Juniper & Thorn(45)
He laughed, but it was a raw, scraped-out sound.
“Of course I’ll try.” My eyes were bleary with the smell of Fedir’s vomit. “Papa will kill me if I don’t.”
“I wouldn’t let that happen.”
“You would not be able to stop him,” I said, though I bit back a smile at the thought that he would try. “Do you really live here? I assumed you would live with Mr. Derkach . . .”
I trailed off as Sevas’s face shuttered. “No, I don’t live with Derkach. Not anymore.”
“Marlinchen,” Papa barked. “Stop talking to that boy and come here before this man drowns in his own sick.”
He must have settled on a deal with Niko. Trying not to inhale through my nose, I crossed the flat and knelt beside Fedir’s cot. His eyes were shut and he was as still as death, but when I leaned over his mouth I could feel the barest whisper of air against my cheek.
My relief came and then went as quick as a snuffed match. I had never seen a man this sick before, and even if I could discern what was ailing him, I didn’t know if I could cure it. My magic wasn’t any good for that. But Papa was staring at me with blades behind his eyes and Niko had his head in his hands and Sevas’s bottom lip was chewed up so terribly that I saw little black spots of dried blood in it, and so I looked up at them and asked, “When did he first start showing symptoms?”
“He came home last night and we thought he’d been drinking.” Niko peered at me through the gaps in his fingers, voice low. “He kept going down the hall to the bathroom, once an hour and then twice an hour, and then eventually he couldn’t move from his cot. We brought him a pail so he wouldn’t have to leave, and he kept us up the whole night with his retching. By morning he could scarcely speak, except to tell us not to call any of the doctors in Oblya. Only you.”
I let out a trembling breath, almost a laugh if I had dared. I was nothing close to a doctor and all I had was a satchel of herbs and my sister’s compendium. Still, I swallowed the rising fear in my throat and said, “And have either of you started to come down with anything?”
“No,” said Niko, and Sevas shook his head. “Whatever he’s sick with, I don’t think it’s catching.”
That, at least, was some good fortune. I let my fingers unclench and prepared to take Fedir’s face in my hands, but before I could he began to cough and splutter, sick bubbling between his lips.
Panic slid down my spine and I tried to prop him into a sitting position so he wouldn’t choke, but his skin was so damp and clammy that I couldn’t find purchase and his body was so limp and heavy that I couldn’t have lifted him either way, and as the stream of panic turned to ice in my belly, Sevas knelt beside me and helped me to push Fedir up.
Together we held Fedir by the shoulders as he leaned over the bucket and was loudly, violently ill.
“I’ve got him,” Sevas said quietly as he began to rub a slow circle against the small of his friend’s back. “You can let go, Marlinchen.”
So I did, fingers trembling horribly. Papa’s breaths had gotten loud and dangerous and I knew it was because Sevas had been too friendly with me by saying my name and, by his estimation, I was more than friendly in return.
I could no longer afford so much as to smile at him, not with Papa in the room. I waited until Fedir had finished retching and then said in a sharp voice, “You aren’t getting paid anything to help.”
Sevas’s eyes darted between my father and me, then he gave a quick nod and stood up again. He knew my meanness was only for Papa’s sake, and a shudder of both yearning and fear went up my spine at that silent understanding between us.
Once Fedir was lying down again, lashes fluttering weakly, I could pinch his earlobe between my finger and thumb and hold my other hand along the line of his jaw.
The vision seeped into me like someone had cracked a soft-boiled egg and let the yolk run past my eyes. The flat winnowed away, and I was standing in Oblya’s streets at night, everything slick-looking in the dark. My hands were rough with yellow calluses and I could tell right away that they were Fedir’s hands now. There was a tremendous ache running from the back of my knees all the way up between my shoulder blades—the ache, I assumed, of a long day’s labor and longer days without enough to eat. The road that stretched out in front of me was studded with bright, smiling faces, the faces of other young men who looked like adolescent borzoi as they loped down the street, all elbows and gangly legs.
I went after them, unsteady on my own legs, and there was a haze that made everything seem as dewy as the morning after a storm. All of us went laughing down an alleyway and then through a door into a tavern, which I could tell right away was a poorer establishment than the one I had been to with Sevas, because there were only blackened oil lamps inside and no women laughing daintily.
At the bar, we ordered vodka in dirty glasses and drank it all without stopping for breath. And then, as my sight—as Fedir’s sight—got blearier and closer, I stumbled into the bathroom and leaned over the sink and turned on the faucet. Water poured into my mouth and I swallowed. After the vodka it tasted like nothing at all.
Darkness closed around me, and when I managed to open my eyes again I was back in the flat, still kneeling over Fedir’s body. Gooseflesh rose on my arms as the vision ebbed, and I took my hand off his jaw and let go of his earlobe. It was bright pink and swollen where my fingers had pressed so hard into it.