Today's Reading

You sit shivering on your rug, clutching your shawl around your shoulders. You're not poor, so you can probably get the asu to visit with his bag of remedies: herbs and barks and salts, stirred into beer to be swallowed; ashes and powdered snakeskins and river clay, kneaded into fats and massaged onto whatever limb he thinks most likely to be causing this misery.

The dream warns you, though. It isn't just the remedy-man you need. You also need the priest—the ashipu. He can help discern which of the thousands of pestering demons, always lurking in the corners of the world, has taken up residence in you.

And more importantly: why. What door have you opened to punishment? You might not remember wrongdoing, but that doesn't necessarily mean innocence. The ashipu can walk you through all of the possibilities. He'll be able to put his finger on the problem, perform the correct incantations to purify you—or, maybe, identify and cast out a wandering spirit that's simply taken a false turn and settled into the wrong earthly vessel.

But you heard, day before yesterday, that the ashipu—he trained in Isin, that capital of medicine, and so is much in demand—has gone to treat an outbreak of fever and boils in the north. You are without a mediator, alone with the fire in your joints and the ache in your belly. Alone with the fear.

You had business to do this afternoon, a journey planned for tomorrow. Those are mirages now, unreal shadows in a life that might end by noon. There is nothing left in your world but you, the pain, and the inscrutable gods who might either punish or rescue you.

And so you pray, desperately, throwing the words at the stone-hard heavens, and hoping against hope that the world will continue, that this is not the end.


LATE NOVEMBER, 2020

A buttermilk sky is brightening toward dawn outside your window. You left it cracked last night, since the fall has been weirdly warm. But the strange weather's par for the course. It's 2020, after all, and Covid-19 has upended everything.

You didn't set your alarm, so you're waking up a little later than usual. But it doesn't really matter; like everyone else in your office, you're working from home. As long as you get the kids fed before they have to sign in to their virtual middle-school classes, and comb your hair before your 11 am Zoom call, you'll be fine.

But you feel lousy. Shivery and clammy, a heat in your throat and an odd tightness in your chest. You reach for the thermometer that's lived on your bedside table since March and pop it in, waiting in trepidation for the beep, praying to the universe for the digital readout to reassure you that your body is still running steady at 98.6.

Beep. You squint at the display, and your heart begins to pound a little harder. 100.5.

You think frantically back through the last week. There was that bearded guy in the grocery store, mask-less and hovering over the produce section; you detoured around him, but maybe droplets were already spreading through the air. You had coffee with your sister, but you were both outside. Is she sick? You'll have to call her. Your neighbor came over for a glass of wine last week, but you're both in the same bubble and she's being as careful as you are. ''

Maybe it's allergies, says the part of your brain that generally rationalizes your worst fears into manageable possibilities. I can have a fever with an allergy, right? Or a cold. Or... you can still get flu if you've had a flu shot, right? And another voice is starting to list all the problems. Do I try to stay away from the kids? Who's going to supervise their school? What do I tell my boss? But all of these churning thoughts are being slowly drowned out by yet a third voice, this one stern, growing steadily louder.

You might die.

You put the thermometer back on the nightstand, crawl back under the covers, and clutch them around you. You can still hear your heartbeat in your ears, feel another cough erupting from your throat. And all you can think is please. Please, please, please. Please let it not be.

Our bodies are the crossroads where our most private selves meet the world outside, the matrix where our thoughts and emotions and beliefs are formed. When our bodies are functioning well—when we are healthy, strong, energetic, pain-free—we don't notice how our physical existence affects those thoughts, emotions, and beliefs.

But let a grain of sand grit its way into the works, and suddenly everything changes.

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