Occasionally, she lifted a cup of water to his lips, and
resorted to wiping his beard with the dampened hem of her skirt.
But then, noticing his worsening condition, she took up a rag and
dipped it in tea and pressed it to his feverish brow to try to ease the
torment that visibly shook his trembling, half-naked body with
increasing vehemence.
Slowly, as Si'Wren endured the passing of the hours thus, evening fell
and twilight was transformed into the blackness of night and the
flicker of the cooking fire in it's cobblestone pit in the cypress
bungalow of the field slaves. A mist began to rise from the land,
covering all with it's creeping white vapors, obscuring everything
under a drifting, gauzy white veil of dimly-cast moonglow.
"Si'Wren," whispered L'acoci, leaning close so that others in the
bungalow might not overhear, "I would have a word with you."
Si'Wren beheld the old woman, and waited respectfully.
"Si'Wren," repeated L'acoci, her voice as whisper-dry as a pile of
dried leaves as she bent close to Si'Wren's head and Si'Wren sensed the
parched lips hovering close to her ear, "I have heard the stories of
old, told of moon-madness, shared in the bungalows in times past. I saw
when you yourself, as a tiny orphan girl new to the House of the
Master, were told such horrible stories by the fireside when the slaves
hid in fear of the full moon shining in the blackness of night, with
tales told about how the moon drives men, and women, and even little
children, to madness.
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