The Fever Prayer

November 10, 1871

I woke with the taste of salt and blood in my mouth. The air in the room was still, heavy, sweet with the faint scent of something burning that shouldn’t be. My pillow was damp — not from the heat, but from a cold sweat that clung to my neck and hair like a second skin. Frost traced the windowpanes, yet I burned beneath the blanket.

The Kentucky book lay open beside me. The ink in the margins had bled outward, the shapes warping into something almost alive. My handwriting — unmistakably mine — filled every inch of white space. I read the words once before the letters began to waver:

Light shall feed the hollow. The hollow shall hunger. The mouth beneath remembers the shape of dawn.

I don’t remember writing it. I don’t remember speaking, though my throat feels raw, as if I’d been chanting for hours. Whenever I reach for the memory, it slips, leaving behind only the echo of my own voice in a language I don’t know.

My pulse feels wrong — too fast, yet too faint, each beat taking something from me. When I stand, the room leans with me. The candlelight pools and breathes as though following my unsteady rhythm.

In the mirror, my face was dusted gray beneath the eyes — ash where there should be color. I tried to wash it away. The water in the basin turned cloudy, and the smell that rose from it was sharp and sweet, like burnt honey and smoke.

There’s a heat inside me now that no fire could match. I don’t know if I’m sick… or if this is the ritual taking root.

Maybe the fever isn’t mine.

Maybe it’s the prayer answering back.