BryonySeries Excerpt: "Bad Air"

So with multiple days in a stretch of unhealthy to hazardous air quality, I thought you might like a short excerpt from the second installment of this BryonySeries novel.

The main character is Kellen Wechsler, an extremely poor cottager in early seventeenth century Germany, living on the outskirts of a the fictional town called Grotekop.

Kellen's fortune slightly changes when the wife of a wealthy farmer Kellen calls "Voll-Bauer" takes an interest in his hard, daily labors in the farm's fields and gives him his own plot of land to tend, with a small share of the profits going to Kellen.

At that point, Kellen's very large family (his wife and an indeterminate amount of many children, some who work the fields with him) move from the cottage to town, trading one set of problems for another.

Like the plague.

CHAPTER FIVE: BLACK DEATH

            Wailing, wailing. Everywhere, wailing.

            If not wailing, then eerie, uneasy, disquieting silence.

            Both were for the same reasons: Death.

            Black, grisly, painful death.

            It happened fast, and it happened like this.

            One day, as they did every day except Sonntag, Kellen and the boys left the house before sunup (with Catarin's nagging and the kiddies' sassy mouths ringing in his ears) and rode out to the fields.

            About midday, Kellen had left the boys to meet Voll-Bauer's Man. Fraulein had barred his entrance.

            "Enough foolishness," Kellen had said. "I'm to see Him this day."

            "No," Fraulein said. "We have sickness here. Now leave, before you're sick, too."

            Fraulein heaved against the door, but Kellen braced himself against it.

            "If you speak truth," Kellen argued, "why do you remain?"

            Fraulein's lips trembled, but her response was stoic.

            "No one may come in. No one may go out."

            As Kellen pondered this information, his hold on the door slackened. Instantly, the door slammed into his face. Rubbing his bruised nose, Kellen continued to ponder the queer exchange all the way back to the fields. Ludolph looked up and saw Kellen's puzzled expression.

            "Meeting go well, Paps?"

            Kellen, still pondering, scarcely noticed. Ludolph paused to lean on his hoe and wait for his father's reassurance.

            "No meeting." Kellen ducked his head into one of the water buckets and drank a long draught, still pondering. When he came up for air, and shook out his hair, Kellen added, "They've got sickness at the House."

            "Paps! Paps!"

            Ruprech and Nolthe came running up, Nolthe holding Ruprech by the wrist.

            "Something bit Ruprech, Paps!"

            Kellen leaped to his feet, just as Nolthe held up Ruprech's arm. Deep in his pit was a large angry swelling.

            Immediately, Ludolph tore off his shirt, dunked it in the water, and began bathing Ruprech's arm. Ruprech winced, and tears ran down his cheeks, but he did not cry out.

            "It hurts," Ruprech sniffled.

            Kellen turned to Nolthe. "What bit him?"

            "Don't know," Nolthe answered. "We didn't see anything. Right, Ruprech?"

            Ruprech wiped his arm across his eyes and nodded.

            Bizarre.

            No one scolded Ruprech for infantile weeping. No one shamed him when he faded into sleep against a tree near the lavender and forsook his afternoon work. No one spoke when a second swelling appeared on Ruprech's neck, except Nolthe, who bathed the bite while Ruprech drowsed in and out of consciousness, and Kellen and Ludolph worriedly watched.

            "What bit him, Paps?" Nolthe asked as he dabbed the angry lumps multiplying on his younger brother. "A yellow sac spider?"

            "I don't know," Kellen said.

            But he remembered the fright in Fraulein's eyes and wondered.

            That night, they returned to a changed Grotekop.

            Bonfires hissed and spat at the crossroads. Whitewashed "X's" marked the doors that weren't boarded up. Carts stacked with bodies rumbled past them and out of town. A stream of disoriented townspeople bore candles as they shuffled toward church.

            "Bad air," one old woman muttered. "Bad air. Bad air. Bad air."

            Kellen abruptly stopped the horses.

            "Herr Flechtemann?" Kellen called out, as the sausage-stuffer stumbled past his cart.

            Swaying slightly, Herr Flechtemann paused and looked up at Kellen with glassy eyes. Nolthe shrank into Kellen. Ludolph sucked in his breath.

            "Paps," Ruprech whined through chattering teeth. "I'm scared."

            "Pray for God's mercy," Herr Flechtemann mumbled. "We are doomed."

            Herr Flechtemann crashed to the ground. Those nearest him shrieked and scurried away. The rest kept walking.

            "Paps," Ludolph whispered. "What does this mean?"

            Kellen did not answer.

            "My head hurts," Ruprech moaned low in his throat.

            He jerked up and vomited over the cart's edge. Ludolph steadied Ruprech so he wouldn't fall.

            "Paps, his skin burns," Ludolph said. "Is it...is it the sickness of which Fraulein spoke?"

            Kellen did not answer.

            "Unhitch the horses," Kellen said to Ludolph and Nolthe. "I'm carrying your brother inside."