I woke as if returning from that same impossible distance, the girl's wail of anguish still ringing in my ears, and I lay motionless for a long time, my eyes closed, attempting to judge my location by the feel of my shoulder blades beneath me and the weight of the fabric covering me. My mouth felt as if mice had nested in it, given painful birth, and died. The wailing continued and I cautiously opened one bleary, bloodshot eye.
The greased leather tent was small and bare, and I could see through the open flap that it was just becoming dusk. A low fire of dried sheep patties smoldered just outside, and I heard the comforting sounds of people shuffling about slowly and chatting as they moved between their chores. The wailing was not a sound of fear or anguish, as I had first suspected when coming to my fever-charged senses, but was rather the serene humming of the girl, who sat calmly in the far corner of the tent, gently pounding some substance with a small stone pestle. I stared at her in the dim light without moving, this time noticing her long black hair braided in a complicated pattern and wrapped around her head, and her loose-fitting robe, the same as I had seen her wearing earlier. The garment completely covered her shoulders, back and legs, so unlike the light and airy chiton Athenian women wear on summer nights. The girl's face was just beginning to show the leaner lines of the woman she was becoming, yet she still retained the soft, trusting innocence of a child. Her expression, as she softly scraped and pounded, was one of deep absorption in the simple task she was performing, and contentment at her progress. I rustled slightly, and her humming stopped as she looked over at me, staring for a moment as if startled for the second time that day to see me before her. This time, however, her face broke in a delighted smile, and she quickly stood up and approached me, kneeling by my side on the floor. She picked up the water skin lying nearby, and pulling out the bone plug, she held the opening up to my mouth in offering. I seized the skin and gulped greedily, but she pulled it away from me with a laugh, exclaiming softly in what sounded like remonstration, and then took the skin with her as she slipped out the door.
I heard excited voices outside and then the tent flaps were lifted open and several people stepped into the tiny room. They were short and thin, and all of them, men and women alike, wore garments of the same rough, dirty weave. Most strangely, their hands and faces were completely covered in stained rags, as if in protection against the heat and dust of the desert. Only their dark, piercing eyes were visible through the complicated wrappings. They chattered softly in their incomprehensible, guttural language as they stared down at my body prone beneath the blanket. An old woman entered, the only one with her face uncovered, displaying a visage at first glance as wrinkled and prunelike as the Pythia's. As she bent over me in the dim light, however, and I peered at her more closely in my feverish fog, her face took on a horrifying cast: dark, glittering eyes set not over a nose, but rather over two open nostrils, like the end of a boar's snout, and teeth bared in a hideous grin, as if protruding so far that the narrow lips were unable to cover them. I clenched my eyes shut and willed myself to regain lucidity, to emerge from this vision of pig-people, as does someone who is dreaming, yet knows he is dreaming, and in his dream commands himself to awaken.
The woman passed her hand over my face and forehead, just above the surface of my skin but not touching it-feeling, I suppose, for signs of my fever. When I anxiously opened my eyes again, however, I saw not a woman's hand, but rather the rounded, stumpy foot of a pig, discolored and misshapen, passing in and out of the shadows over my face. She apparently detected the feverish heat emanating from my skin, for turning to the girl who was hovering at her shoulder, she said something in a sharp tone that sent the girl scurrying out. Next the old pig-woman gently drew the thin blanket off my body, leaving me again exposed in a state of nature, to the evident amazement of the observers in the tent, whose eyes ranged up and down my limbs as their voices dropped to whispers. I sat up and feebly attempted to pull the blanket back over me, but a sudden wave of dizziness and nausea swept over me, and I lay back down quickly, resolving simply to endure the nightmare until the comforting light of morning.
The girl returned a few minutes later with an earthen jar bearing a substance redolent of vinegar, but with a sharper, ranker odor. This she proceeded to pour liberally on some freshly laundered rags produced from a basket in a corner. Oblivious to my feeble protests, the girl gently swabbed my entire body with this potion, lifting limbs and mopping out folds and crevices, as the pig-woman gave her instructions. The mysterious healing substance left my irritated rashes feeling cool and comforted, as when you climb wet out of the bath and feel a chilling breeze on your damp skin. They chatted quietly to each other as they performed their task, the woman pointing out places the girl had missed and laughing softly at her wondering questions, while I alternately clenched and opened my filmy, swollen eyes in fear and curiosity, trying desperately to recover clear vision. I finally resorted to my other senses, my ears particularly, attempting to divine what the women might be saying. The girl repeated a word constantly while looking at the woman, a vocative I took to mean "grandmother" or something of the sort, while the old woman repeated a word back to her in return: the girl's name, Nasiq.
Thus I lay for two days and two nights, though I know this to be true only because I was informed later by my comrades. My own reckoning of time was confused, floating as I was between delirium and lucidity, terror and exhaustion. Nasiq faithfully dampened my body with the cooling substance several times a day, while two of the men, whom I took to be Nasiq's father and brother, peeked in occasionally to check on my progress. Sometimes their faces were covered, other times their own boar-snouts were exposed, as they asked questions of me in their tongue, to which I was unable to respond, and offered pieces of charred lizard or coarse flat bread. Grandmother scolded them away in irritation, enforcing on me her regimen of small doses of water, supplemented by spoonfuls of a kind of gamy broth administered by Nasiq. The grandmother's kind yet brusque method of healing, nurturing yet never touching, contrasted with the girl's lingering glances and cool fingers resting gently on my forehead after my bathing. Several times, however, the old woman spoke to her sharply, causing the tears to well in her eyes as she stood up and left the tent to do her grandmother's bidding. Weak and confused as I was at the time, I am hard pressed now to know how much of what I remember is true, and how much a mere feverish dream.
The afternoon of the third day I awoke to the pounding of hooves and shouts of men. This first flurry of activity outside the tent, however, was followed shortly afterwards by further shouts, this time of dismay, accompanied by the sound of the quick departure of the horses who had just arrived. My fever had broken by now and I was feeling much more alert, yet terribly weak, when I thought I heard Proxenus' gravelly voice calling me from a distance. With great effort, I raised myself to my elbow. The tent flap flew open and Nasiq rushed in with a worried expression on her face. Feeling my forehead for fever and peering into my eyes for a sign that I had regained my senses, she seemed satisfied for the moment and helped me to drink from the water skin. After that, chatting softly in her language, she motioned to me to rise, which I did painfully and trembling. I was surprised to observe, as if I were an outsider objectively viewing the scene, that I had lost all traces of my former shyness at being naked in the young girl's presence. She, however, stared at my body as if noticing it for the first time, and clucking as if in reproach, snatched up my blanket and wrapped it modestly around my chest under my armpits, securing it with a bone pin she pulled from her hair. She then motioned for me to stoop down and emerge from the tent.