laid the comatose villagers on bare earth. Some had stopped breathing, and were buried in a far-off cellar hole. They had to set a girl with a switch to shoo rats away, for the pests scuttled everywhere. Cowslip showed Gull a nasty bite on the wrist: she'd shooed rats off a wounded child. The bite flamed red. She'd also picked up fleas from the creature, and had to scrub them off with mud in the swimming hole. Lightheaded, she stayed game, and returned to tending the sick.
But at one point she asked, 'What shall we do, Gull?'
'Do?' He paused at digging. They were trying to free a root cellar under a house, one containing winter turnips. He moved slowly because his head still ached from yesterday's stone rain. He felt light-headed too, probably from losing blood to the vampire. 'I-I don't know, 'Slip. Rebuild, I guess. What else can we do?'
The girl looked around the valley, brushed back her corn yellow hair. 'It will be like building on a graveyard.'
Gull shrugged, winced. Questions about life and death and afterlife had never concerned him. 'The only other choice is to leave, and where would we go? My mother claimed the ghosts of our ancestors stayed with us, watching and protecting. Now there are a few more. But in fifty years, this tragedy will be just a story to tell children.'
The girl laid a brown hand on his forearm. 'Whose children, Gull?'
Gull studied her face. Despite dirt and fatigue, she looked beautiful. With his maimed left hand, he trailed hair away from her cheek. 'Our children. Because we are going to stay-'
Suddenly she was in his arms, hugging his chest and sobbing. He patted her soft hair with his callused, crippled, scabby hands and cooed, 'There, there. Don't cry. We'll protect each other, Cowslip.' She turned her face up, and he kissed her.
Yet Gull's father had often said, 'When the gods decide to punish a man, they do it all the way.' Gull remembered that before the sun set.
All afternoon, he'd hunted cattle and goats in the woods. He'd found nothing except traces of goblins, goat horns, and hooves. This bad news he decided to keep to himself.
He felt forgiving anyway. As in any crisis, his emotions had sunk and risen overnight, soared from despair to hope in a day.
Maybe he wasn't thinking too clearly, but he didn't care. He was in love. Holding Cowslip had been the finest thing he'd ever felt, and he almost skipped through the forest. Cowslip would make a fine wife, and he a good husband, he hoped. They would rebuild a home, replant the gardens, dam the stream and bring it back, help neighbors rebuild, see White Ridge grow many generations yet. Another of his father's axioms: A man is only beaten when he quits.
He whistled as he left the woods. Far off, the makeshift village continued to grow from the old center.
But running toward him came Cowslip's brother, Gray Shoat. The boy's cry sent a shock of cold fear.
'Gull! Cowslip's sick!'
CHAPTER 5
Cowslip lay on her back, alone.
Gull blinked, stunned. He could hardly recognize her.
She had crumpled in the path not far from the victims of the mysterious weakness. She'd been fetching them water. A puddle and a broken redware crock lay by her hand. Her mouth hung open, arms flopped alongside, one foot folded underneath. Even under a wool gown, her armpits and groin looked swollen fit to burst. Her skin was dark as dusk, as if she were choking to death. Or already had.
None of the villagers would go near. Horror froze them. Fathers held their children at bay. Mothers sobbed, one of them Cowslip's.
As Gull ventured close, an old man, Wolftooth, grabbed his arm. The woodcutter barked, 'Let go! I must see to her! Why aren't you-'
'Don't!' Wolftooth rasped. 'It's death. Black Death! I know it from the legends! It fells a person in their tracks! Oftimes a wisewoman come to administer dies before her patient!'
Gull stared, but did not approach. He'd heard the stories, too, about whole cities wiped out by the Death. 'What if she's…'
'She's not,' interrupted Wolftooth. 'She's dead. All the rest, too, all inside the house.' The 'house' was the roof under which they'd laid the victims. ' 'Twas rat bite killed her. Poor Cowslip.'
So that was her epitaph, thought Gull. Poor Cowslip, who might have been wife to Gull the Woodcutter. Tears blurred his vision of her, burned his cheeks. Clumsily, he stumbled around the path and wreckage and Cowslip's corpse to peer into the shelter.
By the low entrance lay a boy, Otter, set to shoo out rats. He, too, was swollen and black. Fleas trailed from his body, more fleas than Gull had ever seen.
And everywhere inside the shelter, tiny eyes glittered at him. Hundreds of them. Yellow teeth were bared, then the rats returned to feeding.
The horror was so great, so overwhelming, Gull couldn't grasp it. His mind shut down, walling off the terror before he went mad.
All he could think was: First his mother and father, then his sisters and brothers, then Sparrow Hawk missing, and now a woman he'd just discovered he could love.
And moments ago he'd been whistling in the woods. Suddenly he hated himself. And everything else.
Behind him, Wolftooth argued with Seal, the village bully. And others. The argument rose to a roar. '… We're going, and now, and that's that!'
'Going where?' Gull demanded, falling into his old ways of questioning everything Seal said. Other villagers stopped squabbling and stared at the two men.
'Away!' snarled the fat man. 'This village is cursed! It's an open grave!'
'Going where!' Gull repeated. 'You don't say where! You've never been anywhere else!'
'That doesn't matter! Just away!'
Feverfew quavered, 'But Seal, do you think-'
The fat man turned to his cowering wife and slapped her head. 'Fetch your pots and my jug!' He would have belted her again, but Gull snagged his wrist and squeezed until Seal gasped.
Gull snarled at the villagers. 'Is this the man you'd follow when you quit this village, when you abandon your homeland? This coward and bully? Think of what you're leaving behind here!'
But no one answered him, or would return his gaze. They were afraid and they were running, and it was pointless to condemn them. Maybe they'll return someday, maybe not. There was nothing Gull could do about it.
So he sat on a rock not far from Cowslip's ravaged body and watched them prepare to leave.
Greensleeves talked to a ladybug on a dandelion. Rats scuttled under the propped roof. Flies droned. The clockwork beast clumped and stumped in the distance. The giant, Liko, slept with his bandaged stump in the air.
Gull sat and did nothing.
There was nothing to do. He couldn't bury Cowslip or his family for fear of corruption. Come dark, the rats would have her. He couldn't find Sparrow Hawk. The boy might have been lost in the woods, or been captured by soldiers or the wizard, but more likely he was one of the many corpses that littered the valley. Gull couldn't even think of a reason to live, except to care for Greensleeves.
One by one, as shadows lengthened, the villagers gathered their pitiful belongings. One by one, they traipsed along the ruined road, north over the ridge. A few waved to Gull, but he didn't wave back.
By sunset, the last villager, old crippled Wolftooth, had passed out of sight.
Greensleeves came to Gull and mewed, a sign she was hungry. Gull took her hand.
'Yes. Time to eat. We'll hie to the woods. That's all that's left now.'
He picked up his axe and bow and quiver, took his sister by the hand, and walked toward the whispering depths of the forest.
