Miradey

Cold Cure

Inside, the girl's mouth smoked slightly. The scent of singed apples reached Mrs Burch's nose and she stared in horror. The girl opened her mouth wide, drawing in great raspy, ragged breaths as though there was not enough air in the world to breath. Mrs Burch looked down her throat, she saw a smoldering like banked coals.

The child was burning from the inside out.

Those horrible, now racking breaths filled the room.

Mrs Burch pushed off the table, leaving the child's side, and backed away.

"What manner of affliction..."

She shook herself.

Something cold.

If this was anything like the time Uncle Magnacious foolishly ate a tin of purgapeppers and swore his intestines were slowly liquefying from the heat spreading in his belly and throat, then there was only one remedy.

From a counter in front of the window full of drying and potted plants, she grabbed a bright blue plant mister and a herb in a small pot whose blossoms had not yet bloomed. One squeeze of the mister and the herb froze, frosted over as if she sprayed winter upon it. She yanked it out of the soil in the pot and placed it inside a earthen cup. Grabbing the ancient pestle that had belonged to her mother's mother, she ground the herb to crunchy, frosted bits. A languid blue vapor and fog rose out of the cup.

Mrs Burch held the cup under the girl's nose.

"Menthamist. Breathe it in, there's a good girl." The girl instinctively took several heaving, shuddering breaths, inhaling the icy, healing vapors.

At last the girl got in a good few breathes without twisting in agony, her body loosening against the table in relief. No smoke fuming from her mouth or fire down her throat. When she was blinking her brown eyes at her again, Mrs Burch said softly, "I'm Mrs Burch. What's your name, child?"

She mouthed breathlessly. Pointed at one of the flowers in Mrs Burch's herb pots. The same herb she had just used to save her.

"Miradey? That's your name?"

She nodded.

"A lovely name, that is," Mrs Burch smiled. "Just a flowering herb but its blossoms are a pretty blue, yea? Must be an omen, it is. You owe that herb's magic your life, little one."

The child, again nodded, as if she already knew that.

Her hair was odd to Mrs Burch. Puffy, overly curly, and drawn into two pigtail puffs, looking pillowy enough to rest upon. Still, she folded a soft linen sheet in a bundle and placed beneath her head.

"Where did you come from, running from that awful thing?"

She pointed out the window. At the mountain.

That couldn't be possible. No one was up there, except for the Ironharts in that big monstrosity of a house. Perhaps the girl was one of their servants, escaped. Derelict of her station. It wouldn't do them any good to be caught with her were that the case. But there was no way, she'd come from all the way up there, barefoot and alone. Mrs Burch put the thought from her mind. She had enough to be getting on with, what with Morchrie being away.

"Rest now." Checking for fever, she touched Miradey's forehead. She grimaced while noting the scars all over the child's dark brown skin. Old burns on the bottoms of feet. Shiny patches on her arms and legs. Long pale cuts. Bruises and scrapes.

Mrs Burch picked at the coarse threads of the dirty old sack Miradey wore. The least she could do for now was set her wand to sewing her a new smock.

~

"We can't give her to the Clangs. Good as killing her, that is!"

"And?" argued Malchrie, her eldest son. "If the Clangs learn that we have one and didn't turn 'em over, what do you suppose they'll do to us!"

"What, might I ask, are you imagining the Dragon on The Hill will to do us?" Mrs Burch snapped. "Once she learns we turned over one of their children to the Clangs, she'll roast us—quick and unpleasant or slow and hellish! If she be in the mood to offer choices!"

"The others of her kind are in hiding. She is the only one of them who can walk the streets without fear of death. The Dragon will kill us."

Igrus appeared in the kitchen doorway.

"Ma."

"What is it, Igrus?"

"Miradey is worsening."

Mrs Burch sighed. So much for hoping Miradey's sickness was something she'd eaten. She might have guessed that an intolerance to highest classes of flaming hot hellpeppers wasn't to blame.

"What ails her is beyond my skill to heal." There was only one who could perform the miracles of her mother before her. But she was not one to be trifled with. No, no. She lacked the ways rumored of The Second Dragon, gentle and peacekeeping. The Third Dragon on The Hill had no qualms with conflict and it was said she was quick to anger and cast a hex through a wallop to the face.

"Morrie what say you?" Malchrie demanded "You can't really be thinking to let mother do this?"

Morrie's face was in his hand and her youngest looked weary and scared.

"She's but a child. Mama is only trying to help. We did shut her out there with a monster. She had to kill it because of us."

"Kill it," his brother sneered. "That girl couldn't."

"Where do you think all the entrails and that dark foul blood came from," said Morrie. "Hers is red. I saw when I cleaned and bound the gash on her hand. She bleeds red just like us."

Mrs Burch had not thought of this though she had suspected Miradey had killed the beast when she saw all that gore on her. It was possible that they owed their lives to her. A child she had been prepared to let die to spare their lives.

Where had the beast gone if the girl had not slain it? She would have Mr Burch and the boys search the fields for a carcass later. For now...

"We have to take her up The Hill." Her sons stopped talking at each other. Mrs Burch gave a solid nod. "I'll do it myself if I must, but I won't let her stay here knowing I've not the means to cure her sickness. Not when I know one who might."

It's what she would want for her own children. A chance.