Walking the Ruins

Fever

"Leona, do you hear me?" The voice comes from afar, but its tone demands an answer.

A groan is all I can give them. I try to move my mouth, but the pain shatters my consciousness. I welcome the hands of blackness reaching out for me.

I feel hot. The heat is born from the beating of my heart, like the beating of the drums of doom. It is coming from my right side—from the right of my head and from my right shoulder. I try to open my eyes, but only the left one complies.

I'm lying on my back. Above me, a ceiling reflects the flickering light of a fire. I could die for some water. Well, I feel as if I'm dying anyway.

"Water!" Is that my voice? The movement of my mouth awakens a devil ravaging my right cheek, poking it with a hot iron.

Rose holds a bottle to my mouth. Her face is half hidden in shadows, but the thin line of her lips is in plain sight.

I take a sip. "The bear...?" My voice fails.

"Shush. The bear has been gone, many days ago." She places the back of her cool fingers on my forehead.

"But how...?" The animal's wild, musty scent tingles in my nostrils whenever I think of it.

"We heard your shouting and followed it." She now holds my hand. "There was a noise coming from a building. Your backpack was on the ground in front of it. Then, suddenly, there was a rumbling sound, and a puff of dust came through the windows. Seconds later a bear darted from the house. It ran off, never looking back, as if the devil were on its heels."

"We went in." Steve is sitting beside me, opposite Rose. He's frowning.

Why is he frowning?

He continues. "There was a big hole in the floor inside. It had obviously collapsed. Maybe the bear was too heavy. Anyway... we found you down there. It took..."

His words dissolve as I withdraw back into darkness, returning to the images on its other side, the images I long for. Images of my life, my real life. Images of a place where I have a home providing safety, uncomplicated friendship, a school to go to, my mother to hold on to. Images of routine. Images of my brother, the prat—even they make me smile. Sometimes, I see my father. I cling to these images, never wanting to go back to that world of ruins, of hunger, and of violence.

A swaying rhythm modulates the pain, a pain that has become a part of me. I see a gray sky above, without having noticed that my eyes have opened, the left one at least. The left half of my face is cold, and the right one is on fire. Trees are framing the sky, reaching for it. They move. No, I move. I lie on my back, and the swaying rhythm feels like the rhythm of human steps. I look towards my feet, and I see Kevin, smiling at me. He is carrying something. A stretcher?

I close my eyes, or my left eye, at least.

I return to the images in my head.

I lie in a room with walls of stone. I know this is our winter quarter. Rose has explained this to me. It is an old house at the lake, almost unscathed by the centuries.

She has also told me about the injuries of my shoulder and my head, how they had inflamed. I had been caught in a fever, lost in a delirium for days. Kevin's extensive first-aid kit contained some medication. They fed me almost all of it. God bless his over-anxious mother for it.

The weather carried ever stronger tidings of the winter to come, so they decided to continue their search for a new home. They carried me along on that stretcher.

They finally found this house at the lake. It's an old house, older than most of the others here. It had been constructed in a time when people were building for eternity, and not for profit. They decided to make it our home, at least for the winter.

About three weeks have passed since the bear's attack, but they feel like yet another couple of centuries that I just have skipped.