One of my greatest personal failures is an overabundance of curiosity. Though I do not understand the world as well as I should, or the people in it, I hunger to know more. Often to my own detriment.

  From the journal of Drago? Buh?scu

  One of the women tested it, spilling potash on her hand. She hissed through her teeth, but the strange green affliction seemed to recede from it. Dragos nodded. It was a good enough result for him.

  The barrel was set up just beyond the reach of the encroaching threat, and the children were stuffed in. They all fit, the tallest holding the smallest so that all their heads were clear. The sun sat high above, shining down on their heads while the village glistened unnaturally.

  Zgavra, a mere whisper of a shadow within his own, murmured, “If honey were green, it would look like this.”

  Dragos nodded, frowning. There was something he was missing. His nose knew what his mind did not.

  In the absence of knowledge, experimentation was acceptable.

  One of Mirel’s rules. The Solomonar he’d named the baby after. Thinking of either Mirel was like getting a sudden splinter. The loss of his teacher had been well over a year ago, and still it came to him at odd times. The memory of her chilly, practical wisdom and candor pricked him when he least expected it. Again, he put those thoughts away.

  Dragos picked out the wise folk from the fools by their clean hands. They were untouched by the infestation where it mattered and clever enough not to spread it. They bound rags over the children’s eyes to protect them. If it worked, it would burn and could blind them.

  The children didn’t scream when jars of the caustic liquid were poured into the barrel, as they should have. Those who had fresh water used ash to make more, while the barrel started to fill. It was minutes before the first one wailed.

  “It burns!”

  Moments later, the barrel lit up with screams, and the little ones clawed at the rim to crawl out. Caustic lye splashed. Dragos held himself still, closing his eyes against the screams of agony, until one of the mothers screamed, “Isn’t it enough, yet?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied honestly.

  One of the children started leaking something brilliantly emerald from his nose. Another’s face was suddenly covered with the affliction. At the sight of that, Dragos took a long stride and kicked the barrel over, away from the village, towards the forest, where life was as yet untainted.

  There was little of the sheen left on them, but as Dragos watched in growing horror, he realized it had sunk into them. Moments later, the children started vomiting ooze, retching, and choking.

  Swiftly, jugs of clean drinking water were dumped over them, rinsing away the potash—but not the brilliant green ooze. The experiment was a disaster. One of the smallest children died a terrible death. The rest had lost patches of the Unspoken, but it merely slowed the growth.

  Dragos felt his lungs clench. Teeth gritted, he growled in frustration, to avoid wailing like the parents who lost their child. His palm slapped to his forehead, and he paced and muttered to himself. “It’s not the same. What is different? What?”

  “You said you’d help us!” Someone screamed.

  The wanderer fixed the villagers with a hard stare. “You’ll die if we do nothing.”

  Someone slipped in their hurry to reach the children. She fell in a flurry of green-edged skirts, liquid splashing up all around her. A man helped her to her feet, but her face was covered. In moments, she was gasping, clawing at her face, her fingernails doing nothing to rip away the affliction as it did her skin.

  Alina gasped, her hand paused halfway to her mouth in a parody of a gesture, unable to touch anything. She shook her head, not in denial of what happened, but at the wretched helplessness of it all. Her glistening gaze turned to Dragos.

  In turn, Dragos looked at the field, at the burdei, at the hay barracks and shacks.

  What was he missing?

  “Were there any common afflictions in the village before this?” Dragos asked, feeling the epitome of stupid. A simple question he should have already asked had been forgotten.

  Alina frowned. “A fair few folk have dry, itchy skin. Never thought much about it, but the next village over doesn’t seem to have the same problem.”

  Dry, itchy skin.

  Dragos jolted visibly, rushing to the edge of the ooze field to crouch beside it. He peered into it, squinting at the speckling. What if…

  “You don’t have dry skin,” he stated, standing up and facing her.

  “But your father, maybe your mother as well, did.” He guessed, but by the stunned expression on her face, he was right. He continued, moving away from the Unspoken affected area. “Your parents had skin so dry it was scaling and cracked as dry, thirsty earth. Better in winter, yes?”

  He faced her, a few steps away, and jabbed a finger at the consumed houses, spilling forth with verdant effusion. “So did they.”

  Dragos felt it. The eureka moment when it all suddenly made sense again. A child died in his mother’s arms. He swallowed against the misery of it as he faced Alina and said, “This is entirely new.”

  Alina wasn’t looking at him. The dozen left were half-covered in muck, through the strife, struggle, and too much contact. She tore her gaze away to scream at him, her voice ragged with overwhelmed panic, “I don’t care if it’s new! How do we fix this?”

  “We could use a spring, a cold spring, one that smells like sulphur, one big enough to fit you all,” Dragos said, excitement hinting in his tone. Is there one nearby?”

  Beyond them, the villagers struggled. He saw their misery, but wailing with them would do nothing. He chased the solution like a wolf after a hare. Despite that, their pain could have entranced him—how they held each other, sniped at each other. These people had lived together all their lives. And it seemed that many would die together.

  But not all. Dragos refused to allow it.

  Alina paused, glancing frantically, and pointed. “That far hill, there.”

  “Run,” Dragos said, aware of how the creep had risen, of how little time they had left. He waved at the others. “I have it now! Come!”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Alina sprinted ahead through a field, leaving a trail behind her. The barrel-chested man who’d first threatened him looked at the village with a lost helplessness and asked, “What of the village?”

  “It’s lost,” Dragos snapped, waving at the others to follow.

  Most stumbled along the path Alina left.

  A few lingered, looking around at what they stood to lose, as if it weren’t already lost. Dragos snarled at them, “If you want to die here, that is your choice.”

  “How do you know your remedy will work?” A woman challenged him, green hands leaving thickening stains on her hips.

  “I don’t,” Dragos replied. “Come or don’t. Your life is up to you.”

  With that, he turned away and followed alongside the trail of ooze left by those willing to try to live. He found a family on the way. The wife and child had already succumbed. The husband sat beside them, holding their unmoving forms, greased by the Unspoken. He struggled to keep them in his arms.

  Dragos paused, saw the flat look in the farmer’s eyes, and dashed on.

  Fleet as a buck in spring, he gained on the four ahead and witnessed another fall. If only they hadn’t fought earlier. If only he knew what he was doing… And those thoughts could do nothing but end poorly.

  Alina and a young couple were the only ones left. The two young farmers ran hand in hand until one stumbled and began to vomit a bright green spew. Dragos dodged around them and ran on, following the wild bounce of Alina’s hair, lit brilliantly by the warm sunlight, with streaks of gold dancing in her brown hair.

  His mind rewrote the scene before him. It was not a woman in a nightgown, coated with an Unspoken threat and running for her life. Alina was a woman in a jewel-bright gown, shimmering as she ran, trailing an impossibly long fabric of liquid behind her. The train of an elaborate dress, running with the joy of life on a beautiful day, her arms out, dropping gemstones instead of droplets of a deadly life form.

  A Nerostit? that was, for all Dragos knew, brand new.

  The sparsely wooded hill was steeper than he’d expected. Dragos smelled the springs before he heard them, sharp as rotten eggs left out in the sun. Alina started to climb, leaving handprints on trees and roots. Dragos avoided the rocks she’d stepped on, did not touch the trees she’d used to pull herself up the steep incline. He heard the trickle of water and knew he must be near the spring.

  Alina stood at the edge of a shallow pool. It was big enough to fit perhaps two people at best. She turned to face him. The green had crept along her arms past her elbows, had risen to her hips, and no doubt crept faster as she grew warmer.

  The fine warmth of summer sealed their fates.

  Dragos made a shooing gesture at her. “Quickly, get in the water. All the way. Let your body cool and then submerge and hold your breath. Hold it until you pass out.”

  Alina waded in and sank until she was lying in the rocky pool, breathing heavily from the run. Her head stayed above the water line. Dragos held her gaze as he climbed down to drop to his knees beside the pool. He looked up at the cracked rock face, the mountain ground down to a little stub of a rise over the ages. He snorted and shook his head.

  “Tell me! I want to know what’s killing me, at least.” Alina’s voice trembled with a primal shiver. Green streamers pulled away from her, drifting off her flesh like threads.

  Dragos watched it carefully as he explained what he guessed. “It’s not one Unspoken kind, but two in a symbiotic relationship of happenstance.”

  “You said a word before. The slipcloth one?” Alina prompted, her hair drifting like the threads of the Unspoken.

  “Malure. The thing in the bucket. Like sheets of thin cloth, and no little specks. This,” he pointed to her body, glancing away when he realized her gown wasn’t meant for bathing in. “Um. The specks are known as Cenu?arii. Ashlings. They are mostly harmless, feeding on dead skin and oils. Somehow they came into contact.”

  The remainder of the symbiotic Unspoken crept toward Alina’s neck. He almost missed it, trying to be polite. The see-through fabric of her nightgown darkened as it seeped upward.

  “Take a few long, deep breaths, and then submerge everything,” Dragos said, hands clenching, unable to do much else for her. “Stay down there, no matter what.”

  “Trying to make me drown myself for cursing your travel with my misfortune?” Alina nervously teased. The look in her gaze spoke of terror—and of trust.

  Dragos couldn’t find anything funny to say in reply. When the creeping danger got to her chin, he said, “Now.”

  Alina sucked in a long breath and submerged. Her nose was a mere two inches from the surface but fully covered. At first, he was afraid nothing would happen.

  Then, the specks began to disappear. Little by little, they drifted away in tiny chunks. The slipcloth unthreaded, dissolving bit by bit. Alina twitched. Her eyes opened. Bubbles slid from her nose to pop on the rippling surface of the water.

  Dragos shook his head, holding a finger out. The threads wended away until he saw nothing left on her. He curled his fingers, gesturing for her to come up.

  Alina lunged upwards, gasping, coughing up water with a gasping sob.

  When she could speak, all she said at first was, “That was wretched.”

  Dragos’s chest hitched with a weak laugh. He held a hand out to her, and she used it to haul herself out of the pool. She sat on the rocky edge, shaking with the cold. He sat beside her.

  She shifted toward him and searched his eyes. He didn’t quite understand what she was looking for. Her face pinched, and she leaned into him, squeezing him so tight he struggled to breathe.

  “Thank you,” she murmured, her shivering body trembling against his, and yet her arms were still crushingly strong. Farm girls.

  Dragos draped his arm around her and squeezed her back. He couldn’t quite smile. The conclusion of a harrowing experience didn’t bring him relief, but he did feel pleasure from having solved it. He rubbed her arm with his free hand, trying to bring some warmth back to her.

  “I didn’t do enough,” he muttered, deferring the gratitude.

  She reared her head back to look at him and snorted. “You did what you could, you big fool. How did you know all this?”

  “My—adopted mother taught me,” he said. It was the first time he had spoken of the Solomonar out loud. It felt strange, unwieldy in his mouth.

  “She’s smart,” Alina replied. Her smile flashed briefly and disappeared. That she could even smile for a moment was a feat.

  Dragos nodded, then glanced up at the movement of shadows coming through the trees. Zgavra climbed to the side they sat upon and paused. It was wearing its half-dragon form, gangly limbs, shaggy mane, and scales. His box was on its shoulder, his cloak draped over its arm. Its reptilian face was unreadable.

  “Well then, this appears intimate. Shall I come back?” The zmeu said.

  Dragos sighed and held out a hand. “I’ll lend my cloak to Alina for now. Thank you for bringing those.”

  “Oh, a thank you? My, she’s already rubbing off on you,” Zgavra teased with its usual acidic tone.

  Dragos’ brows pulled down. He did use polite words with the zmeu. Now and again.

  Alina watched it, stiffening.

  “The Unspoken has changed you. Alina,” Dragos said, drawing her attention from Zgavra’s annoying commentary. “You can’t let people know what you see. You weren’t born moroi viu like me. My advice? Tell people your village burned down, and you were the only survivor. Live your life.”

  Alina looked out toward where the village lay, mostly hidden by tree trunks and leaves. She was silent for a time. Until Zgavra dropped Dragos’s cloak over her soaked shoulders. Then she jumped a bit but didn’t otherwise react.

  “How? How do I keep going?” she pleaded.

  “I’ll give you some medicine. Make a tea with it every…”

  “No,” She shook her head, her wet hair dripping. Pure, simple water. Nothing more. “How do I keep going after this?”

  “One day at a time,” Dragos said. He didn’t have a better answer.

  Zgavra rubbed its scaly hands together and said with relish, “Let’s go burn it down now.”

  Click this link.