Ozark Fantasy - Twelve Fair Kingdoms Part 15

and let me see how bad things are in this place!"

"Which sickroom, miss?" she asked me. "We've nothing but sickrooms on this whole second floor.""How many are down?" I demanded, but she only shrugged."I've lost count, miss... might could be thirty, might could be twice that."

"And both your Grannys."

"And both our Grannys."

"Well, take me to Granny Copperdell, then," I said, "and set down

that basin-whatever it is, it's no use to anybody now."

She turned without a word, but I had to take the useless basin from her hands myself, and I followed where she led me. I could smell the sickness now, and I wanted those windows open at the front of the Castle, and fresh air in here as fast as it could decently be

accomplished.

"Are many people sick in the town?" I asked her, wis.h.i.+ng she'd hurry.

"Oh no, miss," she said. "Not in the town. Only in the Castle."

Hmmmph. That would be fuel for the dratted Wommack curse, of

course.

She knocked twice at a doorway, and then opened it and stood aside to let me pa.s.s, saying, "That's Granny Copperdell there in the bed, miss, and I hope you can do something for her, for I surely can't.

And I'm too busy to stay with you, so you'll excuse me, please."

And she was gone.

"Well, Granny Copperdelll" I said, making it a cautious challenge.

"So this is how you run things!"

Hers was the only bed in the room, and she was tiny in it; three featherbeds under her, I was willing to wager, and half a dozen pillows propping her up in them.

"Land, who is it bothering me now?" came from the depths of the bedclothes, and I saw an encouraging flurry. "Can't leave an old woman to die in peace, can you? Come near me and torment me again with one of your so-called Magicians and you'll find out if I'm sick, I warn you, and me that's sick and tired of warning you-all! Magicians! Phaugh-what's a Magician know about healing? No more use than- Well, who be you?"

It did my heart good. She might be sick, but she surely was not dying. She was behaving absolutely as a Granny ought to behave,

and that meant I'd get useful information here at least.

"It's only me, Granny Copperdell, Responsible of Bright.w.a.ter," I said. "And sorry to see you so poorly. May I come sit by you there?"

"Come ahead," she ranted, "come right ahead! Why ask? If it's not

one sort of meanness, it'll be another... why can't you stay home where you belong, 'stead of meddling in our affairs, and tormenting an old woman as is about to draw her last breath?"

I tried the bed, but it was impossible; you sank into the feather-beds and disappeared from sight unless you weighed no more than a Granny, and that did not apply to me.

"You get a chair and get yourself off my bed!" she ordered me, whacking at me with a handkerchief like I was a gerdafly; and I did so gladly, pulling the chair up close beside her head.

"Now, Granny Copperdell," I said firmly, "there's no need for you to keep on with your carry-on. It doesn't impress me, and I'll be no use here if I don't hear some sense and hear it quick."

"Likely," she said. "Likely!"

"Granny, you know I'm right," I said, "you a Bright.w.a.ter by birth; and every Castle on this planet knows quite well why I'm traveling round it. You're in a wild place here for sure, but this high up the

reception on your comsets is certain to be perfect. You know why I'm here!"

"Took you long enough," she muttered.

"No comset on my Mule, Granny," I said. "I've been four days, and

all of them long days, flying here, and I've landed only to make my camp and sleep; I've had no news. If I'd known there was trouble here I'd not of stopped for anything."

She sighed then, and settled back, and I plumped up her pillows for her.

"Speak up, Granny Copperdell," I said. "For I've had not one

sensible word out of anybody else in this house-what am I up

against?"

"Three days ago, it began," she said. "You'd already of left Castle Purdy, I reckon."

"Started sudden?"

"A child's sitting on a windowsill, playing with a pretty and eating a biscuit, happy and fit as a bird," she told me. "And then in two breaths that child is burning alive with fever, and racked head to

foot with misery, and writhing like a birthing woman, fit to break your heart. I've never seen anything, not anything, so quick."

I touched her forehead, though she pulled away from my hand; it

was blazing hot."What kind of sickness is it?" I asked her."Well, I wish I knew that!" she said, fretting, and turned her head side to side on the pillows. "Think I'd be lying here like an old fool if I knew that? If I knew even the name, it might could be I'd know what to tell the idiot females in this Castle to do... what's its name, that's half the battle won any time."

"And the Magician doesn't know either."

I said that under my breath, thinking out loud, and regretted it immediately. A Magician could set bones, and take out sick and useless organs such as an appendix, and deal with cancers. If it had

been any of those, the Magician would already have taken care of

the matter. And there was no Magician of Rank on Kintucky.

"I'm sorry, Granny Copperdell," I said, before she could start on me. "I wasn't thinking straight; just forget I said it. But you help me... tell me the symptoms of this stuff. Even the little things that you don't really think matter."

"High fever," she said, reciting it like a lesson. "Racking pain in every joint and bone and muscle. That's likely the worst of it, that pain. All the lymph glands swollen and tender, especially in the armpits. A b.l.o.o.d.y flux, and pain high on the right of the belly. Rash around the ankles and the hands, and a flaming red patch over both cheeks. Sores in the mouth, sores in the privates... Hurts to breathe, hurts to swallow, hurts to hear any noise much over a whisper- that's why the windows are shuttered, child."

"What have you tried for it?"

"Everything a Granny knows, and some made up new," she said.

"And none of it any use." She was in no danger, but she was exhausted, and I was wearying her more. "I'm not a good patient for you to be observing," she said accurately, "I'm hardly touched with

it yet, and tough as I am I doubt it'll get much worse. You go look at the others and you'll see what it's like.""Can I get you anything, Granny, before I do that?""You can get on with it, and leave off pestering me!"I plumped the pillows up again, and checked to see that the water was easy to her reach, and I went on out and closed the door behind me. She'd keep a long while yet.

Ah, but the others; they were another matter altogether. I counted fifty-one, and they were truly sick. Even Granny Goodweather. She didn't so much as ask me my name when I leaned over her, and that frightened me.

They lay in their beds and they twisted, slowly-I can think of no other way to describe it. As if they hung from intolerable bonds. One arm would stretch, the fingers spread like claws, pus.h.i.+ng, pus.h.i.+ng till I thought the fingerjoints would crack, and then the other arm, pus.h.i.+ng against some unseen wall. And then the legs, one at a time, stretching till the soles of the bent feet lay flat against the mattress. And no more would the foot reach its terrible extension than it began to move back upon itself... and then the arms would start. It was like a horrible, endless, solemn, tortured, dance of death; and it was very clear that it hurt them like raw flames. There were women from the town trying to tend them, but I could see that they weren't accomplis.h.i.+ng much. Changing the bedlinens and bathing flesh, bringing them water to drink and soothing the little ones... that seemed to be it.

As for treason, the thought was indecent. The Wommacks were so grimly convinced their whole household was cursed that they considered the most absolute neutrality no more than their duty toward their fellows. Even when they were without other troubles to distract them, no Wommack took sides, for fear their bad luck would rub off on the side they'd chosen. With things as they were here right now, I could put all else out of my mind and consider only this sickness.

As it happened, I did know what it was. But I wasn't that surprised the Grannys hadn't recognized it, especially since they'd come down with it almost immediately themselves. They'd not really had time to think before their own fever set in, and it was not a common disease.

I went down the stairs and found the Wommacks still gathered there silently, waiting for me, and I had a strong suspicion looking at them that most-including the Master of this Castle-would be in their beds themselves before the day was out. Considering the number sick upstairs, they'd made a brave showing, and I credited them for that; but not a one that wasn't white around the mouth, and the red tinge coming up on their cheeks, hectic, and a line of beads of moisture at the edge of the coppery hair to betray them further.

All that time out in the sun with me had surely done them no good, and I'd of bet the party food they'd put down lay heavy in their stomachs this minute like Kintucky stone.

"I know what it is," I said to them, not bothering to dawdle and

back and fill.

"But neither of the Grannys had any idea, nor the Magician either!"

objected a thin boy by the name of Thomas Lincoln Wommack the 9th.

"Well, I do," I said, "whoever does or doesn't, and the Grannys would of known, too, if they hadn't been taken themselves before they could run it down. What you have upstairs, by my count, is fifty-one cases of something called Anderson's Disease. Or, if you prefer less formality, some call it deathdance fever-which does describe it. And looking at youall, I see a few more cases to add to the count-you'd better every one of you get to your beds."

"And those upstairs?" asked Gilead.

"You need capable people up there, taking care of your sick," I said.