Unnaturals (26 page)

Just then there was pounding on the door. It was Mati, tears streaking her face. "Oh, Mel! Melanie is dying and Walter is shouting and breaking things, and Belle and Mistress Codes can't help! Please, Mel—You're her only hope, Mel!"

Nicolas carried her, she couldn't walk alone. Yet, it wasn't fast enough. Melanie was dead by the time they arrived, and Walter was held by three men. Nicolas let Meliora down and talked to him, but Walter didn't stop pulling and tossing and shouting obscenities. Nicolas punched him in the face. Walter sagged in the arms of his guards, his body lifeless, his eyes rolling up. Blood was dripping from his split lower lip.

Oh, gods-damn you Nic, that's not what you do with a person in shock and grief! You give him medicine! Now I have to patch him up
!

The villagers, though, were of another opinion about Nicolas' deeds. As if everything he did was all right. As if they'd obey him.

She wouldn't—and they felt that. Their looks towards
her
weren't nice.

He is the real chief. My father...

Mel remembered other chiefs. She remembered the mounds up there on the hill, the graveyard that no one knew about or no one admitted to know about.

"You need to go home, Mel," Nicolas said, almost gently. "I am sure the chief would like you to."

Mel went, and couldn't fall asleep for a long time.

***

The next morning she woke up able to walk, so she went around the houses to dispense herbs and check on patients. Most still didn't meet her with good feelings, but at least fewer people were sick, she realized. Some had died, others were getting better. She went home again before midday had come and slept through the day and night. For one day, Belle could do without her.

When she stirred late on the next day old Codes was hovering above her, still weak but fully conscious.

"Enough of that priestess-healer stuff, girl," she said. "You're in the fields today."

Perhaps Mel wouldn't have done what she did if her body didn't still hurt, and if some of that sleeping medicine hadn't lingered. Had they given her more of it? She thought it strange now that she'd slept through the previous day. Her father or Nicolas could have easily ordered Mati to put some in her breakfast. Mati was nowhere to be seen, so Mel could not ask.

She didn't say, "Go back to bed, Mistress Codes," like she would have two days ago.

"Fine," she said, and marched out.

She didn't go to the crop fields. She went to her father's house and then to Nic's. She even went to the temple, though almost no one visited the decrepit building these days. When she didn't find them, she sent Nicolas a message.

Do you want to tell me about the jars? Candles? Do you even know that in the feeds that you've kept in our personal interweb there is information about how to make glass from sand, and how to shape it?

He didn't reply.

Fine,
she wrote.
In this case, I will just go to the fields to harvest some glass.

She could have gone to the hunting cabin, to seek the jars she'd seen, and to seek clues. She'd become good at finding clues when they weren't about what mattered the most to her.

But I am tired of being a child who seeks and does not necessarily find, and of being a scavenger. I will make new glass, with my own hands
.

Three of the children joined her on her way out of the village to the river. Children she'd taught before and healed from the terrible disease later. She'd lost the mother of one and saved the mother of another, and the third hadn't had a village mother in the first place. No matter. They were
her
children. The four of them spent the day digging a hole, building a large fireplace, and finally melting sand. By nightfall they had glass. It even resembled jars.

She gave the jars to old Codes. Old Codes put them in the cupboard behind the other jars so that they could not be seen easily, saying nothing.

Belinda was already at home. "Everyone is getting better," she told Mel. "Even Mistress Reneta."

Melanie's hag mother.

"This doesn't concern her!" old Codes snapped. "Let her sleep."

So that was how it would be. Meliora would be treated as a child again, as a fields servant, as if nothing had happened. As if no one remembered last week, or the past months. It was Lucasta all over again.

Or tried to be. Lucasta was never soaked by the feeling of
trying
to forget, of pushing something far, far back.

But I'll bring you other jars. Maybe I'll even bring candles—to my father and Nic. Let's see how long you people can pretend
.

Alice knocked on their door in the morning. "The chief asks everyone to the temple," she said.

Mel didn't go. She went out of the village again, alone, and walked upriver, watching the water. She did nothing that day. When she came back, there was no one at home.

There was, however, a message.
Elizabeth is in a bad state. Go to her.
It had come five hours ago.

She ran to Elizabeth's home. It was just close enough for her to be able to manage the distance. She was in pain again, but she ignored it. She entered without knocking and ran through the kitchen to the little bedroom. Old Codes was in the kitchen, busy by the fireplace. She pretended to ignore Meliora. Belinda was inside, red-faced, sweaty, laying wet cloths on Elizabeth's face. Other women were there, but they tried to keep out of the way. Lizzy lay drenched in her own blood.

"Where is Pat!?" Meliora shouted.

"Hunters' gathering," a woman answered. Then, at some of the other women's heavy looks, "What, she needs to know! She's saved some of us, all right! She might save Lizzy, too!"

"She hates her. You know they hate each other. Get her out of here—get out, you—"

"Do you have the brains of hens or what!?" the first woman screamed. It was Alice. "Let her in!" On the bed, Lizzy moaned.

Mel hadn't waited to be let in. She'd already shoved aside the woman who was blocking her way.

It wasn't the sickness. At least, it wasn't the sickness that Meliora had fought all these months. It was sickness that came with nature's way and with women producing children with their bodies. Premature birth. Damaged internal organs and blood that just wouldn't stop.

They fought for the mother and baby all night. Lizzy opened her eyes at some point and looked into Mel's.

"You know, Mel," she whispered. "In the Art School they taught us, strange as it might seem to us city people, to sometimes look at the world closely. Only then could we reproduce it the way it needed to be reproduced."

"Lizzy, be quiet. You're losing more blood like this."

"Oh, Mel, please don't cry."

A healer should not cry before her patients. A healer should not shout at them things that didn't concern them and would only distress them. A healer stayed detached because only then you could go through it all, and reach the other side. And a Lucastan wouldn't do any of these, not when it mattered...

Mel cried and shouted. Lizzy had been her first friend here. One of the few who had, at some point at least, cared.

An hour later, the baby came.

"You'll care for her, won't you, Mel?" Lizzy's voice was but a whisper, her lips dry even as her forehead dripped with sweat. "See how beautiful she is, Mel..."

Beautiful? She was pink, skinny, as wrinkled as an old woman. She was helpless, and she was wailing like a jackal. One of the other women was washing her mother's blood from her.

"She is..." Mel swallowed. She could not say it. She could not lie to Lizzy.

"I will care for her, Lizzy," she said instead. "I promise you. I swear!"

Lizzy smiled. The baby stopped wailing at the moment the mother's eyes closed. Mel took it in her arms. It started wailing again.

"Here, girl, give her to me. Haven't held a baby in your life, have you?"

"I have held a baby," Mel said, very, very quietly. "I have held a proper baby who can eat, crawl, grab its toys. I have held a baby that didn't have
wrinkles.
And, more than that, Mistress Codes, I have held a baby whose mother was standing right there beside me, healthy, happy, never bloated, never even inconvenienced, waiting to take her new baby in her arms. While Lizzy... Mel hiccuped. "Lizzy..."

"Blasphemy! Mel, you're mad by grief, you don't know what you're saying. Hush! Here, give little Lizzy to me, you're making her cry again—"

"This is no Lizzy! You can't name her Lizzy! This ugly, mother-killing abomination—"

"Meliora, shut up, I beg you! If the chief hears you—"

"The chief? Yes, mistress, you're right. The chief."

She walked into the chief's meeting with the hunters without bothering to knock on his cabin's door.

The hunters looked at her as if they had never seen her before, except for Nicolas. They were angry and worried, but she didn't care.

Out, Mel,
Nicolas mouthed soundlessly.
Get out
.

She didn't. She walked towards the chief, never stopping, never even looking to the side, until there was only an inch between her eyes and his.

"Lucasta, Father," she said, "was to blame for Mom. Maybe. But this damn Village of Life is to blame for Lizzy!"

The village was like an open wound on the face of the earth. It was time for healing.

She heard breaths taken in sharply. One breath came from behind her—Lizzy's man. He hadn't known, of course. Because he, the fool, was here, instead of beside her!

The chief slapped her for the second time in her life. Her ears rang. Blood spluttered out of her mouth.

"Damn you, chief, you're a grand failure!" she shouted. "This whole village is! I am ashamed to be your daughter! Or
am
I your daughter? Do you consider me this at all, or should I have come to the world through a woman's tears and blood? What is so bad with artificial wombs, chief? Everyone"—she turned to shout at them all now—"Lucasta made mistakes, but it made good things, too! All cities did! Why can't we take what we must and abandon only the rest? You stubborn fools!"

He slapped her again. She fell. After all, she hadn't been well recently. Through blurred eyes, she saw Nicolas try to shout something, but someone pressed a hand to his mouth. He tried to run to her, but two men her father's age held him. Younger men were rising, and Meliora knew those would join Nicolas.

It was happening, then. There would be new graves, and not because of disease. They didn't need bullets, bows and spears would do. Anything would do.

Nicolas shook his head. The young men stopped in mid-stride.

Chief

She woke up beneath the village's overpraised stars and moon. She heard a breath being exhaled in relief, but she could not see the person. One of her eyes hurt to open, the other one was swollen shut.

"At least nothing is broken," she heard Nicolas' voice. "You fool. Next time, something will be."

She opened the one eye she could. A part of his face was swollen, too, and his upper lip was split.

"Why, Nicolas? Why you, too?"

"Guess why!" Something blissfully moist and cool was pressed to her forehead. "Because you're not the only damn fool here, it seems. I only joined the fun when you were already losing consciousness—but at least I was able to spare you the broken bones and permanent damage. He'd have continued. He likes to drive his point across fully once he starts. He—You don't know this aspect of him, do you? When he loses it? All you've seen since you came is a weak man who will do anything for the people he cares for. Yes, Meliora. He'd do
anything.
"

"Why? Why would he kill me? Only two days ago, he—"

"Would have died for you, yes. That hasn't changed. With your mother dead, you are the only thing that can break him. A man, even a chief, has his limits, and a place such as the village helps reach them." He fixed her eye with his. "You know about bullets,
assistant priestess,
you must also know about gunpowder. A place such as this is gunpowder waiting for a spark. Do you understand?"

Perhaps she did. Then again, perhaps she didn't. She knew about fixing people, not breaking them.

"Where is he, Nicolas? Where is my father?"

"In his cabin. Resting. Patrick and Walter are there, making sure he comes to no harm. He is coming to peace with himself, preparing to transfer the chief's office to me."

She exhaled slowly, then again. She realized she was trembling. It was a delayed reaction. What she'd feared the most hadn't come to pass. Her father was alive.

"You are taking his place, but you didn't kill him. Why?"

His voice was as soft as Lucastan silk. "Would you have preferred me to?"

His fingers were still on her face, gentler than before. "Do you want me to kill him for you, Mel?"

He was as mad as the chief himself.

His other hand was in her hair now. Gentle, gentle—but he could crush her with one blow, weak as she was. She couldn't fight him. She could fight nature, disease, those non-existent gods.
Things.

"I don't know how to fight people. I only know how to fix them." She wanted to press a hand to her mouth. She was babbling, she knew it. She'd seen people in shock babble like this. "I don't want to fight you."

"Then don't. You're kind of mine now, so it wouldn't do to fight me, anyway." He leaned and brushed his lips against her swollen cheek, then rose and left.

A moment later Belinda and Mati were by her side.

"It's all right," Belinda said. "You will be like new in no time."

"What did this madman mean? About me being his—no, that doesn't matter—Belle, please. Go after him. See that he does not harm my father."

"And how do you propose I do that?" Belinda's voice was cooler than before. "Do you think
I
can tell Nicolas what to do—Oh, Mel, don't you do stupid things now! You can't get up just yet!"

"He won't harm him." This was old Codes' voice. "If he wanted to, he would have. He could have harmed your father and the few men who'd stood beside him. He avoided the unavoidable, girl. He let himself be hurt in order to stop the other fools from going on a rampage. He prevented a bloodshed."