Aiden Beaks's Arc

Chapter 8 of 10

Aiden left Ethan wrapped in the heavy cloth and slipped out through the red gate. The storm had shrunk to hard rain. He ran barefoot on cold stone, checking every shadow for his uncle. The care plaza glowed white ahead, its wings ringed with fountains. He aimed for the pharmacy at the center and did not stop until he hit the glass. The doors were locked. Lights off. Aiden banged with both fists. He pressed his face to the window and saw empty aisles. No one came. He hit the glass harder, again and again, until his palms stung. A side door swung open. A young woman stepped out, hair black with a few long red streaks, boots too tall for the wet ground. Green snakes coiled loose around her legs. She glared at him like he was noise she wanted gone. "Stop that. The pharmacist left hours ago," she snapped. "Go home." "Please," Aiden said. "My friend has a fever. He's little. He's burning up." Rain ran off his chin. "I need medicine." "I can't help you." She looked away. "I just close up here. I don't have keys to any of that." One snake tightened at her ankle as she turned to go back in. Aiden grabbed the door before it shut. "He could die. I have no one else." Another door opened down the wing. A man stepped out, plain and tired, wiping his hands on a coat. "I heard banging," he said. He knelt to Aiden's level and studied his face. "A fever, you said. How old is the boy?" "Small. Younger than me." Aiden's voice shook now. "He got soaked in the storm. His skin is hot." The man nodded slowly. He was a pediatrician; he said children were his whole day. He glanced at the locked pharmacy, then at Aiden's bare feet. "The shelves in there won't help you tonight," he said. "But there's an old way. My grandmother used it." He pulled a scrap of paper from his coat and wrote as he spoke. "You need the root of a cold-country flytrap. Thick leaves, spined mouths. It grows where the frost sits." He drew a rough shape of the plant. "Boil the root down. Then take a growing leaf from a white weeping willow, young and pale, and steep it in. Give it warm. It breaks a fever." He folded the paper and pressed it into Aiden's hand. "I'd drive you, but I can't leave my patients. Can you find those two things?" "I can find anything," Aiden said. He meant it. The woman watched from the doorway, arms crossed, saying nothing now. Aiden closed his fist around the recipe. He had come for medicine and found none. He had a cure written in a stranger's hand instead, and two rare plants to hunt in the dark. He turned and ran back toward the gray house, the paper tight against his chest.