"I-I'm in pain...help..."
Seeing me clutch the blanket, writhing in agony, he finally turned around. His eyes narrowed, and he placed his hands on my stomach to examine it, though he couldn't analyze what he was feeling.
"Damn..."
The first snowflakes of that night were falling in the distance as I could no longer breathe, my cramps spreading up my thighs, contracting the tendons that bulged from my thin skin.
I held back from screaming so as not to wake the children, but it was so terrible I could have lost consciousness.
Such pain that wouldn't subside and that tore at my stomach. I finally rushed to turn over to vomit on the other side of the bed, Izua realizing that my white robe was stained with blood.
"Ede...you..."
A tear rolled down my face. It didn't take me long to realize something was wrong with my baby, who was barely four months old.
The pain of losing him was greater than what I had felt a few moments ago, and the shock was so great that I unconsciously started vomiting again.
Izua said nothing. He went to get water and tissues to clean everything up. I was in so much pain I couldn't move. I was still having contractions, even though they weren't as awful. I had a strange feeling that it was going to last a long time as I cried.
He saw me crying buckets of tears on my pillow, looking away to avoid confronting my grief.
"Stop being childish. Don't cry like you're the most miserable one. You're not the only one going through this."
"Uh...I'm so sad...and I'm in pain..."
His face tightened. He finally let go, left the room for a few minutes, and came back to clean the sheets and my body as he went, with water that had been boiling from the previous day in front of the downstairs fire. He put all the trash in that sheet and threw everything outside.
"...can't we call the doctor? Maybe he's not dead...?"
"Hope has no place in this kind of situation, pull yourself together."
I placed my hand on my lower abdomen, my silent cries suddenly becoming mute even to myself. I no longer screamed internally...I just told myself: I hoped for nothing, and I'm in pain for nothing. I fell asleep in despair, dreaming again of illness...but the next day, bedridden, unable even to care for my children, I was incapable of communicating with anyone.
I wrote on the spine of a book, my eyes tired, swollen, and red from always being on the verge of tears:
"Your Majesty, I dreamed again of... Your Majesty, I think we should look more seriously into...the question of the sick...
It seems to me that an epidemic threatens to spread soon; the images are getting worse and worse as I dream, and...they all end up dying."
I continued to bleed, my suffering only slightly eased. Each day was heavier than the last, the snow falling so hard that the children ended up sleeping on the sofa in front of the fireplace. Izua took care of them, kept them warm, while I stayed alone upstairs, reading an old book I had brought in my light luggage before getting married here in the North
I hadn't opened it since because it reminded me of my peaceful life. It was one of the countless gifts my mother had given me, this book whose pages had absorbed the scent of Beste Manor.
Mother always told me to put flowers in it so it wouldn't absorb the smell of dust...
Picking it up here to reread it for the first time, I was afraid it had lost its floral scent, but...no, the dust of the North will never surpass the sweetness of the capital, as I remembered.
"I'm not sure I can go to the capital this afternoon."
"H-Huh?"
"Why the surprise? Have you seen how much snow there is? The carriage wouldn't roll."
"But...it's important...isn't it? Won't it bother the Emperor?"
"It happens every year. He knows how to handle emergencies."
He was leaving the room to put the children to bed. He had come to tell me this even though I had already prepared the letter for him to mail with his papers tomorrow afternoon
I still had some important information to deliver... I think the epidemic could wait, but there was no information on the front lines and the increased snowfall.
I left it aside, hoping it wouldn't have too many consequences, and as if it were a message telling me I had failed in my duty by not delivering my letter on time, three days later, Euria came to see me with her face drenched in sweat and red with fever.
"Mom...I feel unwell..."
I looked at him, my face expressionless, analyzing what had just happened. Izua was passing in the hallway...
Sitting on the edge of the bed, I rested my hand on his forehead and looked up at him without saying a word
I didn't know what to say...if I told him about the flu epidemic he'd think I was strange, especially since the disease was unknown to the people and only referred to as such on the front lines at that moment. I just gave him an insistent, exhausted look, purple with lack of sleep and darkened by my long black eyelashes.
I refused to tell myself that it was the same disease that had condemned the strongest warriors...and wiped out an entire population in a few weeks...
I refused to admit it to myself because it would mean that my son had a high chance of dying...and that I would be partly responsible for his death and the deaths of other innocent children...for not having insisted or gone to post the letter myself.
"What is it? Are you still angry with me for no reason? What? What have I done now?"
"...nothing...but...make sure you clean the whole house thoroughly, and tell...tell the children not to put their hands in their mouths."
I laid Euria down next to me and kissed her forehead.
What can I do to make you feel better?
How can I prevent you from suffering too much?
I went to get her some cold compresses...I applied the ice-water cloth to her head, but she didn't seem any better...
"My darling..."
"Mommy..."
"Where does it hurt? Tell me..."
He put his hand on his head, then on his mouth...
I told him to open his mouth so I could look, but the darkness prevented me from seeing. I had to turn him toward the light to see that his tonsils were swollen and red.
"Mom's going to give you some herbal tea to drink. It'll help..."
"Okay..."
I went downstairs to boil some bark and flowers that I had sent Izua to fetch a few minutes ago, telling her briefly that Euria was sick and that it was contagious.
"Drink it."
He sat up, his nose running. I wiped it and had him blow into a handkerchief, tending to his ailments as best I could because my body ached, my stomach was churning, and soon I was trembling too.
I shouldn't have taken so long to recover...I shouldn't have...
Now my son is dying and I can't even properly care for him...
I didn't leave that room all afternoon, only able to hold his hand, leave the room to make infusions and broths, then come back and tell Amaiera, who was worried about not coming into the room.
"Mom, is Euria still sleeping with us?"
"No, he could give you his illness. But I'll come and say goodnight, go to bed."
Amaiera stood for a while behind the door, trying to look through the small opening to see what her sick brother looked like.
He was having trouble breathing; I tried to clear his nose every 20 minutes, but he was too weak to breathe properly, exhausted from having a fever all day.
Amaiera came back a few minutes later and opened the door while I had turned Euria onto his stomach to wipe his nose; he had his brows furrowed and his arms crossed.
"Mom, you forgot to say goodnight."
"Wait a little longer, I won't be long..."
I tucked Euria back into bed, and she was slowly falling asleep before going into the bedroom. I didn't touch anything, just took Euria's bedsheets and placed a kiss on Amaiera's head. She was pretending to be asleep, annoyed. There was nothing I could do, but I was so scared I couldn't move. Izua was watching me from the other end of the hall, having had to prepare dinner and clean all day, while I was starting to feel guilty, little tears forming at the bottom of my eyes.
"You're overreacting. It's not the first time he's been sick."
"This time...it's...I...it's this illness that killed him..."
He entered the room naturally, and I rushed to open the window wide, the sickly smell of the room quickly being replaced by cold. He was about to go to bed next to Euria, but I pushed him away.
"You could catch it."
"So what? If I'm still alive at my age, it's because I'm tough, my god..."
"I've seen people much stronger than you die from it!"