Melli set her mother’s herb box down on the floor.
One side of the box’s bottom panel was raised. As a child, she had thought it was merely a trace of warped wood. Now she could see a gap wide enough for a fingernail. With the tip of a small knife, she pried up the bottom panel. Along with dry herb powder, a thin cloth bundle came out.
The cloth held the smell of old oil. When she untied the knot, several blackened handwritten pages were revealed. Mold had bloomed along the edges, and the letters broke off wherever water had blurred them. Even so, the remaining words were clear.
Baekmaekhoe.
Melli did not say the name aloud. She was alone in the room. Even so, it felt as though if she made that unfamiliar name into sound, someone would hear it.
On the desk lay a letter from Ruan, unfolded. It was a letter that said he was fine three times. The handwriting was neat. But toward the end, the strength in the strokes had faded. The final line’s consonant endings drooped lower than usual. Melli recognized that small difference. The more Ruan was hurting, the harder he tried to write neatly. So every line that was too neat was a lie.
She spread the manuscript beside it. When she drew the candle closer, the indentations on the surface of the paper came alive. Sentences someone had erased long ago appeared at an angle.
Hapmyeong does not stand alone.
The next line was half torn away.
When the hand that connects life takes hold of the knot alone, the remaining life goes to the patient, and the worn-away time gathers in the caster.
Melli placed her hand over the sentence. The paper beneath her palm was cold. The word disaster was too large. But the wavering strokes at the end of the letter did not make that large word any smaller.
Ruan always spoke of himself late. Even when he caught a cold, he said he was fine. Even when he cut his hand, he said it was a small wound. After their mother died, he would close the herb room door every night and still go out to check on the cough of an old man in the neighborhood. Melli had heard the same words then, too.
I’m fine.
Those words were not reassurance given to family, but a bolt Ruan locked around himself. Melli no longer trusted that bolt.
At the back of the manuscript was a list. Most of the names had been scratched out. Only symbols and symptoms remained. Loss of hair color. Delay in the pulse at the wrist. Fever that did not subside even after sleep. Temporary weakness after contact with another’s lifeline. Melli looked at the ink stain on the edge of Ruan’s letter. It was the trace of his hand leaving the page once while writing.
She copied the symptoms onto a separate sheet. Hair. Wrist. Fever. Weakness. Beside them, she wrote the date on Ruan’s letter. Letters from the front were always late. The longer the gap between the date and the day of arrival, the more the condition of the body inside it had already become a thing of the past.
Inside the box was an even smaller piece of paper. It was her mother’s handwriting. Melli held her breath and unfolded it.
Sentences taken from the archives of the Holy Church of the Seven Breaths. The boundary between treatment and heresy is often a line drawn by power. But do not show this to the child. For a child who shoulders things alone, these sentences may become poison.
Melli closed her eyes. She knew at once whom her mother had worried over. Since childhood, Ruan had never been able to step back before a sick person. Even without anyone telling him to, he lessened his own share. He shared bread, reduced his sleep, hid herbs away and gave them to others.
That habit had gone to the battlefield.
Melli took from her desk drawer a letter she had failed to send before. It was a warning she had rewritten several times. Be careful. Do not do it alone. Do not hide your condition. Now that she saw it, all of it was far too weak. Ruan would have read such words, smiled, and folded the letter. His reply would have been brief and calm, as always.
She took out a fresh sheet of paper, then stopped. A letter would be too late. On its way to the front, someone might open it. Worse still, Ruan might read it and hide the truth anyway.
Outside the window, a dawn merchant’s cart passed by. The sound of its wheels rolling over stones carried to the end of the alley. Her hometown was still quiet. People would not know why the herb room’s daughter had spent the night rummaging through old papers. They would say she worried too much about her older brother.
Melli could accept those words. It was worry, yes. But worry was no longer something she could do while staying in place.
She took out a traveling bag. When she set it on the floor, the old clasp gave a small ring. She put the herb pouches in first. Dried leaves to bring down wound fever. Roots that, if chewed for a long time, helped one endure without sleep. Powder that lessened the smell of blood. Such things were more trustworthy than the spellcraft of the battlefield.
She wrapped the manuscript twice in oiled cloth. Her mother’s paper she placed separately in the inner pocket at her breast. Unable to throw away Ruan’s letter, she put it on top. The wavering handwriting remained in sight.
Melli returned to the desk and wrote a short note.
The herb room will be closed for three days. Urgent patients should go to Rosa by the northern well. Payment for medicine may be made later.
Her hand stopped at the end of the sentence. It might not end in three days. Still, if she wrote anything longer, people would try to stop her. She attached the note to the inside of the door.
When she returned to the box, a small piece of metal remained beneath the bottom panel. It was a round mark. Seven short lines converging into a single point. The same shape was beside the name Baekmaekhoe on the first page of the manuscript. Melli wrapped it in a handkerchief and placed it in the side pocket of her bag.
If she wanted to reach the post station before sunrise, she had to leave now. She blew out the candle. The room soon darkened, but the sentences of the manuscript did not vanish from her eyes.
A life held alone will, in the end, gnaw away little by little at the time of another life.
Melli locked the door and hung the key around her neck. As she went down the stairs, she stopped once. On the day Ruan last left home, he had looked back from the same stairs. Back then, he had told her not to worry.
Melli was not going to hear those words anymore.
From beneath the counter of the herb room, she took out three blank prescriptions. She had no intention of imitating Ruan’s handwriting. Instead, she wrote down the names of herbs she knew and antidote mixtures. If someone stopped her at the post station, she needed to look not like a woman searching for her family, but someone transporting medical supplies.
The metal mark had gone cold inside the handkerchief. Melli did not hang it around her neck. Such a mark seemed as if, the moment it was revealed, its owner would change. She hid the mark beneath her needle case and pushed it into the deepest part of her bag.
At the post station at the end of the alley, the lamps were still lit. The coachman frowned when he saw her bag.
“The road toward the front is blocked. I can only take you halfway.”
“Please take me halfway.”
“It’s dangerous after that.”
Melli gripped the strap of her bag more tightly.
“My older brother is in that dangerous place.”
The coachman asked no more. Her bag was loaded onto the back of the cart. Melli looked toward the herb room one last time. The note on the door fluttered in the dawn wind.
The cart began to move. Inside the bag, the metal mark struck against something with a very small sound.
The cart stopped once before leaving the village. The post station clerk came out carrying a travel ledger. As he was about to write down Melli’s name, he asked her destination.
“The midway post station on the eastern supply road.”
“A family visit?”
Melli hesitated for a moment. The word family was true, but too weak. She shook her head.
“I’m going to see a patient.”
Perhaps remembering that she was the herb room’s daughter, the clerk asked no more. In the ledger, he wrote transport of medicinal supplies. Melli looked at those words. They were not wrong. There were medicinal supplies inside her bag. But the most dangerous object was not the herbs, but the folded manuscript.
The road was frozen. Each time the cart shook, the metal mark inside the bag knocked against something. Whenever Melli heard the sound, she placed her hand over it. Beneath her palm, she could feel the edge of the round mark. Seven lines converging into one point. It looked like a prayer mark, and also like a weight hung around the neck.
Inside the cart, she recited the contents of the manuscript again. Hapmyeong is a method by which several breaths share a single burden. A connector who bears the link alone loses joints of their own life after another’s recovery. Symptoms are white hair, delayed pulse at the wrist, and fever. If cessation is delayed, reversal becomes difficult.
At the words reversal becomes difficult, Melli opened her eyes. She calculated how long it would take to reach the battlefield. A day and a half to the midway post station. Two days after that if she could catch a military supply wagon. If the road was blocked, it would take longer. Letters always arrived late. People could be late, too.
The old woman across from her in the cart studied her face.
“Miss. Is someone very ill?”
Melli touched the very end of the letter. Though the wavering consonant ending did not touch her fingertips, she could feel it.
“It seems so.”
“What does it mean, seems so?”
“Because he says he isn’t.”
The old woman clicked her tongue briefly.
“Then he is ill.”
For the first time, Melli almost smiled. But the smile did not last. Ruan would have said the same thing. People who said they were fine usually were not, her mother had often said.
When they arrived at the first post station, two military couriers were changing horses. Melli saw the red cords tied to their bags. Documents from the front. She wanted to approach them, but stopped. If she grabbed any document and asked for Ruan’s name, that name could spread even further. Perhaps her brother’s name had already gone too far.
Instead, Melli took out one bundle of herbs. One of the couriers was coughing.
“Boil this and drink it. Your throat will feel less torn.”
The courier tried to take out money. Melli did not accept it.
“When you reach the front, please deliver it to the military physician. Tell them Melli from the herb room sent it.”
“Which military physician do you mean?”
Melli stopped just before answering. Even speaking a name had become something to be wary of.
“They’ll know if it’s the tent where Medical Officer Hese is.”
The courier’s eyes changed. He knew that name. Melli did not miss that small shift.
“Do you know him?”
“I’ve heard rumors.”
“What kind of rumors?”
The courier hesitated to speak. Melli did not ask further. She had enough without asking. Names Ruan would dislike were already running ahead of him on the road.
The cart began moving again. Melli pulled the strap of her bag and held it closer against her chest. The sentences of the forbidden book were no longer only on paper. The courier’s hesitation, the wavering letter, and her mother’s hidden box all pointed in the same direction.
When she reached the next post station, she decided, she would seek permission to travel the military supply road. If that failed, she would go on foot. The bag was heavy. But compared to the weight Ruan must have shouldered alone, it was still far too light.