ANYTHING
Snow Blossom had been sick for days. His fever had burned for nearly a week and finally he had stopped talking. He lay still on the bed, his skin hot to the touch.
Snow Lily mopped the sweat from her son’s forehead and neck. She had been caring for him since he had first fallen ill.
There was no medicine. The recent drought had caused more than food crops to wither. All pharmacies had been ordered to maintain their stocks for the wealthy and government officials.
Even if she’d had the coin to spend, Snow Lily had been unable to buy fever reducing herbs. No one would sell them to a peasant.
Her son was dying and there was nothing she could do other than wiping him down with wet rags and trying to get him to eat porridge. After five days he had become too weak to respond and not even rubbing his throat would get him to swallow.
He’s dying, she thought in despair.
“Don’t leave me, Snow Blossom,” she begged, pressing her face against his small chest as she wept. “I will give anything for your body to be healed. Anything.”
“ANYTHING?”
It resounded through her. Not sound. Deeper than sound. It pierced her through to the bone then stirred her marrow until she fell away from the bed and huddled on the floor, clutching at her chest and the heart that pounded within.
“YOU WILL GIVE ANYTHING FOR YOUR CHILD’S BODY TO BE HEALED?“
Snow Lily frantically looked around, but there was no one else in the room. Just her and the so still Snow Blossom. She couldn’t see if he was still breathing. Feared that he had stopped.
Tears flowed down her cheeks. She didn’t know what was speaking to her, but her desperation was stronger than her fear of the unknown. “Anything!” she screamed. “I will give anything for his body to be healed. Please. Give him to me.”
“WILL YOU GIVE YOUR LIFE?”
To die so her son could live? How could she hesitate? “Yes.”
It tore through her. Flooded through her veins and organs and overwhelmed her brain. And then it, whatever it was, rushed out of her.
And the empty husk of Snow Lily collapsed to the ground. Dead.
. *. *. *.
Snow Blossom weakly opened his eyes and stared at the unfamiliar ceiling.
His mouth was dry and his body ached as though he’d been sick for a long time. He felt tired and weak. He blinked a few times, then was unable to hold his eyelids up.
He didn’t know where he was or why he was here. The last thing he remembered was drinking the cup of tea offered by the “kind” old woman at the boarding house.
The poisoned cup of tea, he thought.
He and his friends had gone on vacation together and pooled their money to stay at the boarding house. One by one, the others had disappeared until he was alone.
He hadn’t believed the ghost stories the locals had fed them, but at the end he’d begun to fear that they were true. And so he’d run back to the boarding house and begged the nice old lady to go away with him before they were both murdered.
She’d patted his arm and told him to sit down. Have a cup of tea and calm down. He was hysterical. Nothing was happening. His friends would turn up, maybe they had simply lost their way?
Snow Blossom hadn’t wanted any tea, but he’d trusted the old woman that had been so helpful. So kind. So generous. So reminiscent of the grandmother he had loved.
He’d accepted the cup of tea after she had promised to go with him once they finished drinking.
And he hadn’t noticed anything strange with the taste, not with the amount of sugar that had been added. But then the room had begun to sway around him, only it was him that fell down.
And the pain that started in his belly and burned his throat consumed him.
And she stood over him, and her face wasn’t kind. And she didn’t make him think of his grandmother anymore.
And he died.
She killed me, he thought. She killed me and she killed the others. She killed us all.
There was no ghost, but there was an evil spirit. And she’d lived in that town and she’d killed the people that passed through.
But how am I here? he thought. Is this the local hospital?
The town wasn’t rich, but he would have thought a hospital or clinic would be better than this rough pallet and thin blanket.
He tried to open his eyes, but he was too weak. Against his will he fell back asleep.
And he didn’t know that a mother named Snow Lily had traded her life for her son’s body to be healed, but that her son’s soul had already fled. And that into that empty shell a recently murdered soul with the same name had been snatched from another world and pressed into place.
He didn’t and would never know why he lived again as someone else. He would simply be found by an aunt and taken away after his mother was buried.
He would never know Snow Lily. She would simply be another name mentioned to him. Yet another stranger that the original host had known and loved.
He would live in the body of her son and never know of the sacrifice she had made.
And the world would know of the great deeds of Snow Blossom and never think of poor Snow Lily.
=END=
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