'She will kill the boy.'
Eleonora tucked a strand of golden hair behind her ear as she picked out the red starflower from the herb stall. The old woman standing to her right gawked at her like she was an escaped criminal. It didn't upset her — neither the gaze filled with hatred, nor the words spilled like poison. In the twenty-one years of her life, Eleonora had come to accept it as a fact: she was a criminal.
She was yet to know why it was that way; yet to know the crime. Her crime. But a lifetime of experience had taught her to not quibble about the reasons. It won't make a difference.
Once, a long time ago, after a long session of drinking in mourning for his dead wife, her father had confessed it was because she was her mother's daughter. Eleonora had been too young to question it and her father was in too much emotional pain to talk about it then. Ever since, she had tried, on multiple occasions, to make her father talk about it, bribing him with ales shipped from distant lands and making him his favourite roast hare curry, every then and now, that only she could prepare with perfection, but none of her attempts had ever come to fruition.
Making her father talk against his will was more difficult than finding a cure for the most fatal of diseases.
As she selected the fresher of the Mandrake roots from the stall, Eleonora wondered if the woman standing next to her would tell her about it if she asked nicely. The angry gaze piercing her skin made her believe the woman might know about it.
'You're going to kill the boy, aren't you?' the woman said.
Perhaps she would not.
Eleonora stayed silent, filling her basket with the herbs required to brew the medicine.
'Are you deaf, witch?' the old woman stated rather than asked.
Eleonora passed her basket to the vendor for him to wrap it up nicely so the fresh ingredients wouldn't go bad in the summer heat and passed him two bronze coins when he asked for them.
'So you can hear', the old woman mumbled to herself. Then spoke louder, 'Is it your mouth that has a problem, then? Did they cut your tongue off, witch? A noble task rightly performed on a monster like you.'
Eleonora kept a serene expression on her face and patted herself on her back in her mind for not letting it get to her head. It has taken a lot of years for her to perfect her act. To avoid people and their words like those of the ghosts haunting the Spirit Forest. As a child, the same words used to have pierced her heart, brought tears to her eyes and caused her to hate her very own existence. But with time she had come to understand more clearly what her father had repeatedly told her after every such incident: words lose meaning if the header gives them none.
And that was what she had started to do. The words didn't hurt if she perceived them as noise and the stares didn't make her uneasy if she viewed them as old portraits hung on the yellowed walls.
'How can you live so shamelessly, you witch? Why don't you die like the boy you're about to kill?"
Eleonora wondered how the woman would respond if she asked the vendor to add in a few poison ivy with her herbs. She had enough of them in stock at home, however, the thought of breathing life into the old woman's accusation would be interesting to watch — her very own twisted form of entertainment.
She had done it once before, at the same stall, with a different person throwing curses at her. The horror that had taken over their faces was something she would never forget.
But then, the vendor had already wrapped her herbs in a cloth and stored the cloth in a little wooden box. The ivy would draw away the moisture from the herbs and would cost her another bronze coin, so she sacrificed her entertainment and let the old woman have her peace.
'Do not give her that. She's going to kill the boy.' The woman said to the vendor when he passed the packed herb box to Eleonora.
'It's not my business what she does with it. I only sell herbs. Go away. You're ruining my sales,' the vendor said.
'She's a witch, you bastard. One day, she will kill you too.'
'Then let me die rich, you hag!'
It silenced the woman. She still kept glaring at her but the lack of words accompanied with it was like fresh water after a day of hard work.
Eleonora forced a smile away from her face. The old man, the vendor, was one of the few people in the village who still talked to her without cursing her in every next sentence. It was one of the reasons why she walked all the way from her house to his particular stall when there were much cheaper vendors closer to her house. That, and the pristine quality of the herbs.
'Thank you,' she mouthed to the vendor.
He shook his head, dismissing her appreciation. 'I wasn't helping you. I'm just running my business.'
Eleonora smiled at him and took her leave.
In a world that was ready to run after her with pitchforks at the slightest of suggestions, to have only one person look away in the other direction, was a gift far beyond her wildest dreams.
*********
Eleonora crushed the Mandrake roots and took the paste to Albert's lips. For a moment, he stayed still and Eleonora feared his condition was worse than what she had expected. Then his lips quivered, his eyes fluttered open, and he opened his mouth for her to feed the medicine to him.
'Will my boy get better?' Mason's mother asked with tears swimming in her eyes.
Eleonora looked at the boy lying in front of her. He was about her age, handsome and well-built. She wouldn't go as far as to call him her friend, but they had shared conversations sometimes while collecting firewood in the forest. He was always kind to her, and respectful. She owed him gratitude for that.
When his mother had showed up knocking at her door early in the morning begging her to save her son, Eleonora hadn't expected it to be so much worse. Looking at him now, with sunken cheeks, shrivelled skin, and eyes that have lost their shine because of the disease consuming him, he seemed like a different person altogether. A caricature of his old self.
Eleonora moved closer to examine him more carefully. There were no telling marks on his skin, no rash, no swelling, his breathing was normal and there was no cough or fever, just a slowed pulse rate and extreme fatigue.
'How long has he been like this?'
'A week,' said the mother.
Lifting his hands which felt almost lifeless, Eleonora examined his nails. Nothing.
She checked his pupils. Normal.
Took his pulse. Slowed but steady.
Opened his mouth. His tongue, discoloured.
'What did he eat last?'
'I fed him porridge yesterday. He hasn't eaten since.'
'Before he fell sick, what did he eat then?'
'I wouldn't know. He was out working at the mill. It was around midnight when he came back home drunk. I asked him if he wanted to eat anything, and he said he was too tired and went to bed directly. Since then he just lays there all day, barely eating or speaking. My poor child.' Albert's mother sniffed, forcing herself not to start weeping in the presence of her son.
Eleonora looked at Albert and frowned. 'Did he come home drunk often?'
His mother wiped a tear away. 'Never, not until a few weeks back. He started drinking more and more and even started to bring bottles of ales with him. Said it was exquisite, the kind of stuff the nobility prefers. He found a way to buy it at low prices.'
'Do you have any ale left?'
'I threw them all away when he fell sick. I had a feeling it was cursed.'
'Not cursed, just poisoned.' Eleonora conjectured.
'You know that without seeing it?'
'Eliminating every other option leaves only one.'
'Will.. will he live? Can you take out the poison?' Albert's mother grabbed her hands, begging her to not refuse her cry for help.
Eleonore knew better than to make false promises, but she would give her all.
'Give him only rice water and warn stews for now. Leave the windows open to let the light in, the more he sweats, the more it will help him. I'll come back tomorrow with the tinctures and potions for him.'
Eleonora stood up to take her leave, but the woman grabbed her hands once again. This time she wept. 'I'm sorry.'
'For what?' Eleonora asked.
'I called you names before. I'm sorry I didn't know better. They said you were a witch and I believed them.'
Eleonora's eyes widened but returned to their usual ease only moments later.
'I don't remember,' she said with honesty. Every other person, like that old lady at the stall, was nothing but a blur in her mind; their voices unheard the moment they stopped talking, their faces unseen the moment they walked away. It wasn't surprising for her to not remember Albert's mother was one of them.
'Please forgive me. Please save my son.'
'I will,' Eleonora looked at the boy taking deep, slow breaths, struggling for his life. 'Your son was kind to me.'
The sun had dipped below the horizon when Eleonora stepped outside Albert's house. The villagers returning to their homes after a long day at work and the vendors closing their shops to do the same made the usually quiet street appear busy.
Feeling a few eyes in her direction, scrutinizing her, Eleonora tugged at the hood of her cloak, forcing it to cover more of her face as she sped towards her home at the opposite end of the street.
There was a distant noise of horses neighing and hooves thundering on the ground, but it was the least of Eleonora's concerns.