The Hollow Ball

Chapter 7

My grandmother told me of how the sea healed people, so keeping the sick closest to water meant its magic was easier to access. Until the Blue Sickness, it was hard to believe how a chill in a person's body took their life. Even when we received the occasional tradesman or politician, I balked at their stories of poisonous waters and winds that wiped out towns.

Now, as I walked along the cobblestone path to the hospital, my hair a knot of curls from the unrelenting wind, I wished I listened closer for ideas on how to stop such things without the ultimate sacrifice.

Tucked along a winding path leading to the harbor, Tesfaye Hospital was a small building at the edge of town that overlooked the bright blue waters of the Astorian Sea.

The Shadows gifted us with good health and long lives, but of course, accidents happened. Babies still needed a place to be born, and small ailments—a sneeze when winter receded—an upset stomach from too much fish—too much time in the sunshine—required treatment. But I wondered if the hospital was isolated out of superstition. If you could not see such serious sickness—if you did not think about it—your health would remain pure.

I shared my hypothesis with Father when I was seven, and he scolded me. Damn near struck me if it weren't for Mother and Gwenyth's intervention at his seemingly irrational anger.

"Words have power," Father seethed. "Speak of something and it may come true. Good or bad."

That all but confirmed it.

Pausing at the gate, I stopped to take in the chipped white paint and faded signage. It was a stark contrast to the ornate buildings in town, as though its neglect and secrecy were the product of guilt or resentment.

Makeshift tents lined the back of the hospital. Initially, people died too quickly for the beds to be full. But now as patients began to stabilize, space was running out. The inside space was utilized for mothers, the elderly, and minor treatments. The tents, ironically blue in coloring, housed Blue Sickness patients, including Kian.

Untying my scarf from my neck, I wrapped it into a proper covering over my nose and mouth. Though the Blue Sickness struck at random, the covering eased the tension in my chest when I pushed the thick flap away and stepped into the second-most feared part of Hunting Hollow.

I remembered the words of the priests in the last sermon I attended at the Shadow Temple.

"While the world suffers under plagues and blight, by the grace of our Lords and Ladies, we are cured by simple acts of worship," the priest said. Kian had just fallen ill. For the first time in my life, the Great Hall felt empty. "A single drop of blood on the altar; a promise to the land and its masters that our souls belong to Them; a sacrifice of strangers and kinfolk alike."

A foolish choice, I was beginning to think. No matter how much the town or priests insisted otherwise.

Kian's cot was at the back of the tent near an open gap meant to be a window. My hands shook as I approached him, and I knelt at his side, a tear slipping down my cheek. The last time I saw him, I promised to return with a cure. When I saw that he remained exactly as he was when I left, I felt small relief. No sign of blue in his light brown coloring. No wheezing. No coughing fits.

He was stable, asleep, and alive.

An awful, wet gurgling cough came from the other side of the tent. I gritted my teeth.

I tried my hardest to block out the sound. "I'm sorry," I said.

I failed miserably. I felt like my failure made everything worse.

And then suddenly, without control, the words tumbled out. I recalled the way I dodged the manor staff and Guard when I escaped into the forest. How the forest seemed to know where I was and set a trap accordingly. My encounter with the Shadow and his wolves. The horror at the gates. The more I spoke, the hotter I became, until I sat back in the grass, pulled my covering aside, and gasped for air, as though reliving it.