19 Why am I alive?

  Joseph’s eyebrows furrowed as the Pedlar’s eyes widened.

  “You are not the princess!” Joseph said.

  “How dare you!” she said, grabbing the hood and pulling it from his hold.

  Joseph kept looking at her face, trying to digest the reality. “You’re the maid, right?” he asked.

  “I have saved your life three times. Is this how you repay me? By disrespecting me?”

  “I had already seen you near the deer at the back of the palace! You left me as I was bleeding to death to die alone!”

  “I did not! I wrapped your wound and left to ask for help! How do you think they found you?”

  Lord Parlings never mentioned the maid. Joseph was confused. “You are speaking fluent English!”

  “Is that what matters now?”

  “Yes! You spoke Persian to me the other day in the princess' room.”

  “Because I have to hide my identity!” She wore her hood again. “You deceitful English men never seize to disappoint me. And here I thought you meant well by jumping before the alligator.” She exited the room, leaving Joseph in shock and confusion. How could the Pedlar be the maid? She came back in a few seconds with a bottle.

  “What are you doing?” Joseph asked, leaning backward to avoid whatever she wanted to do.

  The Pedlar approached Joseph and stood close. “Come closer,” she ordered.

  Joseph wanted to protest, but he couldn’t. He watched as the Pedlar grabbed him by his neck to steady his head, and started pouring whatever was inside the bottle on his wound. He hissed through his teeth, the acidic pain burning his flesh and giving him a headache. The Pedlar wrapped a new piece of cloth around Joseph’s head. Joseph spoke no words and only waited for her to initiate the conversation as she treated his wound. But she said nothing. After wrapping his injury, she wanted to get on her feet, but Joseph stopped her by taking her hand. She looked at his hand with a frown, and he removed it instantly.

  “I’m sorry that I stalked you for so long,” he said in a weak tone, and the Pedlar looked at him without saying a word. He wasn’t sorry for exposing her identity. He only felt sorry for being disrespectful. “I’m sorry for being a nosy man and for everything I have caused you.”

  The Pedlar sighed. “You are a hotheaded man,” she said. “Why are you so intent to know me?”

  “Why are you so intent to hide your identity?”

  “I must keep it a secret so I can continue helping others. You don’t know what you’re doing. You follow me and call me princess. Do you know how dangerous it is for her?”

  “I never intended to hurt her.”

  “You are supposed to be a gentleman. Yet you grab my hood like a toddler.”

  “It happens when I’m sober. I must apologize.”

  “People apologize for being drunk.”

  “I’m pleasant when I’m drunk.”

  The maid pitied him. Joseph had become an alcoholic while trying to search for his peace.

  “Why is the princess so important to you?” Joseph asked.

  “You’re being a nosy man again.”

  “Come now, Pedlar. Deathbeds irritate me. I’m sober, and everything hurts. Speak to me.”

  “You’re not dying.”

  “Thanks to you. What is your name?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your name. I think I deserve to know it now that I've seen your face.”

  “You do not.”

  Joseph was frustrated. “It’s just a name! Please?”

  “No.”

  “All right then. I’ll call you a Phoenix.” The Pedlar squinted, demanding elaboration with her gaze. “You dropped a feather as you were walking away,” Joseph added. “A long one, which looked odd.” He searched his pockets and found it. The Pedlar looked at it and immediately recognized it. She extended her hand in front of him. Joseph gave it back to her. “I didn’t know a feather is so important to you.”

  She put it into her satchel. “It doesn’t concern you.”

  “All right. I apologize. You were in the forest when I first came to Persia, correct?”

  “Yes. You made me fall. I almost died.”

  “It was unintentional. I was eager to meet you. My trip was long, and I was impatient.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “And you didn’t help me.”

  “An unwanted person stopped me. I didn’t expect him there. I didn’t want him to find out about you.” The Pedlar appreciated Joseph’s secrecy. “Why did you steal the horse?” he asked, wondering why a healer would do that.

  “What?”

  “The horse from Caravanserai.”

  “I didn’t. I was asked to help a wounded horse in the woods, but when I arrived I noticed it had already died. That was a trap to capture me. I thought you had set it up.”

  “I didn’t know you were there. I only tried to retrieve a poor man’s horse. Who could possibly want to capture you like that?”

  “I don’t know. Bandits?”

  Joseph sighed. “You were the one who helped me when I was dying in London, right? Don’t tell me I’ve been tailing a different woman all along.”

  “It was me.”

  “Good. Andyou saved me again from the deer trap.”

  “Deer trap?”

  “It wasn’t you?”

  “It was me. But that was no trap for animals.”

  “What can you mean?”

  “Traps for animals like deer don't have such sharp claws. I could see right through your flesh even though you had boots.”

  Joseph remembered Lord Parlings’ words. He was allegedly a hunter yet he couldn’t tell the difference between a deer trap and a kill machine for humans. Something wasn’t right. Joseph decided to divert the topic to his own questions. “Forget about the trap,” he said. “I need to know something.”

  “You have many questions.”

  “I’ve come a long way.Humor me.”

  “Go on.”

  “Tell me why?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Why do you keep saving me?”

  “Because I help people.”

  “Why me? Why didn’t you save my wife and son?”

  “I didn’t know your wife then. And I didn’t know she was sick.”

  “So, who asks you to help people?”

  “No one.”

  “No one?”

  The Pedlar nodded. Joseph looked at another spot. He realized that his journey was for nothing. The Pedlar wasn’t a God, an angel, or a magical being. There wasn’t a plan for him by God. He felt his heart clutching.

  “Then it was all for nothing...,” he mumbled.

  “What?” The Pedlar asked.

  Joseph looked at her again. “You saved my life for nothing.” Anger and heartache were choking him.

  “Not for nothing,” the Pedlar said. “Do you see my work so small?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Yes. You did. What are you waiting for? What do you expect?”

  “Nothing!”

  “I saved your life when you were about to die. You should be thankful. You should have started a new life by now.”

  “A new life? I don’t owe anything to anyone!”

  “So, you wish to die?”

  “I might as well die since I have nothing to live for.”

  The Pedlar frowned. “Nothing?”

  “I lost my wife. I lost my one and only child. What else do I have to live for? If God hasn't assigned any plan for me, then I am alive for nothing! I can’t breathe! I can’t. I…”

  Tears rolled on his face, but his anger was dominant. “I don’t have a meaning for any of this. For the sun rising every day, for the clouds filling the sky, for the heart that beats continuously, for my eyes that see, for the pain I feel. I-I searched for you everywhere. I imagined you as a magical creature or the angel of the Lord. There had to be a reason for me getting my life back.”

  His voice was loud, and it echoed through the empty room. The Pedlar watched Joseph struggle, and a heavy feeling sat on her chest. He was devastated. A man so obsessed with the idea of a magical being that he had crossed the world to search for her in a foreign land. He needed to find a meaning for his misery. Didn’t everyone?

  “There is a reason,” her voice broke into the despair.

  Joseph looked at her again with furrowed eyes. “What is it?”

  “It’s you,” said the Pedlar. Joseph opened his mouth to curse or to be mean just to hurt her as he was, but she spoke again. “You came from another part of the world to find something magical and to hear the Lord’s plans for you? Or maybe to blame the death of your family on that magical creature? The truth is, the Lord’s plan for you is you, Lord Mainwood. Not someone else, not something else. You are alive because your life wasn’t supposed to end that night.”

  Now that Joseph had found the Pedlar, he was supposed to feel good. He was supposed to find the answers to his questions. But the only feeling he felt was disappointment. Once again, the grief of his family crushed his soul.

  Joseph’s despair saddened the Pedlar. She took a deep breath, choosing to share something with Joseph that would help him feel better.

  “When the sun cripples you,” the Pedlar said, and Joseph looked at her again, “And the sisters soak in darkness, dead eyes will speak thunder.”

  Joseph wiped his tears. “What?”

  “This is what Bibi Banoo told me as she read my fortune a few years ago. Bibi sees things that other people don’t. She is gifted with sight. It made no sense to me then. How could the sun cripple me? And what sisters was she talking about? Everything about that fortune was vague, so I ignored it.”

  Joseph said nothing and waited for her to continue.

  “I believed nothing of the magical, supernatural world. So I didn’t think much of the fortune. Until one night in London, I was walking on the shore and waiting for the ship to prepare for our journey. A man came. He begged me to help an orphan, claiming that if I didn’t, the entire orphanage would die with the contagious disease. I accepted to help and followed him.

  “As we were walking, I saw the shape of the sun on the wooden floor just before I stepped on it. The wood broke, and I fell into a hole. My knee was dislocated. I was in a crippling pain. The thought of not being able to use my leg again scared me.”

  Joseph leaned closer, curious to know the rest.

  “The man helped me out of the miserable state,” the Pedlar said. “I had to relocate my knee back in its place and then followed the man again with a limping leg. That was when I wondered if Bibi’s fortune-telling was right. Because the first part had happened.”

  Joseph listened without knowing where the story was going.

  “A heavy rain started pouring when I reached the orphanage. As I treated the orphan, the roof dripped and soaked the nuns like rats. I realized that was the second part of the fortune. The nuns were the sisters Bibi meant.”

  She hesitated to say the rest.

  “I’m listening,” Joseph said.

  “You may think it’s silly.”

  “It’s not.”

  “After helping the orphan, I walked toward the door to leave. Just at that moment, your young valet found me. He stopped me and begged me to come and help you. I knew I was late for the ship, and I couldn’t agree to it. Because if the ship left, I couldn’t find another one for a month. So I ignored your valet’s request. I kept walking. Suddenly a thunder struck the sky like I had never seen before.

  “It growled and lit the entire orphanage. I froze in my spot. What had me paralyzed at that moment was a painting. It was a huge portrait of a woman with a serious face on the wall of the main hall. The thunder lit her face, and it lasted too long for me. I was shocked. Your valet approached me. He said the portrait was of the person who helped create the orphanage.”

  “Margaret,” Joseph said.

  “Yes. Countess Margaret, your wife. Her eyes spoke to me. That was the last part of the fortune. I knew I had to save your life even though I didn’t believe in Bibi’s fortunes much.”

  Joseph smiled weakly while tears streamed down his face. He had finally found something. Maybe not what he was looking for. But listening to someone speak of his wife was soothing his wounded heart.

  “So, Lord Mainwood,” The Pedlar said. “I think the magic you’re looking for is you. Your life is more precious than you know. Make it worthwhile.” She got on her feet. “And you can leave now. Your wound has mostly healed.”

  She left the room, and Joseph sat to think about everything she said.