Chapter 24 Another Arithmetic of Fever
Chapter 24 Another Arithmetic of Fever
Anemo and Remi looked at each other for a few seconds, bewildered. Ever since their arrival in this time, in this fort, reality had not ceased to surprise them.
"Who could it be so late?" Anemo asked as he placed Sirocco, already asleep, into his makeshift bed on the bunk.
"Something is not right, Anemo! I have... how can I put it?"
Remi approached, as if drawn by a magnet, the massive oak door and drew back the bolt, flinging it wide open.
"I have a feeling of déjà vu," she continued.
On the threshold, dressed only in a linen chemise and a rusty-coloured woollen shawl, Aveline was weeping bitterly, trembling with cold or perhaps due to the tension she was under. The torch in her hand was shaking too, casting a play of waving lights.
"My sister is burning like fire!" Aveline said between sobs. "She is burning and sleeping. We cannot wake her at all. Her baby is hungry and crying... Come!"
Remi put her arms around the twelve-year-old girl, trying to soothe her.
"Of course we are coming, my dear! Try to calm down, we are right here with you!"
Then she turned 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 heavens 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 making sense, but... I will tell you what your role is 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 like me?"
Anemo placed a cloak over Remi's shoulders and took her hand to set off together towards Ri's house. He had his own forebodings, and the words suggesting fever instantly brought his mind back to Egypt and all those febrile and 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. Beads of sweat had formed on her forehead, running down and mingling with her tears. She seemed affected by the fever herself. Remi placed a hand on her forehead whilst walking, as there was no time to lose.
"You are burning too, my dear! Lean on me."
Remi and Anemo exchanged another swift glance, laden with worry but also with determination.
"Let us quicken our pace! After all, I can be El-Beyda again! The fever will claim no one as long as I have a say in the matter!" Remi added, and stepped out into the night of the fort, through the cold, sticky mud that seemed to have a will of its own, trying to slow them down.
A few cawing crows, strategically perched on the palisades, seemed to be spying on them.
Mistral, who was making slow progress through the mud, scanned them quickly with his green eyes and, without any introduction, asked them defiantly:
"Have you nothing better to do? No blood is flowing here! You should have gone to war! Do not wait for corpses! Away with you! Or do you want me to make a meal of you?"
"We are not the only ones!" one of the crows replied. "There are also the wolves, circling the fort. I believe they sense something... is that not so, Mau cat?"
"You are nothing but ordinary scavengers, but we have her!" Mistral added, pointing towards Remi. "You do not stand a chance!"
***
The interior of Ri's house now seemed darker than it had at noon. The hearth smouldered, thickening the layer of stifling smoke. Little Cian was whimpering in his rowan cradle, placed in the immediate vicinity of 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 airy place where the sick are treated?"
Eithne's chest rose in short, ragged gasps, as if the woman were fighting a very demanding 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 beyond the words, from her face, the gravity of the situation, and answered in a low voice:
"We have... a place for the sick, but all the druids and healers have left... who is to snatch her from the clutches of the inner fire?"
Anemo took a step to lift the young woman's feverish body, but just then, as if sensing something, Boo stirred in her sleep on her bunk and began to speak:
"Mother? Is that you, have you come back to us?"
Hearing her little sister, Aveline instinctively put her hand over her mouth, filled with astonishment.
"Our parents passed away a year ago... Why should they appear in Boo's dream just now?"
"It is only a dream, Aveline! Right 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 swift movement.
He looked at Remi, and a blind trust could be read in his eyes. He knew very well who the woman beside him was: not just Remi Storm, the author who had redefined female empowerment in her books, but also El-Beyda, the one who had snatched Demir from the wall of ether. If anyone could bring Eithne back from the clutches 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 move, tightening her cloak. "I am not afraid, Anemo, even if... another arithmetic of fever is looming ahead."
There was no time to lose. In Remi's mind, the battle plan against the illness was already organising itself at a fast-forward pace, like a secret code activated in her blood. She searched for Mistral with her eyes whilst checking Aveline's forehead once more, on which cold beads of sweat had already formed.
"Mistral, you must find Arr! I need... how should I call it? A gathering of cats?"
"Bien sûr, ma chérie!" the black tomcat replied, slipping his supple body through the darkness. He already knew that Remi was a force, a true Storm.
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