The Terrifying Fate of a Black Death Victim

Hey guys . tonight we step into a world where even the act of drawing breath feels like a gamble. The air is thick, heavy with smoke and dampness, and you feel the rasp of your own throat with every shallow inhale. The candle by your bed trembles, its flame shrinking each time you cough, as though even fire itself fears being too close. You probably won’t survive this.

And just like that, it’s the year 1348, and you wake up in a cramped timber house in the heart of a plague-ridden city. The rushes on the floor reek faintly of rot, trampled and stained with days of careless spillage. The straw mattress beneath you scratches at your skin, and the wool blanket clings too tightly, trapping fever heat that makes your body burn and shiver at once. Your ears catch every sound more sharply than ever—the faint squeak of rats in the rafters, the shuffle of your mother’s footsteps in the adjoining room, the distant toll of church bells carried through the fog.

Historically, records from Florence and London describe how quickly the sickness came. A cough, a fever, a swelling in the groin or under the arm. Physicians of the time wrote in desperation, unable to explain why healthy men collapsed in the span of days. You feel that same terror now: the way your pulse thrums out of rhythm, the way sweat beads across your brow though the night outside is freezing cold.

Curiously, some people believed that simply breathing in the night air was dangerous—that the “miasma” itself carried the death. You can almost taste it: sharp, metallic, like iron rusting on your tongue. And so your family, like many others, has stopped opening the shutters even at dawn. The air grows thick inside, smoky from the fire, sour from too many bodies pressed close. Could you sleep like this?

Your mother brings a damp cloth to your lips, water drawn from the well that now tastes earthy, bitter. She whispers a prayer, words half-remembered from sermons that promised salvation if only faith was strong enough. Outside, voices drift past—neighbors arguing in hushed tones about who will leave for the countryside and who will stay. You catch your name, a shadow of pity, and then silence.

The candle spits wax onto the wooden table. You stare at its weak glow and think of all the light it cannot chase away. The corners of the room remain dark, heavy, pulsing with the fear of the unseen. You wonder if the shadows hide the angel of death himself, crouched low, waiting for your final breath.

You shift under the blanket, pulling it tighter, but the warmth is false comfort. A chill seeps in through the cracks of the wall, frosting the edges of the room. Your breath forms a faint cloud each time you exhale, a ghostly echo of the life still within you. Somewhere in the street, a dog barks once—sharp, lonely—before silence falls again.

“So, before you get comfortable, take a moment to like the video and subscribe—but only if you genuinely enjoy what I do here.” I’ll ask you something more personal too: where are you listening from tonight? Tell me your location and your local time. It helps me imagine these stories reaching across the world, from candlelit bedrooms to quiet trains, from sleepless cities to peaceful villages.

Now, dim the lights, and surrender to the night as it was for a plague victim. The story is only beginning.

The night presses close against the shuttered window, and yet voices find their way in. You strain to hear them, muffled but urgent, carried along the crooked lanes of the city. They sound like whispers at first—neighbors muttering, gossiping—but then you realize: no one dares speak loudly anymore. Words themselves feel dangerous, as if naming the plague might call it closer.

You push yourself upright, the wool blanket slipping from your shoulders. The fever makes your limbs feel heavy, yet curiosity is stronger. Your bare feet touch the cold rushes strewn across the floor; they crunch faintly, dry in some places, damp with spilled ale in others. You shuffle toward the window and press your ear to the wooden shutter. Outside, the world breathes in fragments. A cough. A prayer. The low wail of a child quickly hushed.

Historically, parish records describe entire neighborhoods falling silent within weeks, doors barred from the inside. Chroniclers in Florence, Siena, and Avignon note the eerie hush that replaced the usual clamor of markets and bells. You can sense that same hush now—the way even the drunkards no longer sing at night, the way gossip is reduced to whispers exchanged behind hands.

Curiously, some towns passed strange ordinances forbidding loud speech after dusk. They believed that words could stir up the foul air, spreading poison more swiftly. You think of that now as you listen, realizing how carefully each voice treads, syllables swallowed before they fully form. Even fear is whispered, as though it too might infect.

The smell of smoke drifts in through a crack in the shutters—wood, damp and acrid. Somewhere close, a fire burns not for warmth but for purification. People are tossing herbs into the flames: rosemary, sage, juniper. Their sharp tang cuts through the rot of the alley. For a moment, the air feels almost clean, and you breathe deeper, daring.

Then comes the sound of a bell. Not the great tolling of the cathedral but a handbell, small and metallic, carried by a figure moving through the street. The whispering halts. You know what it means: the dead cart. Its wheels creak on the cobblestones, and you picture the bundle of limbs and cloth upon it, someone who yesterday might have greeted you, someone whose name still lingers on their door.

The cart moves on, the bell fades, and the whispers return. You hear them scatter like mice: rumors of cures, muttered bargains with saints, secrets about who has fled and who has stayed. A woman swears that vinegar-soaked cloth will keep her safe. A man boasts that he drinks only wine now, never water, because water breeds death. Each word trembles with desperation, as fragile as the flame of your candle inside.

You retreat from the shutter, leaning back against the rough plaster wall. Your breath comes uneven, chest tight, and you ask yourself: would you dare step outside into that street? Could you walk among whispers, knowing that each glance might mark you as the next to fall?

The dog barks again, closer this time. Then silence swallows it, as though even the animals learn to quiet themselves in a world that listens too closely. You lie back down, wrapping the blanket around you, and the whispers become part of your dreams, voices of neighbors fading into shadows.

Morning drags itself into the room without sunlight. The shutters remain bolted, but a pale glow leaks through the cracks, dust swirling in its path. You stir beneath the rough blanket, and the moment you shift, you feel it—that painful knot beneath your arm. At first, you think it’s a bruise from restless tossing. But when your hand brushes the swollen skin, heat floods through your body, and you know.

Your fingers tremble as they explore the lump. It is tender, throbbing, almost alive. A pulse within a pulse. Each beat of your heart makes it ache deeper, as though something is growing inside you, stretching, demanding space. The wool scratches against it, unbearable now, and you recoil from your own flesh.

Historically, physicians described these swellings in chilling detail. They called them “buboes,” the telltale mark of the pestilence. In groin, armpit, or neck they rose, darkening from red to black as the hours passed. Chroniclers wrote of families who marked the first lump as the beginning of the end, a clock that ticked swiftly toward death.

Curiously, there were whispers that these swellings carried not only disease but prophecy. Some claimed that the shape of a bubo foretold the manner of death—whether it would be fever, bleeding, or madness. Others believed that lancing the swelling might draw the sickness out, though often the wound festered and killed faster. You remember these tales as your own skin burns. Would you dare to cut it?

You press the blanket tighter to your chest, trying to hide from the pain. Yet the body betrays you: sweat slicks your brow, and your throat rasps as if sand has been poured inside. You hear the floorboards creak—your mother entering again. Her face is drawn, her lips pale, her eyes darting to the lump you clutch at. She says nothing, but her silence weighs heavier than words.

Outside, footsteps splash through mud. The city is waking, though life here no longer resembles living. You hear no market cries, no laughter of children. Only the soft rhythm of shovels, the steady scrape of earth being turned. Someone is digging a pit. You imagine it yawning wider each day, hungry for new bodies.

A breeze sneaks through a gap in the timber wall, carrying with it a mixture of smells: smoke from burning herbs, the sourness of refuse, and beneath it all, the copper tang of decay. You gag, turning your face into the blanket, wishing the world smelled only of bread, hay, or spring rain. But those scents are gone, lost to a season of rot.

The swelling beneath your arm throbs again, as if mocking your longing for normal life. Could you ever lie in a meadow now, watch clouds roll past, without feeling this fever hidden beneath the skin? Could you laugh without fearing the lump that grows in silence?

The candle flickers beside you, its flame nearly spent. You watch wax drip and harden, a tiny grave forming on the wooden table. Time feels like that now—slow, dripping, irreversible. Somewhere far off, a church bell tolls once, solemn, and you wonder if it rings for you.

Night falls again, heavy and oppressive, the kind of darkness that feels thick enough to touch. You lie still, your arm pressed against the throbbing swelling, breath shallow, when you hear it: scratching. At first, it is faint, just above your head, like twigs against a roof beam. Then sharper—claws against wood, the scurry of tiny bodies in the rafters above your bed.

You freeze, straining to listen. The sound multiplies: one, two, three separate scrapes, then a squeak, high and piercing. Shadows flicker across the ceiling as your candle burns low, and you imagine them—rats, sleek-furred, whiskers twitching, their black eyes glinting as they search for scraps. You picture their tails curling, their teeth gnawing, their small paws quick and determined.

Historically, records tell us that rats and their fleas carried the plague through Europe, though no one in your time could have known it. Chroniclers only observed that where grain was stored, where filth collected, sickness soon followed. Ships brought them, barns harbored them, and city rafters echoed with their presence. Yet to your fevered mind, they are more than animals now—they are messengers of death itself.

Curiously, some believed rats were omens. In certain villages, a sudden swarm of rodents was said to foretell an entire household’s doom. Others thought that killing a rat and hanging its body at the door could ward off sickness. You hear their claws above and wonder: if you caught one, could its death save you? Or would it only anger fate further?

The scratching grows louder, joined by a faint thump as something heavier shifts on the beams. Dust sprinkles down, tickling your nose. You turn your face into the blanket, muffling a cough that rattles your chest. Your mother shouts faintly from the other room, chasing at shadows she cannot see. The rats remain, undeterred, masters of the night.

The air itself smells of them now: sour musk, grain dust, the faint ammonia of droppings. You wrinkle your nose, but there is no escape. Outside, refuse piles line the alleys, and the dogs fight with vermin over scraps. You imagine their tiny teeth tearing into the bodies left on carts, flesh no different from bread to them. Could you sleep, knowing that even in death your body might be gnawed?

Your candle gutters low. In the wavering glow, you think you see movement at the wall—just a shadow, or the flick of a tail slipping into a crack. The fear presses harder than the fever, and you clutch your blanket, whispering prayers you barely recall.

The scratching continues, rhythmic now, like a macabre lullaby. The rafters above creak as if bearing not just rats but the weight of something darker—disease waiting to drop into your very bed. You close your eyes, but the sound follows you into dreams, claws scraping endlessly at the edges of your mind.

The night is shallow, half-sleep and fever tangling together, when a sound slices through the silence. At first it is distant, just a faint metallic note, but then it grows clearer—a bell. Not the joyous peal of weddings, not the call to morning prayers, but a slow, measured toll. Each strike lingers in the air like smoke, heavy, unshakable.

You sit upright, your body protesting with chills and aches. The candle has burned itself into a stub, leaving the room dim and uncertain. That sound, though—there is no mistaking it. The bell is not for celebration. It is the bell of the dead.

Historically, churches rang these bells as part of the passing bell ritual. A priest or sexton tolled them when a soul departed, both to announce death and to call the living to prayer. In plague years, the bells tolled so often that chroniclers complained the sound became endless, a dirge with no pause. Whole cities seemed to breathe in time with the swinging clappers of iron.

Curiously, in some regions people feared the bell itself might spread sickness. They whispered that the vibrations carried poison through the air, rippling outward with every solemn toll. A few towns even silenced their bells altogether, though most could not bear to abandon the ritual. For many, it was the last dignity they could offer: a sound marking that a life had once existed.

Outside your shuttered window, you hear the bell echo through narrow alleys, bouncing off stone and timber. The whispers of last night vanish; no one dares speak over it. The air itself seems to pause between strikes, as though even the rats in the rafters wait in reverence.

You imagine the scene beyond your door: a cart paused at the crossroads, bodies swaddled in rough cloth, the driver standing silent while the priest lifts his hand in trembling benediction. No names spoken, no hymns sung, only the cold rhythm of iron on iron. The bell is their farewell. Could you sleep, knowing that each note might already be rehearsing your own departure?

The sound seeps into your chest. You clutch the blanket close, your fever making the bell vibrate in your bones. Each strike is slower than the last, until at last the silence returns. You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding, only to cough violently, your ribs aching with the effort.

When the coughing subsides, you notice the aftertaste of iron in your mouth, sharp and metallic, like blood. You wonder if the bell still rings inside you, tolling silently, measuring the hours left.

Somewhere beyond the street, a dog howls in answer. Then the world falls quiet again, leaving you alone with the echo of the dead.

Morning drags itself into your room again, though no sunlight reaches you. The shutters are closed, the air stale with smoke and sickness. Your mother sets a small loaf of bread on the wooden table. Its crust is hard, cracked, the smell faintly sour. Hunger gnaws at you, yet when you tear off a piece and lift it to your lips, the taste has changed.

What once was comfort—warm, yeasty, filling—now tastes bitter, almost metallic. Each chew turns your stomach, the dough heavy as clay. You spit it out, wiping your lips, though your hunger is not satisfied. The fever has stolen more than your strength; it has stolen the joy of food itself.

Historically, chroniclers noted how plague victims often lost their sense of taste and smell. Physicians wrote that even the finest bread or wine seemed foul, as if the sickness soured every pleasure. In London, records tell of bakers who could not sell their loaves because customers claimed all bread “reeked of death.” Hunger lingered, yet mouths refused what hands had prepared.

Curiously, some believed this bitterness was divine punishment. They whispered that God had cursed food itself, so that sinners would find no sweetness in life’s daily blessings. Others claimed the devil spoiled bread by passing unseen through kitchens at night. Families hung herbs over their ovens, hoping to ward off such corruption. You taste the bitterness and wonder: is it your body failing, or the world itself turning against you?

Your mother urges you to eat, her own face drawn thin. She breaks a piece of bread with trembling hands, chews, swallows, and forces a smile she cannot hide. The sound of her teeth grinding against the crust is sharp, louder than it should be in the quiet. You can see she tastes it too—the wrongness—but she endures.

The room is thick with smells: smoke clinging to wool, sweat souring in the fever heat, the faint mildew of damp timber. You lift the bread again, sniffing. To your senses it reeks of ash and iron. Your stomach twists, and you set it down, appetite gone. Hunger, once a simple ache, now feels like another layer of punishment.

Outside, you hear the faint rattle of wheels. The cart again. You imagine the driver pausing at each door, waiting for families to bring out their dead, and you realize: food has no meaning if your body itself is being prepared for the cart. Bread turns bitter because life itself is bitter now.

You close your eyes, leaning back against the wall. For a fleeting moment you remember another loaf, months ago—warm from the oven, shared with friends, its crust flaking into laughter and crumbs. That memory, too, feels sour now. Could you ever taste joy again, knowing how quickly sweetness can rot?

The loaf remains on the table, untouched. The candle flickers beside it, flame bending as though even fire recoils from its bitterness. You turn away, pulling the blanket close, the taste still clinging to your tongue like ash.

The door creaks open with a hesitant groan. Cold air seeps in, carrying the scent of damp wool and something sharper, acrid. You hear the scrape of boots on the rushes, and when you turn your head, you see him. A figure draped in black robes, face hidden behind a long beaked mask. The physician has arrived.

The mask is grotesque, birdlike, its curved beak stuffed with herbs that give off a strange sweetness: lavender, mint, cloves. The eyes are glass, dark and unblinking, reflecting your candle’s glow. His gloved hands move slowly, deliberately, as though the very air might betray him. He carries a stick—long, polished wood—which he uses not for walking, but for distance. He does not step close to your bed. Instead, he points, directs, commands with the rod, as though you were an object to be prodded rather than a body in pain.

Historically, plague doctors became iconic in the mid-14th century. They wore these beaked masks believing the herbs would purify the poisonous air. The stick allowed them to examine patients without touch, to turn bodies, even to ward off desperate families. Records show they were often hired by towns rather than individuals, tasked less with healing and more with counting the dying, keeping records, and recommending quarantines. They were, in truth, witnesses to catastrophe rather than its cure.

Curiously, some believed the very sight of a plague doctor was an omen of death. Children whispered that the beaked masks were not masks at all but faces of demons who walked openly during pestilence. In some villages, people claimed to see the doctors even where none had been hired—phantom figures in black appearing at crossroads, vanishing into the fog.

The physician bends low, the herbs in his beak-mask releasing a sharp perfume that clashes with the stench of sweat and sickness. He does not speak at first. Instead, he gestures with the rod, instructing your mother to pull the blanket back from your body. The wool slides down, and cold air prickles your fevered skin. The physician leans close, glass eyes fixed on the swelling beneath your arm.

Your breath quickens. Could you trust this shadowed figure? His mask reveals nothing—no compassion, no fear, no certainty. Only a reflection of yourself, pale and trembling, in the curved glass. He finally speaks, voice muffled and hollow, as if coming from inside a cavern. The words are Latin phrases you do not fully understand, prayers mingled with medical notes. Your mother nods quickly, as if clinging to any scrap of authority.

From a pouch at his belt, he draws a packet of dried herbs. He crumbles them into a shallow bowl, lights them, and smoke curls upward—sweet, bitter, choking. The air thickens, and your eyes water as he waves the fumes toward you with a gloved hand. You cough, chest rattling, the taste of cloves sharp on your tongue. He mutters that the smoke will drive away corruption, though the way he keeps his distance betrays his doubt.

The stick lowers again, pressing lightly at the edge of your bubo. Pain shoots through you, white-hot, and you bite down on the blanket to stifle a cry. The physician withdraws, scribbles something into a notebook, and without another word, turns toward the door. His cloak swishes, the mask tilts, the stick clicks against the floor. He leaves as swiftly as he came, vanishing into the gray morning.

The door closes, but the scent of herbs lingers, clinging to the rafters, to your hair, to the bitter bread still untouched on the table. You exhale slowly, the echo of glass eyes still heavy on your mind. Outside, footsteps retreat into the fog, and you wonder: did he come to save you—or simply to record that you are next?

The air in your chamber is still heavy with the scent he left behind. That strange sweetness, both pleasant and suffocating, clings to the walls and settles into your blanket. When you stir, the smoke shifts with you, as though it, too, has chosen to keep vigil by your side.

Your mother sets a clay pot near the hearth, tossing handfuls of dried herbs into the embers. Rosemary crackles, sage hisses, and juniper berries pop with tiny sparks. The smoke coils upward, pale ribbons twining like serpents before spreading into the rafters where the rats still scratch. You breathe it in, and your chest tightens, a sharp sting cutting through the fever haze.

Historically, burning herbs was one of the most common defenses against the plague. People believed smoke purified the air, driving out the poisonous vapors. In Florence, records mention streets filled with the constant haze of burning juniper. In London, physicians recommended that every household keep rosemary smoldering through the night. The air became a mixture of perfume and ash, sweet and acrid all at once.

Curiously, some families went further. They carried pomanders—small metal spheres filled with spices—swinging them before their faces as they walked. A few even stuffed herbs into the beaks of live birds, believing their fluttering wings spread protection. One chronicler describes a noblewoman who wore a necklace of dried garlic cloves so pungent that no servant could stand near her. Did she survive longer, or merely die more isolated?

The smoke grows thicker. It clings to your tongue, bitter yet faintly floral, like biting into a dried rose petal. Your eyes water, and you rub them with trembling hands, smearing sweat and ash across your skin. Still, you cannot escape it; even your breath tastes of smoke now. Could you sleep in this haze, or would dreams themselves choke on the fumes?

The room wavers, flickering in the candlelight. Shadows lengthen and twist, and you imagine the smoke shaping itself into forms—angels, demons, faceless guardians pacing in silence. You blink, but they remain, hovering at the edges of your vision. Your mother hums softly, a lullaby almost lost to memory, her voice muffled by the crackle of the fire.

Beyond the shutters, you hear coughing in the street. A man’s voice, harsh and wet, followed by silence. Then another door slams, a latch thrown, and feet scurry away. The smoke inside feels like a barrier, a wall between your frail body and the unseen poison outside. But you wonder—what if the air itself is already inside you, deeper than herbs can reach?

You lie back, the blanket heavy, the air thick. The candle flickers as though even fire struggles to breathe. The smoke swirls above, drifting toward the beams, as if drawn upward by the scratching of tiny claws. You close your eyes, and the world narrows to heat, haze, and the bitter perfume of rosemary and ash.

The street outside grows quieter each day, until silence itself becomes a kind of sound—thick, waiting, uneasy. You wake to it, the absence of chatter from the baker’s wife, the missing rattle of the cooper’s hammer. Where once voices drifted through thin walls and open shutters, now only the wind carries scraps of noise, rustling through empty alleys.

You shuffle to the window, pressing your fever-warmed forehead against the wood. A sliver of light seeps through a crack, enough to glimpse the lane. Doors once painted bright colors are now barred, beams nailed across them in haste. Some houses have marks daubed in crude paint—crosses, circles, words scrawled as warnings or prayers. You realize with a shiver: whole families have vanished behind those doors, locked away to face the pestilence alone.

Historically, city records reveal how entire households disappeared within days. In Venice, Florence, and Paris, neighbors reported sudden silence from once-bustling homes. Municipal laws ordered doors sealed when plague struck within, trapping the sick and the healthy together. Sometimes, whole lanes were walled off, creating islands of silence in the heart of the city.

Curiously, in some places people nailed sprigs of herbs or religious icons to their doors, not as decoration but as desperate protection. In Milan, officials painted red crosses on houses, a public mark of contagion. Some whispered that these marks cursed the families within, ensuring they would never walk outside again. You glance at the lane and wonder if your own door will soon bear such a sign.

The air smells faintly of tar—someone has smeared it across their threshold to block miasma. You inhale, but beneath the tar lingers the sour tang of decay, as though the barriers only trap the rot inside.

You think of faces you once knew: the smith with his booming laugh, the children who raced through the lane with wooden hoops, the old woman who sold apples from a wicker basket. One by one, their sounds have faded, their presence erased. Only the dog remains, padding occasionally past your house, nosing at doors, whining at thresholds where no one answers.

Your mother notices your gaze and pulls you gently away from the shutter. She shakes her head, whispering that it is safer not to look, not to count the missing. But how could you not? Each silence is a story unfinished, each barred door a grave waiting to be sealed.

You return to your bed, the blanket coarse against your fevered skin. The quiet outside presses closer, filling your ears until you can almost hear your own heart knocking. Could you live in such stillness, knowing that each vanished neighbor might be a mirror of your fate?

The candle burns low, and the silence deepens. Somewhere far away, a bell tolls again, faint but certain. You close your eyes, and the sound mingles with the emptiness, a dirge for the neighbors already gone.

The silence of vanished neighbors is broken now by new sounds—padding feet, low growls, the sudden echo of a bark against the stone walls. You shift beneath the blanket, shivering though your fever burns, and listen. Out in the lane, dogs wander without masters.

At first it is only one: a thin mongrel with ribs pressing sharp against its skin. It noses at doorsteps, paws at shutters, whining for the voices that once answered. Then another joins it, then a third. Soon the alley fills with their restless patrol. They move like shadows, slipping between refuse heaps, ears twitching at every creak. Without human voices to guide them, they make their own order—snapping, yelping, then falling back into uneasy quiet.

Historically, chronicles of plague cities mention these dogs. In Florence and London alike, packs of strays became common, roaming through emptied streets. Without owners to feed them, they grew lean, desperate, scavenging what scraps they could. Authorities sometimes ordered them killed, fearing they might spread contagion by gnawing at corpses or carrying fleas from house to house. Yet no order could fully tame them; they were part of the landscape of death.

Curiously, some people thought dogs could sense the plague before it struck. There are accounts of animals howling outside doors the night before families fell ill, as if warning of the unseen. Others whispered that a dog lying at a threshold meant the household would not see morning. Even now, you wonder: do the creatures out there bark in hunger—or in prophecy?

The smell of the street reaches you through the shutter crack: rotting refuse, dung, and the musk of unwashed fur. It mingles with the smoke inside your chamber, turning the air thick, almost chewable. You gag, pressing the blanket to your mouth, but the smell lingers on your tongue.

You picture them now—dogs gnawing at scraps, tearing into discarded cloth, sniffing at the cart that rolls by with its grim cargo. Could you bear to step outside, knowing those eyes would follow, their hunger drawn to the scent of weakness clinging to your skin?

A sudden bark shatters the stillness, close enough to jolt you upright. You hear claws scrabbling against your own door. The wood shakes with the force of the pawing. Then, as quickly as it began, it stops. The animal trots away, nails clicking on cobblestones, its howl fading into distance.

You lie back down, heart racing. The fever presses harder, sweat dampening your hair. In your ears, the dogs’ barks echo long after the lane grows quiet again. They are guardians of a city undone, loyal to no one, yet witnesses to all.

Your candle sputters, wax dripping down its side like tears. You close your eyes, but in the darkness, you still see them—yellow eyes gleaming, teeth flashing, strays roaming freely in a world that no longer belongs to men.

The first flakes drift silently from the sky, so small you might miss them if not for the faint chill on your skin when the wind sneaks through cracks in the wall. Morning has come again, pale and colorless. You drag yourself toward the shutter, lift the corner just enough to see. The lane outside has changed. It is no longer mud and filth alone—it is white. A thin layer of snow smooths over the refuse, softening the harsh lines of a world in ruin.

At first, it seems beautiful. For one fleeting heartbeat, the plague-stricken city looks peaceful, hushed under winter’s hand. But then you see the shapes. Bundles left outside doors, shrouded in cloth stiff with frost. The snow does not conceal them—it outlines them, tracing every curve and hollow. Bodies lie like stones beneath a cold blanket.

Historically, the winters of 1348 and the years following were recorded as bitterly cold across much of Europe. Chroniclers in England and France noted that snow often covered the unburied dead when carts could not pass through frozen streets. Parish accounts describe corpses left outside for days until pits were thawed or dug through the hard earth. Death itself slowed under ice, but it did not stop.

Curiously, some saw this freezing as mercy. People whispered that snow preserved bodies for resurrection, keeping them untouched until the Last Judgment. Others claimed the cold trapped souls, forcing them to linger longer near the earth. In some villages, mothers pressed snow into the mouths of their dead children, believing it would cool the fever in the afterlife.

The sight outside chills you deeper than winter air. Snow has covered the dog tracks, softened the claw marks at your door. It lies in the cart’s wheel ruts, smoothing them into white scars. But the lumps it forms over human forms are unmistakable. You shudder, pulling the blanket tighter, though warmth eludes you. Fever burns your skin while frost sharpens the world beyond.

Your breath clouds the air, ghostly in the candlelight. You reach out and touch the window frame, wood rough with frost, and your fingers sting instantly, numbness creeping into your hand. The world feels suspended, as if frozen not just in temperature but in time. Could you imagine life moving forward again when even footsteps vanish beneath white silence?

The snow muffles sound. No bells ring, no dogs bark, no whispers drift. Only the soft hiss of flakes falling, endless and indifferent. You listen, straining, but hear nothing beyond your own breath. For the first time, even the scratching of the rats has ceased. The city sleeps beneath its shroud.

You draw back from the shutter, retreating into the dim chamber. The candle burns low, its flame steady now, as if calmed by the cold pressing from outside. You lie down again, body trembling with fever though your skin feels icy to the touch. The snow remains in your mind’s eye, each flake a silent epitaph falling on the forgotten.

The door creaks open again, not with the shuffle of your mother’s feet, but with the careful, hesitant step of another. A voice whispers low, the syllables uncertain, carrying the weight of ritual. When you raise your head from the pillow, you see him: the priest.

He is younger than you expected, face pale, lips chapped from winter’s bite. His cassock hangs loose on his frame, as though even his body has grown weary of feeding itself. In one hand he clutches a crucifix, the metal cold, trembling as he holds it before him. His other hand shakes too, though he tries to steady it with the strength of faith. His eyes do not meet yours directly. They hover, skittish, as if afraid that one look might carry contagion.

He kneels awkwardly near the hearth, but not too close to you. The air smells of the herbs still smoldering there—sage, rosemary, and the bitter tang of juniper smoke. The priest raises the crucifix higher, his voice faltering as he begins to recite prayers meant for the dying.

Historically, priests bore one of the heaviest burdens during plague years. Records describe entire parishes emptied of clergy, men who entered homes and never walked out again. Many were praised for bravery, others accused of cowardice when they fled. In Siena, chronicles note that even bishops fell silent, too fearful to administer last rites. Yet without priests, death itself felt unblessed, and the living clung to any who dared remain.

Curiously, some families begged priests not to touch their dying, fearing the sacrament itself might hasten death. In certain villages, bells replaced blessings: the toll of iron meant prayers had been spoken, even if no one entered the home. A few desperate households even appointed laymen to whisper rituals, believing that any voice was better than none.

Now the priest before you sways slightly, his hands shaking so much that the crucifix rattles against its chain. His voice cracks as he whispers Latin, syllables blurring with his fear. You try to focus on the words, though the fever muddles them into a distant hum. Your mother kneels beside him, head bowed, clutching her rosary so tightly that beads leave red marks in her palms.

The room smells now of candle wax and sweat, layered over smoke and frost. The crucifix glints in the flickering flame, its metal reflecting your face—pale, drawn, eyes hollow. Could you find comfort in this trembling blessing? Could you believe, even for a moment, that faith might cool the fire inside your skin?

The priest lowers his hand, crosses himself quickly, then wipes his brow with a sleeve. For a heartbeat, his eyes meet yours. They are wide, uncertain, filled not with divine certainty but with human dread. He murmurs one last prayer, softer now, almost like a secret, then stands abruptly. His cassock brushes the floor as he backs toward the door, bowing his head but never stepping closer.

When he leaves, the silence returns. Only the faint crackle of embers and the drip of melting wax remain. The blessing lingers like smoke—thin, fragile, easily scattered by the next draft. You pull the blanket closer, trembling not only with fever but with the memory of his trembling hands.

The night feels longer than any before, stretching endlessly as your fever burns and cools in cruel waves. You drift in and out of shallow sleep, only to wake at every creak of the rafters, every soft scurry overhead. At some point, you notice your mother sitting by the table, her hands clasped tightly around something small. The candlelight flickers, and the object gleams. Coins.

They are not for trade, not for bread or firewood. She polishes them with her sleeve, eyes red from weeping though she tries to hide it. When she catches your gaze, she forces a smile, but it trembles on her lips. The coins clink softly as she sets them down, and the sound chills you more than the cold air.

Historically, placing coins on the eyes of the dead was a long tradition across Europe. The gesture kept eyelids closed, preserving dignity, and sometimes symbolized payment for the soul’s journey. In medieval Christian households, it was less about Charon and more about reverence—ensuring the body would not stare blankly into eternity. Parish records mention families saving their last pennies, not for food, but for this small act of honor.

Curiously, some whispered that coins also protected the living. A glint of silver on the eyes could fool demons or restless spirits, preventing them from stealing the soul. In certain villages, people believed the dead might open their eyes again in the night, haunting loved ones unless they were properly weighted. You look at the table and wonder: are those coins for your journey, or for your mother’s protection?

The room is thick with scents: stale smoke, sour sweat, damp wool. Yet when she lifts the coins again, they smell faintly metallic, sharp, almost clean compared to the rest. She cups them in her hands, whispering prayers you can barely hear. Her shoulders shake as though each word weighs more heavily than the last.

You swallow hard, throat dry. Could you tell her not to prepare so soon? Could you beg her to keep those coins hidden, to believe you will not need them? Your lips part, but only a cough escapes, rattling deep in your chest. She rises instantly, rushes to your side, and presses the cloth to your lips. Her touch is warm, trembling, desperate.

When the coughing subsides, you see her glance again at the coins. Her fingers trace their edges, her eyes flickering between you and the small, gleaming discs. She does not speak, but you know. Every moment of silence carries her fear: that by morning, they will rest upon your eyes.

The candle burns lower, its flame haloed in wax. Shadows stretch across the walls, long and uncertain. You close your eyes, but the darkness offers no peace. Behind your lids, you see them already—the cold press of metal, the final weight of coins sealing your gaze.

The sound comes first: a wooden groan, rhythmic and uneven, wheels dragging over cobblestones. You lift your head weakly from the pillow, ears straining. The bell does not toll this time—only the low rumble of a cart rolling nearer. Your mother stiffens, her hands pausing mid-prayer. You both know what it means.

Through the shutter’s crack, you glimpse it. A rough wooden cart, drawn by a weary horse with flanks hollow from hunger. The driver sits hunched, cloak pulled tight, face hidden beneath a hood. His gloved hand grips a small bell, though he does not ring it now. He does not need to—the sight of the cart is enough.

Bodies lie upon it, swaddled in coarse cloth, limbs protruding where the fabric cannot fully cover. Some bundles are small, heartbreakingly so. Straw has been thrown over them, not for comfort but to dull the smell, though even from behind your door the scent creeps in—sweet, rancid, unmistakable. The cart groans again as another man hauls a body onto it, the weight thudding against the others already piled.

Historically, such carts became a symbol of the Black Death. Chroniclers in Florence and Avignon describe them moving daily, gathering the dead from each household. In London, accounts note that the cry “Bring out your dead” echoed through the streets, though often silence answered. Records even speak of bodies left at thresholds, waiting for collection like unwanted burdens.

Curiously, some families tried to bribe drivers to pass them by, hoping to keep their dead within the home for a few more hours, a few more prayers. Others whispered that drivers themselves grew rich from stealing rings or purses from the corpses. A lesser-known tale tells of a cart that collapsed under its load, scattering bodies across the street, forcing neighbors to flee their homes in horror.

You press your forehead against the shutter, wood cold against fevered skin. The wheels rattle closer, and you feel your heart pound with each turn. The driver pauses at the door across the lane. A man emerges, face pale, dragging a shrouded figure with trembling arms. He lowers it to the ground. The driver and his assistant heave it onto the cart, straw shifting as it lands atop the pile. For a moment, you catch sight of a small hand slipping from the cloth, stiff and pale against the winter air.

Your mother pulls you back from the window, whispering fiercely that you must not watch. But the sound fills your ears regardless—the groan of wood, the crunch of snow under hooves, the muffled thuds of bodies being gathered. Could you rest easy, knowing that cart will one day stop at your own door?

The smell drifts stronger now: sweat, decay, damp straw, iron. It lingers in your throat, clinging to the bitter taste of fever. You lie back, eyes wide, blanket pulled tight as though it could shield you from the wheels’ relentless approach.

The cart creaks again, then moves on. The sound fades into distance, but its memory remains. The street is quieter than before, as if emptied not just of neighbors but of time itself. Only the ruts carved into the snow remain, dark grooves marking where the dead have passed.

The sound of the cart lingers in your ears long after it vanishes, but soon another sound replaces it: the steady rhythm of shovels. You rise from your restless half-sleep, fever making the world swim, and listen. Metal strikes earth, thud after thud, followed by the scrape of spades lifting frozen soil. The noise carries from the edge of the city, where fields have been turned into graves.

You picture it clearly, though you cannot see. Men with scarves tied across their faces, hands raw and cracked from winter, swing shovels again and again into the hard ground. Frost resists them at first, but slowly pits open—wide, deep, unending. Smoke drifts from fires lit nearby, meant to mask the stench, though nothing truly can.

Historically, plague pits became the grim necessity of Europe. Parish cemeteries filled so quickly that churchyards overflowed. Records from London describe trenches dug so deep that hundreds of bodies were laid within, each layer dusted with lime before the next was lowered. In Florence, entire fields became burial grounds, pits consuming rich and poor alike without distinction. Chroniclers wrote with horror at the sight of earth swallowing entire neighborhoods.

Curiously, some believed the pits themselves were cursed places. A lesser-known account from northern France tells of villagers refusing to walk near them, convinced the souls of the unshriven dead rose at night, their whispers drifting on the wind. Others spoke of strange lights hovering above the ground, flickering like candles—a sign, they said, of spirits trapped between worlds.

The shovels continue their rhythm, muffled yet relentless. You imagine the bodies lifted from carts, rolled like bundles into the yawning earth. Straw scatters, cloth unravels, limbs tangle in the descent. The pits do not care; they receive without judgment. The men working there do not linger, either. They toss lime, cross themselves quickly, and step back before the next cart arrives.

The smell reaches even your lane on certain winds: acrid lime, sour decay, the damp musk of freshly turned earth. It mingles with smoke from your hearth, creating a bitter taste in your mouth, as though you’ve swallowed soil itself. You gag, pressing the blanket to your lips, but the air remains heavy.

You wonder what it feels like to lie in such a pit, pressed among countless others, body indistinguishable from the rest. Could you find peace there, or would your soul rise screaming with the crowd? The thought chills you deeper than fever, and you shudder despite the heat coursing through your skin.

Your mother avoids speaking of the pits, but you see her glance toward the window each time the shovels echo. Her rosary beads clatter in her fingers, prayers whispered faster, tighter, as though words alone could keep your body from joining the earth’s endless mouth.

The candle beside your bed burns steadily, flame trembling only when the draft slips through. Its light casts shadows across the wall, long and hollow, like trenches waiting in the distance. You close your eyes, but you cannot unhear the rhythm of spades, each strike like a heartbeat counting down.

The morning air is brittle, sharp as broken glass. You wake to the sound of wings. At first it is faint, just a flutter here and there, but soon it grows into a chorus—flapping, cawing, a restless storm of black shapes circling above the city. You push yourself toward the shutter, weak hands fumbling at the crack, and peer into the pale winter sky.

There they are. Crows. Dozens of them, perhaps hundreds, wheeling in great arcs, their black feathers stark against the washed-out heavens. They dip low over the fields where the pits are dug, then rise again, calling to one another with harsh cries that echo through the silence of the street. Their presence is undeniable, their hunger unashamed.

Historically, crows and other scavenging birds became a constant sight during the plague. Chroniclers in England and France noted how flocks grew unnaturally large, drawn by carrion left unburied or by pits too shallow to contain the scent of decay. Priests sometimes ordered bells rung or fires lit to drive them away, though always they returned. Their cries became part of the landscape of fear.

Curiously, some people believed crows were more than scavengers. A lesser-known belief held that these black birds carried souls on their wings, ferrying them skyward when no priest could. Others whispered the opposite—that crows were omens, circling overhead to mark houses soon to fall. In some villages, children were told never to meet a crow’s eye, lest death recognize them.

The sky outside your window is alive with movement. Shadows cross the snow-covered street, flickering like black sails over white seas. A single crow lands on a roofbeam nearby, its claws scratching wood, its head tilting as it watches the shutter where you hide. Its beak gleams, sharp and purposeful. Could you hold its gaze, or would you turn away before it marks you?

The smell reaches you faintly, carried on a shifting wind—sweet rot, mingled with feathers’ musk and the acrid smoke from burned herbs. You gag softly, the taste rising in your throat, bitter and metallic. Even inside, the birds’ presence invades you.

Your mother crosses herself when she hears their cries. Her hands tremble, beads slipping between her fingers as she mutters a prayer too quickly for you to catch. She avoids the window, refuses to look. But you cannot. Your fevered eyes follow the black storm above, wings glinting in the weak sunlight.

The crows circle endlessly, a wheel of dark shapes against pale sky. They are patient. They wait for carts, for pits, for whatever falls. You lie back against your mattress, the sound of their calls echoing in your chest. Could you ever see a crow again without hearing these cries, without tasting this fear?

The candle flickers, shadows winging across the wall as though the birds have followed you inside. You close your eyes, but their voices remain, harsh and eternal, a sky full of crows blotting out the last comfort of light.

The cawing fades with the day, but another sound replaces it: whispers again, drifting through cracks in the shutter. Not the fearful murmurs of vanished neighbors this time, but urgent, hushed exchanges between those still alive. Remedies, cures, charms—secrets clutched like treasure. You shift beneath your coarse blanket, fever making your skin clammy, and listen.

Your mother leans close, speaking softly, as though confessing. She has heard of something—a cure not written in the priest’s book nor carried by the physician’s stick. She shows you a small pouch, sewn clumsily from scraps of linen. The stitches are uneven, the cloth fraying at the edges. Inside, herbs rustle faintly. She presses it into your hand, her eyes pleading with you to believe.

Historically, beyond smoke and prayers, people sought protection in talismans and amulets. In plague-stricken Europe, charms filled with dried flowers, coins, bones, or verses from scripture were sewn into garments. Some families swore these “plague bags” warded off disease, especially if worn close to the heart. Chroniclers mention entire markets springing up to sell such tokens when fear was greatest.

Curiously, certain villages devised stranger cures. A lesser-known practice involved sewing powdered emeralds or ground-up toads into small pouches, believing the stones or creatures absorbed poison from the body. Others tied red ribbons around wrists or ankles, claiming the color itself frightened away death. In Germany, one chronicle records that children wore live frogs in tiny cages, convinced that the animals would “drink” the plague before it touched their flesh.

You open the pouch your mother has given you. The smell drifts out immediately—sharp rosemary, faint lavender, a bitter dust of ground garlic. It makes your eyes sting and your mouth water, though not in hunger. She ties it to the cord around your neck, letting it rest on your chest where your heart beats too quickly. The cloth warms against your fevered skin, its presence both comforting and unnerving.

The air in the room already reeks of smoke, sweat, and sickness, yet now this new scent cuts through—herbal, pungent, almost medicinal. You breathe it in deeply, hoping it will soothe you. But the cough still rattles your chest, and the swelling beneath your arm still throbs with each heartbeat. Could such a pouch truly protect you, or is it only a symbol—something for your mother to hold onto as the world collapses?

She smooths your hair back with trembling fingers, her touch as fragile as her faith in the little charm. For her, the pouch is hope, however small. For you, it is a weight, pressing against your chest like a reminder of how close death waits.

Outside, a cart rattles distantly, its wheels crunching over snow. The pouch shifts against your skin as you lie back, its herbal scent clinging to your breath. You close your eyes, and for a moment you almost imagine it working—fighting the unseen poison, holding back the shadows. Almost.

The next day dawns gray, smoke already hanging heavy in the air. You wake coughing, lungs raw, and notice that even before the hearth is stirred, the room smells of burning. Not the sweet crackle of wood alone—something harsher, acrid, like scorched cloth and hair. Your mother whispers that the city has ordered another fire, this time in the square.

From the shutter’s crack you see faint plumes rising beyond the rooftops, drifting upward in twisting columns. The smoke is darker than wood smoke, denser, carrying the tang of oil-soaked rags and charred leather. You imagine the piles: mattresses dragged from sickrooms, clothing stripped from bodies, bedding spotted with sweat and blood. Everything touched by plague is heaped together and set alight.

Historically, great bonfires were one of the most common responses to the Black Death. Cities from Florence to Avignon ordered infected bedding, clothes, and even furniture burned in public squares. Chroniclers wrote that smoke thickened the air until the streets grew hazy, the sun itself dimmed. Some believed the fires purified contagion, others that their smoke repelled poisoned air.

Curiously, lesser-known accounts describe people adding more than cloth to the flames. In some towns, parents cut locks of their children’s hair and tossed them into the blaze, believing it would keep death from finding the living child. Others burned wax figures shaped like the sick, a symbolic sacrifice meant to trick fate. One record from Lübeck tells of villagers who flung spices directly into bonfires, as if sweet smoke might confuse death’s sense of smell.

The flames in your square roar louder now, their crackle carried through the still streets. Sparks rise like stars in daylight, vanishing against the gray sky. You catch the scent of rosemary, faint under the stench of charred fabric, someone tossing herbs into the blaze as offering. Yet the smoke still turns bitter, making your throat ache and eyes water.

Your mother ties a cloth over her mouth and presses one against yours, the fabric dampened with vinegar. The sour sting makes you gag, but she insists it will protect you. You lean into her hand, weak, breathing through the soaked rag as the air grows thicker. Each inhale tastes of sourness and ash. Could you imagine sleeping peacefully while the whole city burns its own belongings in the name of hope?

Children cry faintly in the distance, their voices muffled by the wind. The fire consumes everything, leaving nothing but embers and blackened scraps. You close your eyes, picturing familiar objects—blankets, chairs, books—vanishing into smoke. A world built carefully, piece by piece, now reduced to ash for fear of invisible poison.

The candle on your table flickers as if it too feels the pull of the great fires beyond. Its flame bends toward the window, drawn to the draft carrying smoke. You watch it tremble, then curl back beneath your blanket. Outside, the fires roar, relentless, as if the city itself were being offered to the sky.

The square has grown quiet again, ashes drifting like gray snowflakes across the rooftops. You lie in bed, staring at the shutter crack, when you notice what’s missing. Not the sound of the cart, not the toll of bells—something subtler. No laughter. No running feet. No shrill voices echoing in the lane. The children are gone.

Days ago, you heard them still—small groups darting past, hoops rolling across the cobbles, a game shouted in hurried whispers before parents called them back inside. But now the silence is complete. You rise weakly, pressing your eye to the crack in the shutter. The lane is empty, its doors barred, its windows sealed. The chalk marks painted there seem whiter in the cold air, like warnings written for no one left to read.

Historically, chronicles speak of children vanishing from the streets during plague outbreaks. Some were taken to country manors by desperate families hoping distance might shield them. Others simply disappeared into pits with their parents, no record left of their names. Parish registers from 1349 list lines of burials marked only as pueri—children—without number or identity.

Curiously, there are stranger tales. In parts of Germany, parents left children in the care of wandering friars, convinced holy men could protect them better than their own households. In northern Italy, rumors spread that entire bands of children marched away singing hymns, a “children’s crusade” against the plague, vanishing into the mountains and never returning. Whether truth or legend, such stories reveal how fear carved absence into the very fabric of community.

The emptiness outside feels heavier than noise. The lane smells of cold stone and tarred doorways, faint smoke still hanging in the air. Without children’s voices, even the dogs roam less often, as though the absence unsettles them too. You remember a girl who sold apples, her laughter high and bright, and the boy who chased her with a stick, pretending it was a sword. Their echoes cling to the street like ghosts, audible only in memory.

Your mother says nothing when she notices your gaze fixed on the window. She smooths your hair back, avoiding the subject, but you catch the glimmer in her eyes. Perhaps she, too, notices the absence, though she dares not name it. The candle between you sputters, its small flame failing to warm the hollow silence.

Could you imagine a city without children? Without their cries, their laughter, their quarrels spilling into the street? The thought chills you more than the fever. A place emptied not only of life but of future. You curl tighter beneath the blanket, the herbal pouch pressing against your chest, and try to listen for a voice that never comes.

Only the crows answer, circling overhead, their harsh cries cutting through the silence like knives. They mark what you already know: the children have vanished, and the world feels older, emptier, unbearably still.

The silence of vanished children lingers in the air, but the city does not remain empty of movement. As you lie weakly beneath your blanket, the sound of shuffling feet reaches your shutter. Slow, deliberate, almost ritualistic. You peer through the crack, and there they are—figures drifting through the lane, each one marked by strange ornaments, masks, and relics dangling from their necks.

One woman passes with a strip of crimson cloth tied across her face, the fabric spotted with dark stains where she has breathed too long. A man follows, his entire head swathed in linen, leaving only narrow slits for his eyes. Another clutches a crucifix so tightly in his fist that blood seeps from where the edges bite into his skin. The street is no longer filled with neighbors, but with masked shadows, each carrying their own fragment of hope.

Historically, the use of masks and talismans became widespread during plague years. While physicians adopted the long-beaked masks stuffed with herbs, ordinary people improvised. Some wore bags of camphor around their necks, others held posies of flowers to their noses. Pilgrims carried relics—bones of saints, fragments of cloth said to be holy—as if holiness could shield them from contagion. Parish inventories from Avignon list chalices and reliquaries lent out to the fearful, their surfaces kissed raw by desperate lips.

Curiously, not all relics came from the church. A lesser-known practice saw villagers fashioning charms from animal parts—wolf teeth, bat wings, even dried frogs—believing these grotesque relics frightened away sickness. In parts of Germany, mothers stitched small crosses of iron into children’s clothing, while in Spain, some hung scallop shells over their doors, symbols borrowed from pilgrims of Santiago. Each relic was both shield and declaration: “I fight with what I have.”

The street outside reeks of vinegar-soaked cloth and sweat. The sharp tang drifts through the shutter, mingling with the smoky residue still hanging in the rafters. You taste it even before you breathe deeply, sour on your tongue, like spoiled wine.

Your mother, too, has prepared something. She ties a small relic to the cord around your neck, just beside the herbal pouch. It is a wooden cross, carved roughly by your father years ago, worn smooth by her hands. She presses it to your chest, her lips brushing your hair, whispering that this will help. Her faith trembles, but her hope is fierce.

You feel the weight of both charms now—the pouch of herbs, the wooden cross—resting against your skin. Together they are heavy, almost suffocating, yet strangely comforting. Could you believe, even for a moment, that such objects might turn away death’s gaze? Or is belief itself the cure, even if the body fails?

Outside, the masked figures continue their slow procession. Their relics clink faintly with each step, bones against wood, metal against cloth. They pass silently, shadows carrying fragments of faith through a city emptied of certainty. You lie back, the relic pressing into your skin, the mask of smoke and prayer settling over the night.

You wake in darkness again, and the first thing you notice is not a sound, but the lack of one. No cart wheels groaning. No dogs prowling. No bells tolling from distant spires. Even the crows, whose cries had once shredded the sky, have fallen quiet. It is the kind of silence that feels unnatural, as though the city itself has stopped breathing.

You drag yourself toward the shutter, every movement heavy, fever draining what strength remains. When your eye meets the crack, the street lies still—snow untouched, doors barred, smoke absent from chimneys. The whole lane looks like a painting abandoned mid-stroke, frozen in a moment that refuses to pass.

Historically, chroniclers wrote of entire quarters of cities falling mute in the height of plague. In Florence, a scribe recorded that “no voice rang, no bell, no song; the city lay as still as the grave.” In London, foreign merchants described how even market squares stood deserted, stalls abandoned, goods rotting in silence. What once had been the heartbeat of cities became empty lungs.

Curiously, in some villages people believed silence itself was protective. They thought noise disturbed the balance of the air, stirring the invisible corruption that clung to every breath. A few towns even banned singing or the playing of instruments during outbreaks. Yet others feared silence more than noise, claiming it meant death walked so close that no one dared call out.

The air around you is thick, heavy with absence. Even the rats in the rafters seem to have stilled. Their claws no longer scratch, their squeaks no longer pierce. You wonder if they, too, have fled or fallen. The silence presses so hard that you hear new sounds: your own pulse thudding in your ears, the rasp of your breath through parched lips, the faint creak of the mattress straw when you shift.

The room itself feels swallowed by it. Your mother moves softly near the hearth, but even her motions are subdued. She no longer hums prayers under her breath, no longer dares to whisper comforts. Her silence speaks louder than words—fatigue, resignation, dread. She lights a candle, and even its flame seems hushed, flickering without crackle, a silent witness to the night.

You close your eyes and imagine the whole city asleep, though you know many do not sleep at all. Behind doors, families hold their breath, waiting. Could you endure this stillness, night after night, knowing that noise itself has become suspect, dangerous?

When you listen harder, the silence is no longer empty. It becomes a presence of its own, a shadow pressing into your chest, filling the corners of the room. You pull the blanket tighter, clutching the relic and the herbal pouch against your heart, and breathe shallowly. The silence spreads—outside, inside, within—and there is nowhere left untouched.

The silence presses on, heavy and suffocating, when a faint knock comes at the door. Your mother startles, clutching her rosary. Slowly, cautiously, she unlatches it. A figure stands in the threshold—another physician, his mask shorter, his cloak streaked with ash. He does not linger long inside, but leaves behind something curious before departing: a small leather-bound book.

It rests on the table by your candle, its cover stained with soot, its clasp rusted but intact. You reach for it with trembling fingers, the leather rough beneath your touch. When you open it, the pages are filled with cramped handwriting—Latin phrases, diagrams of bodies, lists of symptoms and “remedies.” The ink blots where a trembling hand pressed too firmly.

Historically, plague doctors often kept notebooks of their observations. These records, though not cures, became some of the earliest medical descriptions of the Black Death. Surviving manuscripts describe buboes in meticulous detail, fevers measured in days, bleeding noses, vomiting, sudden collapse. Some note the failure of treatments: bloodletting, lancing, poultices of herbs and vinegar. They are not guides to healing, but grim diaries of despair.

Curiously, lesser-known entries reveal desperation in stranger forms. A few notebooks mention rubbing crushed emeralds into the skin, or applying mixtures of chicken fat and onions to swellings. One Italian doctor described tying live pigeons to a patient’s body, believing the birds would draw out poison. Another wrote of burying figs beneath the bed to trap the sickness overnight. Each page is both confession and experiment, a record of hope and failure.

The scent of the book is sharp—ink, dust, a faint tang of mildew. You flip through slowly, eyes watering from the strain, fever making the words swim. One passage catches you: “Patient still breathes, though sores blacken. Prognosis: poor.” Another reads: “No remedy avails. Only prayers remain.” The words blur, and you wonder if the physician who wrote them believed in his remedies at all—or only in his need to write.

Your mother hovers, eyes darting to the pages as though they hold salvation. She cannot read, but her gaze clings to the diagrams, the marks resembling the swellings beneath your own arm. You close the book gently, unwilling to let her see more. The leather creaks as you fasten the clasp, sealing its grim truths inside.

The candle beside it flickers, casting the book’s shadow across the wall. It looks larger than it is, heavy, ominous, as though the words within carry more than ink—an echo of every patient reduced to a line of text. Could you imagine your own body described so coldly? A swelling noted, a fever measured, a sigh written down as the last?

You lie back, the image of the notebook lingering in your mind. Outside, the silence remains, broken only by the faint rustle of snow against the shutters. Inside, the little book waits, a silent witness, its pages whispering the same truth: there are no cures, only records.

The night deepens, and the air grows sharper. You stir beneath the blanket, shifting to pull it tighter, but the cold has already crept in. When you exhale, you see it—your own breath drifting before your face, pale and ghostly in the faint candlelight. Frozen breath. Proof that winter has entered your chamber as surely as the plague has entered your body.

The rafters glisten faintly where frost has spread along the beams, silver lines catching the candle’s glow. The straw in your mattress crunches stiffly as you move, each stalk brittle with cold. Your fingers ache when you clutch the relic at your chest, the wood biting into your palm. Even your fever cannot keep the chill away; it mingles with heat, creating a strange, shivering confusion in your body.

Historically, chronicles of the mid-14th century note bitter winters that worsened suffering. Parish records describe victims lying in unheated rooms, their final breaths visible in the air. In England, some wrote of frost forming on the blankets of the sick, while in France, bodies left in doorways froze solid before carts arrived. Cold did not cure the plague, but it preserved its victims, delaying decay until the ground could be broken.

Curiously, some believed frozen breath itself carried meaning. A lesser-known belief claimed that when you could see your soul leaving in white puffs, death was already waiting to claim it. Others said the opposite—that each visible breath was proof of life, a fragile candle of the spirit. Parents sometimes pressed children’s faces close to the light, desperate to see that faint cloud appear again and again.

You lift your hand toward your lips and blow softly, watching the plume rise and fade. It seems insubstantial, dissolving faster than you can grasp. You wonder—when the breath no longer comes, will your soul drift just as quickly into nothing?

The room is hushed except for the faint crackle of embers in the hearth. Their warmth does not reach you. Smoke curls lazily, too weak to fight the frost. Your mother wraps another blanket over you, but the chill still pierces, sharp as knives. She cups your face, her hands rough, her breath mingling with yours in the cold air. For a moment, two white clouds intertwine, then vanish together.

You listen to the silence, broken only by your own breathing. Each exhale is a reminder, each cloud a marker of time passing. Could you count the hours left by watching your own breath fade into the night?

The candle trembles, flame bending as frost creeps closer to its light. You close your eyes, body shivering, your chest rising and falling in shallow rhythm. Breath after breath, each one a visible prayer written briefly in the air, erased before it can be answered.

The frost still clings to the rafters when another sound rises through the silence. Low at first, like a hum on the wind, then clearer—voices. Many voices, weaving together in a single rhythm. You push yourself upright, fever-slick hair sticking to your temples, and press your ear to the shutter. The sound carries through the frozen air: chants at midnight.

They come from the direction of the church square. You can almost see them in your mind—processions of figures moving with candles held high, flames shivering in the night wind. The wax drips onto gloved fingers, but the singers do not falter. Their voices rise and fall, heavy with sorrow, yet strangely steady. Latin prayers, some familiar, some lost to your fever. The cadence is hypnotic, like waves pulling at the edges of your consciousness.

Historically, midnight processions were common in plague years. Priests and penitents walked through streets, singing litanies, begging heaven for mercy. Chroniclers describe entire towns joining these somber marches, candles glowing like rivers of light through darkened lanes. Some hoped their prayers might soften divine wrath; others simply needed the sound to break the suffocating silence of death.

Curiously, a lesser-known custom involved the flagellants—groups of penitents who whipped themselves as they marched, their chanting punctuated by the crack of leather on flesh. They believed their suffering might atone for the sins that brought the plague. Chroniclers wrote with awe and horror of these bleeding processions, their chants echoing like thunder in the night.

The voices outside swell louder, filling your chamber with resonance. You smell wax faintly through the shutter, mixed with smoke and the sour tang of sweat. For a moment, you imagine you are among them—feet crunching on snow, breath rising in pale clouds, the candle trembling in your frozen hand. Could you walk with them, body weakened by fever, believing that each step brought you closer to mercy?

Your mother kneels by the hearth, whispering the words she can remember, her voice joining faintly with those beyond the walls. The candle between you flares, its small flame bowing toward the shutter as though drawn to the procession. Shadows tremble across the walls, flickering in time with the chant.

The music becomes more than sound. It seeps into your body, steadying your breath, calming your racing pulse. For a moment, you forget the swelling under your arm, the cough scratching your throat. You are carried by the rhythm, drifting as though the chant itself holds you afloat.

And yet, when the last voice fades into silence, the emptiness returns heavier than before. The echoes cling to the air, hollow and lingering. You lie back, staring at the rafters rimed with frost, and wonder: were those voices heard in heaven—or swallowed by the same darkness that swallows every breath?

Night folds around your chamber like a cloak still cold from the snow. The embers in the hearth have slumped into a dull red eye, winking through ash. You pull the blanket closer, feeling the hard little knot of the herbal pouch against your chest and the wooden cross beneath your palm. When the wind threads through the cracks in the wall, you smell old smoke and damp wool—and then, underneath it, something different. Wet fur. Earth. A breath of the outside pressed right up against your door.

You hear the first scrape. Nails on wood. A soft whine follows, uncertain, rising and falling like a question. You hold your breath. Again: the scratch, the pause, the soft thud of a body settling onto the threshold as if a weary sentinel has chosen its post. You glance toward your mother; she has already lifted her head, eyes shining in the candle’s faint halo. She does not move to open the door. She only listens with you, hands resting on the rosary that has grown heavy from so much use.

You speak without words, the way the sick speak to guardians. Stay. Please stay. As if the thought itself might pass through wood and iron and find the animal curled outside.

Historically, accounts from plague years note that dogs lingered at thresholds and followed carts, haunting the in-between places of a stricken city. Chroniclers describe orders to cull strays and to keep household animals confined, fearing they might spread corruption or disturb the dead—yet still, dogs appear again and again in the margins of the record, keeping their own mournful watch. They were not the cause understood then, nor a cure, but they were present—persistent as winter, faithful as habit.

Curiously, in some traditions people believed a dog’s touch could ease a fever or guard a soul at the hour of death. Stories of Saint Roch, the plague saint, tell of a nameless dog bringing him bread and licking his sores when no human dared draw near. Others tied small bells to a faithful hound’s collar so that its circling would ring away spirits at the door. You picture such a bell now, a tiny halo of sound that might have softened this sharp-edged silence.

The scratching stops, replaced by a long, contented sigh that fogs the bottom of the door. You can almost see it: a narrow muzzle pressed to the gap, whiskers silvered with frost, breath blooming into little clouds that vanish as quickly as they rise. Your own breath answers, a pale echo in the cold room. For a few heartbeats, the two rhythms meet—inside and out—like signals exchanged across a thin frontier.

You lean, just slightly, so the relic and the pouch shift against your skin. The wooden cross is cool, the knotwork rough beneath your fingertips. A sweet, peppery note from the dried rosemary sneaks into your nose each time you inhale. The candle guttering by the book left earlier throws a small gold circle on the table, and in that circle you notice the crumbs of bitter bread from days ago, hard now as gravel. You swallow against a dry throat and listen harder.

Out in the lane, snow carries sound in bright, clean lines: the hush of a drift settling, the faint creak of a roof beam, the snap of something brittle under a careful paw. Above, the rafters are quiet—the rats as subdued as prayer. The city has been scoured down to essentials: breath, heat, hunger, faith. And a dog at a door.

Your mother rises and moves to the hearth. She feeds the embers with a twist of kindling until a small flame wakes, sighing smoke into the room. The smoke curls toward the roof like a ribbon, and you follow it with your eyes until it disappears into the dark seam where the beams meet—a private sky where, if you let your mind soften, you can almost see stars beyond the planks, thin pinpricks quivering above the smoke like distant candles. Could you sleep beneath such frail constellations, trusting a dog to keep watch while your own eyes refuse to close?

The whine comes again, softer, then a steady arranging of limbs as the animal settles more firmly. You imagine the weight of it pressed into the snow, the slow blink of its eyes, the way it tucks its nose beneath its tail to steal a little more warmth from itself. You know that warmth—the ingenuity of bodies when fire is small and night is long. You and the dog are not so different: both counting breaths, both guarding what little heat remains, both waiting for a morning that might or might not arrive.

Your mind drifts to other dogs in other lanes—those that roam masterless, the lean silhouettes that slink after carts, the bold ones that test the rope of the gravediggers’ patience. You remember the sharp order shouted last week to drive them off. How quickly commands thinned in the frost. How hunger and habit returned them. You wonder if the one outside your door has a name given by a child who no longer answers the call. A memory clings to the fur like burrs: a hand that fed, a voice that praised, a bedfoot where paws were once allowed.

The smell slips under again—fur warmed by its own breath, a ribbon of cold earth, a trace of wet leather. It threads the cramped chamber, mingling with rosemary and juniper and the sour ghost of vinegar cloths. For once, it does not sicken you. It smells like the world beyond the plague, like fields after rain, like the rough happiness of an ordinary day. You ride that scent as if it were a rope thrown across water. On the other shore: a low sun, bread that tastes like bread, laughter that fits the size of a room.

A cough snatches you back. It claws up from your chest, raking your ribs, and you clutch the blanket, eyes watering. Your mother is there with the cloth before the second spasm, her palm steady against your back. The dog outside gives a low, questioning sound at your first cough—then goes still, listening. When it ends, you sag into the straw and the dog lets out a tiny chuff, as if announcing to the dark that the danger has passed for now.

You close your eyes. The image of Saint Roch passes through your mind—thin as a page illustration—knees in dust, hand on his chest, the dog at his side with a scrap of bread. You think of the coins on the table, cold circles meant for eyelids, and the cart that will come, and the pits where crows draw their dark ellipses in the sky. The dog knows none of that. The dog knows the smell of your door and the warmth that leaks from its cracks and the sound of a breathing that should not stop.

Your mother whispers, so quietly you might mistake it for the settling of ash, that she once heard of a family who let a dog curl at the threshold every night through their sickness, and all winter the cart rolled past their door. She doesn’t say whether the dog saved them or merely kept count; stories do not always remember the endings. She only adds a splinter of kindling, holds her hands to the brief new flame, and turns her palms outward as if pushing the warmth toward you, toward the door, toward the listener on the other side.

Outside, the wind shifts. Snow sifts against the step with a soft hiss, then stills. The dog adjusts once, nails ticking lightly on the plank, then settles into the slow tide of sleep. You follow the rhythm—four beats: in, pause, out, pause—until your own breath remembers it. The candle sways and recovers. The little starry pinpricks you imagined above the rafters steady, as if some unseen night has agreed to hold.

Could you call this mercy? Not a cure, not even a promise. Only a presence. A soft body against the cold. A watch kept without hope of reward. You let that be enough. Your hand finds the relic again, then falls open, palm up, as if to receive a small weight. You picture a warm muzzle pressed there for a heartbeat, a touch light as blessing.

The room dims around the edges. Fire, frost, smoke, breath, and the steady heartbeat you borrow from the threshold. Somewhere far away, a crow pulls a scrap of sky into flight. Somewhere nearer, the dog dreams. You surrender to the quiet guard at your door and slip under.

You sleep, but the sleep is shallow, a thin film of rest that trembles at the slightest touch. When the door wood creaks—just a hair, just enough—you drift upward, then sink again, cradled by warmth that isn’t yours. It takes a moment to name it: not the hearth, which has dwindled to a sighing ember, not the blanket, which scratches rather than soothes. No—this warmth is imagined. Borrowed. You realize you have slipped into a dream, and in the dream it is summer.

It begins with air. Not the sour mix of smoke and vinegar and damp wool, but a wide, clean breath that tastes of sunlit straw. You pull it in and feel your ribs loosen, as if each lung were a bellows newly mended. The rafters above you melt into blue, and between their beams a bright river runs, its banks thick with yellow flowers that brush your fingertips when you lift your hand. Bees hum like distant psalm-singers. Your skin, so long gripped by fever’s claws, remembers what it means to be merely warm, not burning.

Somewhere in that brightness, a dog barks—sharp, joyful, nothing like the careful sentinel outside your door. In the dream he runs through barley, ears flying, and his path draws lines that your eyes follow to a hill. Children shout at the crest and tumble down in a rolling scuffle, knees grass-stained, mouths split open with laughter. The sound cracks your chest the way good bread cracks beneath a new knife—cleanly, sweetly. You stand, and your legs hold. You lift your arm, and there is no stab of pain, no hot knot in the tender hollow. The bubo belongs to another body, in another winter, in another world.

Historically, people living through plague years measured time by seasons as much as by bells, and summer meant more than warmth—it meant trade returning to roads, markets breathing again, fields green enough to suggest a future. Tax rolls and manorial accounts from the late 1340s record harvests resumed after the first terrible wave, thin at first and then abundant, as if the land itself were trying to knit the sundered world. You let that fact fall through your dream like seed, each kernel a possible morning.

Curiously, there’s a lesser-known belief tucked into some parish tales: that summer couldn’t find the dying if they slept in gardens. Families moved pallets into courtyards, swearing the plague passed over those who lay under vines. Whether true or desperate, the image lingers—bodies beneath trellises, faces dappled with leaf-shadow, breath syncing to cricket song. In your dream you slide your pallet across sun-warmed bricks, and the blanket turns light as linen.

Textures arrive. The skin of a plum, its bloom dusty and cool against your thumb. Bread that tastes not of iron but of yeast and salt and patient hands; its steam swirls up and does not smell like smoke from burning bedding but like the inside of a bakery at dawn. A cup of water lifted from a well and sunned on a stone until it is neither cold nor warm, only perfect. You tilt it and watch the light bend inside. Your mouth, so long uncertain, learns sweetness again. The bitterness—how quickly it had made a home in you—loosens its grip and slides away.

You walk. Bare feet on packed earth, little pebbles biting your heels. The path leads past a hedgerow where wild roses burn faintly in the noon heat. Their scent is not strong, not the way rosemary shouts from the winter pot, but a soft thing you must lean into. You do, and their breath answers yours, petal-warm and vaguely honeyed. Could you ever have believed you would lean into a smell? That your body would trust the air enough to drink it?

Wind lays a hand on the tall grass and draws it all one way, like a mother combing a child’s hair. Heat presses at your shoulders but without malice; it is the kind of weight that invites drowsing under trees, not the kind that cages you under a fevered skin. On the hill you lie down, and the earth is not hard but springy, stitched with clover and the soft rags of last year’s leaves. You close your eyes, and on the underside of your lids the red darkness blooms—bright, alive, free of the knife-flash of pain.

When you open them, crows cross the sky—not the carrion circus that haunted your window, but high riders on thermals, their calls thin and ordinary. Far below, the roofs of the city settle into a pattern that looks almost deliberate, almost kind. Smoke lifts from chimneys in harmless threads. In a market square, the awnings are striped and ridiculous, fluttering like laundry; fruit sits in pyramids that defy logic and gravity. A fiddler coaxes two steps’ worth of dance from a girl who pretends to scowl. She fails. She grins. You grin back, from your hill, unseen and nevertheless included.

The dog in the barley finds you by smell. He trots up the slope and leans his shoulder against your knee, the way dogs do when they’ve decided the world isn’t safe unless the two of you are touching. His fur is warm, the guard hairs coarse but the undercoat as soft as something you’re not supposed to touch in church. He pants, and you drink the meadow-sour scent of his breath, which is somehow clean. He drops a stick. You throw it. He returns with the wrong stick, pleased. Agreement is easy. You both pretend it’s the same stick.

You do not look for coins in this light. You do not look for carts or pits. You find instead a field path that slides between hedges into a bend of river. The water holds a secret vocabulary—glide, burble, hush—that your body understands without study. You roll up your sleeves and wade to the knee; silt proves cool and slippery, reeds tickle your calves. Sun strikes the water into broken mirrors, and every shard attempts to keep a piece of your face. You let it. There will be more faces. There will be later faces. You practice that belief until it feels less like treason and more like work—honest, necessary labor.

From the far bank comes music you can’t source—a pipe or a boy’s whistle or a wind threaded through a hollow reed. It steps lightly along your spine and sets little bells shaking in your ribs. The bells are not warning. They are welcome. It has been a long time since you were welcomed by anything larger than a hand.

Above you, clouds pile into slow castles. A swallow writes loops into the corner of the sky like someone signing their name to the day. Once you would have explained these beauties to yourself the way the sick explain everything: by counting what is left, by measuring the distance to loss. Now, in this invented noon, you do not measure. You simply let the swallow sign your skin.

A figure sits beside you without arrival: your mother, younger by a decade, sunlight turning the soft hairs at her temple into a halo she would laugh to hear named. She tears bread—real bread, the kind that leaves a tender resistance against your teeth—and presses half into your palm. For a fragment of a fragment you consider refusing out of habit. Then you eat. She watches as if this were a sacrament. Perhaps it is. Salt moves over your tongue like a kind of language you used to speak fluently and had forgotten.

“Could you sleep like this?” the day itself asks, in the voice of wind through barley. You think yes. The answer startles you with its simplicity. Yes, you could, and even waking would not frighten you. Waking would be merely the next soft thing.

At the edge of the field, a market bell rings. It does not toll; it beckons. The note lands on your shoulder like a bird and stays. A second note lands beside it. Together they feel like a shawl you forgot you owned. In the distance, church bells decline to compete; they let the market sing today. It is a gentle, ungodly arrangement. You approve.

But all dreams contain their seam. You feel it when a stray breath inside your real chest catches on a thorn. The river’s vocabulary stumbles. The barley hushes, but not in the summer way. A cool hand—winter’s—slides briefly beneath your shirt and touches the ladder of your spine. The dog’s ears prick. He looks toward the city not with fear, but with a working animal’s attention, as if a duty has stirred in him that is older than play.

You look too. The roofs tilt, the striped stalls in the square become the same colors as the cloths you saw on the cart, which is impossible. The swallow’s signature smears. The bread in your hand is still bread, but it has cooled. You lift it to your mouth and catch the faintest memory of iron. Not a taste, exactly—more like the thought of a taste. You close your eyes and try to fix the meadow to the inside of your lids as if it were a relic. You know it is only a tidbit, a charm sewn into the lining of a hard season, but charms have kept worse doors than yours from blowing open.

The dog noses your wrist. His whiskers tickle, a mundane mercy. You scratch his cheek and thank him without saying it, and he accepts your thanks in the universal grammar of a lean against the knee. “Stay,” you nearly say, and then you do say it—not to the dog, who honestly needs no instruction, but to the summer. Stay. Just one more handful of seconds.

Wind warms once more, a final gift. It lifts the hair at your temple the way it lifted your mother’s. It smells of crushed clover and a scuff of dust and your own skin—not the sickroom skin, but the skin you carry on market mornings. Then, with the gentleness of a hand removing a cloth from a sleeping face, the light thins. The river turns back into rafters; the swallow into a knot in the beam; the hill into a straw mattress murmuring under your shoulder blades. A distant bark answers the memory of play. Somewhere very near, the real dog at the door rearranges its paws and sighs.

You open your eyes to darkness softened by ember-glow. The pouch lies warm on your chest. The wooden cross has imprinted its crooked grain into your palm. The room smells again of smoke and wool and the faint, honest musk of a guardian outside. But inside you, under the ash, something small continues to glow—like a coal waiting for breath. You turn your face toward the cracks where a few cold stars insist on being stars, and you keep that little warmth alive the way you have kept everything alive lately: by noticing it, by not letting it go.

The dream of summer dissolves, and when you wake, the world has sharpened into agony. Heat surges through you in waves, stronger than before, as if fire has replaced your blood. Your skin burns to the touch, yet you shiver violently, teeth rattling like dice in a cup. Each breath rasps, shallow and painful, as though your chest has been lined with sandpaper.

Your body is no longer your own. The swelling beneath your arm has hardened, black veins branching outward like cracks in glass. Sweat soaks the blanket, dampening the straw beneath, filling the room with a sour stench. You claw at the fabric, trying to free yourself from the weight pressing down on every limb, but your strength has ebbed. Even your fingers tremble too much to hold steady.

Historically, the final fever of plague victims came swiftly, burning away what little life remained. Chroniclers in Florence and Avignon describe patients who seemed stable one evening and collapsed dead by morning. Their bodies grew blotched with dark spots, fevers spiking until delirium blurred prayer and reason alike. In some accounts, the heat of the sick was said to melt wax candles near their beds.

Curiously, a lesser-known belief claimed the fever was not destruction but purification. Some whispered that fire inside the body burned sin away, that the hotter the victim burned, the cleaner the soul rose to heaven. Others feared the opposite—that fever was hell’s flame already consuming flesh before death. You feel the heat now and wonder: is it punishment or passage?

Your mother hovers at your side, cloth in hand, dabbing at your forehead. The water in the bowl has already warmed, useless against your blaze. She whispers prayers, her voice breaking, words tumbling into one another. Her hand trembles so badly that droplets spill across your cheeks, cool for only a heartbeat before vanishing into the furnace of your skin.

The air reeks of vinegar-soaked rags, sweat, and the faint sweetness of the relic pouch pressed against your chest. You try to breathe, but each inhale feels shallow, each exhale a struggle. Your vision blurs; the candle flame doubles, triples, then smears into streaks of light. Shadows lengthen, bending unnaturally at the edges of the room. You wonder if they are only tricks of fever—or visitors waiting.

Your heart drums in your ears, faster and faster, a frantic hooves’ rhythm pounding across your body. You try to follow it, but it outruns you, stumbling into chaos. Could you survive another hour of this fire? Could anyone?

Your mother grips your hand, pressing the wooden cross into your palm. Its rough edges bite into your skin, anchoring you for a moment. You focus on her eyes—red, swollen, desperate—as she whispers again, though her words blur. You cannot tell whether she prays for your healing or for your release.

The fever surges higher, your body trembling uncontrollably. Your breath grows ragged, lips cracking, tongue dry as old parchment. You shut your eyes, clinging to the rhythm of your mother’s voice and the steady warmth of the cross. For now, you are suspended—burning, trembling, but not yet gone.

The fever leaves you hollow, yet strangely clear. Each breath feels borrowed, thin threads unraveling from a spool that is nearly spent. You lie back against the straw, every sound amplified: the faint crackle of embers in the hearth, the slow creak of timbers shifting in the frost, your mother’s soft sobs muffled behind her hand. The room is dim, shadows swallowing corners, but one thing remains steady—the candle flame beside you, its halo trembling yet unbroken.

You find your lips moving. At first no sound comes, only dry air passing cracked skin. Then, with effort, words begin to form. They are fragments of prayers half-remembered: Pater noster… Ave Maria… Some lines slip into silence, lost to fever, but the rhythm of them steadies your breath. You do not pray loudly—only a whisper, more for yourself than for heaven.

Historically, many plague victims clung to prayer in their final hours. Chroniclers record whispered rosaries, muttered psalms, confessions made to empty rooms when priests could not be found. In some households, families pressed crucifixes to the lips of the dying, believing a single whispered word of faith could open the gate to salvation. Even skeptics prayed in the end; fear has a way of teaching piety.

Curiously, some believed words spoken at the threshold of death held special power. A lesser-known tale from Avignon tells of a woman whose last whispered prayer was said to cure her child’s fever the next day. Others claimed that dying prayers lingered in houses, echoing in the rafters, guarding those who lived on. You wonder: will your words vanish into the smoke, or will they cling here like breath frozen on the air?

The scents of the room deepen—wax melting into rivulets, the pungent herbs in your pouch, your mother’s damp wool sleeve as she leans close. Her face hovers above yours, eyes glistening, lips moving with your own. She mouths the prayers with you, voice catching each time yours falters, as though carrying your words when you cannot.

The candle flame sways, sending shadows dancing across the wall. For a moment, they seem like figures—priests with raised hands, neighbors long vanished, children laughing somewhere beyond. You close your eyes, and the darkness fills with their shapes. Your voice is faint, but the prayer continues, riding the rasp of your breath.

“Could you hear me?” you whisper—not to your mother, not even to God, but to anyone who might be listening. The words are little more than air, yet they feel heavier than stone. You exhale, and for a fleeting heartbeat the room feels lighter, as if the walls themselves have leaned in to catch your words.

Your mother presses the wooden cross against your hand, her tears falling onto your skin. You whisper one final line, broken but whole enough: fiat voluntas tua. Thy will be done. Then your lips still, breath shallow, prayer lingering in the silence like smoke refusing to rise.

Dawn is only an idea when the door opens. Cold pours in first—then hands. Gentle, hurried, human hands that don’t quite know where to grip. You feel the rough linen drawn over your face, the coins—were they used?—shift slightly, their chill sliding from eyelid to cheek. Your mother’s breath catches; you hear it more than you hear your name. She says it anyway, through the cloth, once, twice, as if names are knots you tie so a soul does not slip loose too easily.

The stretcher smells of damp straw and old boards. Your body, lightened by fever’s theft, is lifted and set down. The room recedes: smoke, the book on the table, the stub of a candle that fought longer than it should, the dog at the door who stands now and makes a sound that isn’t a bark and isn’t a howl, something softer, as if language fails dogs too. The threshold passes beneath you; the lane receives you.

Air outside tastes different. Wider. The sky wears that fragile gray that belongs to hours before bells have decided what kind of day it will be. Snow hushes the world; it squeaks softly under boots. Your bearers speak in a low trade of syllables—careful, slope here, mind the step—and you feel each note through wood more than you hear it. Your mother walks beside, one hand on the stretcher’s rim, knuckles white, the other clutching the wooden cross that has imprinted its grain into your skin for days. The dog follows at her heel without being told.

Historically, when numbers overwhelmed parish yards, bodies were carried to common trenches at the edges of cities. Chronicles from London and Siena describe dawn collections—fewer eyes, fewer questions, work done before markets woke. Lime was piled by the pit, shovels leaned like mute sentries, and men labored quickly to keep pace with the carts. Records show layers: bodies, lime, bodies, lime, the earth stitched shut only when the day or the trench was spent.

Curiously, some mourners slipped small things into the bundles before the pit: a button from a wedding dress, a splinter from a saint’s shrine, a single field flower kept from summer—pressed and brown but still carrying a memory of smell. A lesser-known note in a French parish book mentions a mother who tucked the dog’s worn leather collar beneath a cloth because the animal would not let it go until she promised it would keep watch underground. You glance, across some last thread of awareness, at the hound shadowing your stretcher and imagine the weight of such a promise.

The path leaves stones for dirt; the ruts of carts cut it into ribs your bearers step across. The city thins to garden walls, then to hedges dusted white. Crows stitch black against gray above the field, circling their slow alphabets. The wind gnaws at your linen; it tastes of ash and iron, and of mint ghosts from old pomanders. The world smells like endings and like beginnings that refuse to announce themselves.

At the trench’s lip the ground gives off the damp, clean musk of newly turned soil. It is a smell older than fear. Men with scarves over their mouths stand back as your bearers set you down. Your mother kneels. Her fingers find your forehead through cloth and trace a cross as if carving a secret door. Could you feel it? Perhaps only the memory of touch answers—a warmth like breath on winter glass. The dog sits, uninvited, so close his flank brushes her skirt. He does not look into the trench. He looks at the place where your face would be. As if to memorize the shape of it with patience alone.

The pit speaks in small sounds: a spade knocks a stone; lime hisses where yesterday’s snow melted into yesterday’s layer; rope fibers creak with a tiredness that belongs to objects forced to learn grief. When your turn comes, the bearers lift, and the world tips. The cloth tightens across your nose and mouth—then loosens, then breath moves past the weave and becomes only air again. The descent is quick. Wood, straw, cloth, and you settle into a shallow cradle made by others. Shoulders brush. The weight of the world, distributed. A human closeness without names.

Above, the sky is a rectangle, its edges rough with roots and boots. Your mother’s silhouette folds over it once more. The cross she holds catches a weak light and throws it back. “Now,” she says—only that word, a command to the universe with as much authority as any queen ever had. Now, it must be enough. She lowers her hand and lets the wooden cross fall. It finds your chest by memory, or luck, or gravity’s obedience to love. The thunk is small but entire.

A shovel moves. A clean clod strikes your shoulder, breaks, and sends a few cold grains down the fold of the cloth to the hollow of your throat. Then comes the quiet rain of more. Thud, crumble, sift. Between the strokes, a man’s breath fogs into the trench like a curtain that opens and closes, opens and closes. Lime follows: its smell is sharp, like something that wants to be snow but has a mission. It dusts your blanket; it writes you invisible to the nose.

The dog makes its sound again. The men pause. Your mother says a word to the animal that is not “stay” and not “go” but something like “I know.” Then she speaks toward the trench, voice low and level, as if discussing chores for the morning: bread, water, sweep the hearth. Her voice does not break on your name this time. It steadies on it. It lays your name like a plank across a gap and walks it.

Another shovelful, then another. The world narrows. The rectangle of sky becomes a coin, then a sliver, then the briefest white breath. Snow hisses where it meets warmer earth. Somewhere a crow calls three times, patient punctuation. Somewhere a bell refuses to toll. The men work with a rhythm learned in weeks that felt like years. The trench takes what it is given and makes no speeches.

Historically, many pits were left unmarked except by the slight settling of ground and a new geometry in the field where grass later grew sweeter for reasons people did not care to name. In later centuries, builders would cut foundations and find bones, and the city would remember what it had chosen to forget. Records show that sometimes, when spring came early, flowers seeded themselves along the seams of the trenches—ragged pinks, stubborn calendula, saint-John’s-wort glowing like lit matchheads over the old sorrow.

Curiously, there were nights when gravediggers swore they heard murmurs from the pits, though by then their hearing was tangled with dreams. Some said the murmur was prayer completing itself, the tail of a word finally catching hold. Others said it was only wind working loose the smallest stones. Could you choose which tale to keep? The kinder one, perhaps, if only because kindness is rare and should be hoarded like winter apples.

The last spadeful falls, and the grave—no, the ground—closes. The men step on the new earth with their boots, pressing it down the way you press a sheet to rid it of creases. One sets the shovel aside and crosses himself. Another rubs his wrists and looks at the sky for weather. Your mother stands. For a moment she sways, and the dog leans the fraction of an inch it takes to become a pillar. She finds her balance on the animal’s sturdiness, then on her own. She does not leave yet. She waits until the wind decides it is time. When it does, it lifts the edge of her shawl and tugs it very gently toward home. She obeys, step by measured step, the dog pacing her like a proscribed shadow.

The men return to their work. More carts will come. More bundles will descend. The field will accept them, precisely and without complaint, as it has accepted seed for centuries. Snow begins again—those dry, feathery flakes that don’t know how to melt on contact. They pattern the new earth with a soft geometry of forgiveness that is not quite forgiveness. Breath rises from the trench line like a seam in a sleeping giant’s coat.

Could you feel the world closing over you like a blanket and not a door? The question sounds foolish and tender at once, like many true questions. You try it on, like a cloak held up by someone kind. For a heartbeat, it fits. The weight is not punishment; it is keeping. Not exile; shelter. Earth over you as a mother’s palm laid across a child’s eyes when a harsh light passes the window. “Hush,” the gesture says. “Just for a moment. Hush.”

Above, boots recede. Below, bodies settle, making small bargains with gravity and comfort. Between, lime draws its clean line. The last thread to the room—the candle, the book, the loaf that turned bitter, the rafters traced with frost—thins until it is only a sensation in your chest where the wooden cross lies. You think, if thinking is the word, of fire, frost, smoke, dogs, stars through a smoke hole, and snow as blanket—the whole litany of the night you have traveled. Each motif folds itself once and once again, tucks into the hollow under your breastbone, and goes quiet, but not gone.

The ground above you accepts the soft dress of snow. The field looks smooth from the road. A crow alights on a fencepost and, finding nothing new to say, says nothing. The dog stops once at the lane’s bend and turns his head toward the field. Your mother does not. Not because she does not wish to, but because turning would break the fragile craft she is sailing home. She holds her course. She will set a bowl by the hearth tonight without comment. She will tuck a relic into a box. She will listen for breathing that is not there. She will sleep with her hand on the wooden cross’s absence as if it were still warm.

The grave closes, which is to say: the world holds. Earth covers earth. Breath returns to the wider air. The field is a page that refuses to be blank, even when covered. Snow writes its slow script over the day. Somewhere, later, someone will walk this way and feel the ground give the smallest sigh, as if thanking them for stepping lightly. And you, who were so fiercely here, now rest where even crows soften their wings.

Snow smooths the field where you lie, and yet you do not vanish. You move forward as an echo moves—quiet, persistent, finding stones and eaves and throats to live in. Centuries turn, but you travel easily through them, borne on breath and story. When boots cross the sleeping ground in spring, when a spade hits bone by accident during a new foundation, when a scholar opens a parish book and stops at a nameless line—there you are. Someone says “they,” and somehow it means you.

You walk the lanes that rise from your night. They are cleaner, wider, stranger to your eye, and yet the cold finds your wrists the way it always did. A market flaps its bright awnings; glossed apples pyramid themselves as if they have never known ration or fear. And still, beneath the chatter, a learned hush returns whenever sickness brushes the edge of a sentence. You lean close to the stall and listen. People pretend at forgetting but rehearse remembering in the private theater of their ribs.

Historically, the plague halved towns and emptied parishes; across Europe a third or more of the living were gone within a few harrowing years. Fields went untended; mills idled; guilds lost masters whose names had taught apprentices where to place a hand. In the long after, wages rose for many, and laws pushed back—statutes commanded workers to accept old pay, as if statute could mend a torn world. Churches commissioned windows in blues and reds that tried to say what bells had said until bells wore thin. The story of your night became a new calendar: before and after.

Curiously, the after learned rituals you would not recognize. In some places people cut shallow basins in old boundary stones and filled them with vinegar so coins could be washed for trade—plague stones, they called them, a border where fear and commerce shook hands. Elsewhere, families tucked sprigs of rue into roof thatch long after they forgot why, or carved little circles into lintels and called them blessings because no one had the appetite anymore for long explanations. You pass these markers and feel the slight tug of your own weight upon them, the way a river remembers every bend it has ever taken.

You enter a church one winter noon—any church will do. Incense climbs like a practiced habit, sunlight lays gold ladders across the nave, and the floor is starred with the brass names of sleepers. A child runs a finger along a date so old it sounds like a fairy number. The mother shushes, softly. You stand beside them and do not make a sound. You simply share the air. Your breath is not visible here, but you know how to see it anyway. It stands where candles waver, where the organ pauses to inhale, where silence gathers itself for the next sentence. Could you call this haunting? Or is it only a kindness—that the living are not required to carry the past alone?

Outside, a dog waits at the steps. Different dog, same function. He lifts his head when the door opens and tests the air for news. You sit beside him on the stone and let his shoulder find your knee. His fur smells of rain and the practical, democratic mud of a city. Once, a small bell on a collar meant a charm against night. Now it only makes a neighbor smile. The bell rings anyway, and the ring writes a circle that includes both of you.

On spring mornings you visit the places where the ground has learned to be soft again. Nettles choose the richest seams. Calendula that no one planted glows on the ridge of a trench that is no longer a trench. Children—here they are again—pluck flowers with the solemn authority of small botanists and press them into pockets already full of stones that are important for reasons not yet classified. Their laughter enters you. You notice how it feels to be entered by laughter. It is not theft; it is repair.

Scholars will argue in warmed rooms about what exactly rode the backs of your rats, about the true vectors of your winter. They will find skeletons that tell stories you were not able to tell with your one mouth. They will date timber and pollen and say: here was a door; here was bread; here is how the river braided itself differently around the empty houses. They will be careful, or not. They will be right, or near right, or wrong in ways that help the next right arrive. You forgive them in advance because you understand the terror that makes people reach too quickly for a certainty-shaped object.

You notice how the world keeps inventing ways to turn toward one another when air turns doubtful. Windows become altars. Thresholds learn to bear more weight. A hand, even a gloved one, still finds another hand. In the narrow mouth of crisis, neighbors relearn how to be plural. You are present in these rehearsals—the quiet advisor who has nothing to sell and much to loan: the memory of how heat feels when it is shared; the engineering problem of a door propped open just enough; the physics of a nod across a lane when words are not advisable.

At night, you return to your old motifs because they are the only steady furniture you own. Fire—now a stove behind glass, or the blue confession of a gas ring. Frost—still a message on a window, no matter how the panes are fashioned. Smoke—less of it, but it remembers how to draw history in the air. Dogs—everywhere, continuing to choose us. Stars through the smoke hole—translated now into a city sky that gives you three good points of light and dares you to make a constellation anyway. Snow as blanket—yes, and not only snow. Sand over a footprint. Leaves over a path. Time over a wound.

You return to the field where you settled and find it domestic again. A woman strolls with a book and a thermos that tastes of citrus peel; a boy bikes along the path with a scarf streaming out like a small flag; an old man addresses the crows as if they were regulars at his bar. The ground sighs under them, grateful to be used for the living. You walk with them as easily as a sleeve lining walks with its coat. They do not know you are there. They do not need to. If you have learned anything, it is that the best guardianship is the kind that leaves the guarded unconcerned.

Historically, the memory of your night seeded art—paintings of saints with dogs and scars, altarpieces crowded with votive wax limbs, books of hours whose margins grow vines around skulls that grin without malice. Records show that donors asked for snow to be included in winter scenes, not because painters required instruction on weather, but because snow says gentleness in a language that does not need translation. You see yourself in these pages and panes and whisper your small corrections: less terror, more breath; less edict, more neighbor; leave room for the dog.

Curiously, you also find yourself in places that pay no tithe to churches—an old stone bowl in a wall still half full of rainwater that smells ghostly of vinegar; a lane where someone carved a circle into the lintel because their grandmother carved a circle and that was reason enough; a pocket where an ordinary person keeps a pebble touched so smooth that it teaches the hand what smoothness means. Your echo feels at home in such addresses. They are not grand, but they endure.

If any of this frightens you—if the idea that you continue should startle the night from your eyes—come back to the smallest scene. A threshold. A worn board. A bowl by a fire. A dog whose attention is a kind of prayer. Sit there with me in the part of the mind that knows how to get quiet without going dark. Ask the old question: Could you sleep like this? Listen to the hum that answers from the ribs outward: Yes. Maybe not always, maybe not yet, but yes enough to practice.

And when practice becomes habit, and habit becomes a way, you will walk to your own window—whenever, wherever your window is—and you will put your hand to the glass and feel how the cold presses back just hard enough to count as the world saying: I am here. You will breathe, and your breath will briefly write itself and vanish, and you will think not of loss but of participation. The echo has never been doom. It is only membership in the choir of those who were, are, and will be.

So dim the lights for real now. Pull the blanket up, whatever your blanket is made of tonight. Fire, frost, smoke, dogs, stars, snow. Let the inventory keep you. Let the quiet learn your name and hold it gently, not like a secret, but like a lullaby that can be sung by anyone who loves you enough to try.

You lie still, listening for the smallest, kindest sounds. The room answers with ordinary music: the slow tick inside the walls, the soft complaint of fabric when you shift, the unglamorous hush of your own breath passing in and out. Nothing performs, and that is a blessing. You have walked through a long night—not only the night of a century you never saw, but the night your mind can make when it is tired. Now the work is simple. Count warmths, not worries.

There is the warmth of your blanket. The warmth of your hands when you cup them together and make a small house for your own pulse. The warmth that lingers in objects that have served you well today: a cup, a pen, a lamp with a loyal switch. If a dog is near, count that warmth twice. If only memory is near, count it three times.

Breathe easy. Let the breath be unambitious. No need to sail far; you are already home. Inhale through the nose as if smelling bread that will be ready in five minutes. Exhale through the mouth as if cooling the crust for the table. Let the shoulders lower by a finger’s width. Let the jaw forget its task.

If thoughts knock, offer them a chair by the door and a blanket of their own. They can rest too. You do not have to carry them upstairs. The field we crossed together—white in winter, green in summer—waits whenever you return. You know the path now: fire when you need courage, frost when you need clarity, smoke when you need a signal, dogs when you need company, stars when you need direction, snow when you need gentleness.

Close your eyes. Imagine one small light far away, respectful and steady. It will keep watch. You may sleep.

Sweet dreams.