A Stranger Comes to Call
The front door opens, a rare occurrence these days. A covered woman appears, dark brown tendrils peeking out beneath her blood red hood. A bright tube of metal flashes out from her left hand - her lightstick is locked and loaded.
“Look what we have here. A little munchkin for me to eat?” she says to the feral child knocking on the door, offering a smile with just a hint of teeth. She grabs the basket from the shaking child. “Please thank your mother for the food.” The child scuttles away, eyes wide, without response. The woman’s smile disappears, and she closes the door with a quick flick of her wrist and walks inside.
She floats through the hallway, afraid to make a sound. She listens for any hidden breaths, flashing a lantern into the darker corners, as though she's hunting for ghosts. After a few minutes of this, she's satisfied, and returns to the aft bedroom.
"Well, we've got food at least. The farmer’s daughter dropped it by. She looked terrified." The woman lowers her hood and removes bread from the basket. She holds it out, but withdraws her hand after a few moments. “Still on your hunger strike, huh? Well, you’ll be delighted to know that I gave the kids a new chapter in their story of Lilith, the ageless witch on the top of the hill. All you’ve gotta do is threaten to make a meal out of them and they scamper down the mountain like clumsy ferrets.”
There's a body on the bed, still as death but for the gentle rise and fall of her chest. Her eyes are open but she stares straight at the ceiling.
“You’re right. I’ve gotta get a new routine.” Lilith opens a container of soup from the basket. She spoons a tiny amount and brings it to the mouth of the woman on the bed. "C'mon, my friend. You got a whole five words out yesterday. Let's try to break the record, eh?"
Lilith is without impatience. Those first five words were a marked success after weeks of silence.
On one of those terrible nights when only the most desperate animals brave the outside, destroying each other for what’s left of the autumn harvest, Lilith heard a weak scrape against the front door. She grabbed her light stick and cracked the door open, just a little bit, only to find a skeleton of a woman splayed out on the steps, pelted by hail and snow.
The stranger looked as though she’d suffered an animal attack, or worse, reapers. Lilith wondered how she'd even made it up the hill but quickly stopped wondering and pulled her indoors. Pale pink icicles crunched beneath the woman’s body as Lilith slid her in - blood turned to frost.
Lilith peeled the rotting furs from the woman’s body, searching for the source of the bleeding, though she couldn't find it. She suspected that weeks of dirt, smothering her skin, might obscure the wound.
She ran to grab one of the buckets she kept outside to catch the falling snow. While she'd taught the village the basics of getting water to flow at the ready, the moving waters stilled in the wintertime.
She placed the bucket next to the fire. Once it melted, she began wiping the girl down, beginning with her face and hair.
After some time, the caked crimson flakes covering her hair gave way to shimmering blonde hair. Wiping her face revealed once-soft skin damaged by the harsh winter winds. The girl flinched at each dab of cold water, but said nothing. She barely even blinked.
Lilith brought an old straw mat out to the foyer and gently rolled the girl onto it. Her leg was badly infected - the bleeding had stopped but the wound churned out yellow foam. Lilith sucked in her breath as she recognized the symptoms - only the bite of the silver bear could cause such eruptions.
Lilith forced aside the memory of her last encounter with such a wound, of bodies slowly blackening, turned rotten by a poison that lives in the saliva of the beast, biding their time until they pass on in a slow, painful convulsion.
She still carried a small amount of the antidote in her emergency kit. She hurried to the pantry to find it, and hoped the bite was recent.
After the injection, the stranger fell into a heavy sleep. But when she awoke, she screamed and screamed. Lilith couldn't make head or tail of the feral yowls. Each day, she waited for the stranger to tire herself out, pouring sips of water when the girl's screams faded to silent whimpers. This went on for three weeks.
All the while, Lilith continued with her daily routine. The winter was coming to its end, which meant she’d have to come up with new farming tricks to trade for food and water and clothing; knowledge was her only currency. She hoped that if the villagers heard the screams, they chalked them up to tricks of the wind. Still, she took extra care each time she opened the door.
Eventually, the fever dreams stopped. Then Lilith made every effort to get words out of the young woman. For twelve days, she tested each of the different clan languages. In each language, she invited the silent girl to tell her story, offering a morsel of her own tale.
And on the 13th day, she decided to test the Old Tongue, on a whim really, just to see if she'd retained any of her old schooling.
"Night stranger," she repeated for the 13th time. "You’re safe here. Share your story with me so I can help you heal."
"I can’t," the sick woman finally croaked. "I've seen too much death."