The Music of Rdnzarim, 3
Chapter 3
By the time they were home,
George’s cough had gotten much worse. Conrad could hear his breath catch,
followed by wet hacking. George had to stop halfway up the little rise to their
cottage.
The sun had set completely, and
Conrad didn’t like standing out in the dark, but he didn’t want to leave his
brother hunched over, his hands on his knees, nearly retching. Conrad leaned
closer. When George coughed, there was something on his lips that was darker
than spittle.
For a moment, George groaned, and
it sounded almost like humming. Then the door opened, and their parents came
out, shepherding George inside and to bed. He was coughing so badly, they put
him in their room instead of his bunk with Conrad.
The younger boy tried to explain to
his mother what they had seen in the woods, the weird music. She was busy,
though, getting blankets and putting on the iron kettle to make honey tea.
Conrad realized how childish he sounded, telling his mother that he’d run away
from a singing monster at the kindling hill. She told him to go fetch water.
He carried more water as the night
went on, which he didn’t like, because he had to run to the creek every time, down
through their pollarded copse. The stave trees were creepy in the dark. They cast
strange shadows, like giant hands sticking up from the dirt.
He got sweaty, despite the autumn
chill, and his legs were sore when his father sent him to bed. He lay under the
scratchy wool blanket, listening to George cough. It sounded like he had thrown
up too. His parents were whispering in the next room, and then Erin started to
cry, woken by a louder fit.
It was difficult for Conrad to
sleep too. He hoped he didn’t catch what Georgie had. He didn’t want to throw
up. Then he started wondering where his parents were sleeping, and that was the
last thing he remembered before his thoughts drifted away.
He woke once in the night, and
there was silence. Usually George snored, and it always bothered Conrad, but
now the quiet bothered him just as much. Suddenly, he wondered if it was quiet
because Georgie had died, and he almost cried before he wiped his nose and
squeezed his eyes shut.
When he opened his eyes again, dawn
was slipping through the space below his door, a line of pale light. He put his
feet on the cold floor and crept out.
His mother was in a chair, holding
little Erin, both asleep beneath a pile of blankets. George was moaning and
coughing quietly from behind their parents’ door. Conrad didn’t know where
Father was.
He nudged the front door open, but he
didn’t see his father in the yard either. A bucket full of bloody rags and
bloody water sat by the stoop.
Conrad heard Father though, coming
nearer along the trail down the rise. Soon Orson appeared, and with him,
someone else. The other man was wearing a mask that made Conrad gasp. He
pressed himself against the doorframe.
The hide mask was strapped across the
stranger’s face, so tight that the bands pressed into his skin. His flesh puffed
out around their leather. The eyes were covered with green glass windows, and a
bulbous sack of herbs had been affixed on the mouth and nose.
“The other doctors all are sick,”
the man had been saying, just before Conrad gasped. He must have been louder
than he thought, because his father and the stranger both stopped and looked at
him.
“You’re up early,” Orson said. His
voice was empty, like he couldn’t remember a time he had ever smiled. Hearing
his father like that made Conrad feel sad.
“Look how you’ve grown!” the masked
stranger said in a muffled voice, and he stepped forward to pat Conrad’s
shoulder. His hands were covered by canvas gloves sealed with wax.
It took Conrad a long moment to
tell who it was. But looking at the masked man’s layered robes, with a feverfew
leaf embroidered at the cuff, Conrad remembered that his name was Merrian. His
parents had taken Conrad to see the herbalist when he had a fever, and they’d
gotten some bitter tea that made him feel sleepy.
“Go fetch some more water,”
Conrad’s father told him in a hollow voice, as though it were the only thing he
could think of. Both their eyes went to the bucket by the door, heaped with
bloody rags. “I’ll fetch it,” Orson said instead. He sent Conrad in with the
doctor, reminding him to stay out of the way.
So, Conrad sat by the fire, laying
a few lengths of split kindling over the past night’s coals. The wood smoked
sweetly, and after he had blown on it for a minute, a flame came up with a
little woosh.
Now that he wasn’t puffing on the
fire anymore, Conrad could hear bits of his parents and Merrian talking.
Someone was sniffling while the herbalist spoke, and George’s coughing
interrupted them almost constantly. The coughs were different now, short and
dry, like he’d run out of snot to bring up.
Conrad caught the doctor saying, “Make
him comfortable.” This was followed by a sharp sob, his mother, Conrad was
pretty sure, but Conrad thought that was good. He was glad that George would be
comfortable. Merrian said something else, about riding out to the Abbey at the
Crossroads, but he didn’t think they would come in time, whoever they were.
After Merrian left, no one asked
Conrad to fetch water anymore. His father told him to sit with Erin and play
with her, then went outside. When he came back in, his eyes were red and
swollen.
That wasn’t the last time his
father went out. He kept carrying out the bucket, and he told Conrad not to
look in it. Conrad did, of course, and there was always more blood. Then there
was skin, tattered like a shirt caught on brambles. George had mostly stopped
coughing, and now he only groaned from behind their parents’ door.
Conrad found that he couldn’t look
in the bucket anymore, as his father trudged out again, ashen-faced. When he
tried to peek, it was like making himself step out in the dark when he was
little. He shut his eyes when their father passed him, and he decided to focus
on Erin.
They rolled a wooden ball across
the floor. Conrad did voices with her sewn doll, making it pretend to be a
bard, chanting silly rhymes tunelessly. When she got hungry, he peeled bread
away from its crust and fed her. He was pressing a hunk of soft brown crumb
into her palm when George got louder.
Not moaning anymore. George
screamed. It reminded Conrad of when he’d seen a man go down under his horse.
When the horse came up, the rider’s leg was twisted back, and the bone was
sticking out of it. He had been holding onto the sharp, white bone, staring at
it and shrieking.
But George was louder, and he
didn’t stop. Conrad heard the timbre of his brother’s voice break. Like a ghost
was flailing out of his throat. Erin started crying and buried her face on
Conrad’s stomach. He covered her ears, pressing his palms tight. She put her own
tiny hands over his.
Conrad thought maybe he should take
her outside, but he felt like his legs wouldn’t know what to do if he stood. He
could only stare at the door, listening to Georgie scream.
And then the scream changed. Like
two voices were trying to break out of his brother, then three, and then
another and another. Tangling, howling voices, singing together but never quite
meeting. Like the music he’d heard by twilight, out on the kindling hill. Like
the thing with a hundred mouths.
Finally silence. He let go of
Erin’s ears and held her to him. It made him feel braver, like he was
protecting her. His parents were crying in the next room, still in there with
George. Conrad stroked his little sister’s sandy hair.
He watched the door, listening to
his mother and father cry, wondering if he should do something. He bumped Erin
up and down on his knee. A new noise started, softly at first.
From behind the shut door, his
parents began to cough.
