Chapter 21

As I sensed, things didn’t take long to get worse.

A few days later I discovered myself with a fever. Very high. My body refused to obey the order to move forward, and I had to lie down; moving made me dizzy. I could barely stand up to take care of my needs, and those of my children.

When the fever made me delirious, Mirko was left in charge of the den. I don’t remember what happened in the meantime; very little is clear to me except that I recovered after a time that I cannot calculate. The fever subsided and I felt better, weak and hungry, but grounded. My will to recover and be strong, to resist, was much harder to crack than a damn fever could believe.

Even that will was practically in vain when the diapers ran out again. The time we were hidden in the log burrow was long, and I can swear that it was one of the worst times I have ever had in my entire life.

***

I drifted in and out of consciousness in a turbulent cloud of distorted sounds and blurre