"This letter. Take only this..."
The messenger set down his glass of cold water, looking at Izua's stunned face, his heart still pounding with fear that he had missed him.
"I need to know...if my wife is crazy or if what she's saying is true..."
The messenger didn't answer him, only took the letter and left the pub without a word, preparing to face the snow.
"My wife is dying. If it turns out she's that important, you'll call a doctor, won't you? Our doctor is sick too, he can't examine her...and she's losing her mind." Izua spoke with difficulty, the cold burning his lungs and the race he'd just run having drained him of all his energy.
He hoped he could make use of the emperor at least once, no longer really knowing what he was doing either after being so overwhelmed and out of his depth with the events at home.
The messenger climbed into his cart and said in a hoarse voice:
"I will speak to the emperor about it."
This letter hadn't convinced Izua of my gift; he thought I was even crazier than before...but what had changed was that he was afraid. Every time I looked at him, even though I was suffering, he gave me that terrified face covered by a thick white cloth.
I knew very well that he had read my letter; I also remembered what I had said because of the euphoric episode brought on by my very high fever...
His reaction never ceases to amaze me
The house smelled strongly of vinegar, and above all, I could hear Sola's little feet again in the living room. Euria was cured, so he was forcing her to wear a mask too, and most importantly, he was throwing away the sheets stained with Euria's sweat and vomit, wanting to get rid of as many germs as possible.
I understood where this paranoia came from; I knew I should be afraid, but I didn't think he was the type of person to become so serious about it.
As soon as I coughed, he would open the window, waiting a few minutes to prepare. He gave the children boiling soup so there wouldn't be any germs in their food and permanently locked my room, eventually isolating me completely.
In the end, this isolation policy didn't work so well because Amaiera had found a new game.
He would dress in several layers of clothing to stay warm and would throw snowballs at my window to get me to come see him
I greeted him when I could get up, opened the window to talk to him, but when I wasn't in a feverish euphoria it was impossible, and sometimes I even vomited myself, not bile or digested food, but lots of phlegm that I couldn't get out without it making me want to regurgitate. Euria and Sola, too fragile, were grounded, which meant I hadn't seen them for a while.
"Are you feeling better?"
I shook my head, my face bent over the bucket, spitting out phlegm after coughing, sometimes mixed with blood from the irritation caused by my excessive coughing.
"I'm not feeling well at all."
"Five minutes ago you were reading your book and saying everything was fine, and now you're crying, huh?"
"I'm crying because I'm going to die..."
He stopped scrubbing the floor and lifted his head towards me as drool dripped from the corner of my mouth over the bucket, my eyes filled with tears, I couldn't help but tense up
"I'm going to die...it's too late..." I said in a high-pitched voice that cracked with irritation. I continued because his silence was too heavy: "I've been sick for too long. That means I'm not going to get better..."
I was having more and more moments of absence where I was no longer in control of anything. I didn't necessarily feel bad, but it was always the moment before the fatal plunge where I felt worse and worse.
The fever from Euria, which had passed in 5 days, I had been fighting for almost two weeks, which led to my exhaustion.
I didn't wake up often; I was in a state of latency, or when I wasn't suffering and tired, I was going crazy.
Soon this euphoria transformed into constant delirium where reality was nothing more than an impossible effort to perceive, and everything was mixed with physical pain.
"You should blow your nose..."
I took the handkerchief he offered me, then he helped me sit down. I blew my nose as best I could because I was dizzy and very congested. When I pulled my hand away, everything was red and my nose was bleeding...
It must have been fatigue and irritation, but... I'll always remember Amaiera's distraught look as he watched my blood flow from the hallway, he who hadn't seen me for a few days and hadn't touched me for several weeks.
"Go away or you'll catch his disease."
Amaiera didn't listen to him and ran into my arms unexpectedly. For me, who hadn't had any warm contact for a long time, I couldn't help but hug him tightly too.
"Go now... Mom is fine."
He dried his tears and went to join his brothers. Izua seemed to be losing it. He would have liked to isolate him with me, thinking he was already sick after all, but he hadn't had the chance before he was already in Euria and Sola's arms.
"What am I supposed to do now?" He said exhaustedly, the depth of his voice filled me with bitterness.
He simply wiped away my blood with the handkerchief and left the room, leaving me alone with my thoughts, now even sadder after remembering that my children depended on me for their lives.
By thinking only of the outside world and Behean, I had forgotten that my children were suffering too. I had always taken care of them, and now I...
That day, I found the courage to get up and open the door, making sure to keep the cloth tied above my nose so as not to contaminate them.
As soon as Amaiera passed by in the hallway a few minutes later, he understood that he could stay with me for a while and would hurry to my arms to tell me what he had done during his week
"Mom. Come play with me when you're not sick anymore. Euria and I went sledding. Dad made us one! He nailed several planks together and attached a rope to it."
"Was it going very fast?"
"Yes! I protected Euria when we fell at the finish line, but I had a lot of snow on my face, it was funny. My eyelashes were all white."
"You'll have to show me that."
Euria saw us and rushed towards me, crying. It didn't take her long to climb on top of me and get scolded by Amaiera for being too noisy.
Sola, too, having tried to keep up with his brother, had fallen on the floor in front of the door. I got up to go and pick him up and hug him...
It almost felt like a normal day, but I was already starting to sweat; I was probably overdoing it.
"Don't worry, don't worry."
Izua was watching me from the hallway, disapproving of my behavior, while he didn't find much to criticize about the children being there. He must have seen me too as a condemned woman...who has the right to have her children with her during her final moments
I sent them back to their rooms fairly quickly, feeling faint under the energy of these little darlings.
"I could come back tomorrow, right?"
"Of course. You can even come back tonight if you have a nightmare."
I was the one having the most nightmares...and yet...I thought I could bring them comfort with theirs? I fell asleep, knowing full well that they wouldn't come and that they would sleep peacefully like the little angels they had always been.
The fever made my visions increasingly bizarre dreams, sometimes making no sense and just making me dizzy.
"You're scaring me..."
"...uh..."
"Even when my previous wife died, I didn't feel all this anxiety."
I watched that figure at the door, lit by candlelight. I could make out the silhouette of a man, although I wasn't able to think, my condition worsening at night and tearing at my lungs...that angelic voice sounded very much like the one I knew, the one I loved when I was only 12...Behean's voice.
"Your death is long...it looks like it hurts a lot too..."
I couldn't tell if it was a vision or reality anymore, so I leaned over, sliding from the bed to the floor...
"I'm sorry you have to go through all this. Tell me what you wish for and I'll try to give it to you."
My chest...it burned a lot...really, really badly. My throat too, it was full.
I grabbed the bucket from the ground to spit into it, but it was very runny...in the darkness of the night I couldn't make it out, this garnet red that came out of my damaged lungs only to gather and stain everything around me.
If...if I could have had this life with Behean, would I have suffered like this? I didn't want to suffer anymore, I wanted to live...I wanted to be happy and have more children to take care of, I wanted to be able to love, to feel...and spend my days showing things to those I love most...
I burst into tears again, feeling the strength in my arms slowly fading away.
The door burst open in a panic after Izua heard me fall and cry. He was doing his best to help me, but I pushed him away; the fever made me see not my husband, but the man who had abandoned me six years ago.
"I hate you! I want you to die! Die with me! Don't leave me alone!!"