“Hello? Mister, ah, Jester? Are you okay in there? G-got us awfully worried.”
The rain and thunder had gone quiet by the time Tam’s knocking woke me. That was some measure of relief. What was more worrying was that my limbs still felt partly-liquified. The bruise on my cheekbone throbbed loudly, echoed by a full fuzziness in my head as if my mind had been stuffed full of cotton. When I drew a breath, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I had taken ill, and a new bother joined the ranks: a twist of dread deep in my gut.
“Jester? I will break down this door if I have to--”
Thump. Thump. I shook out my knuckles after striking the wall. The pain echoed up my arm all the way to the shoulder.
“Is that… Is that a yes? You been in there, uh… A very long time.”
I looked up and tried to gauge the amount of light coming in that little curtained safety window, but I knew full well that noon would register as “dark” just as much as midnight would at this point. I couldn’t tell if it was encroaching dread or illness that was steadily spreading chill through my bones. It took a feat of willpower to thump my fist against the wall twice more, and quadruple that to haul myself up from the tub of useless water.
I suited up-- paused a moment to look in the mirror. The face of Jester stared back at me. I knew the face instinctively, even if I had never really stopped to look at my reflection in all this time. The fabric of the mask was solid: no hole for a mouth, no holes for eyes or ears or any of the features one might expect. I could still see through it, obviously, but it was a one-way road, to see without being seen. So when I looked in the mirror, it was a wholly dissociative experience. It was me, but it was that… Jester. For a moment, I could understand the pet-name, even if I wasn’t overfond of it.
Tam stumbled back when I opened the door and slumped against the doorframe. He still wasn’t used to that Jesterly visage. The obligation to be polite quickly devoured the surprise, though, and he forced himself back to some measure of composure, coughing into his fist and fidgeting his fingers. “It’s almost dinner time. You…” He squinted as he looked me over. “You don’t look like you’re holding yourself too good. You alright?”
Much as it pained me to admit, I was already getting chills again. I felt my shoulders heaving up and down with every breath. If I went out again, if I got caught in the rain again… I shook my head, pressed a hand to my chest, clasped it to the side of my head, hoping that he would get the message.
He did. He reached toward me, and hesitated. “May I?” Warily, but too weary to care, I nodded. Surely he had learned his lesson anyway. He pressed a hand to my shoulder, then touched several points down my sleeve. “You really shouldn’t be wearing this while it’s still wet.” But he understood that too. I didn’t expect him to, but the way he leaned back and worried his lip after saying it said he understood the predicament.
“Mkay, what if… Well, we got beds upstairs, but…”
I shook my head. The easiest option was right here: I patted the bathroom door. Only there. Only where I could lock the door between me and them.
“In-- In there? Okay… Um. How about --and just hear me out-- How about we set up a cozy spot in there for ya. We’ll clear out here too. You put your clothes through the door and knock when you’re done so we can put them all in front of the… in front of the fireplace, what’re you doing?”
Having pushed off from the doorframe, I was slugging my way across the room to where they had spread the blankets in front of the fire to dry out. I lay down on them, bundled myself up in them, and curled up on my side there. The horn of my mask was a bother for laying on my side, but if I just twisted my head I could make do for a little while at least.
In my wake, Tam shuffled his feet and wrung his hands. I was familiar with the anxieties that my particular presence brought about and started to tune him out, but startled to find a hand on my shoulder. A lance of panic snapped me upright, one arm ready to push him away, but I froze.
He had frozen too, mid-flinch. His eyes slooowly cracked open to look at me with a sheepish, apologetic smile. “Sorry. I’m sorry.” He held up the pillow in his hands. “If you prop this under your cheek, you shouldn’t have to twist your head so much.”
I stared at him.
He winced bashfully and offered out the pillow.
I stared more. I couldn’t tell if it was because my head was full of cotton, but there was something especially odd about that man’s particular brand of courtesy in that moment. It didn’t feel rehearsed. It didn’t feel ingrained. Something in that smile felt… hopeful? No-- He was embarrassed. He was embarrassed for bothering me with his obligation to offer me whatever comforts he had at his disposal. He knew it was out of habit, and that’s why he felt the need to recoil behind such a timid smile.
I took the pillow anyway, still watching him as I tucked it between my cheek and the floor, trying to figure him out. It was fever. I was feverish. That’s why. That’s all.
The fever got worse. My garments eventually dried out, but I remained cold and sluggish, a coil on the floor. I distinctly remember every time it started raining again, because I found myself thinking curses and jinxes at it, every curse and jinx I could think of and a few especially creative ones I invented on the spot. When they brought me food or when biological necessities mandated, I had to lift mountains just to get myself into the bathroom and all but crawled back to my spot in front of the fire. After the second or third meal, I returned to find that Tam had removed the cushions from the couch to set on the floor and make a sort of bed for me. There was that apologetic smile again as he looked up at me from where he was reading on the cushionless couch-frame. I didn’t have the energy to protest.
After the fourth meal --or around that point, at least-- I lost track of time altogether. For a while, Soryya kept mumbling urgently to her husband, until he finally went out during a break in the rainfall. The steady thwack of an axe through wood shortly followed. Firewood. Because they were keeping the hearth lit for me.
Soryya and their daughter generally kept their distance from me, as if afraid they’d catch whatever disease I had. I still caught either one of them watching me from afar every now and then, the enigma that had burst through their door and wound up in an exhausted heap on their living room floor. As far as I was concerned, they had the more reasonable reaction. But I think they knew that I couldn’t harm them even if I wanted to, not while I was sick.
After another blur of boredom and misery, I woke again to find Tam staring at my back. When I twisted to look at him, there was that embarrassed smile again. It was his go-to. “Don’t get too comfortable, hey? You’ll get lazy.”
Ha ha. I pushed a hand up from the blankets to make a dog’s mouth of my fingers and clip-clip them together at him. Even I wasn’t sure what I meant by it, but at that point I was bored enough that any interaction, coherent or no, would count as a boon in my books.
To my surprise, this made him laugh. He closed his book around a feather and sat forward on the couch. It couldn’t have been comfortable sitting there, and yet he did so for several hours every day, as if I needed monitoring. “Good to see you’re at least responsive. Are you feeling any better?”
I considered for a moment, running a brief systems check. I still felt heavy and bleary, but the chills had let up some. In fact, I might have gone so far as to say I was cozy. When was the last time I had been cozy? The word itself has so many criteria to it: warm, fed, sheltered, well-rested, in good company, safe, trusting in that safety. Thinking back, I truly couldn’t name a time when I had been truly, properly cozy, not even back in that mountain village. How… strange.
I rocked my head to one side and pinched my fingers together. A little bit.
He smiled wider, an almost childish delight. “If you have the energy, you should get up and move around a bit. The blood-flow’ll help you feel better.”
I let my arm drift back down to the floor.
“So many things I wanna ask you, but I know you don’t want to answer. You scared the daylights right out of us, though, when you first busted in.” He looked toward the door, now with a temporary patch of wood hammered over the hole, and smirked.
Following his gaze, I felt a tickle of amusement, myself, but it was quickly swallowed when I remembered the panic that had sent me flying through solid wood in the first place --the rain. That was a danger of traveling that hadn’t occurred to me. If I had stayed the night in that room in Mitissilva as they had intended, I would have woken to see the grey of the sky and feel the moisture in the air. I would have known to stay inside to wait it out. Would they have let me, though? Surely the troupe that had confronted me in the night would have found me eventually. I would have had to emerge for food at some point. No-- The truth of the matter is I couldn’t have stayed. Even if they hadn’t pushed me out, I would have chosen, by my own free will, to go sleep in the woods anyway. Maybe I would have found a cave or some sort of shelter in time, maybe not. But here… Here, I was cozy.
“My daughter’s a bit afraid of you; I can’t lie about that. But it’s kind of an inside joke now. We trust that you won’t do anything untoward. Favor for favor, yeah?”
Favor for favor. They really had done so much for me. I couldn’t fathom why. The rules of normal courtesy should have splintered with the wood of the door. And yet they still had thrust upon me everything they had at their disposal and then some: fire, cushions to sleep on, blankets that I may have ruined with wetness, food, privacy. Habit shouldn’t extend that far when a stranger breaks into your home and then collapses unresponsive onto the floor.
Perhaps that is why I held up my hand and raise one solitary pinkie finger.
He squinted at it for a good long moment, frowned as he puzzled it over and finally relented, “What’s that?”
It took some effort to work my other arm free so that I could link my pinkie fingers together. Then I unlinked them and extended my hand toward him once more.
“I, uh… You want me to…”
I nodded.
He slowly set his book down and got up to close the distance. He looked worried. Maybe he thought I’d slap him again. “You want me to, uh…” I nodded once more, and he tentatively hooked his pinkie finger with mine, searched the face of my mask for some sort of explanation. Just when I was beginning to lose faith that he would understand, a light suddenly dawned in his eyes. “It’s a promise.”
I nodded.
He tightened his pinkie finger with a grin. “You’re not so bad.”
A laugh caught in my chest and made my shoulders bounce. I let go of his finger and pointed at him, before gently placing a hand on his face, pushing him back, and turning over to rebury myself in the blankets. I could hear him snickering behind me. He pat me on the arm before rising and returning to his spot on the couch, but I stayed put in my cocoon by the fire. After all, I had resting to do so that I could feel better, so that I could get out of there and put this all behind me as soon as possible. It wouldn’t do to let them cloud my judgment.
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