The cold air seared my skin and slid like molten metal down my throat.
“It’s alright,” a voice said in my ear as an arm curled around my shoulder. “Lass…it’s alright.”
The fire did not return. Perhaps it had fled after being so close to death’s embrace. Perhaps it found my waterlogged body a weak host. Regardless, I had vanquished the flame.
And I fainted before my savior carried me to shore.
* * *
The first thingI remembered upon waking was the pain. A band of pressure wrapped around my head. Every time I moved, it tightened. I was sure my skull would buckle. I’d seen enough people die from head injuries to know how horrific it looked. Blood would seep from everyorfice—orifice:my eyes, nostrils, ears, and mouth. My head would become misshapen, and my face would swell…
“Easy,” a voice said as something cold and wet pressed against the back of my neck. A damp scrap of fabric. Oh, it was bliss! The water trickled over my heated skin, cooling me, and easing the pain.
“Try not to move, lass,” the voice murmured again. A hand brushed against my shoulder. “This will pass.”
And it did, although not immediately.
For several days I drifted in and out of consiousness—conciou—conciousness (I’ve never fully mastered the spelling of this word). I drifted in and out ofsleep(I’ll use a word I can spell correctly).The pain in my skull refused to abate. It spread, traveling down my neck, across my shoulders, and into my joints. Each time I woke, I cried out, unable to lift my head or open my eyes. And then the voice would speak again in its soft and soothing manner. The damp cloth would drape against the back of my neck, and I’d slip back to sleep.
“‘Tis a fever, lass,” the voice said on the fourth (or fifth, or perhaps sixth) time I’d awoken. “Rest. Do not fret.”
When I next crawled out of the murky depths of sleep, my eyelids felt as heavy as stones. The dim light of the morning sun drove scalding needles into my head. Tears blurred my vision, and nausea clawed at my stomach, but I kept my eyes open.
A figure moved toward me, but I couldn’t make out his features until he knelt on the ground beside me. It was a man—ahumanman.
“Easy,” the man said when I tried to sit up. “Easy.” He had a deep, rumbling voice.
It reminded me of a boy in Detha who had once lived a few dwellings away from Mama’s. He’d been little more than a child, but his booming voice had sounded decades older. Conn, his name had been. He’d always been so gentle, so kind, especially to the younger children.
He’d died before he reached adulthood.
But the man who knelt before me now…
“You’re soold!”I blurted.
In Detha, people seldom made it to adulthood. Those that did often didn’t survivelonginto adulthood.
So it was quite a shock to see a man this old: his dark skin crinkled with age, his hair stark white.
The man chuckled. The wrinkles around his eyes deepened when he smiled. “I suppose I am, yes,” he said. “To your eyes, I must seem ancient.”
I watched his gnarled hands as he wrung water from a piece of fabric. “Who are you?” I asked.
“My name is Terrick.” He pressed the cool cloth to the back of my neck. “And it’s nice to see you awake. You were firmly in the fever’s grip. I—you,” he sighed. “Do you remember what happened? At the pond?”
I did. But I said nothing.
“Were you trying to start a fire, lass?”
I remained silent.
“You may have been too close to the bushes. That’s why you lost control over it. But fortune was with you that night. Had I not seen the smoke, I wouldn’t have been able to save you.”
So he didn’t know. He thought I’d been trying to kindle wood. He hadn’t seen the fire erupting from my skin.
I didn’t know whether I was relieved or disappointed by this revelation.
“I can show you how to safely start a fire, if you’d like.” Terrick pressed a hand to my shoulder. His palm was massive; he could have wrapped his fingers twice around the thickest part of my arm.
