2 May 2024

The summer before she turned 18, however, a plague swept through the land. Many people claimed it was a graveborn curse, and fear ran rampant. By the time their little village was hit, people were already reaching their breaking point.

“Do you think it’s actually a graveborn curse?” Lily asked.

For a moment, Astrid didn’t respond. “No. It spreads too slowly for one of theirs, and leaves too many alive. It’s spreading farther, too.”

When the village did get hit, it was hit hard. Lily was one of a small group unaffected, and she worked herself past exhaustion trying to help and save as many people as she could. Every once in a while, she’d start to worry about catching the disease herself, but she always pushed the thought out of her head. And somehow, Lily never did get sick.

On one particularly hard day, she was tending to a young boy. Johanne. His father had lost to the disease just the day before, and Johanne himself was fading fast. 

Lily did everything she could think of. She banked the fire and wiped his sweat. Nothing worked. When she tried to feed him medicine, he coughed it back up. All he could do was lie there and groan in pain.

Something broke inside Lily, and she clung to the boy and wept. Unbidden, the words to an old lullaby came to her lips, and she started to sing, eyes closed.