Chapter 4 Part 1 – The End of Winter
Author: J. Arque
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Norwood Periphery, 28th Late Winter, Markadia Calendar
"AAAAHHHH! Help Kal! Help!" Natasha run as fast as she could as hundreds of bees buzzing right behind her. When the buzzing sound became louder and louder, Natasha put both of her hand to cover her ears.
"Run to the river!" I shouted and pointed at the riverbank just a couple of yards away from her.
Instead of following my instruction she turned away and ran towards my direction.
"Oh shit! Don't come here!" But she kept running as if she didn't hear anything.
Natasha and the bees came closer and closer each second.
Nononono... Shit!
I remembered I have to spend few days just to recover from a dose of Apitoxin.
I couldn't afford to get stung by a goddam bee again not to mention hundreds of them.
As she came closer, I had to inject every bit of my power into both of my legs. With that, I dashed to the river that I have avoided ever since I arrived in this world.
Have you ever chased by a dog, then suddenly you could run faster than you thought you can? If yes, then it was similar to what just had happened to me. I felt as if I just broke the world record, a hundred meters in 9.5 seconds –Literally.
"KAL! HELP!" Natasha kept shouting at me, but I didn’t bother to look back.
As I ran towards the river I felt the time flow slower. I could feel each beat of my heart and I heard Natasha’s screeching voice transformed into low pitched voice.
Time Dilation!
At the edge of the riverbank, I realized I just confirm the theory of relativity in this world.
SPLASH! SPLASH!
We both jumped into the river which was filthy and had yellowish brown color. Just as I moved my body to stay afloat, there was something solid and nasty touched my skin.
Damn it Natasha!
I kept cursing in my head as I swam to the other side of the river and submerged to take a breath.
When I opened both of my eyes, I couldn't see Natasha anywhere.
I waited for a couple of seconds, but I still couldn’t see her.
Natasha and Karl often play together near this river but don't tell me after all this time, she couldn't swim?
As my face grew paler by that thought, I dived into the filthy river again.
I cursed at the visibility range in these yellowish brown water.
Then, I saw Natasha struggled to swim to the surface.
I moved as fast as I could, but when I caught her, she started to lose consciousness.
Fuck! Did she forget to take a deep breath before jumping?! I cursed inwardly.
I was taken aback when I tried to swim back to the surface while holding her. Apparently my original assessment that she was lighter than me was inaccurate. Her true weight should be around 80 pounds.
She should not be this heavy as a four feet tall, right?
She is only seven for god’s sake! Is she even human?!
But I had to stop my train thought since I had to use lots of my energy to move my arm and my legs.
Fortunately, the water helped make Natasha lighter and I could finally bring her to the surface. With the oxygen started to fill my lungs, I moved to check the unconscious Natasha.
I checked whether she is still breathing.
But I couldn't detect any air blew either from her nose or her mouth.
I also noticed that her chest was not moving at all.
Thankfully, I was trained for this kind of situation since I was in the Boy Scout and not to mention my training while in the army.
I moved my finger to her carotid artery to check her pulse for about 10 seconds, but it was not there.
Fuck! Yolanda is going to kill me
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I immediately performed the CPR for her, but she still not breathing.
I repositioned her head and closed her nose, then blow air into her mouth until her chest was full of oxygen. Suddenly she opened her eyes and water started coming out of Natasha's mouth.
I released my fingers from her nose and she started to breathe normally.
She also coughed for some time.
"Are you okay Nat?" I said as I put my hand on top of her wet blond hair.
She suddenly cried "Kal! Sob… Sob… I thought I am going to die" Tears started to flow from her bright blue eyes. The tears kept flowing as she struggled to weep the tears on her cheeks using the bottom of her palms.
I let her lean into my shoulder to cry.
I know it was part of my fault.
I shouldn't have told her to jump into the river, hell, I shouldn't even bring her to search the beehive in Norwood in the first place.
"I am sorry Nat" I said stroking her head gently but she just kept crying and mumbling something that I couldn't hear.
"Let's back to my house for now" I stood up and held her hand.
She nodded and started to walk right next to me.
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After we arrived at Bob's house, we both changed our wet clothes into a dry one. It was pretty much similar to what we had earlier, except now, I also wore my shoulder cape with a liripipes hood. The hood was weird actually since the liripipes was quite long probably two feet long and I had never seen anything like this before I arrived in this world.
"Huachoo! Hic" Natasha sneezed and hiccupped at the same time.
When I put my hand on her forehead I felt my palm was burning.
"You should lie down, I will boil some water and make a soup for you, okay?" I told her as I took my own blanket and cover Natasha with it.
After she lay down on my hay bed, I started a fire in the hearth to boil the water in the bronze cauldron. Then I took out the jar that contains some wild edibles that I gathered before I got sick. In the Jar, there were some wild asparagus, wild leeks, oyster mushrooms, and wild strawberries.
I took out the wild asparagus and some oyster mushrooms and put it into the cauldron, I also minced the wild leek to add flavor and aroma to the soup. Sadly there was no salt to improve the taste.
The absence of salt kept reminding me of its importance in our everyday live.
But here, salt was a luxury commodity. Only those who came from a relatively well family in a large town could have table salt in their house. Here in this village, however, even if some had heard its existence from mummer and traveler, I really sure none of them had ever taste salt -well perhaps except Bob or Pateyk who previously lived in the large town to search for apprenticeship; or Yolanda and Natasha who were not originally from here.
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The only salt mine in Rohrkadia was in Xneth plain and that mine was totally monopolized by Xnethar City-State royal family. This monopoly helped Xnethar to survive and stood strong as major hegemons of Rohrkadia peninsula despite majority of their land were barren and unsuitable for crop cultivations. The unfortunate part of this monopoly however, was the price would always be manipulated by the Xnethar's royal family to suit their needs since there would always be demand for salt even if the price rise to unreasonable level.
Because of the price manipulation from Xnethar and added to the fact that salt miner was the job with highest mortality rate in Rohrkadia, the prices of salt were just slightly lower than prices of gold in value to weight ratio. This made Xnethar royal family one of the richest family in Rohrkadia. Karl once heard Mummer said Xnethar citizens are really proud of their salt, they even carved their City-State symbol –A horseman drawing three arrow- in every salt stone they mined.
The fact that we had to spend so much fortune in order to gain salt really disturbed me. There is simply no other salt mine that could become another source of salt. Even the salt consumed in some Country in Southern Exen continent like Gova, Ybnei and Arbazh mostly imported from Xnethar.
After all, salt was really important commodities, not only for seasoning but also for food preservation. Not to forget the importance of salt as the main ingredient for Solvay process to mass produce cheaper Sodium Carbonate or soda ash.
Because soda ash numerous uses, mass producing them was important for my plan. For example in dyeing flax based textile (linen), flux for glassmaking, cleaning agents, pH stabilizer, and so on.
However, I could use seawater instead of normal salt solution (brine) for the Solvay process. Salt could also be extracted from seawater by constructing saltpans in Exton Delta which is the end of Exton River that connected with South Rohr Sea.
The Saltpans would be made of metal to fasten the evaporation, and there would be windmills to move the seawater into the saltpans using Archimedean screw. Then the salt could be transported via Exton River directly to the village.
The only problem was the lack of material, manpower, and coins to build such facility. The saltpans would need lots of metal to make and to build such large windmills we need skilled workers which I had none. I also needed to reevaluate whether building our own Saltpans would be more economical than acquiring salt directly from Xnethar.
Sigh… I need notebooks to write all these business ideas
After the asparagus and the oyster mushrooms were cooked, I put out the fire in the hearth and filled the wooden bowl and went to wake Natasha up.
Previously I also had filled the waterskin with a cold water from outside and put it in Natasha's forehead.
When I put the bowl with a soup next to Natasha, she slowly opened her eyes as the aroma from the soup traveled into her nostrils.
"Hey Nat, How do you feel right now?"
"My throat… hurt"
I took a spoon of soup with some sliced asparagus and oyster mushroom and offered it to her "Well, here I made a soup, it would make you feel much better"
She nodded and opened her mouth.
I blow the soup a little so that it wasn't going to burn her tongue then I shove it into her mouth.
Her eyes widened as she chows the asparagus and the mushroom.
"How it is?"
"It is good!" After she swallowed the sliced vegetables, I could see drools started to flow from the edge of her little lips.
"Suit yourself then, I also need to prepare one for myself" I gave her the wooden bowl and spoon and then took another empty bowl and filled it with the soup.
When we finished eating, Natasha continued her sleep and I went outside the house to wait for Bob to arrive.
It had been five days since he and Pateyk left Exton. They should arrive anytime soon.
I waited for a couple of hours but sadly, they didn't arrive that day.
That night, because Natasha was getting cold, Yolanda became totally freaked out. She rambled that Natasha got some disease that I hadn't heard before. Judging by her reaction, she thought Natasha got a deadly disease. On the other hand, I was quite sure that it was just a common cold since the symptoms were exactly the same as the one on Earth. Natasha should be fine few days later after she had enough meal and rest.
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Exton, 29th Late Winter, Markadia Calendar
Because Natasha got sick, Yolanda left to Ellen’s a bit later than usual. But before she left, she also made some rye porridge and asparagus soup for us to eat.
In the morning, I also walked into the village's northern entrance where there was no house around the area, instead, there were only open fields without crops since it was still winter.
Once I was bored waiting for Bob and Pateyk, I came back to the house and saw Natasha already moving around energetically despite of her cold.
It was probably an hour past noon when I got out the house again after I told Natasha some random fairy tale from the earth like Snow White, Cinderella and other kid shits. She was captivated by them. She even asked me to re-tell Snow White ten times before she finally was able to sleep.
When I arrived at the entrance, on the horizon I could see 8 men and 2 women riding a tall black horse which resembled Destrier and right at their back followed 20 other large horses that really similar to Belgian Draft horse but slightly smaller. Each of the horses had two large sacks surmounted at their backs.
There were also 12 young men in a large wheeled metal cage that drawn by the Belgian horses. Chains in their necks and feet could also be spotted from afar. Each person's chain connected to other person's chain to prevent them running away. These 12 young men were barefooted and their body filled with scars. Their eyes filled with misery and despair.
As the two older men who rode the black Destrier in the front of the convoy slowly approached Exton, I started to recognize both of them.
It was Bob and Pateyk!
I could not hide my excitement.
A Destrier should cost a fortune to purchase, it was known as the horse that used in cavalry troops. However, the one that staggered me the most was the Belgian horses. They were supposed to be modern draft breed from 20th century, but I could see with my own eyes those horses were indeed resembled Belgian Horses only slightly smaller than the one I saw on Earth.
Back then, I also had a couple of Belgian Draft Horses. They were strong and had better endurance than most of other breeds. Even in the begining of 21st century Earth, Belgian Horses were still the most largely used as draft horse in the US.
And how could they afford to buy that much? A mere 200,000 Strung shouldn't possibly be enough for all that, right? And who were those people riding with them?
As Bob saw me standing at the village's gate, he waved at me. I also waved back. I pulled my dagged hood to cover my head and started to run towards them.
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