I got to my feet to stand before the door. I glared at Benji, our black shepherd as he napped in the corner. He was a terrible guard dog.
“What in Alyria is going on, Cal?” Grandmother yelled, bothered enough that she got off her pallet to take in the scene. Her annoyed expression shattered into disbelief when she noticed the woman. Her horrified gaze moved from the cuff in the woman’s grip to my bare wrist.
Grandmother moved faster than I had ever seen before and ripped the cuff out of the woman’s hand. She slapped it back on me with so much force that I grimaced and rubbed my pained wrist.
“You idiot!” she screamed at the woman. I almost took a step back at her tone. Never had I seen her react like that. The woman was silent as she clutched her stomach, her eyes wide in agony.
As I watched Grandmother rush around the small cottage, grabbing different items on her tables, a nervous pit grew in my stomach. “Grandmother, what’s going on?”
She ignored me as she gave all her attention to a passage in one of her books, her finger traveling down the page frantically. She took some herbs she had in one of her jars and threw them into the fire. Her back was to me, and I heard her softly chanting, then silence.
The woman’s short breaths and the crackling of the fire in the hearth were the only sounds, the thick tension in the air leaving a cold sweat in its wake.
My attention was brought to the woman’s shivering form as she slid to the wooden floor.
“She really needs some help,” I said to my grandmother’s still but tense back. I didn’t know as much about healing as she did, or I would have taken a look at the woman. People from all over Alger came to Grandmother when they were sick. I’d learned a little from watching her here and there, but she had never taught me much like I always wished she would. I assumed it was because I didn’t have magic. My grandmother had a purpose here; I wasn’t so sure I did.
Grandmother treated anyone whether they could pay for it or not, and that was why my heart beat in confusion when she said, “I hope she dies for what she has done!” She finally turned away from the fire to glare at the woman.
“What is wrong with you?” I looked at her as if she were the grandchild, instead of the other way around. This had to be a dream. The whole situation was too strange to be real.
“I hope you are suffering, Reina! Because you have just put a death sentence on your daughter’s head!”
My mouth fell open as I looked at the sick woman. She was my mother? The woman I hadn’t seen in the twenty years I’d been alive? My grandmother never told me much about her, and my questions stopped long ago when I realized she was never going to be in my life. As a child I imagined a hundred ways I would get to meet her, but this had never come to mind.
What better way to say hello to your daughter for the first time than try to steal from her?
I forced a laugh down as I didn’t believe that was the reaction you were supposed to have. Even if there was a rule book, I didn’t think that this particular situation would have ever been listed. So, I stood still, gazing blankly into the fire while trying to ignore the dull ache in my chest.
My grandmother and mother only looked at each other for a moment, while unease seeped into my lungs. The silence was heavy and starting to suffocate me, but when I went to say something, Reina beat me to it.
“I’m sorry. I just need some money, and I will leave.”
“What, your fancy little job in the city’s not paying enough these days?”
My grandmother had never said much to me about my mother. But finding out that she had lived right in Alger, a small ride from the cottage caused a sharp ache closer to my heart than I would have preferred. I pushed away the pain, clenching my teeth to replace it with resentment.
“Mother, I’m sick. I can’t work anymore.”
The anger in my grandmother’s eyes faded as she took in the news. “You don’t look sick to me. You look like someone who’s smoked too much Midnight Oil and then ran out of money to continue.”
My mother tried to steal from me, so it wasn’t that unbelievable she was addicted to Midnight Oil. No, the unbelievable part was that my mother was a prostitute.
Or had been. I supposed she couldn’t work now; no one would risk it.
Midnight Oil was used in the brothels so the women could escape the reality of a strange man between their legs. It only had an effect on women, and I had never seen any villagers but prostitutes use it. I’d heard stories of it taking you away into a sunny field, where all you could feel was the warm sun and the long grass caressing your skin. The withdrawal was a painful experience; I had seen with my own eyes as Grandmother had treated many of the prostitutes from Alger’s symptoms.
I had always known I was a bastard. But now I knew I was a whore’s ba
stard.
That wasn’t exactly what had my stomach turning. There had been many prostitutes seeking help to ease the withdrawal symptoms who came through our warped wooden door, and every one of them was sick in an entirely different way.
There was no other reason for my mother to be out of work and coin unless she had the one sickness that put prostitutes out of business. The Pox. She didn’t appear symptomatic as there were no lesions on her skin. Those who showed symptoms died from them, and those who didn’t, lived.
Was it too early to see the symptoms? Or was my mother one of the lucky ones?
I watched her retch on the floor and felt as if I would be sick myself. Why would my mother choose that lifestyle? Was a whore’s life more exciting than a life of raising her daughter? Had my father just been another patron?