Always in the back of his mind was the dread that he was running out of options and time. He went back over all of the words about planting, looking for anything he might have missed. He started checking on the plants several times a day, as often as he thought he could without anyone noticing.
Throughout the day his fears would mount as the white spots took a deeper and deeper hold on his imagination. When he couldn’t stand it anymore, he would check on the plants again, sometimes returning to the field ten times in a day. The fear could only be held back by the sight of them, whole, healthy and untarnished.
One afternoon, in air thick with baked-in heat, he brushed sweat off his forehead and knelt down among the leaves. He turned over a leaf, examining its top and underside then all down its stem to the ground. There was no white. He sighed, but it was a small relief. The book had not yielded any clues. Either the Olders had never encountered this problem or the book had significant gaps in its overview of their knowledge.
A shadow cut across his palm, and the leaf cradled in it. He looked up.
“Charlie.”
“I was going to ask…” Charlie said, appearing uncomfortable. “’Course you’re busy.” He looked curiously down at Illya.
“Oh!” Illya said. “I was just checking the progress of the plants.” He stood and brushed his hand off on his trousers. Charlie smiled. His face seemed strained with worry. Sweat was running off his forehead and past his ears. It had soaked his shirt in the shape of a dagger down the center of his chest.
“How are Ezekiel and Leya?” Illya asked, trying to ignore a surge of guilt that went through him at this sight. He turned away, trying to swallow nausea.
Deep summer should have been the best time of the year, but now he saw how hard it was for the people to be out in the fields in the heat day after day. A short way away, Marieke stood up from where she had been crouching in the dirt, pulling up weeds. She stretched, rubbing her lower back.
“Oh, great,” Charlie said. “Little guy eats a lot. He’s already bigger.”
Illya looked down at the plant at his feet.
“The plants look good too,” he said, which was true, at least for the moment. They did look good, for the moment.
“Yea,” Charlie said. He hesitated as if he wanted to add something. Illya kept his eyes fixed on the plant and waited.
“I heard about Molly and Brant. Maybe their baby will be the next.”
Illya blinked at him stupidly, feeling like an owl. “Molly… My sister Molly?” he asked. There was no one else called Molly in the village, but he had to have misheard.
“And Brant. They’re courting now, right?” Charlie said.
“They’re courting,” Illya repeated. His brain felt as if it had been flung into a solid wall and come to an abrupt splat. He seemed to be surrounded by blank space, the air filled with vague buzzing. Somewhere beyond the blankness, Charlie was still talking.
Molly had black eyes.
Molly was only thirteen.
“I just have been wondering… I used to love to hunt in the shade at this time of year or wait until the fish are biting in the evening. With the sun going down and the gnats buzzing over the water,” Charlie said. “I know we have to do it this way, to get everything going, but… once it’s all set up, couldn’t I hunt too? Not just dig?”
Illya closed his eyes then opened them again. He tried to listen to what Charlie was saying but couldn’t make his head clear.
“I don’t mind hard work,” Charlie said, rushing his words out now. “It makes me happy to come and dig all day, to think that my family will have enough.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Illya managed.
“I just hoped that, someday, I could do something else too. It does wear a man down to do the same thing every day.” Charlie dropped his eyes to the ground.
Illya’s heart pounded in his ears. Everything seemed muffled and far away as he looked across the expanse of waving leaves. He remembered that Charlie was still waiting for an answer, somewhere outside of the hazy periphery of his vision.
“It is honorable to dig the soil, Charlie,” he said. “You are making all of this possible.”
He knew that it wasn’t the answer that Charlie wanted. It wasn’t answer at all, really. But there was nothing else he could say. His heart hammered, and his breaths came fast and short, making his vision glaze with bright points of light.
He remembered Molly as a tiny girl, playing by the river. He saw Molly and Brant handfasting then holding a newborn baby, thin and howling with hunger. Then came the white patches on the plants and Charlie with a face like a man who had taken a knife to the gut, realizing that Illya had betrayed them all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THE MORNING FOG was thick. It swirled around Illya’s legs and coated his feet and ankles with tiny beads of water.
It was nearly opaque. You could almost look at the white patches on the underside of the leaves and tell yourself they were just a bit more fog. Almost.
Despite the fog, the early morning, his tired eyes, the dim light; despite a hundred factors, Illya knew the truth.
The white spots were there. They were small, too small for casual notice, but it would not be long before they spread and coated the surface of every leaf.
He had expected his spirits to crash when this happened, and he braced himself for the impending feeling of despair, but it did not come.
Spots, that’s all they were, Illya thought. Tiny spots, no bigger than a freckle.
They didn’t seem like they could be real.
He dropped the leaf and pulled in a breath, squaring his shoulders. It didn’t matter how small the spots were. He had to tell everyone.
Illya walked back toward his hut, his legs growing heavier with each step.
They would be furious. He wondered what they would do to him. He swallowed.
It wasn’t long before he stopped walking altogether.
He was going to die.
Once the thought came to him, he could think of no other way it could end.
His knees turned to liquid. He started breathing so fast that darkness closed in on the sides of his vision. He closed his eyes, trying to force himself to calm down, but he might as well have ordered the river to flow uphill.
He had to tell them, but if he did, they wouldn’t bother with throwing him out to the Terrors. They would kill him themselves.
Maybe there was another way. There had to be a better option than just telling everyone and taking what came.
The longer he entertained this thought, the more attractive it grew. The darkness around his vision started to recede, and his breaths slowed. There would be another way. He would think of something.
After all, there was still time. It would take a little while before the white patches spread enough to be noticed. At the very least, there was some time to think about how to say it.
Illya studied the book all day until the letters on the page seemed to quiver. His eyes blurred and his head pounded. He looked at every page, and not one of them had a solution.
He thought of burning the fields to the ground and starting again. Of course, it would only work if they could find new seeds and if there was enough time to grow new plants before the first frost.
All too clearly, he remembered the chill that had started to come in the mornings. The days were still hot, but it wouldn’t be long before the nights froze.