I do not understand my companionship with the zmeu. Why it lingers despite my consistent suggestions it leave baffles me. What is it waiting for? And yet, my road is a lonely one. As obnoxious as the beast can be, at least with it near, I am not as alone as I had been the past year.

  From the journal of Drago? Buh?scu

  “Are you its master?” Alina asked, gaze flicking nervously at the creature ahead of them.

  She walked back the way she had run with Dragos beside her, on the far side of the track. His limp still teased from time to time, but his knee was on the mend.

  Zgavra drifted like an unruly zephyr, flowing along as a translucent ribbon of shadow—until it heard her words. It spat, “He is not!”

  It folded in half to level a baleful glare at her.

  Alina stopped, hands up, to ward off its anger. Zgavra slithered backwards, as if her hands were a threat. Dragos supposed they were. Droplets of gloop fell from her open palms to splatter on the dusty, furrowed road.

  “It owes me respect,” Dragos said, walking ahead.

  Zgavra rumbled a low growl and streaked off for the village, breezing by Dragos.

  “You’re it’s…”

  “No!” Dragos said with a crack of horror in his tone. “I only gave it something it never had. It listens—when I need it most.”

  If it were near. Zgavra didn’t interfere often, usually just to offer snide remarks, but it did listen. It had helped. It was more like a rotten younger brother than an adopted son, in Dragos’ opinion.

  “Ah,” Alina said, as if that satisfied her curiosity. The glistening trail she left on her run away from the village was a bit wider than on her way back.

  That close and in such abundance, Dragos couldn’t help but smell it. It had hints of verdant swamp but also somehow reminded him of long-untouched dust, as if he’d somehow arrived in a dusty old attic beside a lush, vibrant pond. The two scents made no sense together, but he couldn’t argue with his nose.

  Over the hours Alina slept, a few of the burdei and a modest house had been fully consumed. People had gathered by the town well; all of them had dark green gunk on their feet and legs. Many on their hands as well. They were simple folk in rough hemp clothing of earthy, muted tones. Weather-worn faces turned towards the two walking along the road towards them.

  Belatedly, Dragos realized his cloak was still off. The soft summer breeze dried the sweat that clung to him, soothing, and his mind was spinning over the strange, Unspoken thing in front of him. He should not have allowed himself such comfort.

  It was too late to hide what they’d already seen.

  People pointed. Shouted the usual words. Nerostit?, anatem?. Unspoken. Shunned.

  Alina ran forward, a splatter flung off her hands as she shook them. “No! He didn’t bring this! He’s here to fix it!”

  Lumini. Of course. The blame would be on him, though he’d yet to set foot in their village. He stopped walking.

  Alina ran to them to placate the small crowd. More than a dozen, fewer than twenty, of all ages. Dragos counted some elders, a scant collection of children, but most were robust farm folk. He cast a grim look at the burdei that had been consumed. Alina had confirmed that her parents were dead, surely drowned as the Unspoken plague crept down their throats in their sleep.

  A fate patiently waiting for them all.

  “I need to study it to understand it,” Dragos said, arms folding over his chest, gaze sliding over the agitated villagers. “If there is a chance to save you, I’ll find it.”

  “Who is this—this albstrig? that haunts us?” A man demanded, glancing about for something. Probably a weapon.

  “His name is Dragos,” Alina snapped back, her fists squeezed tight by her sides, secreting virescent discharge. “He’s here to help!”

  “I am a peddler of remedies, although,” he paused as he observed them, “I cannot promise anything. This is severe.”

  He read their faces like separate passages from the same book. Doubt gave way to fear, and fear bowed to a tenuous acceptance, with few exceptions. He could practically read their thoughts. What worse could happen? What else could they do? They didn’t know him. They could scarcely trust a cursed stranger who appeared the day they awoke to disaster. Yet, what other choice did they have?

  “He brought it! I’ll kill him and end the curse!” A tallish, thick-bodied man spat.

  Dragos smirked. There was always one. Someone to deny, grow belligerent, and hinder him; this time his study of the Nerostit? phenomenon. In the time he’d wandered, Dragos had learned people followed patterns—ugly, clumsy, as crude as a child’s first needlework.

  Predictable and simple.

  The stiff-backed man stalked over to a shed coated with a shimmer of slime. His hands were already covered to the elbows when he grabbed the tined wooden pitchfork and turned about. Alina threw herself in front of him, pushing against his barrel of a chest.

  “Stop! He’s the only one who will help us!”

  “Stupid girl,” the man growled, shoving her aside with the haft before leveling the tines at Dragos. Alina stumbled back, keeping on her slippery feet, just barely.

  “Remove your curse, striga, or I’ll run you clean through!”

  Dragos unfolded his arms, positioning his feet for a swift retreat if the man followed through with his threat. The tool-turned-weapon was coated in the virulent Unspoken.

  It was then that Dragos noted something beyond the threat.

  The man’s chest had two fresh patches of green where Alina had put her hands.

  “I can’t remove what I did not make,” Dragos said loudly enough to carry to all of them. “I can leave. I offered to help, but if I’m not wanted, I’ll go with a clean conscience.”

  That was a lie. He would leave with a heavy heart and dwell upon the villagers’ fates—and the girl who had simply stumbled in the reeds and brought home death. The doubt would linger in his mind like weighty stones. Could he have saved them?

  “You’ll die with a guilty conscience if you drive him away!” Alina shouted at the man’s back.

  The man rounded on her, pitchfork pointed at her chest. “T’was your house that was consumed first. Maybe you caused it! You’re the witch!”

  Thoughts raced.

  Killing Alina might end it, but Dragos didn’t believe it. His thoughts churned. The specks in the fluid. The fluid itself.

  How long had it been dry? He’d flown across the face of Calruthia upon the zmeu’s back and seen how the fickle clouds could rain in some places and leave others dry.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  Dragos considered weather patterns as he watched the man threaten the hapless girl who’d brought doom upon her home. The villagers all rushed to grab the man and the pitchfork. Panic in action.

  “Always the same, isn’t it?” The zmeu drifted close, thinner than incense smoke dispersing on the ceiling.

  Dragos sighed, unable to intervene without getting infected himself. He rubbed his forehead, scowling at the villagers’ devolution into violence. A sigh whispered from his chest.

  Tears of shame slid down Alina’s cheeks, but her chin lifted in defiance.

  The villagers pulled and screamed, berating him for threatening an innocent girl. One of the other men punched the belligerent one square in the jaw, leaving a fresh green stain that clung. Alina stood back from it. Horror shone in her eyes. Her hands squelched audibly as she clasped them together, frustration and despair diminishing the girl who had run for help when the village was in dire need, despite her own troubles. Dragos watched the deep green viscous substance drip from her palms.

  The specks in the fluid. The fluid itself. Moisture.

  “What is in the well?” Dragos asked out loud. They ignored him. Too busy wrestling for the pitchfork, screaming at each other. Children sobbed, squatting on the ground in a terrified huddle, the goo creeping slowly up their limbs.

  Jaw clenching, he ignored the ruckus and waved at Alina. She was entranced by the fight in front of her, having somehow left her behind. Dragos scratched his brow with frustration and then called to her.

  “Alina? Draw some water from the well,” Dragos asked. The stone was surrounded in a thick, wet sheen, and he didn’t dare touch it himself.

  With a start, Alina’s gaze snapped his way. She nodded and hurried to fetch the bucket beside the rough little well. Her lips quivered as she touched the slick stone, leaned down, and struggled with the slippery rope.

  Alina hauled up the bucket after a few fumbled tries. She took the handle and held it out.

  Dragos motioned at it, squinting. “Tilt it toward me. Is it infected?”

  She tilted the bucket and nodded. “It’s not even water, it’s just more of… this.”

  A cow lowed nearby. Dragos glanced at the cow, which shimmered with the Unspoken disease as it wandered toward the scuffling people. He noted the man with the pitchfork had been overwhelmed, and his makeshift weapon had been confiscated. The townsfolk, having settled their differences, turned to approach the wandering peddler.

  With every step they took toward him, Dragos backed away.

  “I can’t help you if I’m also afflicted. Stay where you are,” he said, all the while his gaze fixed on the poor farm animal. The cow lowed again. Bubbles of bright green saliva popped from its mouth and nose, and the beast’s chest heaved as it stumbled. The grass lay flattened in patches, matted beneath a slick sheen of the pervasive substance.

  It loved water. That much he was sure of. Perhaps it was born of the Umbre, or perhaps it was a mutation, a life altered by the essence of the Umbregrin or the Zioruluc. His mind raced as he tried to remember the flow of the spirit-rivers. The maps changed, but the raul spiritului had their habits. Perhaps one of them diverged and ran off here, merging with the nearby waterway.

  Perhaps…

  “I need to do some tests,” Dragos said aloud, gaze fixed on the stumbling cow. She’d been a milk cow, gone unmilked that morning. Her udders were veined and distended—but that wasn’t the cause of her bubbling moan. No part of her was untouched.

  “Your poor Laptas,” a woman murmured, stepping back as the beast shambled near. Her eyes lifted to Alina.

  Everyone watched the cow stumble and fall. A soft sob of horror slipped from somewhere in the small crowd. The heaving bones of the animal showed them their eventual fates. Darkly slick like a newborn, birthed from a poisoned womb, the cow lay drowning.

  When its chest stilled, it was over. The villagers wailed; many turned away, weeping. Their own afflictions had crept in the meantime. Slow. Inevitable. Death’s promise made.

  Dragos rubbed his chin, fingers scrubbing over the scant stubble. It was Alina’s cow. She’d not mentioned milking the cow before bed, but he was sure she had. He knew enough from his wanderings that it would have been done two or three times a day to keep it productive.

  “Alina, bring the bucket here,” Dragos motioned to her where she stood by the well. He pointed to a patch of earth near him, untouched by the creeping muck. Alina hurried to set the bucket by his feet. Dragos leaned over it, peering within.

  The mucus-like substance appeared thicker than the stuff outside, folded like translucent, pale green cloth in a wash bucket. Backing away, Dragos scanned the ground near the road, where trees were plentiful. Spying a stick, he strode over to snap it up from the underbrush. He turned to face the village and paused.

  All eyes were on him. Their sobs and rage had transformed into hushed breath.

  Swallowing against their collective tension, he returned to the bucket and dipped the stick in. The slime did not come out in a form characteristic of what he’d seen thus far. It was more of a sheet of gelatin, like fat congealed in thin, membranous layers. The specks were still present, but drastically fewer in number than what he’d observed by poking at the slime. The membranes slithered off the stick, paler in hue than the ooze that glistened all around him.

  “What is it?” Someone shouted.

  That broke the silence. From none to many, everyone cried out, demanding an explanation. Dragos understood their frustration, so he stared down into the bucket until he could school his expression away from irritation. He shook his head.

  “This is different Uspoken,” he murmured, tearing his gaze from the bucket to look at Alina.

  She met his gaze, hair brushing her shoulders as she shook her head. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “This is slipcloth. Malure.” He pointed with the stick, which had nothing clinging to it, then pointed to the wet line on the ground, uncomfortably closer than he remembered. “They aren’t the same Unspoken. I know how to cure this one.”

  He nodded at the bucket.

  “It looks similar…” Alina stomped her foot, splashing muck in frustration. “Why are there so many Nerostit? here?”

  Dragos frowned. He couldn’t explain how or why, other than habits. “Similar things are drawn together.”

  “Let’s try the cure for the stuff in the bucket, then,” Alina suggested. Her voice carried tempered hope, as if she’d already hammered at it, thrust it into the fire, and beaten to an edge of grounded optimism.

  “Some hope is better than none?” Dragos asked, the corner of his mouth twitching up in an awkward half-grin.

  Alina smiled and nodded, her dripping hands held out, as if poised for a curtsey that would never come. She sighed and agreed, “Better than none.”

  “We can use salt, a lot of salt.”

  Alina whirled and shouted, “Salt! We need a wagonload of salt!”

  A few hopeful cheers went up. Dragos couldn’t join in, as he focused on the children. They were further along. Their arms and legs were coated to their middles, with their little bodies more easily consumed.

  His thoughts strayed to Mirel—unbidden, unwanted—and brought a sharp ache to his chest. He shut the door on it as best he could. He couldn’t afford to be distracted by thoughts of the baby he’d kept in his care for only a few days.

  “Where we gonna get a wagonload of salt? May well be gold!”

  “Salt mine’s leagues off, we’ll die before then!”

  Dragos’ jaw clenched. They were right. Salt wasn’t the answer; it couldn’t be in this small, remote place.

  He stepped away from the bucket as the coating outside of it crept closer, an enchanting emerald color, if it weren’t so deadly. The unknown Nerostit? was robust, nothing like the paper-thin sheets swirling in the bucket. But not unlike, either.

  The flecks and the viscosity were confusing.

  His jaw worked as he thought it out, and the villagers got into an argument about the best way to procure salt, including raiding the neighboring village eight miles off. Desperation was ugly. He couldn’t quite blame them, though the stupidity of the idea was momentous.

  “Any mineral will do,” he said. They didn’t hear him. They screamed in each other’s faces, pointing and shaking fingers, some with the idea of marauding off, others steeply against it.

  Dragos sighed and looked at Alina. “They’re your people.”

  “I don’t claim them,” Alina said bluntly. “I’ll take the nice ones, you can have the rest.”

  His lips twitched with amusement. Who was she when terror was not creeping up her limbs? He doubted he’d have the chance to find out. She wore a death sentence, unless he could figure out the remedy.

  “I said any mineral will do!” Dragos cracked out sharply, cutting through the bickering.

  “What’s mineral?” A farmer asked.

  “Potash,” Dragos replied, a plan forming in his head. He started to feel an optimism to mirror the one shining in Alina’s eyes. “Everyone, clear out your fires and bring the ash here, and bring back whatever potash you’ve made.”

  “I tried fire,” the man said, holding up an arm, as if to show off burns that could not be seen.

  Dragos winced and nodded. He took a mental note. Fire didn’t work.

  “If you have a cask or a tub, bring the biggest you have,” he said, gesturing to the children. “The little ones are in greatest jeopardy.”

  “I’ve an old wine barrel, we’ll use that!”

  “We’ll need clean water as well. To wash them,” Dragos suggested.

  A man loped off, followed by a few others. The rest of the adults scattered to squelch through the goop and fetch the ash from their fireplaces and jugs of water. Alina rocked from one foot to the other. Her house was already a solid cube of the stuff. Ooze spilled from shutters in a trickle of globular fountains.

  “Do you think it’ll work?” She asked, her chest already expanding for a sigh at his answer.

  Dragos folded his arms over his chest and scowled. “For their sake, I hope so.”

  Click the link. It will open in a new window so you won't lose your place.

  Burdei (boor-DAY) [rolled r]: A type of pit-house or half-dug out shelter, combining sod house and log cabin build concepts.

  Anatem? (an-ah-TEH-muh): A person or thing that is detested/loathed.

  Nerostit? (neh-ross-TEE-teh): Calruthian word for all things unnatural or strange, synonymous with Unspoken. Places, events, and situations can be referred to as this, as well as beings.

  Albstrig? (ALV-streeguh) [rolled r]: White witch. Barn owl. A pale ghost or evil spirit.

  Lumini (loo-MEE-nee): Light

  Striga (STREE-guh): Witch, in this case.

  Raul spiritului (RUHL- spee-ree-TOO-loo-ee) [rolled r]: spirit river, either the Ziorluc or Umbregrin.