The Hollow Ball

Chapter 4

"I know," I said. It was a lesson I learned many years ago. "I'm trying, I promise."

"Do you feel ill?" She pulled back and searched my face for the first signs of the Blue Sickness: cold sweats, paleness of the face, and the shallow, short breaths that come before the cough and fever settled in.

We called it Blue Sickness because of the blue haze it left over a person's skin as they suffocated to death. For some, it took days, others weeks. But over the last few weeks, one thing was almost certain: no one came out of it.

"I'm okay." Or at least, as okay as I could be given the circumstances.

My words lingered in the silence like an omen, thick with memory, and I sunk into her hold again. Kian said the same thing to us the night before his fever appeared. In the way a fourteen-year-old boy felt invincible, my brother was convinced of his immunity. That he was the exception. But like many others, he was found unconscious in his bed the next morning, skin burning, chest rattling. For the brief moments he woke up, his cough was too violent to allow many words except,

"I'm sorry."

Now, he said nothing at all.

Shame-filled tears burned through my gaze. It was one of only a few emotions I was capable of feeling these days. Shame, anger, guilt, and fear. They coursed so strongly through me that I was certain they might drown me one day.

Carefully peeling myself away, I took her hand. "You know I would tell you if something felt wrong, Mother. Feel my face. See? No fever. Dr. Brinley says it shock."

Wilting, she sighed, exhaustion deepened the lines along the corners of her large brown eyes. Settling on the pink cushions beside me, she followed my gaze to where the black forest stood with attention. "They've called a meeting at City Hall this morning. I hope it's something good this time. Maybe a breakthrough in Blue Sickness. For your sake and mine."

I doubted it. But I said, voice low, "It's likely about what happened at the gates."

She pursed her lips. "Both, I hope. Goddess above, I hope it's all over."

I prickled at the mention of my mother's chosen deity. Unlike my father and siblings, my mother wasn't born in Hunting Hollow. She arrived as a little girl, with a goddess she worshiped alongside the Shadows. Though she never told us the goddess's name in fear of retribution, Mother invoked Her frequently. 

There were steady flows of people who came to Hunting Hollow for a better life. A small handful of families every twenty-five years or so, according to my father. They were different from the merchants and artisans, fishermen, or travelmen who occasionally crossed through, but refused to spend more than a few nights. 

I didn't blame them. Not when so many went missing in the middle of the night. 

As Cedric Hannover described it in the ancient history of Hunting Hollow's charter, the call to settle in Hunting Hollow came in a dream. You are Chosen. Here is your path. And once a desperate family gave their offerings to the Shadows on their altar, they were bound to the land and its masters forever.

No matter how far they ran, no matter how hard they tried, they would always come back.

Not that I ever heard of anyone attempting to leave. Why would anyone ever want to?

A humorless laugh rattled from my chest. "What do you think the Council will say? That whatever happened with Dorothea and Mr. Roberts was an accident? That the rumors aren't true? Or, even better! The doctors have concluded that the sickness is over! We can continue to go about our days just as we've been doing his whole time!"