The Disease and the Academy

A Story by JRTillay

See top of the story for preface

This is an excerpt from a book that I'm writing. In this scene, a boy's adoptive mother is sending him off to an academy to learn. He's an exceptionally talented boy, but trapped in a city with no resources and a limit on his ability to learn. He also was infected with a disease while living in the city that rots the body from the inside out. The disease causes him near-constant pain in his stomach, and will eventually spread to the rest of him if left untreated. It is impossible to cure, but can be managed with medicine and/or magic. It can be transmitted by any bodily fluid, even saliva, and so his mother must warn him not to infect anyone else. In this story, he is about 8 years old, but frighteningly intelligent. The name his mother calls him is Blue because when she first adopted him, that was the color of his eyes. The name he calls himself is Grey because when he used a certain death magic spell, it drained the color from his eyes and left them Grey. Both names refer to the same person.

Also note that he has been stuck in this city for as long as he can remember. It is built like a hole in the ground, so that ground level is hundreds of feet above him. He has no memory of grass or trees. Also the Earth is in tidal lock with the sun in this universe, meaning half of the Earth always faces the sun and is in daylight, half of the earth is always facing away and is in eternal nighttime. He is on the side always in night, and so he has no memory of the sun. Still, he loves watching the stars and moon.

That's all you need! Enjoy.

She smiled with sadness in her eyes and her tone. “You must be careful, Blue, never to exchange blood, saliva, or any other part of your body with another. If you are bleeding, run with shame and let no one touch you. Do not bite to break the skin, do not even kiss. And especially important is to never” her voice strained the next few words “never form a blood pact. All of these things carry a risk of transmitting the disease you have.”

Sharply and defensively Grey responded “And what is so wrong with spreading it?” He was now insecure. His stomach knotted up. “So wrong that I must deprive myself of intimacy!” He choked, “And even a kiss! Must I be ashamed of the same body that houses my mind and soul.”

Grey clutched his stomach, afraid that it might fall out. Then his heart, afraid it might stop beating. She merely looked at him, half pity and half mothering glare.

The knots in his stomach became a rotting, tearing sensation. He stared into a nearby alley, the same in design as the one where the man had given him both power and pain. The place where the man in the motley cloak took his shoulder and put inside of him a power to compliment the disease he had contracted. The pain of that night, of every night since, made by comparison the pain of shame, the fear of one’s own body, seem like nothing. And were he to spread his disease, the victim would inherit both: shame and the pain. He could not do that, no matter how lonely he was, he could not bear becoming evil.

“Am I going to die without ever being able to love?”

And Lily answered honestly with a sympathetic ring that was still clear and free with the weightlessness of honesty. “I don’t know.”

He held her closely, too tired to weep, no more questions to ask. The great thing that filled books and inspired stories and held humanity bound together. That divine thing that all men strived for, love, might never be his to know. He might die unmade, born only once, unloved. Never seen in the way all people wish to be seen, never reborn in the eyes and words of a lover. He felt so impossibly alone, as if surrounded by some venomous moat, unable to escape, unable to find safe passage across. Impossible to even be broken or slain by the great thing men wrote about. He would gladly take some horrible heartbreak over this half-living solitude.

She sang the old lullaby that put him to sleep as a baby; his eyelids grew heavy. “Where the Goddess of Life goes, so does the God of Death. Lovers in mind, but never in breath. He steps behind, and calmly reminds her, one moves not without the other. There is no mother without child, just as there’s no child without mother.” She hummed the rest of the lullaby, unsure of the words. Though Grey was certain the humming was the true way to sing it.

Grey slept, carried home in the arms of his mother. He dreamed marvelous dreams about flying and laughing and learning and staring at the sky that he had memorized after gazing at it for countless nights, mapping it out entirely in his mind. He dreamed of the crunch of wet grass on a cold night, the birds singing to the sun, and other things of which he had no conscious memory. He dreamed of floating through space and seeing the planets up close and speaking to species impossibly different from his own. He dreamed of being tall and strong and handsome. He dreamed of punching holes in the night sky to let the powerful and luminous sun pour down and cleanse this city that housed his family and friends.

Then, as all men inevitably do, he dreamed simple dreams of love. He dreamed of that music that he heard when Adam and Evan stood too close, or Rian and Lily. Or when Rachel spoke of the old death mage she used to know. He dreamed of those moments in books when the beautiful maiden met the charming prince, and how when he read it his breath would catch because the writer chose just the right words so that Grey could almost feel what the people in the story felt. He dreamed of the lyrics in that song their souls must have sang, a collection of sweet-nothings, phrases about forever and always and never and perfect, lies more glorious and valuable than even the greatest truths. He liked the lyrics, though he had been afraid he would not. He liked how images of them old and grey flashed into his mind, shaking as they walked into a long expanse of not-darkness and not-light, supporting each other. It created tenderness in him, a splendid vulnerability. And so he fell in love with love. He fell in love with it vaguely, ambiguously, as he was still too young, too naïve, to really understand it. But a vague love is often the most exciting and also the most healing. He dreamt of inhaling the great silver ghost of romance, and it passing through him, swirling around, chilling his blood and blowing like a cooling wind on his hot insides. He dreamt of marvelous storms mixing in the night sky, though there was no cloud in the heavens. He was kissing his love, whose eyes reflected the sky and swirled the stars in their chaotic depths. He saw the starry cosmos more beautiful and fiery than ever before, as it was captured in the glossy eyes of his love. After he ran out of sleep, of tiredness, he awoke and he remembered not a single detail of a single dream, but stroked the fur of his pet Tucker, content. He packed his sparse things in one burlap sack Lily had left for him, sighed out the ghost that had entered him in the night, and walked out to the kitchen. In place of the ghost, something now filled his rotting body. A new, ineffable hope.