And so they’d traveled from village to village, trying desperately to find someone, anyone, who could help Iona. She shook with chills and cried with agony, but no healer could ever seem to help. Ivor had hunted and, yes, killed for various village elders in exchange for all sorts of potions and medicines, but none had any effect.
Plenty of kind souls had tried to help, but each and every single one had been useless. Occasionally, a family would offer to take Iona in permanently – but even if it would be better for her, Ivor couldn’t stand the idea of them being separated. Ivor usually stole away with his sister in the dead of night after he heard the same words every time; “it’d be better to put the poor lassie out of her misery.”
Nay. Never.
“I just want somewhere that can be our home, Ivor,” she told him now. She rode in a cart that he dragged along with the strength of his own arms. They’d had a donkey once, but he’d sold it for food at the last village. “I dinnae care if I have to be sick. I just need to rest.”
“I ken,” he said. “Dinnae worry. The next one will get ye better, I promise.”
He prayed to God or anyone else who would listen that this time it would be a promise that he could keep.
* * *
The blacksmith hired Ivor on as a chore boy as soon as he reached the village on the border of Riven. He was kind, even giving the children room in his home. They had plenty of food and warmth, and Iona even seemed to be thriving.
But then came the night a month later that Ivor came back from work to find Iona lying there on the floor, pale as a ghost, blood on her lips. He screamed for help until the blacksmith’s wife came running.
The village healer came as quickly as he could, paid for in full by the blacksmith. Now, Ivor waited outside the room while the healer did his work. It felt like it had been hours, and the blacksmith had repeatedly tried to get him to go to sleep, but he refused.
“Nae until I ken she’s all right,” he kept saying. He saw the way that the blacksmith and his wife kept exchanging looks, but he chose to ignore it. He had to.
Finally, the door opened, and the healer came out. He was a nice man, broad and cheerful. Ivor had brought him apples from the nearby field a few times. He wasn’t cheerful now, though; his eyes were hooded, his expression grim. He led the blacksmith away, and the two of them spoke in a low voice.
“The lad deserves to ken,” the blacksmith said finally. “Come here, Ivor.”
Ivor loved how the blacksmith treated him like a grownup, but right now, he felt like he was nothing but a small child. He walked over, and the healer crouched down so that they were eye to eye.
“Ivor,” said the healer. “I’m afraid it isnae very good news.”
Tears sprung to Ivor’s eyes. “Is she dead?”
“Nae, nae yet,” the healer replied. “Though it’s a miracle that she’s lasted so long.”
“That’s what they all say,” Ivor protested. “But I keep going. I look after her. I promised her we’d find somewhere we’d be safe, sir, and I’m nae gonnae let her down now.”
The healer and the blacksmith exchanged looks. The healer shook his head. “So adult for a lad nae even one and ten,” he said sadly. “Let me tell ye the truth, boy, since naebody else will. Yer sister, she’s got a disease of the lungs and of the brain. It’s a darkness that’s working its way around her system, and it cannae be stopped. Naebody is sure how it starts, just that it always ends the same way.”
Ivor clenched his fists so hard that he could feel the nails digging into his palms. “But if ye ken what it is, ye can fix it, aye?” He grabbed the healer’s robes. “Please, sir. She’s all I have left. I cannae lose her too.”
The healer sighed and looked to the blacksmith. “This is too much to put on the lad,” he said.
The blacksmith looked pained but said, “He’d never forgive me if I made the decision for him. He’s been her only caretaker for two years. It’s up to him.”
The healer sucked in a breath and said, “I have two concoctions that might help her, but no way to cure her.”
Ivor sat up. “Tell me.”
“The first,” the healer said, “Is a tonic. If she takes it every day, four times a day, she may live another three or four months. She’ll be weak and in pain, worse every day, but alive.”
I cannae bear the thought of me poor baby sister in more pain. I just cannae.
“What’s the other option?” Ivor asked. The blacksmith put his hand on his shoulder, and Ivor’s stomach roiled as he guessed already what was coming.
“I have a mixture that will send her to sleep,” the healer said softly. “It’ll relax her and send her into dreams, where there’s nae pain. In the morning, she’ll have slipped away.”
Ivor went still. So his choices were her death or her pain? He’d failed her. He’d promised her that he’d take care of her, and he’d failed her. At the age of ten and a half, Ivor had fought on battlefields, worked for a living, and even killed men. He was a boy no longer. And yet, when the blacksmith offered him a hug, he collapsed into his embrace like a sobbing child.
* * *
