Chương 34: Chapter 33: Sickness and Madness

Sleep was not long in taking her consciousness. The relaxation of shared breathing, that collective rhythm that had become the nocturnal heartbeat of the dormitory, always yielded the same result: tranquility embraced her, soft and delicate, as an old wool blanket. Her breathing grew slowly and deep, and Selena drifted into the dark void that preceded dream-logic. Then, she dreamed. It was a heavy darkness. The blackness so dense it seemed to have texture, as if she could brush it with her hands.

And so, she did: she dug, clawing with her fingers through the gloom, feeling it tear away like a worn curtain. When she emerged on the other side, the smell hit her first. Ozone. Deep vegetation. Intense, metallic iron. Fresh, damp moss. It was a primordial mixture, the scent of a wild and ancient world that had never known the hand of man. The dream then took shape before her eyes.

Immense trees flanked the sky, as tall and wide as the redwoods might have been in her other life, but these were different, darker, more primal. Their crowns interlaced high above, trapping the light and filtering it into thin beams that barely reached the floor covered in ferns and undergrowth. The light was greenish, subaquatic, as if the entire forest were submerged in an ocean of air. Among the brush, men were moving.

They wore military uniforms of a green that mimicked the vegetation, their blurred figures camouflaging into the shadows and leaves. Selena squinted, trying to distinguish details. Tanned leather armor, yes, but different from the guards of Terracanto. Lighter, more functional. And their movements... they were military. Rigid, precise, rehearsed. Their nature as soldiers betrayed them in every gesture, in every silent coordination. Until one of them broke away from the group. Running, he set a course toward her.

His face was a smudge of featureless shadows, a void where eyes and a mouth should be. He moved his lips, but no sound emerged. And yet, Selena knew, with a certainty that transcended logic, that the man was calling her name. Then she lost control of her legs. Without will, without decision, she began to walk toward him. Seizing that strange moment of lucidity one sometimes has in dreams, she looked down at her own body. It was Selena's body.

The same one she inhabited every day, with its soft curves, pale skin, and slender hands. But the clothes were different. She wore a military-cut uniform of a red so intense it looked like freshly spilled blood. On the epaulettes, three large eight-pointed stars shone with a golden glow. The fabric, brushing against her skin, possessed a softness that only luxury could afford, a caress of silk in a world of coarse wool. Her thoughts were interrupted by the soldier.

The man had arrived before her and bowed his head with a reverence that spoke of rigid hierarchies and millenary protocols. When he spoke, his voice was clear but distant, as if coming from very far away through a tunnel. —Miss, the project... A mental static cut through the next sentence. White noise, like a distant electrical storm, erased the words before they could form. Then the voice returned, clear and sharp: —... has been carried out with difficulty, but we are taking steady steps.

We are now testing the juveniles underground and the adults in the forest. Selena did not know what the man was talking about. It was an enigma, like every dream, like every fragment of a life she didn't remember but which claimed her from the depths of her unconscious. But she felt, deep within, that it was dangerous. An ancient, visceral danger that made the hair on her neck stand up and chilled the blood in her veins. The image began to blur.

Like ink wiped away with damp cloth, the trees lost their definition, the soldier lost his shape, and the red uniform faded. A tinkling sound began to replace it all, growing as the dream vanished, until the sound was absolute, total, filling the dream universe with its metallic clatter. Selena opened her eyes. The ceiling of the communal dormitory loomed over her, with its dark wooden beams and the straw insulation peeking through the cracks.

The grayish light of dawn filtered through the high windows, and there, in the center of the room, stood Anya with her bronze bell, calling them to a new day. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. Selena stretched, reaching her arms above her head. The movement made the straw of the pallet creak and woke muscles stiffened by the night. Strangely, far from leaving her heart racing like other days, that dream seemed like just another anecdote.

So common, so mundane compared to the wonders and horrors she now lived while awake, that tranquility overwhelmed her without resistance. The morning flow passed with its learned ritual. The cold showers in the courtyard, the freezing water clearing the last vestiges of sleep, the formation to receive tasks. Anya, with her practical and maternal voice, assigned duties with the efficiency of someone who has done the same for years. —Selena, today it's your turn to help me make the morning porridge.

Nyssa will assist us in the dining hall, cleaning and setting the table. Selena nodded and followed Anya to the kitchen. The room was spacious, dominated by a massive black iron stove that took up a good portion of one wall. In the center, a solid wooden table, worn by decades of use, held pots, wooden spoons, and piles of humble ingredients. Anya went straight to the pile of logs stacked by the stove. She began to take them, one by one, to stroke the fire that was already starting to wake in the iron belly.

Without being asked, Selena imitated her. Her hands took the logs, feeling the roughness and the weight of the wood, and placed them beside Anya's. The sister of charity looked at her and offered a smile. A warm, grateful smile, the kind that needs no words. Then, both concentrated on their task: Anya fanned the embers with the air from her lungs, blowing softly until the flames licked the new wood; Selena feeding the fire with the logs as they were needed.

In the background, only Nyssa could be heard cleaning the tables with mechanical movements while her inexhaustible litany filled the space: porcelain going down, wheat going up, ash soap smelling like burnt things, hard pennies, soft pennies, twenty by twenty, always twenty by twenty. It was then that Anya finally gave the instructions. Her voice was practical and direct, the voice of one who knows exactly what needs to be done and how to do it. —Selena, please peel the yuña roots.

And also bring me a few of those vegetables from the back. She said no more. She leaned over the stove again, blowing on the fire with the patience of someone who knows that flames have their own time, their own rhythm, their own will. Selena obeyed. The yuña roots were larger than a potato, with rough, earthy skin and a bulbous, elongated shape. She took the knife Anya handed her without looking and began to peel.

The skin came away in long, irregular strips, revealing a white, moist pulp that smelled of earth and something like celery. The knife glided easily. Within a few minutes, she was halfway through the task, the peeled roots piled in a wooden bowl and the skins in another for waste. It was Anya who interrupted the work. The sister of charity stood up, wiped her hands on her apron, staining it, and looked at her with an expression Selena couldn't quite interpret.

Then she spoke, and her voice had the texture of someone sharing a secret, a confidence. —You know, Nyssa was in charge of the town's central market— She paused, letting the information hang in the air. —The one who knew how to move every coin, the value of every grain, the fair price of every piece of merchandise. She sighed deeply, letting the air escape slowly, as if the weight of the years left with it. —As you can see, she works despite everything. Despite her madness.

Despite her flow having run wild, losing its way. Selena kept peeling, but her ears were completely attentive. The knife continued its mechanical work while her mind focused on Anya's words. —Many girls say she lost the protection of Our Lady because she hoarded porcelain. Vases, jars, kitchen utensils. The finest ones. Glazed ceramics and gleaming pewter. Anya made the sign of infinity over her heart. —The goddess watches over her. Despite everything. And little by little, I see her recovering from her lucidity.

She channels her flow through infinite compassion. Glazed ceramics. Gleaming pewter. The words were seared into Selena's mind like brands. She continued peeling the roots, her fingers moving with the same precision as before, but her mind had flown elsewhere. A pulsing, familiar pain began to throb in her forehead, right between her eyes. Not mad, she thought. The certainty was absolute, overwhelming. She isn't mad, she's sick. Heavy metals. Lead from the pewter, perhaps.

Pewter and ceramics, if not made correctly, they could leach heavy metals into food and drink, accumulating in the body for years until the brain began to fail, until lucidity faded like mist in the sun, until only that mechanical repetition remained, that echo of a mind that had been brilliant and now could only repeat prices. Selena gripped the knife tighter. Her knuckles turned white under her pale skin. She had just discovered something she could not share.

Then the thoughts came as questions: how to explain, in this world of divine flows and celestial punishments, that sometimes madness was not a curse? Furthermore: how to explain something that even I don't fully remember? She kept peeling. The yuña roots fell, one after another, clean and white, while her mind repeated Anya's words like an echo: glazed ceramics, gleaming pewter. And behind them, the truth: lead, mercury, years of accumulation, a brilliant mind reduced to echoes and repetitions.