a foolish night

[April 3rd, 1362 - Eirennach]

It was a special day when the bell in Inbhear Caol chimed twice. The streams ran as cold as they had been in winter, and there was no substantial change in the wind. Blossoms that had once burst outwards in the depths of the elber trees cascaded downwards in droves like rainfall, collecting in piles on the side of busy streets as a carriage drove past Llewen Way.

Because it wasn’t any of these occurrences that made the day particularly interesting. It was that it marked the eighth week since the Hero had come to save the world…

…that was the joke that the children were telling, to be sure.

An elderly man stepped out of the carriage, fixing his collar and lowering his cane as he nodded to the driver, signaling the carriage’s departure from a lonely cottage on the hillside. Steam billowed out from its quaint faded-brick chimney nestled into the tufts of roofing high above, melding with the dreary spring sky like splashes of paint in water.

“Good morning, Mr. Bellham!” A voice called out from behind him, prompting his gaze to flit over to the sudden appearance of a young boy. He had hair as bright as fire, cheeks filled with freckles like stars.

“Little O’hare!” The old man smiled brilliantly, kneeling down with the assistance of his cane, wincing slightly before ruffling through the mat of orange on his scalp. “Have you been treating your mother well? You know well what the guardsmen do to boys who don’t behave.”

“They hire them!” Little O’hare jested, joy seeping out as bouts of laughter as he covered his mouth with his tiny fingers. The old man remembered when his children had been of that age. It was… nostalgic.

“Right you are.” The elderly man winked. “So make sure to keep yourself in line, or me and my boys might have to pay you a visit!”

The boy adamantly shook his head. “No, no. That’s okay…”

Everyone in Inbhear Caol knew to respect Mr. Bellham. After all, a man who had distinguished himself over thirty-five years in the guard should have been greeted with his proper flowers. But there was one woman who always treated him as distinctively as she did all of her other guests and customers— that was, Penelope Raphailia of Agamemnon, with her tendency to cast shadows onto others.

She was trimming away at a small potted fern when Mr. Bellham first stepped inside, chimes sounding out as he pushed the front door to the cottage open. The faint scent of petalwest burning in a pot of ash emanated through the air. It was faint and sickly sweet, tinged with the sharp scent of copper in its trailing note.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Bellham.” Penelope nodded her head politely, tilting it to the side with curiosity. “Are you here for your weekly dose?”

An illusory butterfly trailed from one of the countless round-bottomed flasks behind her, wisping away into flecks of pale light that stained the very air. Bubbles boiled up from another flask beside it, popping along with each tremor of the counter, following a series of roars coming from the back room. The voice… it was animalistic, buried under a wailing exhaustion, scratchy and shaky in its dreadful cry.

“My, my… it sounds like you have a beast back there, eh?” Mr. Bellham joked, nodding his head towards the curtain behind the counter.

However, when he glanced back towards Penelope, it seemed that the feeling was not reciprocated. She had an annoyed expression on her face, slowly replying, “I would appreciate if you didn’t make comments about my patients, Mr. Bellham. Maybe your mind has been dulled by the work that you guards do— all of the killing, executions, torturing… but the people who are wounded cry when you’re done with them. The sick are no different, they have their own feelings too. Make your jokes, but then remember what the Hero is facing now, precisely and only because our Kingdom decided they needed another weapon.”

She immediately put herself to arranging various glass vials that had been positioned across the counter top, those which had been gifted to her by her wealthy clients in view of her status as a Healer. And in those she fell silent. It was as if she had immediately absorbed herself into her own world.

“Ah, I’m sorry, Saintess. I didn’t mean any harm by it, I swear. Yes, just the weekly dose, for my knees. They’ve been more troublesome recently…”

But to his apology, he received no reply. So he scratched the back of his head in a defeated matter and sighed.

“Well, I’m also here on business. It’s just a matter of the state, I’m sorry. I just have to ask you formally— do you think the Hero will recover from this?”

Penelope shook her head. “No, it’s alright, Mr. Bellham. I know you’re worked to the bone as is. I wouldn’t make it harder on you when there’s no good reason to.”

She seemed colder towards him, far more indifferent now.

“As for the Hero… it’s a difficult matter. If you had asked me to give my opinion when I had first encountered his case, I would have said that you were better off killing him again. But after spending time with him…”

She took a deep breath, glancing out of the window beside the counter, gazing at the field of wildflowers just outside of Llewen Way.

“…I think he has the will to survive it all. It wouldn’t be a matter of saying whether or not he will ever be functional as the Kingdom’s Hero, that identity was robbed of him the moment he became ill. However… I think he can live.”

Mr. Bellham gazed at Penelope absentmindedly, absorbed in her honeyed description of the man. Such was the whim of the greatest Healer in the Kingdom.

He nodded, turning away. In the short time they had spoken, she had already prepared a parcel filled with the various herbs that Mr. Bellham would smoke for relief. He grasped at it and sighed once more.

“Between you and me, the Kingdom is eager to dump him onto you. I, for one, just want to clear our hands of this mess. Whether he lives or dies, it won’t stop what’s coming. So I’ll report that all’s well.”

Suddenly, Mr. Bellham stopped in his tracks, spinning around as he raised his hands. “There’s one more thing, Saintess.”

“Yes?” She didn’t even bother lifting her head from her work this time.

“A private collector recently came to Inbhear Caol looking for a buyer. In the end, he lost certain items from his collection. In particular, a fairy.”

Penelope’s head perked up. “A fairy?”

“Yes, so if anything strange starts to happen around you— well, just send notice. Good day, Ms. Raphailia.”

“See you next week, Mr. Bellham.” She bowed politely, watching as he exited the cottage, the chimes hung from its frame not far behind in its leitmotif.

Then, mumbling under her breath, she cursed the name of that collector.

“Fairies, always fairies…”

And when she was sure that the cottage was free of guests, Penelope turned her attention to the room behind the curtain, to the sobbing in the quiet. Only two months prior, the Kingdom had performed a summoning of a Hero, in hopes that they would receive a terrifying weapon.

What they hadn’t anticipated was that their summoning would fail. Instead of bringing forth a human from another world and granting him fantastical powers… the Hero had received a deadly illness.

One that the Kingdom had tasked her with treating.

Restlessly, Penelope first mixed illumin powder into a poultice moist with mountainroot sap. This would prevent infection from spreading as she tended to the Hero… but the pain would be far too much for him. She would have to prepare something for that too…

Penelope hovered over the counter top, staring at its polished wooden surface, the scars that her work had left behind over the years…

…when had they started to consider her the greatest Healer?

Clenching her fist, she cursed silently.

This had to be something that she was capable of!

Once she had finished preparing several other concoctions, she made her way to the curtain behind the counter top. She walked past the kitchens and into the dingy hall, drawing the door closed behind her as she did so.

Because in the dark back room of the cottage, the centerpiece of all suffering on that hilltop was curled up on a mattress of straw and harsh linens, silently bowing his head underneath his arm. The skin of his forearms was withered and red, covered in layers of bandages. His face was pale and thin, jaw sharp and head of crow-hair fading in hue, almost a blush-pink.

Worst all was his back, which was too bloodied to lay on, plastered with sheets of thick white bandages.

“Once more, Hero. I’m sorry.”

Each day, she would visit him in the back room of the cottage. To feed him, to care for him, but most especially to administer her talents.

He screamed and cried, sometimes her name, mostly her title. ‘Saintess, please-!’, but she couldn’t offer any solace— that wasn’t her gift.

She could only heal him.

She maneuvered a sheet of light across his back, excising and singeing the blackened flesh that tormented him. It spread like ivy, tendrils of rot running down his mottled white flesh like lightning. Each time the radiant blade ran through the tattered meat, he would curse and bite the pillow he leaned his head into. And with the emerging heat, she had to constantly pay attention to her skin. It was a danger that her sweat might drip towards his wounds.

It was a tumultuous affair. But that time was only spent with each other, the early afternoons stretching into the dead of night. She usually spent her days with her attendant, her regulars, and the various others that would visit for any number of purposes. This… was the most time she had spent with someone in particular since the youngest years of her childhood.

The man’s eyes were cold, but also curious. The pain often kept him in too dull a state to speak, at least as he let on, and so their exchanges were not frequent. He never thanked her for her services, gratitude was the farthest thing from entering his gaze.

But at night, he would tell her things, almost as if it was an unspoken exchange.

‘If you heal me, I’ll share my world’s bounty of knowledge with you.’

Math, sciences, literature…

What was most important to her was the medical knowledge he would impart. Anatomy, cells, the very makeup of life…

For a Healer, this sort of knowledge was not only fascinating, it was like true magic.

So the two never shared a smile between one another. They were like two partners engaged in business. She would heal his affliction during the day, and he would teach her during the night.

And when Penelope would tuck him in for the night, making sure that he was not tormented by unending pain, she would whisper to him, almost as if scrawling the signature on the contract between them,

“Goodnight, Kaede.”