Florence, Italy, 1630

Thick, herbal smoke clung to the cottage walls like mold. The burning bundle of sage glowed brightly in the muddy light of mid-morning. Eerie shadows followed me like wraiths over a cooling corpse. As I moved from one rotting room to another, I traced invisible patterns of purification and health, watching as the smoke billowed from the burning coals. The floors were black with dirt and old, reeking blood. Filthy clothes and bloody towels were hung from broken chairs and chipped basins. The smell of death and rot permeated from this small cabin, but I could only smell the burning fumes of camphor and rosemary from my doctor’s mask as it filled my nose to the point of bleeding. My hands inside my leather gloves shook profusely as I surveyed the state of this house, how completely devastated these lives have become. I felt the thick, suffocating fabrics from my doctor’s uniform press down all around me like a cage. Trapping me into this cursed life of hunting an invisible predator. A ghost that we must chase across barren farmlands and reeking cities. I remember hearing hushed, frantic whispering from the other apprentices about how this plague is a sickness cast upon us from God. This is how we must repent for our sinful existence. Looking around this festering house, I can imagine how this is a godly impediment, a holy punishment. Faint groaning from somewhere deeper drew me forward. As I entered what I could assume was a bedroom, the smell of death reached me even through my mask. Here lies the heart of the pain that had ensnared this home, the beating core that stained these walls and rotted the floorboard. Huddled in the corner were three boys, their gangly limbs, blistering sores, and sweat-slick hair, made them seem to have been shriveled inwards by the weight of being so close to death. The sharp curves of their spines were overtly visible through their thin skin as rasping breaths shuddered from their dry lips. I felt like a harbinger of death as I towered over them, my shadow eclipsing their crumpled forms. No longer did I feel like a symbol of healing, of hope. No hope lived within these walls. One boy, who seemed to be the oldest among them, tended to the others. His sores were less encroaching, and there was more color in his cheeks. As if a ghost piloted his body, his mind hiding in the far reaches of his consciousness. Puzzled, I stepped closer toward him, but my movement seemed to have broken a spell within him. He jumped to his feet, his eyes wild as he stepped in front of his brothers. Despite the exhaustion that rattled through him, making his bony legs quiver with the effort to stay upright, his icy cold gaze never strayed from my masked face. I slowly surveyed him, moving just slightly forward to inspect his wounds. When I came into view of his bare skin, I watched in rapt fascination as the sores along his arm healed before my eyes. The decaying skin would stitch itself together again, as if controlled by invisible hands. But once his wounds would close and health returned to his face, the disease would drag him back down again. His sores reopened, his skin rapidly paled, and cold sweat broke out across his skin. Unlike the other two boys who seemed to be clinging to life by a single thread, he seemed to be dancing along its knife-edge. Rapidly healing and dying every few seconds. Icy coated my tongue, and my blood felt sluggish in my veins. This wasn’t possible. No human body can restore itself that quickly; it simply is not possible. The boy stepped towards me, the way a cat would stalk towards a cowering mouse. In the warm, flickering light from my sage torch, I watched as his eyes were bright one moment, tracking every movement, then in the next they dulled—glassed over as if the life behind them had stepped away. They continued this eerie cycle as he walked between life and death. I stumbled away from him, knocking into broken furniture and shattered dishware. This…thing was not from this world. And yet, the lace of panic in his eyes seemed human. The pain I saw mirrored countless faces in my time as a traveling doctor. It was the face of someone who is lost, out of control. Watching as the things they hold most dear in this world come crashing down around them. 

“Please.” He stammered, as if the sound of his own voice was foreign to him. “Help them.” I stopped. Utterly transfixed by this creature and the shackles that seemed to be attaching him to this place, to these people. 

“Who are you?” I replied hollowly. The skin along my neck rose as his eyes continued to flare with life, only to drain out again, leaving them pale and clouded like cooling wax. One of the younger boys stirred, a breathy moan escaping from him. I watched silently as the old boy rushed over, his feet soundless against the wood. Frozen by shock or pain, I was silent as he wrapped the sickly boy in dirty bits of cloth to keep him from shivering, not understanding that their high fevers and muscle spasms were the cause of those shivers and not the drafty room. The strange boy’s hair was dark and curled softly along its edges, while the other two boys had sandy, straight hair that fell over their eyes. The strange boy’s skin was also the shade of hammered copper, instead of an alabaster. The gnawing aches from the brutal hours of being on my feet constantly to care for other patients weighed heavily on me as I shifted my weight to my other foot. The movement drew the dying eyes of the boy. His face was utterly devoid of restraint. Every emotion he felt flitted along his features. Desperation shimmered beneath his eyes as he slowly watched their lives slip away from him. This ghost of a boy, was he truly being tethered to this place? Was he cursed to watch them die, unable to help? I made a move to do…something. To say something of use, but before I could form a thought, a hulking shape stepped from the shadows of the doorway I had previously entered from. Octavian de’Medici was a large man in both presence and size. He filled any room he entered with impressive surety. His beaked doctor’s mask, stitched with golden threads, made him an even more intimidating opponent. Gleaming silver metals along his breast marked him as one of the King’s most revered healers. And the man who held my fate like a leash around my neck. I swiftly stepped aside and lowered my head as he walked by me, boiling rage coursing silently in my veins. The dying boy glanced over at me from where he stood rooted before the others on the ground, his eyes searching my face as if he sensed the rage begin to seep through me. One of the younger boys, whose pale green eyes were clouded with pain, dragged himself onto his elbows until his head was leaning against the wall as he watched the scenes unfold. Raging coughs shook his form, black blood sprayed across his hands, and the coppery scent filled the small room. Silent dread engulfed me as I watched Octavian approach the boys behind lowered lashes. The dark-haired boy stepped closer. Shielding the younger ones with his body as he shook beneath Octavians’s impassive shadow. 

“You need to leave,” Octavian warned, his voice booming. It seemed wrong to speak so loudly in a place like this; so encased by death, you can feel it slither along your skin. The dark-haired boy shook his head furiously, his eyes never leaving Octavian’s face. That steel I saw earlier was nothing against the fire in his eyes. One of the boys stirred beneath him as he tried to rise, his matted, shortly chopped hair bobbed as he lolled to the side and collapsed heavily to the ground again. 

“I can’t,” he trembled, his thick, lithe accent rolled smoothly through his words. “You will die if you stay–” Octavian started, his words clipped as he studied the boy closer. Watched his skin repair itself, then decay once again. Octavian uttered a swift, brutal prayer in his mother’s tongue before grabbing the boy by the arm. He yelped, the sound like a kicked dog. I started forward, my hand going to the knife at my side. But Octavian turned towards me, his head tilted to the side mockingly as if to say you cannot hurt me like that, girl. I tensed, my posture becoming one like stone as an oppressive wind swept through the room. I knew that wind; I knew it meant that our lives were swiftly coming to a close. Dark smoke rose from the bloodstained floor. It encircled Octavian’s wrists and neck like writhing snakes. “I found you, Amos.” He said before the room plunged into darkness. A shattering cry escaped my lips as I surged forward to where Octavian and…Amos had disappeared to. But the shadows within the room squirmed and writhed against me. Wherever the shadows touched my bare skin, it felt as if a corpse dragged its rotting hand down it. The cold, wet sensation made me want to leap from my body. An idea began to form, the edges coming to me as if it were being whispered into my soul. Faster than I thought I could move, I grabbed a new sage stick and my flint from my pack strapped to my side, and struck. The sage caught immediately and roared to life. Warm, buttery light streamed from my hands to reveal Octavian standing above Amos like an avenging God. But Amos was not cowering; his body was thrown over the two boys protectively. Even faced with death, his resolve to save these kids was unfaltering. Amos bared his teeth defiantly up towards Octavian, but the movement caught my eyes. Wings. Great, blinding wings grew from Amos’s back. The stark white feathers seemed to glow with an inner light. An angel. For the first time since my damnation to serve this dark healer, I felt no fear for my own death. I surged forwards on an invisible wind, smudging my gleaming blade with my sage in the same movement. Octavian turned towards me, his eyes behind his mask glowed a fiery red. Sparks seemed to erupt from his gaze and from within his mask like his soul was set ablaze. And for the first time, Octavian’s shadows faltered at the sight he beheld, at the glowing blade I now held aimed at his heart. I did not. I traveled faster than light across the room, and before he could even take another breath, my blade was between his ribs. From the moment my steel made contact with Octavian’s skin, red veins began to creep along his torso like cracks in glass. An unearthly roar shook the earth as the cracks traveled up from his heart to his head. Then in a shattering ripple of darkness and blazing light, Octavian burst into ashes. In the silence, my heart pounded in my chest. I was shaking from head to toe; it felt as if my bones would soon come out of place. As the darkness receded, Amos rose to his full height, crowned in a halo of burning gold. In the absence of that impenetrable night, Amos’s blazing light burned my eyes as he unfurled his wings. A soft feather brushed my cheek. In its wake, a warm buzz erupted from my skin as the cuts along my arms began to stitch themselves back together again. Breathless, I started forward towards him, words bright on my tongue. But a warm glow settled over the boys sprawled brokenly on the ground. Amos’s eyes were sad as he knelt beside them and touched their foreheads. Something inside them stirred—two faint shapes rising like breath on a winter morning. The angel gathered those fragile souls, holding them close as if afraid they might break. I heard faint, tingling laughter as they lovingly floated around his hair and nestled against his neck. Amos turned towards me then, the souls of those two boys glowing brightly against the reek of their house. He smiled warmly at me, and the sight made me fall to my knees. Dirt and blood caked my legs. Then, with a single sweep of his wings, he rose through the ceiling as though the world had turned to water. Leaving me alone in the bones of a broken home.

Edited and Reviewed by Kien Powell