CHAPTER 7: FLUVIA INSPIRES SOME OLD MEN

When she came in, the poor thing was pale and lifeless, to the degree that even I, Healer Martin Theodore, could only have dim expectations for her to live out the week.

However, although we only just managed to keep her alive for a year, miraculously, the Young Lady Dellarose made a complete recovery.

Although a complete recovery doesn’t actually mean she returned to her original state.

Of course her magic potential is completely different, but there is also the fact that Young Lady Fluvia acts nothing like a child.

From the reports of Lady Estella’s maid-in-waiting, Young Lady Fluvia had been a normal child before the brain fever, though calmer than Young Lord Fedor.

If that is any indication, that probably means she was indeed a very normal child, since Young Lord Fedor is on the rambunctious side.

But when Young Lady Fluvia had recovered and begun to speak with us, I couldn’t think that she was a normal child.

For one thing, she had curried the favor of the notoriously difficult Lord Minister Wynchestor within half an hour of their first meeting.

After that incident, Young Lady Fluvia’s childish tone quickly faded.

When I asked Mary, the attendant we had assigned to the Young Lady, she said,

“That’s right. Although sometimes she speaks childishly, in general she speaks rather like an adult, although some of the things she says are a little different.”

I became a bit concerned.

Has the Young Lady become someone completely different?

It’s not unheard of for people with brain fever to undergo a personality change – if they wake at all.

However, for a child to become an adult as if it was overnight is a little …

Even though I have little time to spare to begin with, I made it a point to drop by the herbalists’ laboratory to ask if they had anything that would influence the mind, but as expected there was only concoctions that soothed nerves or caused sleep.

These days I’ve begun to wonder if it’s alright to leave the way our country’s healing methods are done as they are.

Healing magic is only useful for obvious wounds, otherwise it simply relieves the symptoms.

In that way we are able to prolong the lives of those with illnesses by repeatedly casting healing magic on our patients, but their full recovery is out of our hands.

Medicine is… although there’s the herbalist and alchemist laboratory, there are few herbalists or alchemists, if you compare them to the number of healers.

The laboratory is a small room with a sturdy desk and a wall full of small drawers.

That’s it.

That’s the way it’s always been, in Houses of Healing all over the country.

I don’t think it can be helped that I wonder if there’s anything more that we can do.

Although the Head Healers of the Houses of Healing might not think it’s necessary, for those of us who deal with the patients directly, it’s very hard when all we can do is cast Heal and hope that their own recovery abilities will take them out of danger.

“Even so… this is a death trap, isn’t it?”

“Nah, well, we don’t got lots of time to mess with it.”

I was sitting in the carpentry shop of a childhood friend of mine, Herman, staring at the item we had been making on a whim, in order to improve the lives of patients and invalids.

I might have been the son of well-to-do merchant, but my playmates were the sons and daughters of tradesmen.

If I had followed my father’s footsteps perhaps I’d be considered a merchant with good connections, due to mixing in with so many different types of people since my youth.

But in the end, because of mixing in with so many different types of people, I became a healer who wished to better the lives of those who had contracted illnesses or injuries.

When you know a lot of people, you are naturally exposed to those whose lives are impacted with sickness and accidents, after all.

And I, a healer, am collaborating with a carpenter because of this.

And what we have developed is a monstrosity.

“…If we leave it like this, it would be difficult to introduce the wheeled chair to the House of Healing.”

“Yup. But it’s a start, so don’t ya get too upset.”

I sigh from my seat on the lumber pile.

“I understand, but I was hoping for it to be something… a little bit better. It’s taken three years, after all.”

“But it ain’t like we was working all of that three years.”

That’s the problem.

Herman is the head of a prominent carpentry shop in the Capital, and I am the Healer over most of the Nobles’ Ward in the Capital’s House of Healing.

We aren’t people with a lot of time on our hands.

I think we can count the hours we spent on the wheeled chair on one, maybe two hands, despite it having been three years.

We were far too impatient to make it into a reality, I suppose. Perhaps we should have thought about it more when we were still conceiving the design.

But, really, it was unlikely that we’d be thinking about it in the times we weren’t actually in the shed working on it, with all of our other, more pressing duties going on, so I suppose this dangerous-looking thing is just the natural result of our busy lives.

“By the way, what happened to that thing that noble lady asked for? The tiny table ya use in bed.”

“Ah… that one. Hm? Didn’t the next order come in for you? The House of Healing is asking for five similar items. Ah, although it should have been specified in the order, make them lighter without sacrificing the durability.”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Oh, it worked well, then? Oi, don’t demand something impossible, makin’ them lighter without sacrificing durability.”

Herman sighed as he played with the ‘finished’ wheeled chair by rocking it back and forth.

I chuckled as I remembered the look on the face of Young Lady Fluvia when she saw the gold and mother-of-pearl inlaid cherry bed table, carved with flowers and birds along the legs and border.

“Yes, it did work well, although the ornaments seemed to be too much for her.”

“Huh? Although she’s a noble? I thought they like that stuff.”

“Mm, well this noble’s a little … different.”

I absentmindedly poked at the wood shavings while I thought about that ‘different’.

To tell the truth, I have begun enjoying talking to Young Lady Fluvia.

What first began as concern and an attempt to probe the depths of her personality change became a pleasant pastime as she presented ideas I hadn’t heard before.

Rather then presenting these ideas, it was more like these ideas were things that the Young Lady believed about how the world worked.

At first it could be seen as the mere understandings a child makes up to explain how things worked, but the conviction she spoke with and the conclusions she drew about the world due to those understandings fit how things truly were in a terrifyingly accurate manner.

Young Lady Fluvia’s attendant, Mary, views it as merely the words of a child, but I …

The more I talk to the Young Lady, the more I am excited by the possibilities of the way she views things, but at the same time, I am all the more unsettled by it.

The way she sees things, the way she can read the intentions of others, at this age, it is eerie, isn’t it?

If she continues this kind of talk into her adolescence, it wouldn’t be surprising if other people begin to view her as a witch.

I can’t help but think that, for Young Lady Fluvia’s future, it would be better to help her revert her change in personality back to her original personality.

At the same time I understand that, not only is it dangerous to do so, but it could very well be our country’s loss, no the loss of all the civilized lands, if I succeeded in changing her personality back.

While playing with the wood shavings, I feel the uneasiness in the depths of my stomach roll.

Herman gave me a strange look.

“Is that noble THAT weird? Although she had a good idea, if she’s tyrannical or something, I don’t think I’d like to meet her after all.”

So he was curious about her.

“That’s not it. I was just thinking about what to do with a patient, is all.”

But then, it was only a few days later that Herman was able to meet that different noble himself.

What started out as a diversion from the Young Lady’s restlessness, as well as a self-deprecating desire to showcase our failure, became something I could have never imagined.

In an instant, Young Lady Fluvia recognized that our wheeled chair was something she would never desire to set foot in, and she quickly went about trying to fix our poorly conceived design.

Herman and I lost our heads at the simple sketch that Young Lady Fluvia made, so much so that I forgot myself and ran off to Herman’s workshop and had to be brought back by Bartholomew, the Capital’s House of Healing’s Steward.

I got quite a scolding from Mary as well.

Hm? Isn’t Mary’s treatment of me, who is in charge of all the nobles of high-standing in the House of Healing, getting rougher as of late?

I wonder if this is also the influence of Young Lady Fluvia.

I finished the rest of the day’s rounds dutifully, but I almost couldn’t contain myself and my mind wandered towards the wheeled chair.

Mary, who had caught wind of my absentmindedness from the other attendants, scolded me once again.

Well, it’s true that I deserved it.

After that I managed to pull myself together, but as I thought, a feeling of overwhelming impatience lingered despite my best efforts.

That very evening, as I entered the shed we had been using behind Herman’s carpentry workshop, Herman immediately came thundering up to me.

“Martin! Martin! It’s genius! Those free-spinnin’ wheels!”

Even though it was very late in the night, a few of Herman’s subordinates and apprentices were also there.

Which is surprising, since Herman had said he wouldn’t force them to go with our experiments before, but I suppose the situation has changed.

Herman waved something in my direction.

“Look! Ah, this ain’t the final product, since it’d break way easy with some weight, but look!”

What Herman showed me was a piece of wood with small wheels attached to each corner.

The wheels are… hm.

The axle through the wheels are bent at right angles upwards and fastened to a small plank of wood, and from the wood is a bolt that goes up and is attached to the main piece of wood.

The hole the bolt is going into is pre-drilled, so it truly spins freely.

“I see, so they can spin in all directions.”

“… For land’s sake, that ain’t it!”

Herman set the wood down, wheel-side down of course, and pushed it along, squatting down on the ground.

“…Hm?”

Something is clearly different, but it’s subtle.

I, who am not a carpenter or weelwright, can tell that something is different, but it’s out of my expertise, after all.

Luckily, Herman tells me the answer right away.

“It turns WAY easy! Although, it was a disaster when we tried puttin’ a harness on this and had the shop’s dog pull it. Tipped over, an’ all, with all th’wheels goin’ in different directions like that. But if ya put it like that lass said, with the rear wheels fixed like reg’lar wagon wheels, it turns great, with a lot less effort!”

Herman is so excited, pointing wildly at the other prototype wheeled board that an assistant was holding, that I feel like he’s going to explode.

“Y’know, this could change a lot!”

“… How so?”

I can tell Herman thinks these will be great, but I’m not too sure myself.

Like I said, this is out of my expertise, you know?

“Y’know how you usually need to make wide turns with stuff? Like those food carts for when ya take food in ta’ the patients? This makes it so it turns on – well, not quite on the spot, but it turns tight!”

“Oh… oooh!”

I see!

In narrow places like the halls of the House of Healing, it’s certainly true that the attendants have often just carried things by hand, choosing to make more trips to bring things or enlist the help of other attendants rather than using the carts due to their cumbersome maneuverability.

Indeed, these wheels could make a big difference, couldn’t they?

I didn’t think of it right away, since I don’t do a lot of the manual labor, light as it may be in the House of Healing, in my position.

As I realized it, I thought of a mutual friend of ours, that is Herman and mine, who is one of the cartwrights of the Capital.

“Are you going to pitch these free-spin wheels to Gregor?”

“Nah, it ain’t good for a carriage or wagon, for the wheels to spin all the way like that. If it’s something small, like these wheeled chairs and carts and stuff, it’s fine. Don’t want a noble’s carriage tippin’ over. Gregor’d lose his head. I’ll tell him about it, though. He’s been goin’ crazy with boredom, since nobles just want taller and taller carriages, so maybe it’ll be a good diversion for him to see if he kin make something stabler off them.”

Herman sighed as he looked over the free-spin wheels.

“Well, forgit Gregor. I gotta make it so these can take a beatin’. Even if it works, if it breaks easily we’ll be spendin’ more time repairin’ these than usin’ ‘em.”

Herman says it with some frustration, but there’s a light in Herman’s eyes that I hadn’t seen in a while.

I am interested in seeing where these free-spin wheels will take him.

He turns towards me and hesitates, before he finally asks,

“Nah, Martin, who is that lass?”

That’s right, I hadn’t really introduced her to him, did I?

Well, the impact of our wheeled chair threw the timing for introductions out the door that day, after all.

With a thin smile, I say,

“She’s the young noble lady who ordered the bed table, Earl Dellarose’s daughter.”

Herman’s mouth fell open. Finding out she was a noble was more startling to him than the fact that she was a child, hm? Or was he startled that a single person had thought of both the bed table and these free-spin wheels?

I laughed heartily.

Mary’s more adaptable than I am, so it’s not fair if it’s just me being constantly surprised at Young Lady Fluvia.

Ahh… it would be a waste if I continue to try to return the Young Lady to her childish state.

That night, I truly thought that from the bottom of my heart.

But even so, I can’t help but worry about what Young Lady Fluvia’s ideas will bring her in the future.

While I hovered in unease, several months had passed.

Despite my best efforts, Lord Minister Wynchestor has begun to teach Lady Fluvia how to circulate mana, and she’s able to add that to her daily activities to disrupt a bit of the boredom she undergoes while being kept to bed-rest.

Well, if it’s just circulating mana it’s fine, but I won’t be able to tolerate it if he goes beyond that and begins to teach her actual magic.

She’s still considered a convalescent, you know?

Although, certainly, we are beginning to allow her to walk around the room for short periods of time.

Along with these diversions, Young Lady Fluvia is also now able to leave the room.

In the country’s first ever (non-dangerous) wheeled chair.

Herman has greatly improved the free-spin wheels, Gregor has introduced more stable carriages and has begun to research something similar to the free-spin wheels for the use for wagons and carriages, and I …

I am discussing the importance of ‘aftercare’ with a certain Young Lady as I go through the busy life of a being a prominent healer in the Capital’s House of Healing.

I can’t help but feel that that being introduced to something new is the best way to start an overwhelming wave of inspiration that I could have never imagined.

In this time of incredible progress, THAT happened.