Job, the housekeeper, looks through the crack in the door and sees Olivia, the princess he has grown to love and care for, still shivering under the thickest goose-feather duvet he has just thrown over her.
Job wanted to spend more time with Olivia, but there was another stumbling sound from Karen's room.
"It's hot! It's hot!" Karen was walking back and forth in her room, wearing nothing but a little white tank top, her hair in a mess like a pile of dry weeds, her princess-like dignity gone. Job brought a large bottle of ice water and opened all the windows, but Karen set everything around her on fire like a little fireball. Job was sweating.
Job had to attend to the other two princesses, who seemed to be in good health, but not in a good way. Job held the pale hands of Princess Eileen and Princess Cathy, and probed their foreheads, but he could not tell whether they were hot or cold, as if they had lost all sense of warmth or coldness.
The doorbell rang, and Job answered it, grumbling, "Damn you for visiting on such a busy afternoon!
"We don't accept visitors of any kind here," Job said, as the door was half-open, "Please go back. Take your time." Before he could finish his sentence, the door closed again.
"A drug unique to the Amazon basin." the leader said softly. The words, though loud, pushed through the three-inch-thick dark wood door and into Job's ear.
Job's whole body froze. The four princesses had returned from the Amazon.
Job quickly put away his surprised look and said in a deep voice, "The antidote to the poison?"
"In the yin and yang," the man said. The man said.
"How long will it take?" A quick question.
"Six weeks." A quick answer.
Job opened the gate and a group of men dressed as Orientals stood in the snow. Job mentally counted thirteen men, each with a medicine chest, unarmed, with the look of a long journey, but not the look of exhaustion.
"Please come in." Job slightly bent down and welcomed these thirteen strange men from the East.
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