“She’s lovely, isn’t she?” asked Beryl. The doctor wasn’t foreign to mothers pushing their daughters toward him.
“Yes, ma’am, she’s a lovely young girl. I’m sure one day she’ll make a fine wife and mother.” He winked at the girl and Cressida somehow felt better knowing that the young doctor understood her mother.
“Perhaps you’d like to court her?” said Beryl. “She currently has a long list of suitors, but none as fine as you, doctor.”
“Mother! That is rude and forward. I’m sorry, doctor.”
“It’s fine. Miss Beryl I am not in a position to take a wife, nor do I wish to have one at this time. Your daughter will not suffer in finding many eligible men willing to marry her.”
“So you refuse?” she scowled.
“I respectfully decline,” he said standing and placing his instruments back in the bag. “Continue with hot broth or tea and stay out of the cold for a few days. You should be just fine in no time. By the way, what is that smell?”
“It’s something that’s always been on the property,” said Cressida. “Mother uses it for repairs on our cabin and it seems to work well but we also have an entire greenhouse with herbs and special plants that mother uses.”
“It’s not a pleasant smell, is it?” he smirked.
“No, not at all,” said the young girl.
No matter what Beryl said or did, the doctor was determined to leave a single man and she wasn’t about to have that. As the boatman pulled away, he shook his head at him.
“You’ve angered the wrong witch,” said the man.
“Beryl is a mother of an eligible daughter. She’s not a witch.”
Just then the wind began to rage, the waves lapping against the side of the small boat.
“We’ll see about that. Let’s get the hell outta here before we die.”
The storm raged for days before finally settling. But what blew in with the storm was something the likes of those in the area had never seen. A strange red algae with an noxious odor was carried into the bayou.
Crops were dying, people in the area were getting sick, and nothing could be done about it. Twice Beryl called him back out to the cabin to see her daughter and twice, Hezekiah had to gently let her down, insistent that he would not be taking a wife.
In the end it wouldn’t matter. He would be cursed for more than two-hundred years and live a life inside a mirror he only admired for its beauty, not his own.
“A red algae that smelled awful,” repeated Suzette. “This is going to take some more time to research but if the algae was carrying a parasite or bacteria unknown to us and it mixed with the wood tar, it could have been dormant for generations and came to life somehow this winter.”
“What now?” asked Quentin.
“We have to go out there and get some samples from around that cabin. Rachel will be going with you to tell you exactly what we need.”
“Wait, you want me to go? I’m a nurse not an environmentalist,” said Quentin somewhat panicked. Send him into war zones to treat orphans. Let him pull wounded soldiers from the fields, but to go to something with possible toxicity freaked him out.
“We do a lot of different jobs here, Quentin. If you have a reason for not wanting to go, just tell me,” said Suzette.
“Nope. No reason,” he frowned. He didn’t want them to think he wouldn’t pull his weight. He could get through this. “Let me get changed and I’ll be back.”
Quentin, Rachel, and Chief headed back out to the cabin to get some samples and only realized they had an additional guest when they were half-way there.
“It looks the same.”
“Oh, shit!” said Rachel jumping at the sound of the man’s voice.
“Sorry,” he smiled. “I wanted to see this place again. I needed to be certain that I hadn’t forgotten something about my visits here. I mean, it has been quite some time.”
“It has,” laughed Chief. “It’s fine, Hezekiah. You’re always welcome to come along. So, this witch, Beryl. Was she a voodoo witch or a ride a broomstick witch?”
“No one rides a broomstick,” frowned Rachel.
