DREAMWIELDER Book 1 of The Dreamwielder Chronicles

Chapter 5: A FINAL BREATH

When Makarria came in for lunch after finishing her morning chores, Parmo was still asleep. Makarria joined her parents at the small dining table beside the iron cooking stove in the center of their home and eyed his empty stool.

"Why's Grampy so tired today?"

Her parents exchanged a glance but said nothing. Prisca filled Makarria's wooden bowl with crab and leek soup from the pot boiling on the stove and handed it to her wordlessly. Galen kept his eyes focused on his own soup. They had been acting like this all morning, as if Makarria had done something wrong, and they were angry with her. As far as Makarria knew, though, she hadn't done anything wrong. Although tired and lethargic, she had gotten up in time to milk the goats before sunup, she'd pulled weeds in the garden and harvested the leeks for their soup, she'd fed the chickens and checked for eggs, and she'd done it all without a complaint or daydreaming.

"I think I'll go wake Grampy," Makarria suggested, wanting nothing more than his warm presence there with her right now.

"Let him be," Prisca said. "He was up late last night. We all were but you."

"But his soup will get cold."

"Makarria, I said let him be."

Galen frowned. "It is nearly noon. The old man should be up by now, having stayed up all night or not."

Makarria had no idea why her grandfather or the rest of them should have been up all night, but her eyes lit up at the prospect of waking him nonetheless. "Can I, Mother?"

"Fine," Prisca relented. "You can ask him but don't badger him into getting up if he's still tired."

Makarria dashed up from the table and threw aside the curtains separating Parmo's sleeping area from the rest of the room. "Grampy," she said, shaking his shoulders. But he did not stir, and his face was covered with sweat. His breaths came in rapid, shallow rasps. "Grampy?" she said again, and this time a thin moan escaped his lips. "Mother," Makarria started to say, but Prisca had heard the worry in Makarria's voice from across the room and was already at her side.

"Father," Prisca said sharply. She flung the sleeping furs off of him and saw that his nightclothes were soaked with sweat. "Go draw up a hot draught with worm root and anise like I taught you," she told Makarria. "Quickly, go! Galen, fetch water and a washrag."

Galen had been coming to see what the fuss was about but now turned and rushed outside to fetch the water and rag while Makarria ran to the stove to pile on more wood and stoke the flames. Galen returned a moment later with a pail of water and filled the kettle atop the stove before hurrying into Parmo's sleeping area with the remaining water and the washrag.

Once the flames were going strong in the stove and the water in the kettle heating, Makarria hopped onto one of the dining stools to reach the drying rack hanging from the roof. There were dozens of the little muslin sacks on the rack with a wide assortment of herbs, roots, dried berries, and fruits within them. All of them were similar-looking, but Makarria knew how to identify each one by smell; in a quick few moments she was back on the ground, crumbling with her fingers one pinch each of worm root and anise root into her grandfather's large bronze stein. The water in the kettle was not yet boiling though, and Makarria saw that her father had nearly filled it to the top. She dumped half of it out into the pot of crab and leek soup so that the water in the kettle would heat faster; the soup would be thin and tasteless now, but that was the least of her concerns. She could see that her parents had stripped Parmo of his nightshirt and were wiping him down with the damp washcloth. Galen lifted Parmo's head and torso so that Prisca could wipe his back, but it sent the old man into a fit of coughing.