Chapter 1 - Aliyah Barlow
I walk down the muddy road, back toward my one-bedroom home. My brother should be back from his job as Head of the hunting team, and I hope he was able to bring something back. I’m starving more than usual.
Just as I finally look up from the ground, a horse and buggy hit a large mud puddle next to me and now I’m soaked to the bone. I grumble as I finish my walk home.
It feels colder inside than outside, but my brother is working on getting a fire going in the fireplace, so it should be warming up soon.
“Hey, Milo,” I say as I enter, dropping my bag of medicines on the dusty floor. No matter how I clean it, it always seems covered in a thick layer of dirt. I scrubbed it every day for a week once, and it was still dirty. “How was work?”
“Good, we got a couple of deer, so in about an hour we’ll be able to have dinner.” He sighed as he stood up, having gotten a small fire going. “How about you?”
“Fine, same as always. There’s never much work to be done at the toxicology center. No one needs poisons around here, so we mostly just sit there and kill time.” I complain, shifting on my feet. My work always sounded small and unimportant next to my brothers, who fed everyone in the village. Sometimes I wish I had a better power, something that could help more people. I’m only useful when someone gets a cold or needs some poisons for something I know better than to ask questions about.
“Well, I’m glad it’s not stressful.” He smiled at me, which caused one of my own to form. “You should go take a bath.” He laughed at my appearance as he watched the mud dripping from my clothes.
I did as he suggested, taking a warm bath and doing my best to hand wash my clothes. I wish we had power - a washing machine and hot water sounds nice right now, but I live in Grimeshire. We don’t get power like the other villages. We don’t get a lot of things the others do.
Despite Grimeshire being the village of rejects where they send all the people whose powers aren’t good enough for the king, I like it here. The people are nice and the food is good, although I’ve never been to the other villages so I have nothing to compare it to.
Sometimes I hate how we can’t go to the other villages. I’d love to see what they’re like. Of course, I’ve read about them in textbooks during high school, but it’s not the same as experiencing them.
I finish washing my clothes and hang them up outside to dry. It’ll take a while since it’s cold, but they should be fine by morning.
I walked into the kitchen and watched over my brother as he started working on dinner. Normally, I would be the one to cook, but I usually let him handle the meat since he was better at it.
After we ate, my brother went to take a bath and washe his clothes while I read an old book I’d already read seven times. After about an hour, I got bored and went to bed, trying to prepare myself for the next day.
“Good morning.” Milo welcomed me as I walked into the living room. “How’d you sleep?”
“Terrible.” I smile. “Like always.”
“Same.” He smiled back, standing up from where he was getting his bow ready for another day of hunting.
“You look tired,” I commented, noticing the dark circles under his eyes. “Are you feeling okay?” He always had dark circles, so that didn’t concern me. The glazed look in his eyes and pale skin threw me off.
“I think I have some kind of cold,” he sighed. “That’s all.”
“You should rest.”
“I can’t, Aliyah, you know that. People rely on me to bring home food. If I take a few days off, there’s a good chance people could go hungry.”
“It’s almost winter, there shouldn’t be much left to hunt,” I argued, crossing my arms.
“Right, but I need to get what I can before winter hits.”
Winters were always rough. We usually ended up losing a couple of people, with more falling ill. Milo already getting sick worried me.
“Fine, but when you get home, rest,” I said firmly, leaving no room for argument. “You’re no good to anyone dead.“ I picked up my bag from where I had dropped it the night before and raked through it, pulling out a smile vial of clear liquid. I handed it to him.
“I’m not going to die,” he smiled softly as he placed his hands on my shoulders and looked down into my eyes. “It’s just a cold, don’t worry. If it makes you feel better, I’ll see Bailey when I get back.”
“That would make me feel better.” I try to feign annoyance, but it falls flat on my tongue. “Go see Bailey and let me know what she says. Until you can get to her, take this. It should help.” I handed him the vial again and saw a hint of hesitation as he finally took it and poured it down his throat. He coughed at the sharp, bitter taste but voiced no complaints.
Bailey was the village healer. We have a couple of them, but Bailey was the best. She couldn’t work miracles but she could do more than most here. She could do more than I could, even if I knew medicine.
I go off to work, ready for another boring day of sitting in an office and staring at the wall. Maybe I could find some medicine or poison that needs to be restocked or maybe try to come up with a new one. Lord knows we’ll need it this winter.
“Aliyah,” my co-worker Daniel called out during my shift, interrupting me creating some more cold medicine to replace what I had given Milo. “It’s your brother. Bailey needs you to get home now.”
I dropped what I was doing and ran outside, running back home and busting in the front door.
“Milo!” I call, heading to the bedroom where Bailey sits next to him by the bed. “What’s wrong?”
“Milo has pneumonia,” Bailey said as she stood up. My brother was sleeping. He looked pale but peaceful. I could hear a rattling in his chest and he was wheezing worse than he was this morning.
“What do we do?” I ask, knowing that there’s not much we can do. We don’t have any medication strong enough to fix pneumonia, but maybe we have something that could help.
“I’m giving him medication that should help clear up some of the mucus. There’s not much else we can do, since we don’t have the means to get proper medication for it.”
I know the other villages have plenty of pneumonia medicine. It’s nothing more than a bad infection for them, whereas it’s pretty much a death sentence here in Grimeshire. Yet again, I feel a deep rage at the king for making it impossible for us to travel between villages.
“We have to get medication,” I say finally. “He’ll die without it.”
“Aliyah, we can’t just get medication for it. You know we can’t go to other villages, and they’re most likely not going to send any here.”
“There has to be something we can do,” I argue, feeling panic start to rise in my chest.
“I’m sorry, Aliyah. We have to wait this out.” She sounded sad, almost as upset as I felt. “This medicine should help clear some of it up, but it may not fix it completely. I suggest you focus on your work, and hopefully, you can create a medication for pneumonia. I know you’ve been working on it for a while.” She sighed as her voice trailed off.
“I don’t know if I can get it finished before…” I couldn’t finish my sentence, letting the unspoken words hang between us. “Will you stay with him? While I work?” I ask finally, looking toward her with hopeful eyes.
“Of course I will.” She smiled softly. “I’ll watch over him and send someone to get you if he gets worse. Just focus on your work and try to come up with a cure. I know you’re getting close, and if anyone can come up with a cure for this, it’s you.”
I knew she was right. I was the best toxicologist in the village, but that wasn’t saying much. My powers were nothing compared to those in the other villages, but they got the job done.
Usually.
A couple of people have died under my care, all of which were due to diseases that we don’t have medicine for. Only one was my fault, and I was only trying to help.
I think back to the woman that I gave a poison to, hoping that it would help reverse the illness she had come down with. It did, but it killed her in the process. It helped me figure out a cure for typhoid fever, but at a price I wasn’t willing to pay. Hearing her cries as the poison slowly killed her still keeps me up at night, and I shudder at the thought.
I had to find a way to save my brother before he was met with a similar fate. I knew I didn’t have much time before the pneumonia would get worse, so I rushed back to the toxicology center and got straight to work, leaving my brother under Bailey’s care for now.
