Chapter Fourteen

Meredith sincerely believed she was hallucinating as the door to the cell opened and a man stepped in, carrying the limp figure of a young girl with long, blondish hair and pale skin... it was Katrin! He laid her gently down on the hay beside Meredith and hurried away, without any explanation.

Meredith was battling with reality. Surely it was only her imagination. She tentatively reached out a hand and touched Meredith’s forehead, but she didn’t fade away as she had expected. Instead, she fluttered her eyelids and let out a groan. Her forehead felt warm and real. She really was here, and she was alive.

Meredith slid closer beside her and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Katrin,” she whispered. “Katrin, are you OK?”

Katrin groaned. Her lips moved as though she was trying to speak, but no sound came out. She wouldn’t open her eyes.

“Katrin, can you hear me? What’s the matter?”

Another groan.

Meredith wondered if Katrin was unconscious. Since she appeared to be neither asleep nor awake, it would stand to reason that this was the case. She wished she could talk to someone. She wished she wasn’t locked up in a poky cell with very little ventilation and no food or drink to offer Katrin if she came round.

She wished none of this had ever happened.

It was only a minute or two later when one of her wishes actually came true. The cell door opened a crack, Meredith heard whispering voices; she saw fingers appear round the door, followed by a long arm, and then two people stepped into the cell. One was tall, dark and young; the other small, dark and young. The tall one was the boy- the boy who had been part of the group which had brought Meredith here and had rescued both herself and her sister from almost drowning- and the small one was the girl who had slipped in earlier with the tray of food. The girl stayed near to the door and kept her eyes to the ground, while the boy stepped forward, his forehead set with resolution.

Meredith didn’t know what to expect. She wondered if the boy had been set to finish them off, once and for all. But if that was the case, why all the trouble to get them here in the first place? The Indians had had plenty of opportunity along the way to kill them. That first man- the one who had found them- could have done it. He had been about to do it. But something had mad him change his mind.

“Why are you here?” asked Meredith, boldly.

He took another step closer. Then, slowly, cautiously, he knelt down beside Katrin. She was lying on her side, still and motionless, alive but as though dead. He looked tentatively at Meredith; she relaxed as she saw that his expression conveyed pity, understanding and a desire to help.

The boy waited, watching Meredith’s face. At last, he slowly reached out, gently gathered Katrin’s hair in his hand and pulled it to the side, revealing the back of her neck. Meredith moved nearer, bemused. But it didn’t take long for her to notice what the boy was trying to show her. There was a puncture mark on her neck; a hole about the size and shape of an apple seed; and surrounding the puncture was a peculiar, dark-coloured rash.

The boy turned and signalled to the girl by the door. She hurried over and took out a small bottle from her apron pocket. Cautiously, gently, the boy turned Katrin onto her back. Then the girl knelt down beside her and poured a little of the bottle’s contents into Katrin’s mouth

At first, nothing happened. Katrin lay just as still, her eyelids fluttering occasionally, groaning intermittently. Then Meredith got a surprise.

“Your sister will recover,” said a voice. She looked up- it was the boy. He had spoken.