There were four of them. An old mother and a nest of three, curled together in the last stage of the fever. The door cracked against the adjacent wall and their heads turned. Caught in their stare—I froze, and I watched. And I listened. Their eyes spoke volumes.

Hosea was there. “Arika, you’re not well.”

I tuned him out, straining to hear their tales. The themes were pain, and confusion. Short stories with tragic endings. A crack sounded in my head and a deluge of other images poured forth. In the kitchen—malnourished children with bloated bellies, heads too big for their bodies. Blank eyes—not content at all—but dull with misery. Dark skin marred with ropes of scars. I’d averted my eyes—diligently. But, somehow, I had seen. Evidence had been mounting for years.

“Arika? Let me take you home.”

I shook him off. “I’ve got to do something,” I realized.

“There’s nothing we can do,” he said.

“There is!” I insisted. “I can breathe for them, like with Kiwi!”

“Not all of them, Arika.”

“Then one!” I was in a frenzy. “Please, Hosea, we have to try.”

“Arika.”

I took handfuls of his shirt and shook as hard as I could. “We have to try!”

* * *

He let me have my way, however misguided. We moved from house to house. He tended with medicine and, when he couldn’t treat them, I knelt and breathed for them, mouth to mouth. They would puff out broken pieces of story that made little sense to me—but I persisted. Kneeling, breathing, blowing. Blowing, breathing, kneeling, until it felt like all I ever breathed for was to breathe for another. I recalled how confident I’d been when I’d first come to the village. I’d entered the sick room with the giant at my side. I’d felt certain, with my quill and pad, that I could make it better.

It’s good that I didn’t know then how it would end. If I had seen the truth, I might have guessed the worst part. Not my aching knees, or the smell of blood—spilling and soaking. Not the shallow catch of a family gasping for air, like fish out of water. Not even the taste of their dead mouths—like cold salt cod.

No, the worst part for me was not being able to fix it! At that time, I imagined knowledge was force. My faith said I could manage my world through wit. I was valedictorian, all-powerful. And yet that night, I could not fix the fever. No matter how I breathed for them, they died terribly one by one, gasping. Realizing that I could not save my people—that was the worst part. It upset my faith and made me fear, in my gut, that I could not save myself.

“I need more medicine,” he said in my ear, between Houses. “I’m running low.”