Lily's Arc

Chapter 3 of 1

Tommy slept, his fever beaten down for a day or two. Lily sat at her lab table and read the slide again. Tommy's blood showed faint threads, tangled and strange. But she had nothing to compare them against. She needed blood from someone healthy, someone with the same bloodline but no sickness. Only then could she spot which thread was the broken one. Without that, every trait looked the same. She could study Tommy's blood for weeks and still guess wrong. Her own blood. The thought stopped her. She carried the same bloodline. Six aunts and uncles had died of this illness. But she was alive, healthy, no cough, no fever. If the sickness lived in her threads too, she would see it twice, once in Tommy, once in herself. If it did not, then whatever thread she lacked was the broken one. She found a clean needle and a lancet from the kitchen drawer. Her hand shook. She pressed the point to her fingertip and pushed. Blood welled up, bright and round. She squeezed three drops onto a fresh slide and sealed it. Her finger throbbed. She wrapped it in cloth. She needed to carry both slides without breaking them. Her lab had no proper case. She dug through the cupboard and found a small container shaped like a kitchen, its lid capped with painted mushrooms. The inside held padded slots meant for spice jars. The slides fit snug, side by side. She closed the lid and carried it to the toy cart. Splitting the samples took all morning. She spun them in the cart's wheel, the way her father had taught her to separate the blood last week. The threads settled. She lined up her slide beside Tommy's and bent over the lens. At first the two looked the same. Then she saw it. Tommy's blood held a short, curled thread near the edge. Hers was smooth there. The curl sat in the same spot each time she checked. She counted it four times. The same curl. The broken piece. Lily sat back. Her chest felt tight. She had it. The sickness had a shape now, and she had seen it. Not a guess. A thing she could point to. She wrote it down fast, drawing the curled thread, marking where it sat. The cure would mean fixing that one piece. She did not know how. But she knew where to aim. She carried the mushroom case back to the shelf. Then she stopped. Her slide was only one healthy sample. One was not proof. The curl might be something rare in her alone, not the sickness at all. To be sure, she needed more blood from more of her living family. And they were scattered far across the planet, past the berry fields, past the tall mushroom school where the other children went. She looked at the case in her hands. It would have to travel.