Total pages in book: 169
Estimated words: 161535 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 808(@200wpm)___ 646(@250wpm)___ 538(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 161535 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 808(@200wpm)___ 646(@250wpm)___ 538(@300wpm)
I sneeze.
“The…Vulture…God…has cursed us?” the woman asks as she sits up. I can see a wild array of gray tangles around her head, and her face is heavily lined. The dark circles under her eyes are so pronounced they look like bruises.
“Not you,” Kalos continues, taking the bucket of water and pouring it into the cauldron. “Just your well.”
“But…why?” she asks.
“Who can say what the gods are thinking?” he comments blandly.
I touch his hand to thank him for the assistance. I’m sweating already, and the room feels stifling hot. Probably a touch of fever thanks to him using his magic. “We’re going to boil your water and you’re going to want to do that every time from now on,” I tell her. “Understand?”
Wordless, she nods. Then her face contorts, and she reaches for the bowl next to the bed. I turn away, wincing, as she’s sick, and Kalos moves to my side. He puts an arm around my shoulders, pulling me in close, and leans in to whisper against my ear. “Check the root cellar. She’s eating something that’s bad.”
More than just the water? I nod, trying to focus. It’s difficult when his lips are practically brushing against my earlobe.
The woman in the bed dry heaves, and that ruins the moment.
I turn around, eyeing the floor. “Where’s your root cellar?”
“Don’t steal my food! It’s all I’ve got to eat!”
This is going to be trickier than I thought. “Trust me, I don’t want your food,” I say as nicely as I can. I remind myself that to this woman, I barged into her house and started going through her things. She doesn’t know that I’m not here to steal from her. I spot a woven rug with a depression under it and flip it back. The moment I do, the sour stink hits me like a wall. Choking, I step back and go outside for a breath of fresh air, my eyes streaming.
I pull my dress up over my mouth and nose and re-enter the house. “What do you have down there?”
“Pickles,” she says.
“Do they always smell this terrible?” I flip the rug back again and there’s a wooden trap door in the floor. When I lift it, I see a pit a few feet deep, and inside it is jar after jar of what must be canned vegetables. I lift one into the air to get a good look at it and it’s cloudy inside. Bad choices, indeed.
“Just this batch,” she says, panting. “But I don’t have anything else to eat.”
Poor woman. I give Kalos a helpless look.
He shrugs, holding his hands out as if to say, what do you expect me to do?
“We’re going to get you something decent to eat,” I promise her. “But don’t eat these. Feed them to your pig.” I hesitate, because I don’t want her to poison her pig, either. “Actually, don’t do that. Let me think.”
Would burying them solve the problem? Pouring them out and re-using the jars sounds like it would create a toxic mess. I rub my forehead, thinking, but the noxious smell is getting to me. Covering my mouth, I fight the urge to dry heave myself.
Kalos sighs heavily, as if he’s incredibly put out. “You owe me a favor,” he mutters to me and takes the jar from my hands and stares at it. As I watch, the cloudy contents become clear, showcasing what look like pickled turnips inside.
I sneeze violently again, three times in a row. Then, three times more, until my head is throbbing. He hands the jar back to me and I point at the rest of the woman’s cache. “Can you do all of them?”
He eyes me, wiping away some of the tears streaming down my face from the intense round of sneezing. “You sure you want me to do that?”
I nod, because fixing one meal for this woman isn’t going to solve her problems. We must fix all of them or else she’ll just go back to eating rotten food and be just as bad off.
“You’re too soft-hearted,” Kalos chides, even as he pulls the next jar out of the shallow root cellar.
By the time he’s done, I’m shivering with fever, a cold sweat coating my limbs. I can handle this, though, because I expect it. I manage a smile when he shoots me a look of concern, and grit my teeth to keep them from chattering. The water has been boiling for several minutes, and I scoop a dipper of it out and put it in a cup to cool, then add a few sprigs of the herbs we’ve been wearing at our belts. Can’t hurt to give it a little flavor.
The old woman sits up in bed, watching us move about her house with a perplexed expression. “Who are you?” she asks when I hand her the hot cup of water.