The city wakes up as Kaya and I head for the marketplace. With every step, my mind wars with the desperation to stay away after yesterday's horrors and the determination to find something for Nona. Kaya quickly notices.

"Hey," she slows to a stop. "Are you sure you want to go back there? I can search in there by myself, and we can go together to the places outside of the market."

I shake my head. I won't let my fear hold me back. I won't let it prevent me from helping Nona.

I won't let it make me useless.

I press forward and Kaya doesn't argue. This is too important to the both of us and we can't afford to waste any more time.

We reach the edge of the market and my heart begins to race. The air is blissfully clear and the only negative behavior is from the tired, grumbling merchants setting up their stalls. A few people stroll along, making early morning purchases before they head to work.

Still, I can't stop looking over my shoulder and occasionally batting at my arms. Agonized screams sound at every turn and every wisp of black causes my skin to relive the burns. We pass through the center and my breath catches. Evidence of the dead stain the jagged pavement. Severed vines are dyed with patches of dark crimson. I can't move, only able to stare at the place where three lives met their end.

"You're fine," Kaya's voice breaks through the sea of terror. "It's over. I'm here, Cara. Take a deep breath. You're okay."

Inhale. Exhale. Again. I release a shake breath, my eyes squeezed shut. "Okay," I whisper. "Okay."

My eyes snap open and I avert my gaze from the area. "Let's go."

Kaya leads me through the market, stopping at every stall with the slightest mention of healing. None of them can offer any explanation for Nona's condition, just like the first time we came. A few offer something to help with an aspect of the sickness, but nothing certain. Kaya takes everything that suggests a possibility of healing Nona, but nothing fades the troubled expression set on her face.

We leave the marketplace as seven bells sound. Kaya's bag is disturbingly light on my back, giving me little hope.

"Let's try some of the smaller apothecaries," Kaya suggests. "Maybe they'll have something that isn't as widespread."

She doesn't wait for a reply and heads places only she knows, and I silently follow.

The early morning heat promises an unusually hot day as sweat drips down my back. We spend two hours hitting every single healer in the sector. We almost went into the next one, but the guards stationed there happened to be the ones who had it out for me the most.

"Cara, don't blame yourself," Kaya says. "It's not your fault."

"Really?" I scoff, kicking aside a stray branch. "It's not my fault we can't search in the other sectors because my stupidity caused me to be on the wanted list of nearly every guard in the damn city?"

"Still, it's not as if we would have had much of a chance even if we did go. How likely is it we'd find something there when no one here has a clue about Nona's sickness." A hopeless note enters her voice at the end.

"What do we do now, Kaya?" I spin around to face her, throwing my hands up. "We've looked everywhere and just like the first time we came searching. We may have tried a few new places, but we ended up with the same infuriating result."

Kaya sets her gaze on the ground and I feel a pang of guilt. All Kaya wants is to find something to heal Nona, and our failure affects her, too. But unlike me, she doesn't lash out.

"What do we do now?" I ask again, softer. "How do we find an antidote for a sickness no one has ever heard of?"

"A special disease deserves a special cure, don't you think?"

Kaya and I snap to the voice. A frail elderly woman steps out of the shadows of a shop. A tattered old dress blankets every inch of her body, leaving only the neck up uncovered. The material is too thick for the relentless summer sun, but she seems unfazed.

"What kind of cure?" I ask, skeptical of the odd woman. Her bony hands plait her wispy, white hair. The action reminds me of a young girl, but it's disturbing to be seen on the old woman.

"Well what kind of disease?" she offers, continuing to braid. Although thin, her hair is long, growing past her waist.

"Someone we care about came home one day in winter and fell ill," Kaya replies. She details Nona's situation.

We wait for the woman to respond, but she continues to braid her hair. Her fingers weave with an unnerving speed. However, despite the speed, she seems to take quite a while to finish braiding. She finishes one side and begins on the other. I glance at Kaya and she gives me a confused look. Finally, I get fed up and turn away from the crazy woman.

"Let's go Kaya," I say, exasperated. "All we've got from this day are a few unlikely options and an encounter with a psychotic woman. I don't know what we'll do now, but we're wasting our time with her."

The woman is before me in an instant, her movements too fast for someone of her age. Her hair is fully braided, strangely starting by her temples, giving her a disturbing image. Her eyes blaze. "Careful, child," she says in a singsong voice. "Your insolence and impatience will not help you. After all, you wouldn't want to burn to ashes along with the rest of them, do you?" Her low words are nearly identical to those I heard seven years ago and chills creep down my back.

"Do you have a solution for us or not?" I mean to snap, but for some reason I can't manage enough force behind the words. The woman is too unsettling.

"I might. I might not, as well." The woman clasps her hands in front of her and twirls her foot in the dust. A child in the body of an old woman. "It all depends on you, my dear."

"What do you mean?" I retort. I should leave; the woman is rambling. But something about her, something in her eyes, makes me listen.

"The world holds many possibilities." She lifts her head to the sky. "But the world can also hold many setbacks. At the end of the day, they are one and the same."

Kaya grips my arm. "Let's go," she hisses. "I don't think she'll help us."

"Maybe she can," I say. "At this point, what's the harm? We haven't found anything else. We might as well try her."

Kaya considers it for a moment and drops her hand. The woman's mouth twists into an empty grin, the only two teeth in her mouth directly across from each other in the center of her gums.

"Ah, see, you've got a good head on them shoulders." She taps my forehead and I recoil. Her touch is burning yet freezing. "Now, the cure," she says.

I lean forward, hanging on her every word with the peculiar certainty the woman will help us.

"Oh, that precious cure," she drawls. It takes everything I have not to force the words out of her.

She stops speaking and after a few minutes I can't bear her silence. "What is it?" I growl.

"What is what?" She tilts her head.

"The cure," I hiss, clenching my fists.

"Oh," she blinks. "That silly old thing. Well, the forest holds many wonders," she says. "It is a work of nature and contains the smallest forms of life, along with some of the largest."

"Animals," I say drily. "You're saying a forest has animals."

The woman's eyes flash with such an intensity that I stumble back. Kaya catches my arm and keeps me upright. "So narrow-minded," she says in a low voice. "Perhaps you won't find what you need after all."

I gape and she waves a dismissive hand. "No, I don't mean your cure," a grim tone tinges her words. "You will come to learn there is much more at stake than a single life."

I grab the woman's dress and pull her forward. "She's more than a single life," I snarl. "She's worth hundreds."

The old woman doesn't seem affected by my outburst. She wraps her fingers around my wrist and I gasp, releasing her. The feeling from her earlier touch is magnified, as if my soul is burning through a murderous blizzard.

She relinquishes her hold and I crumple to the ground. Kaya kneels beside me. "Cara, are you okay?" Worry laces her tone and she helps me up. "What did you do to her?" she accuses.

The woman shrugs. "The better question is what did she do to herself?"

Kaya shakes her head incredulously. "That's it, let's go."

For some stupid, unrelenting reason, I stand my ground. "I want to hear what she has to say."

"You can't be serious," Kaya says.

"I don't know, I just need to know." I meet her eyes. "Please."

Kaya sighs. "Alright." She glares at the woman. "Spit it out. What do you know?"

"Go to the forest and look for the berries shaped as stars," she says. I start at the first coherent sentence from the woman.

"Where in the forest? It's huge," I say.

"So demanding," the woman sighs. "You'll find them growing on the side of the trail a little ways into the trees. Shouldn't take you too long to find them – that is, if you're meant to," she adds.

Kaya and I turn around in the direction of the forest sitting on the outskirts of the sector. "Are we really going to look for these supposed healing berries?" Kaya asks.

"I don't know how to explain it, Kaya, but I just feel like we have a chance now. It's like I know they'll help Nona, but I don't know how I'm so certain."

Kaya releases a long breath. "Well, it's not like we have other options."

I turn back to thank the woman, only to find her gone. I whip my head around, searching for any sign of the unsettling woman, but there's no trace of her.

"She was her just a moment ago," I say.

"There's nothing to do about it," Kaya replies. "Let's just go look for those berries. I really hope this won't end badly."

"It won't," I say. "We'll finally find something for Nona and everything will go back to the way it should be. Everything will be okay again."

As we make our way to the forest, something about the woman suddenly strikes me. I don't know how I brushed it aside before, but now that I think of it, I can't get it out of my head.

On top of everything else, I don't think I'll ever forget her scarlet eyes.