Maeve. My caretaker. She watches over me when Jason isn’t around. She doesn’t say much, just gives me these sad little smiles and I don’t know why. She’s such a pretty girl I don’t know why she doesn’t smile more often.
I ask her why she doesn’t smile more and she tells me she lost her little brother to a raid. His name was Jonny. I ask her what kind of raid and she gives me another one of those sad smiles and shakes her head as if to say she can’t tell. I pretend to understand the pain of death and put my hand on her arm to comfort her. She gets up and leaves without a word and I study the ceiling again. There’s nothing else to do.
I eventually move on from the ceiling and inspect the walls. They’re painted with all sorts of strange images like little monsters. There’s a red circle around one of them and it’s the biggest, scariest of them all. It’s big and black and ugly. It has horns and fangs and has blood dripping from its thin lips. I shudder. Who would dream up such a hideous creature? There’s just one word by it. Him.
Maeve comes back a few minutes later with another cloth and goes to drape it over my forehead but then stops. She holds it in from of my face. “Smell this, but not too deeply.” I do as I’m told and am nearly knocked out by the scent. My mind blurs and by the time my eyes refocus I don’t know where I am.
She shakes her head. “That’s what I thought.”
For the rest of the night she doesn’t let anyone near me and she says it’s because I’m very sick and am under quarantine. She won’t even let me see Jason, which I nearly hit her for.
“When you remember who I am, I’ll let you go.”
“When will that be?”
“Soon, I hope. It hasn’t been that long.”
“Since when?”
“When you remember, I’ll let you go.”
I look at her with an eyebrow raised. I try my hardest to remember and I just can’t. She gives me a piece of a chicken leg and I eat it and she shakes her head. She brings me her collection of beetles and accidently kills one after she drops it. I ask her if that one was particularly rare and she shakes her head. We talk about the paintings on the wall like they were real and I do to humor her. I know they aren’t real and I know she knows I know and she shakes her head. She shakes her head and I don’t know why.
She says that I didn’t ever get sunstroke and that Jason was lying. It’s the middle of the winter and that means there’s no sun at all, which is ridiculous to me because then how would I get sunstroke? But she keeps telling me I didn’t and that I was drugged but I don’t believe her.
She doesn’t shake her head as much anymore because she says I’m starting to do better. She cooked me another chicken but I couldn’t eat it. I got sick as soon as she brought it. When she saw me doubled over she said “good, good” and then threw out the chicken and went to comfort me. She apologized and said she had to. It was good progress.
I believe her now because the fuzzy spot in my brain is a little smaller now. I remember a little more. I remember how death feels. But I still don’t know who she is and why she’s not affected by death like I am. Is she drugged too? How does she control it? She says I’m the only one in history who can feel death and I don’t quite believe her but that’s alright because she says I’m making progress. She says the next step is the monsters and that’s the part I don’t want to remember but it’ll be a good step towards remembering who she is.
I want to get better, really. But I don’t know if I want more pain.
