Page 37 of The Thirteenth Child
He let out a deep groan, thrashing onto his other side. His breath was rank and reminded me of Papa’s after a night of drinking. Sure enough, the floor was littered with empty bottles. I briefly wondered if he’d made the spirits himself—Kieron had led us through a field of rye on the way here—but I pushed the curiosity aside, knowing I was procrastinating.
“It burns.” He gasped, digging his feet into the ticked mattress. I noticed with a sickening twist in my gut that his toes had a blackened hue. “Holy First help me, it burns.”
“What does?” I asked, but he was too lost in his throes to answer me. “Reynard?”
He turned and vomited over the side of the bed. I had to jump back to avoid being splashed with the foul offering, and I felt my own stomach heave, longing to purge itself of every bit of Merrick’scake.
I whirled around to my godfather. “I can’t do this.” I knew I sounded panicked, lost in a rising hysteria, but I couldn’t help it. This was bad. This was so much worse than I’d ever imagined.
I’d thought Merrick would ease me into life as a healer. I’d startout small—headaches, toothaches, stitching some wounds, maybe a few cases of summer colds.
Not…this.
Merrick stared down at me, appraising me with a placid expression that made me want to shriek. Didn’t he understand what was going on?
“I can’t…He’s going to…” I sighed, none of my arguments forming into coherent thoughts. “He’s going to get me sick.”
Merrick shook his head. “He won’t.”
“The air in here is so tainted it’ll be a wonder ifyoudon’t fall ill,” I hissed.
“You won’t get sick,” he replied. “You’ve always had a strong constitution, have you not? In the whole of your life, can you recall a single bout of influenza?”
I thought back over my childhood. I recalled listening to my siblings as they coughed and sneezed, hearing them all the way from my little nest in the barn. I shook my head.
“An outbreak of spots?”
Another denial.
“Allergies?” he persisted.
I said nothing for a long moment. “Your doing, I suppose?”
He smiled pleasantly, as if we were having this conversation over afternoon tea. “It wouldn’t do to have a healer who caught everything her patients suffered from, would it?” Merrick made a soft noise of sympathy. “I know this seems hard now, but I believe you are more than capable of helping this man. So…go on.”
Behind me, the farmer let out a cry of pain, his arms flailing like a broken marionette. “Why did you bring this devil with you?” he screeched, using the last of his strength to fling a rancid pillow at mygodfather. More vomit gurgled up his throat as he shrank back into the bedding, hiding under a quilt stiff with stains. “Oh Holy First, save me from this monster!”
“He’s not a monster!” I snapped, striking the headboard with the heel of my palm. I just wanted to make the noise stop, to put an end to all those horrible sounds coming from him. “He’s not!”
Despite the complete chaos of the moment, despite the screams and the stink and situation exploding past the point of my control, Merrick smiled down at me. He touched my cheek, making me look up at him, making me focus on his eyes alone. “You’re doing fine, Hazel.”
“I’m not! What is fine about any of this?”
Behind me, the farmer convulsed, shrieking about the fires of the afterworld come to singe him. He struck up a conversation with someone who was not in the room, and I looked back at my godfather with a pleading expression.
“Center yourself,” he advised, his voice maddeningly calm. “Find your inner peace and try again.”
I let out a sob. “I can’t. I don’t want to. Can’t you just fix him? Please? We can go home and just…” I trailed off, hating myself, hating how much I sounded like a coward.
Merrick shook his head, not backing down. “There’re clues here, Hazel. You need only look.”
“I don’twantto look,” I admitted, tears welling up.
He paused for so long I started to believe he’d realized his mistake: I was not a healer. I never could be a healer. He’d call it all off and we could go home. Hope flared in my chest as I waited for him to admit he’d been wrong.
“Go on and touch him, then, if you’re so keen on giving up.”
My hope sputtered out, a flame doused with cold water. He wanted me to use the gift. The magic.
