After a while, a house came into sight. It was a shabby structure. Dreary, isolated, and submerged in a sea of fog, beaten and broken by pounding rain, the very image of world-weary. And outside its front door, the master of the house.
When she first noticed him, she though him a corpse. Her heart froze, and her legs lost their mobility, and she would have skirted the house if she had seen another sign of civilization or shelter anywhere. The rain showed no sign of easing up, and night could not be far in coming. Corpse or not, here was shelter, and she was beyond exhaustion. Swallowing her fear, she forced her feet forward.
It was as she neared the end of the house that the first signs of life came from the man in the form of a violent shiver and weak moan. The girl’s heart jumped into her throat, and she froze again, but when her reason caught up, she rushed toward the man sitting against the doorframe. Empty flesh he seemed, clothing draping in large, wet folds over his body, arms and legs lying useless. His hair was tinged with gray, and his head hung against his chest.
The girl crouched beside the man. “Sir,” she said. “Sir, are you okay?”
For a time, the man seemed not to notice her. She repeated the question, but to no answer. Afraid she might have imagined his being alive, afraid she might have, in fact, been speaking with a dead man, the girl touched his forehead, flinching at finding it burning under her fingers despite the rain. For a moment, she thought she saw the man react to her touch, so she placed her other hand upon his arm and said, “Sir, are you alive? Can you hear me?”
With weary slowness, the man’s face half-turned to her, and as with the hills and Mel’s question, tears pricked the girl’s eyes. All across the man’s face were laugh lines, but his brow was wrinkled, and his dull eyes stared out from sunken sockets. She almost wished he were dead if only she could escape the dis-sonance of a dead man’s face on a living one.
Glancing at the door, the girl asked, “Is this your home?”
The man gave no answer but to shiver and drop his head. A gust of wind struck them, and the man let out a shuddering gasp. Seeing she could not hope for an answer, and fearing for the man, the girl acted. She pushed open the door and, straining under the man’s bulk, she dragged him inside as gently as she could and left him on a dry spot on the dusty floor. Inside, one of the windows had lost its shudders, so she ran over and fastened down the sheet that was attached to the sill. Ignoring the water leaking through the roof, she ran to the fireplace and started piling in wood. Finding the flint, she struck it till the wood defeated the moist air and wet floor and caught. As soon as the fire was strong, she pulled the man over, removed her bag and kithara, and began looking around the house.
It was as gloomy as the weather. Dust and dirt coated every surface. The table was worn, and only a single chair sat beside it. Quiet and empty and musty, as though not lived in. A twinge of sadness struck the girl’s heart, but she pushed it down and got to work.
She found blankets in the bedroom trunks and wrapped them around the sick man. After she felt confident that the patient was warm, she investigated the cooking area. Most of what she found in the cabinet or hanging from the ceiling was unusable, but she scrounged together enough to make a simple soup. It was watery but sustaining.
Night came on, and the girl felt a ringing in her head that strengthen as her hair paled, but it was bearable. Though she grew feverish, she did not collapse or feel in danger of doing so. The moon must be weaker tonight, she thought as she looked at the closed shutters rattling with rain.
All night the rain did not stop, nor did the girl in tending to her patient. When she could, she cleaned the floor and table. It felt strangely natural to do so, and the hollowness in her chest soon became more painful than the pounding in her head. Once or twice she nearly cried, but she dared not leave that main room while the fevered man slept, though she wanted to. There was too much here. She did not know of what, but there was too much of it.
During the hours when morning is still night, the rain stopped and the man’s fever weakened, and he woke with a groan. The girl put aside her cleaning and went over. She placed the soup on the fire again and reheated what remained of the frugal dinner. She then ladled a bowl for the man and helped prop him up. Compared to the day before, the man’s eyes appeared startlingly alive, though they still remained as clouded as the sky above. It was like the difference between a thunderstorm and a spring shower, the latter less ominous even if it covers the same amount of sky. When she came over to him, the man himself almost looked frightened, but when he tried to stand, he fell to the floor, still weak from his fever.
