East

I went in and out of consciousness, restless sleep, visions of Batu leaning over me and fevered dreams. The dreams were always about Taylor or growing up in the house of my aunt and uncle. Adopted by them when I was young, I had been a member of their family as long as I could remember.

I missed them. I missed Taylor.

They might as well have never existed.

My hand blazed with fiery pain, eclipsing the rest of my aches and pains a hundredfold.

Stuck in the misery, new thoughts overtook me when the fever dreams finally receded. I witnessed Batu slaughter the men in the room over and over, envisioned Carter the night he sent me back in time. My mind was too jumbled and taxed to form any other coherent thought but this: for whatever reason, I was meant to be here. Whether or not I ever left wasn't something I controlled or could count on, and I definitely couldn't dive after every man wearing a jewelry box I mistook for a phone.

Batu was right. One day, he might not be there, and I'd be killed in the drop of a hat.

My future was therefore clearer: it was to survive the day to day of a world I couldn't quiet grasp.

This all slid away when genuine sleep claimed me. I sank into it gratefully and awoke when an evening breeze tickled the skin of my exposed arm.

I was weak, hungry and fatigued. Sitting up, I registered the sound of a stream or small river first and the felt walls of the tent second. It was raining outside though the interior was dry.

I absolutely reeked. The scent came from my clothing, left over from the refuse in the bucket at the trading post.

"You are alive." He sounded upbeat.

I sat and gazed at my injured palm. It was still puffy and red but not alarmingly so. Doubting they had any sort of antibiotics in this time period, I studied it, puzzled. "How did you stop the infection?"

"Urine."

I looked up at him. "What?"

He gave me another odd look.

"You peed on my hand?" I stared at it, horrified.

"It will stop an infection. How do you not know this?"

I couldn't take my own smell or dwell too long on the idea he'd been peeing on my hand. Something within me snapped.

Close to tears, I crawled out of the tent. I wore a tunic that reached my knees and nothing else, but I didn't care. Half walking, half staggering through a chilly sheet of rain, I made it to the cold stream and waded in until it reached my waist. Flinging off the smelly tunic, I sat. Cold water covered my shoulders and lapped at my chin.