og tried to imagine a worse way to spend the happiest festival of the year and failed. Alone and miserable with illness, he hacked and wheezed his way between restless sleep and hapless attempts to attend to his bodily needs. He could barely breathe when he lay down; it was as if he had inhaled a bucket-full of slime. His intermittent fever meant that he was either sweating or shivering like a mad man. He cursed himself for telling Gong Wei to leave him alone before he and the others had cleared off for Wintersday celebrations.

Now he had to relieve himself and his aching throat was parched. He drew back the blankets experimentally and winced when the chill of his little room cut through his woolen long johns as if he were naked. Teeth clattering, he hurried to his feet, feeling the cold flagstones through his enormous woolen socks. Somehow he found his chamber pot in the darkness and nearly poured its contents on his feet as he fumbled with buttons and trembled with cold and fever.

“Lyssa, ye’ve had yer fun, jus’ kill me already,” he coughed miserably. It was not as if anyone would miss him, anyhow. Well, maybe Lemony, but she would just sigh and think of poor Mog the daft old giant who was too stupid to see a monk before his illness had gotten out of control.

“Oh gods no,” he moaned softly as his stomach lurched and bile rose behind his jaws. He put the chamber pot down as quickly as he dared and lumbered toward the cottage door. No sooner had he staggered onto his door stoop than did the meager contents of his belly spew steaming onto the snow. The icy night wind pummeled him and he succumbed to a vicious round of damp coughs.

“I hate my life,” he thought as he collapsed to his knees, his bare hands grasping the icy railing.

He heard a door open some distance away and saw the flare of lantern light pour over the pristine snow.

“Who’s there?” demanded a woman’s voice, her firmness and malice far out of proportion for a sick man curled over in misery upon his door stoop.

“Yer neighbor,” Mog wheezed as loudly as he was able. She must not have heard him for she cast about in the darkness but did not leave the entrance of her cottage. From his vantage all he could see was the hem of dark fur jacket and her gloved hand holding aloft a battered lantern. She seemed impossibly far away and the wind was not in his favor. He could not rise and if he did not get out of the cold he would die. Mog realized now that on the balance of things, perhaps being alive was not so bad after all.

“Maeve!” he cried, “Help me!”

She must have heard him, for she moved down the steps and headed toward the low gate of her yard. He called out again as she drew closer until at last the lantern light fell squarely upon him. Maeve knelt beside him and touched his face with a gloved hand. He saw her wrinkle her nose at the vomit steaming on the other side of the railing. Then, without a word she urged his arm over her shoulder and braced him against the wall, hauling him up until he had regained his feet and she could guide him inside where it was slightly warmer.

“Where is your friend?” she asked, “The blonde man?”

“He went back to the island to celebrate.”

“But you are ill,” Maeve pointed out, “Why are you alone?”

“I din’ want t’ be, now, did I?” Mog rumbled angrily. What kind of a question was that?

Maeve looked taken aback and nodded.

“No one has been checking in on you?” she asked, this time with more concern and less irritation. He watched her glance around the sparsely furnished cottage with an expression of blank horror. Her gray eyes strayed to the fireplace that was now little more than embers and ashes.

“I din’ think anyone had stayed,” Mog mumbled as she guided him toward the bedroom, her hand still clutching the lantern. The cottage was in darkness. He had not been well enough to build up the fire or find new candles. He blushed as she looked down in dismay at the brimming chamber pot.

“You can’t stay here like this,” she said.

“I don’ really have a choice,” Mog replied, hating that she kept throwing his pathetic loneliness in his face. She guided him to the bed and, to his surprise, tore the bedding off of it. There were two thick woolen blankets and a plump goose down quilt and she draped them around his shoulders and made a hood of sorts to protect his throat and ears.

“Sit there, I’ll find your boots,” she said without emotion, holding her lantern aloft. Mog gratefully rested on the edge of his bed, glad the nausea had passed if not the giddiness. A moment later she knelt before him and eased his feet into his green suede boots, the ones that were too fine and delicate to wear in this gods forsaken dump.

“I can’t walk too far,” he coughed.

“I know, but your odds are not good here,” she said, “You can stay with me.”

Mog felt an odd mixture of horror and gratitude. She smiled grimly at him and helped him back to his feet, offering her shoulder as she guided him away from the dark little hell-hole he currently called home. He might have felt relief but for the biting blast of wind that greeted him outside.

“It’s going to snow in the morning,” Maeve murmured, “but before that it will freeze hard. The dwarves call it the wind of sorrows. They say it is exhaled by the hungry dead that starved during winter.”

“Charming,” Mog rasped, his knees like damp cloth, weak and wobbly as he labored through the snow after her. He coughed and rattled miserably, grateful when they reached the door to her little cottage and was greeted by the dry warmth of a well-tended hearth fire. He collapsed to the carpet-clad flagstones as she closed the door and bolted it. He no longer cared, for he savored the promise of warmth as he knelt near the fire.

“You can sleep here on the floor by the hearth,” Maeve said, “It’s the warmest place in the house, “I’ll make you a bed. Stay there and warm up.”

He hardly noticed her shuck off her fur jacket and boots. All he cared about was the blessed fire; he had almost forgotten what it felt like to be warm. Maeve returned with a large pile of blankets and a pillow. These she spread out meticulously on the floor barely two paces away from the hearth. Then she patted the makeshift bed.

Mog obediently lay down. She covered him up and knelt beside him. Her hand rested upon his brow for a moment and then lowered her head and pressed an ear to his breast.

“I s’pose if anyone were home they’d ‘ave somethin’ t’ gossip about now,” Mog croaked ruefully, “They’ve ben tryin’ t’ force me t’ talk t’ yeh since day one.”

“Same,” Maeve chuckled, “You’re from outside of Rin, I recognize the brogue.”

“Aye,” he croaked. Maeve rose from his side and departed. Mog worried he had offended her somehow but she returned with a wicker basket and a flask and set them down beside him as she knelt.

“Drink this,” she instructed him, “I’m going to melt some snow and make a compress. There’s not much my prayers will do for you at this point.”

“Thank yeh,” he murmured, “’m sorry t’ trouble yeh like this.”

Maeve frowned and picked up her basket.

“It’s no trouble,” she replied.

Mog was silent for a time, the mere effort of breathing keeping him preoccupied. He was vaguely aware of Maeve filling the kettle over the hearth with snow, pouring out the steaming water, mashing something in a pestle and then making him drink it after the water had cooled. The sweet resinous odor of thyme and the musky undertone of sage mingled with the hot lemon of ginger. She soaked towels in the mixture and laid them over his breast while still deliciously hot. Though he was exhausted and giddy, he managed to stay awake long enough to drink three portions of the strange tea before fever rose in him again.

“I don’ think I kin’ hold out much longer,” he whispered, his eyelids growing heavy as the room wavered unnervingly around him. Maeve frowned and laid a cool cloth upon his forehead.

“You’ll be alright,” she assured him, “Sometimes a fever is a good thing, it burns away the poisons.”

“A’fore I die, y’know when I heard yeh sing at Penny’s bedside it were th’ most lovely voice I've heard fer a very long time.”

“Fevers also tend to make people talk rubbish,” she soothed. Mog felt a sudden urgency to tell her the truth about his feelings that night. He might die and then she would never know.

“’n I thought yeh were so beautiful, like I were lookin’ on Lyssa an’ a man could starve t’ death unable t’ look away from Her.”

“Shh, you’re delirious.”

“M’ gonna die,” he rasped and for a moment he was certain there were hungry spirits gathered around him and only Maeve was keeping them a polite distance away, “Don’ leave meh alone w’ ‘em.”

Maeve frowned and clasped his hand upon her lap.

“If I sing to you, will you close your eyes and sleep?” she asked gently.

“’m a fool,” he coughed miserably, “’m gonna regret this.”

“I know you are delirious,” Maeve said quietly, “Close your eyes, my friend.”

“I don’ wanna go back in th’ jar,” Mog whimpered, aware of Ama Svenka’s pale figure standing behind Maeve. The woman’s dark eyes bored into him, “Armeh killed yeh ‘orrible witch!”

Ama was gone and he was staring up into Maeve’s perfect face, soft and heart-shaped, her raven hair gleaming around her shoulders unbound. He remembered how his body had betrayed him the first time their eyes had met but now his body was too weak and there was only his mind fluttering like a moth trying to escape from a jar. He could no longer form coherent sentences. He had the uncomfortable awareness of his poor flesh driving him mad while another part of him, silenced and powerless, looked on in dismay.

“I’ll look after you now,” she told him and he realized her lips were not moving. In that still, silent place he shared the sacred Lyssan bond with her. He felt her like sunshine upon his face, a luminous creature that blazed before his magician eye.

“’m unworthy,” he wept, basking in her beauty as if he had fallen at the feet of Lyssa herself.

And there he curled onto his side, the ground smelling of flowers and cool with morning dew. The goddess sang for him, wrapping him in a mantra of song until the nightmares fell away and the terrible grinding loneliness fled from place where it had lodged in his heart. He was home.