Victor Grimholt's Arc

Chapter 4 of 9

The cough started before dawn. Victor woke to a wet rattle inside the yellow onesie, small and steady, like a pot lid loose on a boil. He held Lunella up to the lamp. Her lips were dark, her nose ran, and each breath dragged something sticky out of her chest. He knew ribs. He knew joints. He did not know this. He wrapped her tight, pulled his coat over them both, and stepped into the mist. There was only one door in the swamp he trusted for green things and small lungs. The herbalist's cottage sat on stilts over still water, thatch heavy with vines, a lantern still burning at the rail. Victor climbed the plank steps two at a time. He did not knock. He pushed the door open and stood on the mat, dripping. "She's rattling," he rasped. "Since the third bell. I don't know cures. I know cuts." Nyama was already awake, sleeves pushed to her elbows, flowers still tucked in her black hair from the night's work. She did not flinch at the butcher in her doorway. She held out both hands for the baby. He hesitated. Lunella coughed again, and the sound decided for him. He passed her over. Nyama laid Lunella on a clean reed mat and bent close. She listened at the small chest. She pressed a warm palm to the belly. She thumbed back an eyelid. "Marsh-damp in the lungs," she said, soft and sure. "Common in swamp babies her age. Not the drowning kind. Not yet. We caught it early." Victor's shoulders dropped a full inch. He had not known he was holding them. Nyama went to her shelves and pulled down a small bottle. The liquid inside glowed a soft gold, mint leaves suspended like green fish. "Honey for the throat. Mint to open the passages. A word or two of mine folded into the pour." She tipped a single drop onto her little finger and touched it to Lunella's tongue. The baby's face wrinkled, then smoothed. The rattle in her chest thinned, then eased, then quieted to a clean small breath. Nyama corked the bottle and pressed it into Victor's hand. "One drop at sunrise. One at moonrise. Three days. Bring her back if the cough turns dry." Victor looked at the bottle, then at the woman who had fixed his daughter in the time it took him to stop shaking. "What do I owe." Nyama smiled and shook her head. "A cut of good meat, when you have it. And her name, for my ledger." "Lunella," he said. "Grimholt." Nyama wrote it down in a small green book. Victor stepped back into the mist with the tonic against his ribs and the baby breathing quiet under his coat. He had found a second door in the swamp that would open for her. He walked home slower than he came.