“Now, aren’t you glad we did all of that extra work this fall?” Abdhe whispered to his daughter as she peeked past him at the thin woman standing at their door.
She looked weary and cold and her five children clung to her as if she were the source of a great heat. Jahrra felt a pang of compassion towards the family and dashed off to get one of her toys, a wooden horse, to give to them. Abdhe had carved it for her, but she knew her father wouldn’t mind. The woman thanked her and the children smiled weakly but appreciatively. Jahrra was grateful to have been able to do something, anything, for those suffering people, even if it was as insignificant as sharing a homemade trinket.
Although everyone was living off of a limited food supply, no one was expected to starve to death. Food was short, yes, the weather was cold and wet and windy, but there was wild game to hunt if provisions ran out. Unfortunately, the cold and hunger wasn’t what threatened the people of the region. Something far deadlier than ice was creeping throughout the land. No one had prepared for the lethal epidemic that crept quietly over the mountains to settle into the heart of Oescienne.
There’d been some word about a dangerous fever outside the province, but since no one ever dared cross the Thorbet or the Elornn Ranges, and since shipping had slowed for the winter, the people living in the south of Oescienne had little to fear, or so they thought. Despite all the obstacles, however, the sickness managed to find its way into the Oorn Plain and Raenyan and Aldehr Valleys. Signs of the fever were soon being reported all over the land.
Entire families would come down with the sickness and perish within the week. Anyone seen coughing or even looking pale would be avoided like a rabid dog. A medicine to fight the disease had been obtained and shipped in, but only the wealthiest could afford it, leaving the poor and underfed to the whims of nature. Many of the Nesnan commoners were left to fight off the illness on their own. Some scraped through, but others, especially the young and the old, didn’t survive.
A black hand of death squeezed the land in its grasp, seeming to drain every last drop of hope from its people. The loss and sorrow lingered like a cloud of evil in the icy air and more than ever, the people of Oescienne yearned for an end to the unrelenting winter.
Jahrra returned home from a particularly odious day of school to find her little cabin to be quieter than usual. The air around the place seemed darker, even though the sun shone brightly through the frigid air. The chimney registered no smoke, despite the fact that it was quite cool and would be getting colder, and the curtains in the front window were drawn shut. Jahrra knew that her family hadn’t run out of firewood because her father had just chopped a large amount four days before and her mother never closed the front drapes before dark.
Jahrra exhaled into the frosty air as she approached the front door cautiously, her boots crunching quietly upon the chilled earth. She feared something might be wrong, but she couldn’t imagine what. She pushed open the front door, its hinges complaining grumpily, and was met with darkness and a strange, still staleness in the air.
“Nida, Pada?” she called timidly.
She walked into the small living room just opposite the kitchen and the stairs leading to the second story. The room was dark because the windows were covered, but not so dark that she couldn’t see. She found her father asleep in his rocking chair, yet even in sleep he looked worried. She walked up to him.
“Pada? Are you alright, where’s Nida?” she asked in a small, frightened voice, her mitten-clad hands hanging on the arm of the chair.
Abdhe fluttered awake at the sound of his daughter’s voice, but his weariness showed more than ever. For the first time in her life, Jahrra saw his true age. The lines in his face seemed deeper, his hair greyer, but it was his eyes, glazed over with years of hardship, that gave away the truth he wished to hide.
“Oh, there’s my girl, how was school?” he queried with a weak smile that failed to mask his sorrow.
“What’s the matter Pada?” Jahrra asked more seriously now. She barely recognized the man before her; he was completely different from the happy, carefree man chopping wood only a few days ago.
“Nothing dear, your mother and I have a little winter cold. We just need our rest.”
“Where’s Nida?” Jahrra asked worriedly.
“Upstairs, the doctor is just attending to her.”
He gave that anxious smile again, and at the very same moment the doctor came down from upstairs, looking just as grim as Jahrra’s father. He looked to be about to deliver some bad news, but saw Jahrra and quickly changed his somber expression to a less bleak one.
“Ah, young Jahrra,” he said with a weary breath. “My, how you’ve grown.”
The doctor was round and balding and was wearing a clean white shirt that hung far over thick brown pants. He held his medical bag tightly and closely in his right hand, as if it held a dark secret within. In his other hand he clutched a battered felt hat that looked a lot like a scrap of tanned hide. A tired smile graced his face when he saw Jahrra, giving him the semblance of a withered plant.
“Jahrra dear, could you please go feed the chickens while I talk to the doctor?” Abdhe’s voice broke the odd silence and his eyes drooped sleepily.
Jahrra stood up right away, not wanting to argue in front of another adult. She walked through the kitchen and out into the back yard, leaving the gloomy cabin behind her. The yard was the same small patch of earth it had been since Jahrra could remember, but it seemed strangely small and unfamiliar now. The rectangular section of the land that had been fenced off using odd shaped tree branches lay fallow in the cold winter world, and instead of a garland of wild roses growing along the fence there stood a tangled mass of thorny branches, looking dead and threatening against the bleak winter backdrop.
Jahrra sighed and stepped through the opening in the fence, walking towards the faint call of hungry chickens. To get her mind off of what might be happening inside, she begrudgingly recalled what had occurred in class earlier that day. Master Cohrbin had asked her a question and as she was about to answer it, Ellysian had butted in. Stealing questions from her in class had become the twins’ newest form of attack.
“You wouldn’t have known the answer anyway,” Ellysian told her after class when Cohrbin wasn’t listening.
Jahrra knew she should just shrug and walk away, but she was getting tired of it, and she was tired of everyone telling her to forget about their cruel treatment of her.
“Just ignore them!” Gieaun had said, coming off more exasperated than helpful. “They want you to get mad, that’s why they do it!”
“It’s easy for you to tell me to forget about them, they aren’t bothering you nearly as much as they’re bothering me!” Jahrra had snapped.
Gieaun was taken aback, shocked at Jahrra’s outburst at her. “Well, most of the time you act like you want them to pick on you!” she retorted, more out of anger than truthfulness.
Jahrra had been hurt by her friend’s words and she hadn’t spoken to either Scede or his sister on the ride back home that day. She sighed again in the cool, crisp air, breathing out a cloud of steam like a dragon. She’d had her first fight with her best friend, and now there was something wrong with her Pada. Jahrra felt like crying, but she didn’t want her father to see that she’d been upset when she came back inside.
It took her longer than usual to feed the chickens. Maybe it was because she secretly dreaded going back into the house, maybe it was because she was still thinking about her fight with Gieaun. Either way, by the time she stepped back through the kitchen door it was almost dark. She found that the fire had finally been lit and she gladly welcomed the wonderful smell of smoke and the warm heat baking her cold cheeks.