A wasting sickness came to the orphanage, I told Sid. Purple shadows under the eyes were the first sign, then a rash all over the body, rough red dots on the face. The signs were obvious. We all soon knew the symptoms and what came next. Dizziness. Lack of appetite. Dry, cracked lips. Oozing eyes. Many girls died, especially at first, and although no Middling or High-Kith doctors would enter the orphanage for fear of contagion, medicine was delivered that eased and sometimes cured the plague.

One night, at dinner, I glimpsed red speckles on the pale underside of Helin’s light brown arm. It’s nothing, Helin said, and shifted her arm away.

After we were supposed to be asleep in our own narrow beds, I went to hers. I touched her cheek. You’re warm, I said.

I’m not, she said.

I will get the nurse, I said.

No, she told me. I’m just tired. I want you to lie next to me.

She shifted over to make room. We were both small enough to fit together in the bed. It was wrong, what we were doing. If we were caught there would be trouble. Girls are not meant to sleep with girls, we had been told. Boys do not sleep with boys.

Yet I was a child, and I remembered the comfort of a crib mate. I longed for it. Her skin was fiery with fever. When I told her so, she told me that wasn’t true. She told me that I was imagining things. She had promised to explain always what was real and what wasn’t, and I shouldn’t worry, she insisted. Stay with me, she said. I just want to sleep, she said, and it felt so nice, so comforting to hold her, that I fell asleep even before she did.

When I woke up, she was cold and hard. A balloon of fear rose from my belly to my mouth.

She was gone. That was what the mistress said when she came running in response to my cry. She pulled me from the bed. The sheet tangled in my legs. Was she feverish? the mistress demanded. I don’t know, I said. Why didn’t you call to someone during the night? she said. I don’t know, I answered, but I did know. It was because I was incapable of seeing something for what it truly was.

The mistress was not unkind. I wasn’t punished for sleeping in Helin’s bed.

I had to be sequestered, of course, out of fear that I too would come down with the wasting sickness. But I never fell sick.