Desperate Remedies

The night was dark, as most nights were, and the city loomed quiet and sinister around her. Boarded and broken windows lined the street, the occasional loose shutter moaning in the wind before clattering towards the pavement. The bricks seemed to be shrinking into themselves, steeling themselves against their abandonment. Every few blocks, a street light flickered, struggling against the smothering black and blue of the air. The moon, which sometimes gave the city a silvery, colorless illumination, was blotted out by clouds, and a cold drizzle had started.

Alone on the sidewalk was a young woman, her hair and face hidden by a rough cloth. She carried a heavy bundle in her arms, and her hands were pale and skeletal against the dark fabric. The thin clothes she wore, an unraveling sweater and worn gray jeans, were silvered by droplets of mist. She walked with her head down and wished for the moon, her steps echoing eerily against the facades of the dead buildings.

Finally, she ducked into a doorway. She turned her head to look behind her. Her glance was furtive, her eyes dark and red-rimmed, the bags under them purple and bruise-like. She lifted one claw-like hand and rapped her knuckles against the splintered wood of the door.

It opened. For a moment, she stood still, blinking against the light. 

“Come in, or I’ll close you out,” a woman whispered through clenched teeth, her voice viscous. A hand darted out from behind the door frame and snatched at the young woman’s arm, yanking her into the light before slamming the door behind her.

“What do you mean, coming here at this time of night?”

The owner of that viscous whisper stood before her, an old woman with a halo of wild, gray and white hair. She was hunched over a cane, but instead of leaning on it for support, she held it low and still before her, like a weapon. She wore a huge trenchcoat-style jacket over tattered brown pajamas. Her irises were a blue so pale that they were almost white, giving her a blind, ghost-like appearance. The many lines in her skin reminded the young woman of a cracked desert, darkened by work and sun.

The young woman opened her arms to show the child she held there. He was a frail thing, shivering despite the bundle of cloth and blankets that wrapped him. His eyes were closed tight and beads of sweat were visible on his flushed skin.

“Please.” The cloth fell away from the young woman’s face to reveal sharp, desperate features. Her eyes were dark and wide, her lips cracked. She held her child out to the elder, sinking to her knees as she held him up before her. “Please save my child.”

The elder’s features softened, and she leaned the cane against the wall before gently lifting the child into her arms. He wheezed and labored with each breath. She felt his forehead, her wizened hand dark against his feverish skin. She saw that he was not well. She saw that he was dying.

“Do you know what we offer here, child?” The elder addressed the young woman, studying her with those haunting eyes. “It is not a simple remedy.”

“It’s my last hope, it’s my last resort,” the young woman’s knees remained on the floor, her hands still reaching towards her child. “I’ll do it, anything.” Her voice faltered.

“Tell me you understand what you’re doing.” 

“I understand. I’ve thought about it for – for too long. I’ve waited too long.” The young woman shut her eyes against the vision of the elder with her child. Shame. A deep breath. The young woman kept her eyes shut, her head to the side. “I’m ready.”

“Come then.”

The elder carried the child deeper into the room, which was lit by hundreds of white candles. Thousands of singular beads hung from the ceiling on invisible threads, frozen in time, glinting in the flickering light. The elder moved silently past tables covered in rolls of cloth and paper, matches and drippings of wax, jars and vials of every size. The floor was scattered with scarves and thick yarn and spools of silk thread, which the young woman stumbled over in her rush to follow.

“Careful,” the elder snapped over her shoulder. 

They reached a shimmering curtain which the elder passed through deftly. The young woman paused, staring at the fabric before her. A deep breath.

The room behind the curtain was dark, swathed in shadows which flitted along the walls. The space was empty except for a large black cauldron, full of a liquid that bubbled and glowed an eerie green. The young woman shuddered as she realized that nothing was casting the shadows that danced around them. As the elder kneeled before the ghostly liquid, the shadows quickened their pace along the walls, chasing each other in a frenzy of light and dark. The young woman kneeled on the opposite end of the cauldron and shut her eyes tightly against the fear that had begun to expand in her chest.

“Open your eyes, girl. You cannot blind yourself to this.”

Her eyes opened. 

“Are you ready?”

The young woman nodded.

“Speak when you have something to say, child.”

“I’m ready.” 

The young woman bowed her head and looked at her own trembling hands, the familiar knuckles and skin glowing in the ghostly light. She raised her head again. 

“I’m ready.”

The elder lifted a wooden cradle from the ground and clipped it onto either side of the cauldron, and placed the child inside of it. He lay still, hidden in the shadows of the cradle, which swayed softly above the glowing liquid. The shadows continued to race along the walls, speeding up until they blurred into something consistent. Something heavy, resting in the air. A presence. A deep breath, held. 

“Dip your hands in the liquid with me, child.” The elder took the young woman’s hands in her own, and slowly they submerged them. The liquid was warm and thick, but not unpleasant. They closed their eyes. The child’s labored breathing began to slow. The wheezing began to lift from his voice as the rocking of the cradle slowed and eventually came to a stop.

At the same moment, the liquid stilled. The bubbling was silenced, the pressure in the air held them all fixed in place. The glow began to subside.

The elder, the child, and the young woman were like statues, floating in a thick, black void, unmoving. Knowing that the idea of moving was meaningless. In the blackness, the stillness, the breath held. And then, all at once, it began to release; the presence exhaled, and with it, the void began to rush around them – the oxygen was gone, but the stars and the dust of the world pushed around them, through them, expelled into the space that surrounded them. And they were the dust, the stars, the space, the black – and they were nothing, and everything. And the exhale began to end, completion forming them again into a solid thing, placing them again into a world of relativity and movement, into a room with a dark cauldron, empty now.

In the cradle above the empty cauldron was a child – he sat up, stretched, and yawned. He looked around in the dim room with healthy and alert eyes, a smile playing on his lips. He turned around to peer at the two old women that sat on either side of him. He looked into each of their pale blue eyes, almost white in the dim, and they looked back at him. 

“Did it work?” One of the old women whispered into the dark.

He began to laugh.