The Celtic Mirror Chapter 24

 Chapter 24 Another Arithmetic of Fever

Anemo and Remi stared at each other for a few seconds, bewildered. Ever since their arrival in this time, in this fort, reality had never ceased to surprise them.

"Who could it be so late?" Anemo asked as he settled Sirocco, already asleep, into his bedding on the bunk.

"Something is wrong, Anemo! I have... how can I put it?"

As if drawn by a magnet, Remi approached the massive oak door and drew back the bolt, throwing it wide open.

"I have a feeling of déjà vu," she continued.

In the doorway, dressed only in a linen smock and a rusty-woollen shawl, Aveline was weeping bitterly, trembling from the cold or perhaps from the sheer tension of it all. The torch in her hand shook as well, casting a dance of swaying shadows.

"My sister is burning like fire!" Aveline cried through her sobs. "She is burning and sleeping. We cannot wake her at all. Her baby is hungry and crying... Come, please!"

Remi put her arms around the twelve-year-old girl, trying to soothe her.

"Of course we are coming, my dear! Try to calm yourself, we are right here with you!"

Then she turned back to her companions.

"Aeolus, do you think you can manage to stay with Sirocco for a few hours? Anemo will take The Collar of the two Skies with him... you know why."

"Agent 003.5 on duty!" Aeolus replied without further comment.

"Mistral, I might have a mission for you as well! I think only now are my dreams about Maria Treben beginning to make sense, but... I will tell you your role along the way."

"Ma chérie, you know you can count on me, but tell me... what kind of déjà vu? Are you by any chance thinking of Egypt and that tomcat who looked just like me?"

Anemo draped a cloak over Remi's shoulders and took her hand so they could head together towards Ri’s house. He had his own forebodings, and any mention of fever instantly brought his mind back to Egypt and all those febrile, mystical episodes he had witnessed.

"It will be alright, Aveline! I want you to be a brave girl and stop crying. Boo and little Cian need you to be strong."

The girl's tear-stained face was flushed, and the curls of her blonde hair clung to her skin. On her forehead, beads of sweat had formed, rolling down and mingling with her tears. She seemed afflicted by the fever herself. Remi placed a hand on her forehead on the move, for they had no time to lose.

"You are burning too, my dear! Lean on me."

Remi and Anemo exchanged another swift glance, heavy with anxiety but also with determination.

"Let us quicken our pace! After all, I can be El-Beyda again! Fever will snatch no one away as long as I have a say in the matter!" Remi added, stepping out into the fort’s night, through the cold, sticky mud that seemed to have a will of its own, trying to slow them down.

A few croaking ravens, perched strategically on the palisades, seemed to be spying on them.

Mistral, who was moving with difficulty through the mire, scanned them quickly with his green eyes and, without any introduction, asked defiantly, "Have you nothing else to do? No blood is flowing here! You ought to have gone to war! Do not wait for corpses! Shoo, get out of here! Or do you want me to eat you?"

"We are not the only ones!" one of the ravens answered. "The wolves are here too, prowling around the fort. I reckon they can sense something... isn't that right, Mau cat?"

"You are nothing but vulgar ghouls, but we have her!" Mistral retorted, gesturing towards Remi. "You haven't got a chance!"

***

The interior of Ri’s house seemed darker now than it had at noon. The hearth smouldered fitfully, thickening the layer of stale smoke. Little Cian whimpered in his rowan-wood cradle, placed right next to the bunk where Eithne lay unconscious, burning with fever.

"Oh, Shehrazad, how I wish you were here!" Remi whispered. "With your calmness and wisdom... We need a different space, Aveline. Do you have a hospital... what am I saying, hospital, you do not know the term... Do you have a more aerated place where the sick are treated?"

Eithne’s chest rose and fell in ragged gasps, as though the woman were fighting a grueling physical battle, and fragments of unintelligible words were uttered like a spell, a curse, or an incantation by her fever-parched lips.

Aveline looked at Remi, trying to read the gravity of the situation beyond her words, from the look on her face, and replied in a half-whisper, "We have... a place for the sick, but all the druids and healers have left... who is to tear her from the clutches of the inner fire?"

Anemo stepped forward to lift the young woman’s feverish body, but just then, as if sensing something, Boo stirred in her sleep upon her bunk and began to speak.

"Mother? Is that you, have you come back to us?"

Hearing her little sister, Aveline instinctively clapped a hand over her mouth in sheer astonishment.

"Our parents passed away a year ago... Why should she dream of Mother just now?"

"It is only a dream, Aveline! Now you must guide us with your torch to Tech Othrusa. Lead us to the house of the sick!" Anemo urged, lifting Eithne into his arms in one smooth motion.

He looked at Remi, his eyes filled with blind trust. He knew exactly who the woman beside him was: not just Remi Storm, the author who had redefined female strength in her books, but also El-Beyda, the one who had defied destinies in the guise of the Morrigan. If anyone could snatch Eithne from the jaws of death, it was her.

"Are you ready, Remi? We shall go to this archaic hospital and everything will be fine!"

"Yes, I am El-Beyda, descendant of the priestess of Bastet," she replied on the stride, pulling her cloak tight. "I do not fear, Anemo, even if... another arithmetic of fever lies ahead."

There was no time to lose. In Remi’s mind, the battle plan against the illness was already organizing itself at frantic speed, like an ancient instinct awakening to life. She looked around for Mistral while checking Aveline’s forehead on the go, where cold beads of sweat had already gathered.

"Mistral, you must find Arr! I need... how should I put it? A coven of cats?"

"Bien sûr, ma chérie!" the black cat replied, slipping his supple body through the darkness. He already knew that Remi had in mind the mystical ritual she had taken part in back in Egypt.