Page 1 of Caught in the Devil’s Hand

Chapter One

The dawn was cold and damp. With the sunrise came an overcast sky, which drizzled upon a struggling village nestled in a small valley. As the surrounding hilltops emerged from the mists with the rise of the sun, smoke began to billow lazily from the thatched roofs. Soon, those who were still of able body would leave their homes, wearily hauling their tools to prepare the fields for spring planting.

For the family in a scanty, weathered hut among a handful of homes near the northern end of the village, today seemed like it would be the same as the rest. They would rise, stiff from sleeping on thin bedrolls with hardly enough warmth to let them sleep at all. They would work in their isolated field, eke out a meager living selling herbal medicines, and return gratefully to their hard, narrow mats for another night of rest.

However, these past few weeks had seen many villagers succumbing to a disease so deadly it was catastrophic. The entire village, already at its knees, was now lying prone in the dirt. In her nineteen years as the only daughter of a family of apothecaries, Shumei had neither heard of nor seen so many people fall ill and die at once. She could only pray to the Divine One that the worst was over and the deaths would stop.

A muffled sound disturbed Shumei’s sleep. She swallowed past the itchy lump in her throat that bespoke of her overly salted meal last night, and took in a shaky breath while denying the urge to stretch, for she was already barely covered by a thin blanket. She opened one eye and realized with a mental groan that dawn had arrived.

She grudgingly lifted her head. Snuggled close within the curve of her body was her brother, only nine years old. He was sleeping peacefully enough despite his sickness. Beyond him at arm’s length, their mother slept upon the larger of their two straw mats. Her mother’s shoulders convulsed.

“Mama?” Shumei called, voice hoarse from sleep. She lifted herself onto her elbow.

“I’m sorry to wake you, baby,” her mother murmured. “Did you sleep well?”

“Well enough. How are you feeling?”

When her mother rolled over, Shumei had to hold back a gasp. A blood vessel in her mother’s right eye had burst, turning the white to red. Her skin was sallow and drawn. Mama was near the last stage of the disease.

“Well enough,” her mother repeated with a resigned smile. “Where’s your father? Already in the fields?” She shook her head. “That man works too hard.”

Shumei lowered her face to hide her expression. Father had been dead for four years. Such confusion was another common symptom of the fifth day. Most people remembered a time in the recent past, but a few reverted several years. Breath hitching, Shumei suppressed the fearful sob that threatened to bubble up.

“I don’t feel good today, baby. When your father gets back, ask him to rub my back.” Her mother sighed and turned away. “I think I’ll sleep a little longer.”

“Yes, Mama,” she said in a weak voice.

A month ago, an otherwise healthy boy suddenly fell ill. He didn’t know how he had caught the disease. Several of his close friends became ill a couple days later. Then their parents, then their parents’ friends…

Everyone began calling it the Burning, for the fourth day’s fever was often lethal. It had spread like deadly fog through their tiny, poor village. Those who hadn’t yet become sick, including Shumei, were counted as lucky, but they were a shrinking minority. Out of their tiny population of over a hundred fifty men, women, and children, over forty had died, and another fifty were still ill. The rest had either fought to recover from the disease or feared catching it.

The village leader and his wife had done nothing for the village except assure everyone they’d prayed to the Golden One—their preferred name for the Divine One. They didn’t even leave their home, too frightened of the Burning to help those they were charged with protecting.

Instead, Shumei and her family’s medicines had become essential to the village’s survival. The fuki plant they cultivated had saved dozens from the fourth day’s fever, although some had still gone on to the fifth day’s symptoms: severe coughing and difficulty breathing. Two unfortunate souls had coughed so violently they’d broken their ribs and had ended up stabbing their lungs.

However, the Burning seemed to have nearly run its course. And just in time, too, for her family’s supply of fuki was not only running dangerously low but also quickly growing stale. Her family still had the early-spring harvest of the herb to rely on, should the villagers have need of it, but picking it before it fully matured meant the medicinal properties of its large leaves would be less potent, and she would need to use more to produce an effective dosage. Doing so would also mean their supply for the rest of the year would be too small for comfort, and unfortunately, it was too late in the season to plant more.

Her lips trembled as she gazed at her brother’s sleeping face. Today was his fourth day. So far, not many young children had survived the Burning’s fever, and she could already see his cheeks warming to a deceptively healthy pink. He had cried throughout most of the first day, scared of dying and in a great amount of pain, making his initial symptoms much worse than they might have been otherwise.

He spent most of the second day silently weeping, body tense and occasionally convulsing as he endured a day-long headache. She managed to dull his suffering with a dose of kavua, but he still couldn’t bring himself to speak through the haze of pain. He ate well on his third day but vomited the last of it a few hours ago. She had woken to find him emptying his stomach on the floor, and had spent an hour cleaning it up and giving him medicine before they could settle back to sleep again. Thankfully, he had yet to cough up any blood.

A splash of moisture landed on his rosy cheeks. She quickly wiped at her eyes and hardened her jaw, determined not to let her anxiety show. She was practiced at hiding her feelings, and this latest crisis would not be an exception. Pressing her lips together, she pushed the fear to the pit of her stomach and sat up, then scrubbed her face with her hands as if wiping away the last layer of sleep still clinging to her.

A movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention. A long-legged spider skittered across the dirt floor, headed toward the nearly dead fire in the center of their single room. Squeezing into herself, she felt the usual rush of fear and adrenalin as she silently panicked over what to do. A small mewling began in the back of her throat. Then her brother turned in his sleep, flinging out one arm and smacking the spider with the back of his hand, squashing it before it could even try to dodge.

Her jaw dropped. She sat there a moment, out of sorts, and her heartbeat slowed as she turned her mind to how she’d clean off Oka’s hand. Her revulsion of spiders was so great that she even hesitated to use a rag. Perhaps a sage leaf, which she could then toss into the fire?

If only life had remained as sweet as when she’d been Oka’s age. Her father had been alive, and his boisterous personality had overflowed their small house, leaving no room for despair. She had been his little garden imp, watching as he and her mother poured every bit of knowledge they had into caring for their field of medicinal plants.

Though the villagers and their thinly veiled animosity toward her and her mother for the color of their hair was always a deep wound, she was well shielded from their sneers and remarks by a loving father and well-spoken mother, both of whom could always make her feel better with a hug and a few words of wisdom.

Then Oka had been born. Even though neither of his parents was blond, he was, and the priests had proclaimed he’d been blessed by the Golden One.

Most of the villagers had brown hair, such as her late father. A small minority had black hair, like Shumei and her mother. Oka’s blonde hair, however, was as rare as brown hair was common, and it had always fascinated her. She loved washing and combing it until it dried as golden as late-summer wheat.

As a young child, she hadn’t yet understood the hierarchy of one’s hair color. She remembered this time as being the happiest of her life, a time when nothing was shut away from her, when the world held no hatred and no danger. But an incident had changed all that, and she had quickly learned the dangers around her. The memories were fuzzy now, but she knew never to leave the village after sunset.

Daylight was safe. The Divine One sheltered and protected his people with the warmth of the sun’s rays, so anyone with golden hair was more loved. Other than Oka, only two others in the village could claim to have been touched by the Divine One. One was the village leader, and the other was his wife.