Sal stayed behind the window for some time. The woman entered the hut and passed by her without noticing her there. Everyone passes by Sal and she was content to melt into the corners of the wall. Lea did too, except she looked back at her.

“You’ve been watching?” 

“Yes.” It’s the first time Sal got caught after all.

“ You’re not even denying it, huh. So that’s why I thought I saw a shadow peeking from the windows. I just can’t with you. Are you a ghost?”

Sal pointed to herself. “ I am a ghost.” Lea did not respond. It was supposed to be a joke. She instead knelt to Sal’s level, looking at her mirror image.

“Stop eavesdropping. People won’t like you for it.”

Sal does not need to.

“ Besides. Don’t they tell you not to listen to the affairs of adults?”

“ All the time.” Sal recalled. “ But I’m older than you. So you should not eavesdrop on me. Is it?”

Lea slapped a hand on her face before clasping both of Sal’s cheeks. “ Forget what you heard, alright?”

“ Why?”

“ Just do.”

Sal can’t turn her head away because the girl’s hands held her face. Perhaps, this should be the better retort. “ You just came here. Why will you leave?”

Lea held firm. “ You heard it all. You were eavesdropping.”

Sal did not like this. “ Do you hate the villagers?”

“No.” Lea said, but followed it at Sal’s stare. “ Not yet.”

“Then, why do you want to leave?”

Lea squished Sal’s face even more, grinning like a child. “ You don’t want me to go?”

Sal replied with a blank tone in her voice. “ Why come only to leave? It makes no sense.”

Lea released Sal’s face, finally. She put her hands on her knees. Eyes looking afar. “ If I’m in the way, I have to go.”

“ You are a goose.” Sal said. “ You charge at things. You yell. Geese never ask permission. They squawk around and run.”

Lea huffs. “ Oh yeah! A goose?” She reaches for Sal again but she is quick to protect her face this time and Sal squished her own cheeks. Lea sat silently. “ It’s a family this time. Sal. You don’t stir trouble in a family like that. “

Lea was not wrong. But somehow, she remembered the Signor, and Lea’s words are only words that find trouble having meaning. “ You just do, alright?” She stood up. “ If it ever comes to the time that I make trouble, I will leave. You stay here. I’ll call your sponsor, or whatever you want me to do. I can manage myself outside just fine, but you cannot.”

Sal sees Ren’s face in her mind. How she thought she heard Ren’s face just before she fell over the river. He must be looking for her as they speak. She remembered his silky voice, his coat over her shoulders. And yet she cannot find it in herself to stay still in those moments.

“ I don’t know.”

Lea only gave Sal a hard pat on the side of her head. “ If I leave, you stay here, at least for awhile. Don’t make trouble.”

When Lea left, Sal thought one thing. Geese squawk, they don’t mew quietly.

_____________#__________

If it so happened that Lea was abducted and replaced by a copy, Sal would believe it. The braided woman kept her silence for most hours of the day. She stuck to the older woman’s side if not disappearing into Inie’s room or her mother’s for a few times throughout the day.

The virtual emptiness of the hut was punctuated by the voices of the villagers who come inside every now and then. Sal would need to hide. So does Lea, it seems.

Ro often talked about how this town is happy and lively, like fireflies in a shell. Sal pictured bugs buzzing in a small jar whenever Ro would tell his stories.

But Lea, she was hushed tones, a voice barely above a whisper and feet that seemed to barely rub against the floors. She was a quiet fairy. Strange to see that the familiar loud rustles were so much silence when she was not the one laying in bed.

The villagers enter the hut sometimes to bring fruits and other things and doling what they call advice on how Inie should recover quickly. It should go away soon, today or tonight. But since Sal left for the capital, two days had already passed.

Inie didn’t get better. Sal can’t exactly bring herself to peek at the girl’s room. Inie retched periodically, like a clock blaring to tell you the time. How worse could it be? Was it much worse than Oleon? He looked like this too, but it was not a slow crawl like this.

Sal dashed a peek at Inie’s room where she lay on the mat and a chamber pot sat nearby.

Lea skidded out of the room and stopped. 

Sal was looking up to her with big wide eyes from where she crouched on the floor.

“ Someone’s coming?” Sal asked.

“Right.”

Without a beat, they both dashed out and hid in an adjacent room.

“How is she doing?” It was a voice of one too many villagers that have visited the house. The voice came out almost muffled because of the distance.

“Mang Coryo?” Lea whispered to herself.

Sal scooted closer to hear unlike LEa who only sat there with quite an expression.

“Her fever, it’s getting worse.” The cousin said. Of course, it would be her responding.

“ Tomas is already well and running a day ago. The kid’s younger than her.”

“ I tried what I could,”

“Did you watch her well enough?” The villager said. “ Never let her glass run out of water. My wife made sure of that when he tended to Tomas.”

The words that came after were what one would have expected to come next. Symptoms, herbs, and some spiel about the neighbor’s wandering chickens. Sal fixated on what they said Inie exhibited. Trips to the bathroom. Fever. She’s read about this before.

“Cholera?” Sal asked.

“ Blue disease? You’d find many illnesses affecting the body that way. I’ve drank their water here so it’s not that. I presume you did not eat in the feast they said you had earlier?”

Sal shook her head.

“Then she should get well in no time. I guess, it’s just taking longer than usual.”

Sal was about to speak something when Lea shushed her.

“ Does it happen even if you do everything mostly right?”

Lea ,who’d been leaning on the wall and keeping her eyes at her surroundings, craned her head to look at her. “What’s that about?”

“ Nothing.”

Lea gave a long look at Sal.

Nothing.

She sighed before she stretched her legs and put her attention to straightening the mats and the cabinets around the room. They will be heard if she continues but Lea moved with no heed. She continued in a whisper.

“Some people can be careless. Someone must have known the food is going bad. How could you make that mistake for a feast? Unless of course, someone did do something. Put something in the food, but I doubt that would be the case.”

Something heavy weighed on Sal’s chest. She laid out on the floor as if it would ease the feeling. Stared at the ceiling. Count. Count. Count. Shhh.

Lea snapped a finger at her. “ Alright.” Lea bent over her. “ She will be fine. I’ll make it so that she’s fine.”