Letter Six

The Year of Our Lord 1112

Dear Nhu,

            I write to you most distressed, sister. First, my neck was swollen, then I found strange growths in my mouth, then there was that odd dream and now I keep feeling cold. I wear layer upon layer and have taken up permanent residence in my bedroom, with blanket upon blanket of down and fur atop me.

            Is it all for naught? I try remedy after remedy, herb-woman after herb-woman, apothecary after apothecary, séance after séance, but nothing yields the result I want. This might have to do with the fact that after each herb-woman, séance leader or apothecary fails to cure my ailment, I dispatch them with the sharpest of the three knifes I keep in my boot. Maybe.

            But the two might be completely uncorrelated. Father was widely speculated to be the one heaving bodies over the old bridge, but he never got sick. I mean, the man was killed by the father of a man he killed, but you know, that’s completely separate from his remedy for all ills.

            Nhu, I cannot retain any warmth in my body. I scald myself in a bath, I know they are unhealthy but they are so warm and delicious in the moment and then that heat is robbed from me by a gremlin of fate. I have left offerings for the ancestors, I have prayed and prayed.

            I killed 12 people this week. And even that did not bolster my spirits. Dear sister, I am starting to worry that something might actually be wrong. I’m taking remedy at every meal, scouring the countryside for the best of the best and quietly carrying through with father’s personal cure-all at all turns, but nothing is working. I am on my last nerve, my last moment of lucidity before I slip into madness.

            And recently, with my ailment, bedridden and slipping into and out of reality, with these horrendous dreams, it has been harder and harder to kill people. I had to bring a maid into my confidence in order to gain access to the number of victims I needed. What was father’s saying again? “Add one life to take to keep well, Add five to take if feeling poorly, Add ten to take if feeling violently ill?” Something along those lines.

            Well, as far as I can compute, I am executing father’s remedy with interest. Hopefully it works. Which reminds me, I need to dispose of the maid I mentioned earlier. I do not think I can trust someone of the lower classes and well, I think she already thinks ill of me. She will spill my secret eventually, so it is better that I spill her lifeblood first.

            Nhu, is there an apothecary you trust in your newly-wed village? I am dying for a recommendation worth its salt. And if you do have a name for me, and it does not prove fruitful, well, the apothecary will be dying too.

Your ailed sister,

Anh