The Scourge (A.G. Henley) - By A.G. Henley Page 0,68
didn’t see them with my own eyes,” he whispers.
I can’t believe it either. I didn’t see them, but I heard, and felt them. And that was enough.
Kora waits on the path, joining us as we walk toward the village in silence. I’m surprised to hear people talking and laughing in normal voices, discussing their day—until I consider that what was earth-shattering to Peree and me is accepted from a very young age by everyone else here. Kora is proof of that.
“Do you want to go to your mother’s?” I ask him. I don’t know where else to go. Nothing feels real to me, like I’m waking from a nightmare, but only just.
“Don’t call her that,” he murmurs, sounding as dazed as I feel. “She doesn’t deserve it.”
“But that is her name,” Kora says.
“What do you mean?” he asks sharply.
“Mother is what Kadee means in our language.”
“Why would she be called that?”
“Mama said it was because her son was all Kadee talked about for so long, when she came to Koolkuna. Mama said she cried for weeks and weeks.”
Arika calls to Kora, and she runs off. Peree doesn’t speak again, but as we wander through the village, I realize he’s leading us to Kadee’s home. She welcomes us in right away. The gentle warmth of the fire is a relief after the penetrating chill of the wind, and the shock of what we learned.
“You have questions,” Kadee says, as she puts a pot of water on the fire to boil. I wait for Peree to say something, but he stays silent.
“The water hole,” I say, “at home. It’s been poisoned for years? So when we drink from it, it plays tricks with our minds? Is the Scourge even dangerous at all?”
“They can be. They aren’t the horrific creatures the poison creates in your imagination, but they are still hungry and desperate, like Wirrim said. They must feed themselves, as we all must. They eat animals—usually raw, which only makes them sicker—and they’ve been known to attack people, too, if they’re starving. It’s probably what led to the first reports that they consume human flesh.”
That explains the bite, the night I fell asleep in the forest. The creature must have been hungry enough to take a bite and see if I fought back, like a scavenger animal. Rose’s plea echoes through my head. Was she still human at that moment, not yet consumed completely by the madness?
“What happens to their minds?” I ask.
“Our knowledge isn’t complete, but they seem to retain their awareness only for a short time. They forget who they were or how to care for themselves. And as far as we can tell, they don’t live long. They become ill, weak from exposure to the elements, and they die. They seem to travel in groups to give them an advantage in hunting, and perhaps as some vestige of how they lived before they became runa. Their name is derived from two words—boolkuruna, which means ‘homesick,’ and birruna, ‘dangerous.’ The sick ones are both.”
She pours us each a cup of tea, and offers fresh bread and berries. I nibble a little, to settle my uneasy stomach. Peree remains mute.
I ask, “What really happens when someone is being consumed, then?”
“It’s difficult to understand, but the closer a vulnerable person—someone under the influence of the poisoned water—comes to one of the sick ones, the more likely they will slip into the madness and join the runa. It’s as if the sight, sound, and smell of the sick ones overwhelms their senses, and completes the illusion.”
An unexpected rage floods through me. “This is unbelievable! All these years, all these generations of people, all the fear and pain and devastation—because of some poison that makes us believe things that aren’t true? Nothing since the Fall has been real?”
“What is reality, Fennel?” Kadee asks gently. “It’s what we, as a group, believe to be true. If a group, aided by the powerful effect of a poison, believes it’s threatened by a mindless pack of monsters, then that is what’s real.
“Ever since I was a little girl,” she continues, “I only saw the sick ones, never the Scourge. The creatures have always looked and sounded to me as they did to you today. I was more frightened by the violent reactions they caused in others than I was of them. When I tried to tell my parents what I saw, they seemed wary, fearful. They told me not to speak of it. So I never did.