We headed to Gunther's sleeping quarters, nothing fancy mind you, just a cot against his little station where he made all the willowbark tea. He was not laying down, he was slumped over upright and was gently snoring.
"I hate to wake him." I said, looking at Comforter timidly, and we lightly touched his arm. His eyes squinted open with a groggy gaze.
"Who died this time?" He asked, his voice raspy putting his spectacles on.
"No one died, Gunther. Comforter thinks he knows who poisoned the water, maybe if we can capture her we can find a cure." I said sitting next to him.
"What the blazes! Who would poison the water?" He demanded his hands be balled into fists and his face was red as a flame.
"A Katala, it seems, Sven, Rune's pet he picked up in Furlin, was studying movement that was not a fish and Rune got a glimpse of her shadow." Comforter explained, sitting down on the cot looking up at Gunther.
Gunther thought for a moment, every cough and sneeze echoed all around us as the three of us were each thinking the same thing, how on earth does one catch a Katala. We looked at each other in sheer bewilderment. We sat there wondering, as far as we all knew no on in history every caught one.
I had a plan. The ice tools on a side of a small boat could be welded together and the boat could be narrow enough to be put into the Evergreen river. It would take time to build it, but I knew that the fastest ship builders would be the giants.
"Comforter send the crows to four giants and have them come immediately here, we can craft the boat. Gunther and I will craft a net to attach to the ice breakers, when we catch it, I think I might know of a way for her to give us the remedy for the plague.
All night long until day break we cared for the sick and in between we got everyone who was healthy to weave a massive net to stretch over the ice breakers on the ship. A few weeks later we heard the mighty footsteps of six giants come marching into the village shaking everything, it was no normal thing to see giants in the land of mortals because everything was simply too small for them.
To keep from crushing houses and buildings they camped out in the forests and they worked tirelessly to build a little boat and they picked up the vessel and then the smithy welded the ice breakers on the side. One of the giants helped myself and Gunther put the massive net all around the poles and we had a steady sailor guide the ship all through the river.
Then seven days later, the entire city heard him for miles around him screaming he got it. I ran out to the little dock and had him drag her to shore. I looked at her evil eyes and it was time for her to suffer until I got the truth.
I took a torch to her fins and that was all it took for her to bellow out a scream that almost made the locals and myself go crazy with insanity, for she did not stop. Yet, her lips did not open for what we needed to cure the plague.
I would burn her for hours and then I realised something that dawned on me, she was not in sea water she was in fresh water. An idea came to me. I brushed her fin with sea water and she cried in such pain even Sven would not go near her.
Then I combined the torture of both salt and fire until she finally relented after three solid days of nearly being set on fire. "Stop! Please, stop!" She screamed beneath gritted teeth.
"To stop your plague you need the Becklanite plant that grows in this lake on the southside." She said, crying and writhing in pain. I told Gunther and he and a few men gathered the plant and boiled in the water we carried from Earlydale and within hours the children were feeling better.
"Kill her. I told the giants plainly." They beheaded her and put her tail in the ocean as a warning to her people.
After a few weeks the city folk were getting better and actually taking long walks and were able to mourn those that they had lost in the plague. We boiled all of the Beclanite that was in the river with fresh water and poured into every well and cistern.
We drained the main lake and of course the fish all died causing more of a stench that was still being mixed with that of the dead, and poured seven hundred casks that the giants carried from Earlydale to Cressida and we made sure to salvage all of the Becklanite to make sure it did not die as we rebuilt the lake, ensuring the water was fresh and clean.
The mayor looked crestfallen, as Cressida's main export was delicious fish, I then told him in autumn with a few good rain storms the fish would be back, and so would the economy. The folks in Earlydale promised to keep coming through massive stocks of food until things got back to normal.
Everything seemed right in the world, except what was going to happen with me. I had not finished the training at the Monastery, and it seemed that Comforter was needed here, and I was unsure of my place in Nod. My dad did not had a companion, Pip had family, and it seemed as though for myself, I changed too much to go back to simply being a son of a silk merchant.
Sven went begging for scraps leaving me quite alone by a mulberry tree far beyond where the mass graves were. I simply skipped rocks and wondered now what my future held. I fell asleep and it was a comforter who woke me in the wee hours of the morning, with Sven licking my face.