The World That We Knew(77)

He was so beautiful, he was a light before her eyes, but she refused to bow to him. She was stronger than a hundred horsemen, but she couldn’t win against Azriel unless she could find a remedy. She knew the cure for beestings; the purest clay must cover every sting. Solomon himself was said to have battled honeybees, coating their hive with clay, for clay was protection both for the bees and for their victims.

Ava lifted Lea in her arms. She was heavy as lead, light as a feather, and she had an unearthly pallor. She was already losing consciousness, and her swollen tongue could no longer fit inside her mouth. Her pulse was weakening, and a red rash had begun to rise in circles over her pale skin. Ava caused the stingers to drop away with a single command. She undressed Lea, then unlatched the locket, which she stored in her pocket. She must cover every inch of the afflicted skin with clay, but there was none to be had; the nearby stream had only a stony granite bank. Ava hastened to unbutton her dress. She knew what she must do, and she quickly reached down and grabbed the flesh covering her hip. She did not flinch as she tugged and pulled. At last it came off in her hands. Once taken from her body it appeared to be ordinary flesh, a bloody portion of it, but when she mixed it with water the flesh once again became the clay it had first been.

The mystical number for beestings was 348, therefore Ava mixed the water and clay 348 times before she applied it, coating Lea’s face and throat and body, taking more handfuls of her own flesh to use for the balm. Beestings could cause blindness, or asthma, or death, and Lea was motionless. Azriel had followed them and was crouching on the bank of the stream.

There was a huge gash in Ava’s side, and once the clay became flesh once more she was shocked to see she still bled, like an ordinary woman. That was impossible, and for a moment her fear burned hot inside her; perhaps she had unmade herself. But when she took her scarf and bound herself with it, she stanched the flow. She was missing a piece of herself and there was a deep indentation over her hip. Her eyes were hot and she ached with some unfamiliar pain, but she could not give in. She must do more to fight the angel. She was made to do more. She knew that honey could cure beestings as well, and that what wounded you could also cure you. She went to the hive, took fistfuls of the honey, then grabbed a dozen bees and crushed them in her palm. She did away with the stingers, and trickled the mixture of honey and crushed bees into Lea’s mouth, then used the rest as a seal over the clay.

She had a single task, to keep Lea safe, and that was what she planned to do. She could not run over the mountain, or escape into the forest. They must flee from Azriel. She went to the neighbor’s house, where she pounded on the door, crying out for help. Monsieur Cazales was shocked when he saw what he believed to be a desperate mother with her limp, unconscious child in her arms, the same two he’d seen at the Félix farm. Clearly some calamity had occurred: the girl’s clothes were in disarray and her breath was shallow.

“Come with me,” Monsieur Cazales told the woman. “We’ll go to the doctor.”

Ava lifted Lea into the bed of the truck, where Cazales kept a blanket for his sheepdog. They went across the mountain on the old roads, sometimes cutting across fields, as Cazales knew the shortest route. He’d had a daughter who’d had measles, and one dark night many years ago, he’d driven this same route in a panic, desperate for the doctor’s help. When they reached the chateau, Cazales leaned his arm on the horn, and the sound broke through the deep silence and had Girard running for the door. At first he thought the police had come for the guest in his barn, then he saw the old farmer.

“Come,” Dr. Girard called to Ava, who carried the girl inside. He thought perhaps the girl had a head injury, but then he noticed the stings and knew she’d had a severe allergic reaction.

“Do you need me, Doctor?” Cazales wanted to know, but Girard shouted out his thanks and told him to go. Before he turned to care for the girl, he was relieved to spy a glimpse of a figure in the barn.

Once inside the office, Girard switched on the lights. “Put her right on the couch,” he told Ava. He went to get a dose of precious epinephrine, hard to get in these times, which made the unconscious girl gasp and open her eyes for a moment, shuddering from the power of the drug. The angel was outside the window; he had followed, but he came no closer. Ava had turned and had shaken her fist at Azriel. “No,” she said aloud, in a voice that emerged from deep inside of her.

The doctor knew this angel and understood the seriousness of his appearance. He gave Lea another dose of the drug, and they had to hold her down, Ava taking her legs, the doctor her arms, to help control her seizure. After a moment, Lea calmed down and they could let go.

“That’s right,” Girard said to the listless girl. “Breathe deep.”

He took out some apis that a patient had given to him in lieu of payment, a mixture made from honeybees and alcohol with the venom of the bee extracted. He placed a few drops under Lea’s tongue. Perhaps it was an old wives’ tale to battle a disease with a measure of that illness, but he’d seen it help before. There was truth in the locals’ homeopathic remedies, ones they had used for generations, and this girl needed all the help she could get. Lea slipped back into a deep dark sleep, and Girard was pleased that her pulse was now stronger. He had noticed the covering of clay and honey on the girl; the poison had been stopped and therefore had not reached her heart, or kidneys, or lungs, but had stayed pooled beneath her skin.