Illness

Photo found on TrekEarth.

There was something nice about going to a boarding school in an old castle, and being surrounded by children my size was a comfort.

It was night and a plague had broken out--the "Black Virus", a girl called it. Though I was a little girl and a student, I was led into the tower to give the vaccine. 

The children died quickly, like petals from an almond tree battered by rain. Once dead, they were thrown in the fire. I looked around and my shadow in the back of my head whispered that they would all burn, that only I would survive. I continued my work without hesitating, the room spinning and blurring.

I saw a girl grown a bit more than I am--she looked so healthy, but my shadow told me that she would be gone, too. I walked down the stairs to find a little boy (a little bit smaller than myself) who was too ill to walk up the stairs. Too weak to carry him, I could only hold his hand, colder and smaller than my own. I saw another boy his size--even more frail than him and with dark hair and bright eyes--pushed in on a wheeled bed by two boys my own size. He was Simon, and I could have sworn the two boys were Ralph and Jack, but they were only two boys I couldn't recognise, practically faceless. Simon wore a melancholy smile and seemed to see something that the others couldn't, maybe something even I couldn't have seen if I'd looked at it. I sent one of the boys to get some more medicine, but I opened my eyes before he returned.