AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Beneath the older man’s teasing demeanor, Bao saw kindness. Ông Hung was honest and good, and a life with his family would mean hard but decent work and plenty of food. Bao imagined living on the man’s boats as children ran around him and scolding aunties told him to eat more, he was getting too skinny. Ông Hung’s youngest daughter would be there, too, smiling shyly from behind her dark curtain of hair. They would all love Bao and care for him, and for an orphan who had drifted alone for almost ten years, the hunger for that life was physically painful. But Bao’s heart belonged to another. He didn’t know whetherherfather would welcome him so readily, but he wanted no other wife but her.
“Thank you, Uncle,” he said sincerely. “Well, I should be on my way. I’ve got a lot of people to check on before my work with Master Huynh begins. I’m going to see Khoa first.”
Both men sobered at once. “If anyone can do anything to help poor Khoa, it would be you, my boy. You and the gods... and maybe the river witch,” Chú Minh said, ignoring Ông Hung’s snort of derision. “People may sneer, but there’s no denying she’s helped many a sick or ailing person. Her methods may be untraditional—”
“Untraditional!” Ông Hung laughed. “The king would throw her into prison for her unnatural practices if she were important enough for him to know.”
“She’s the closest thing we’ve got to a magic-wielder,” Chú Minh argued.
The older man shook his head. “You can keep your mountain magic and enchantresses. I am a citizen of the Kingdom of the Sacred Grasslands, and we are rooted in the earth and good, reliable medicine we can see. I’ll take Bao here over that witch any day.”
They looked at Bao, who hesitated. Growing up, he had often heard Madam Huynh telling her son, Tam, the tale of the river witch to frighten him into good behavior. The story went that the woman had been born in the southern Grasslands, among magic-wielders with benevolent powers like the gift of healing or foresight. But the witch had chosen dark magic,blood magic, to manipulate and control others, and her people had thrown her out because of her evil ways. She had gone north to make her home in the darkest part of the river, and anyone wandering her forsaken banks might have the hair cursed right off their head or a second nose magically sprout from their chin, just for her sheer pleasure at hearing them scream.
Unlike Tam, Bao had never been scared by the story. Perhaps it was because he lived with the Huynhs’ servants, who often joked about the witch and talked of how a former cook had successfully sought her out to erase all of her memories about her unfaithful husband. Or perhaps Bao liked hearing about someone who had come from the southern Grasslands, just like him, the only nugget of information he had about his past. Perhaps they had crossed paths once.
Now Bao shrugged, not wanting to take sides. “I always try to do what I can.”
Chú Minh glanced at the small package in his hand. “I don’t have a strong opinion either way about your employer, but I’ll say this much for him,” he remarked. “Even if Master Huynh doesn’t deign to serve us peasants, it’s decent of him to give you medicine for us.”
Bao forced a smile and said nothing.
“Well, go on, then,” Ông Hung said. “Let’s hope Khoa isn’t too far gone to be helped.”
“No one is too far gone to be helped,” Bao told him, but the men’s grave expressions made him wonder whether he should have had Master Huynh accompany him today. He had asked the physician for advice on Khoa’s case just the other day.
Khoa was a hale, hearty man who traveled south frequently to harvest milk fruit for his sister to sell in the river market. He rarely stayed more than a day or two at home, but had felt so ill this week that he couldn’t make the usual trip. Master Huynh had listened to Bao’s description of the symptoms that had developed slowly over the past few months—paleness, lethargy, and chills—and put it down to a case of travel exhaustion. But the physician had not been there to see the transparent quality of Khoa’s skin or the dazed look in his eyes.
As Bao bid the men goodbye, he saw a small woman hurrying toward him. It was Khoa’s sister, Cô Ha, who was a feminine copy of the man, as though living together for forty years had turned them into each other. But her usually cheerful face was stricken with panic today.
“Bao, please come with me now!” she cried.
“What happened?” Bao asked, alarmed.
Sudden shouts rang out up and down the market. Chickens ran and children shouted as a short, husky man came into view, staggering drunkenly through the market and upending crates of fish and vegetables. It was Khoa, clutching a basket of milk fruit, his ashen face covered withbright scarlet blood. He crumpled to his knees as people backed away, screaming, the basket crashing to the ground. One of the milk fruits rolled to Bao’s feet, drenched in the man’s blood.
“He’s got the bloodpox!” someone screamed.
“Cover your noses and mouths! He’ll get you sick if you breathe in his air!”
Men grabbed their sons and ran. A woman fainted, and several vendors jumped over her body in their haste to flee, while an elderly lady ushered her grandchildren away.
Bao stopped one of them, a tall boy of thirteen or so, and pressed a coin into his palm. “Run for Master Huynh. Tell him to come here right away,” he said, and the boy took off at once. Bao pushed gently past the weeping Cô Ha toward Khoa, but Ông Hung grabbed his arm.
“Are you crazy? If it’s bloodpox, you’ll die soon. This is not worth your life!”
“Someone has to help him,” Bao said firmly, but he tore off a good chunk of his tunic and wrapped it securely over his nose and mouth. He rushed over to Khoa, who lay flat on his back. Blood flowed freely from every opening in the man’s face, including—to Bao’s horror—both of his ears and the tear ducts of his eyes. The man gagged, as though blood was coming up his throat, and Bao quickly turned him onto his side so that it wouldn’t choke him. He tore some more cloth from his tunic—one of only two good ones he owned—and tried to stem the bleeding from Khoa’s eyes and nose, but it was soon clear that he might as well try to stop the river from flowing. He had never witnessed internal bleeding to such a violent degree.
As he murmured soothing words and wiped the man’s face, Bao’s mind raced like frantic fingers turning the pages of a book. For years, he had cared for the river market people and had seen many differentillnesses, but whatever Khoa had was worlds away from anything he had ever experienced.Bloodpox, he thought, his heart thundering.A rare disease that began in the south twenty years ago, before I was even born. The patient experiences uncontrolled bleeding from all orifices.There had been isolated cases here and there, enough for Bao to have learned about it from Master Huynh, but never one so close to home. He prayed that the physician would come soon, for this was far beyond his training.
“Breathe in and out slowly,” Bao said, trying to calm Khoa down, but it was clear that the blood was blocking his airways. “Master Huynh will be here soon.”
Two years ago, a former colleague of Master Huynh’s had come to visit. They had talked about the many fascinating cases they had come across while serving as court physicians to the king of the Sacred Grasslands. Bloodpox had come up in conversation, Bao remembered, for it had been the first time he had ever heard of it. The disease was thought to have come from overseas, since many foreign merchants and sailors docked their ships in the Gulf of Talon, the southernmost coast of Feng Lu. But whether there was actual proof of that, or the belief stemmed from prejudice against outsiders, Bao didn’t know.
What are the chances that it came all the way up here?he thought, gazing down at Khoa.
“He goes south so often,” Cô Ha wept. “He must have caught it from someone while he was bringing the last load of milk fruit home. Oh, what will I do if he dies? I’ll be all alone.”
“Don’t think like that,” Bao urged her, though the futility of trying to stop Khoa’s bleeding was obvious. A powerful smell of rot and damp earth lingered beneath the sharp iron scent of the blood. This man needed medicine beyond anything Master Huynh had in his stores. Baorubbed Khoa’s back and continued murmuring reassurances, not knowing if they were true, but hearing his voice seemed to calm the poor man. Khoa lay motionlessly, his chest rising and falling with his labored breathing as the blood drained from his eyes, ears, and nose. “Stay back,” Bao warned Cô Ha, but the woman seemed to be beyond fear.
