Witch Cold

Nuala, my best friend, opened the door with a thermometer in her mouth and one boot unlaced.

The rest of her working outfit was intact, although not at its best. The rose overskirt had been buttoned up crooked over cream shorts. One quilted sleeve was rolled to the elbow and the other was not. Her star brooch hung dark at her collar, and the gold piping she had sewn by hand made brave straight lines around a woman who looked ready to fold in half.

I set my care case inside, shut the door, and counted: two mugs on the coffee table, three open cupboards, a glass medicine bottle, a bowl of keys, loose cushions, tissues everywhere. I had packed for a fever. I had not packed for the apartment.

Nuala took the thermometer out. “Thirty-nine point one.”

“Since when?”

She looked at the digital display as if it had asked the question. “Six? Woke at—”

Coral pinlights appeared in the air beside her cheek. They were each the size of a grain of rice, twelve of them in a tightening ring, too crisp and even to be reflections. A three-note chime stepped downward through the room.

I knew that signal. I did not know what came after it. Neither did she.

“Brace,” Nuala got out.

The lights sharpened. She sneezed into the crook of her sleeve.

Every loose thing under five kilograms rose.

The mugs lifted cleanly from the table. Keys poured upward in a glittering school. The medicine bottle struck the underside of a shelf, and a cushion planted itself against the ceiling. My case stayed down because I still had one hand through its straps; its detachable shoulder pad did not. Tissues drifted around Nuala’s head in slow white turns.

She closed her eyes. I caught the medicine bottle between both palms before it could spin away.

“Forty seconds?” I asked.

She held up four fingers, made a fist, then did it again: forty. The words were in there; fever and congestion had put a slow door in front of them.

At thirty-eight seconds the keys were over the rug, the mugs over the sofa, and the bottle in my grip. At forty, gravity returned without ceremony. Two keys still found the floorboards. The cushion landed on Nuala’s head.

She pushed it aside. “Good entrance.”

“Sit.”

“Drink.”

“I brought water.” I opened the case. Oral rehydration packets, water, medicine, two thermometers because one was a plan and two was a system, towels, tape, rubbish bags, cooling cloths, spare socks, a compact tool roll, and the flat packet of colored cards Nuala used for noisy jobs. “I left the broth in the car. Too hot to carry through this.”

Nuala pointed at the water. Her hand was steady enough to choose it. I poured. She sat on the floor rather than cross the field of newly landed objects, and I crouched close while she drank three measured swallows.

Her witch cold made every sneeze release one of six workings from her living magic. The selection was random. Nuala could not stop the release, delay it, aim it, choose an effect, or lean on the odds. No symptom, mood, or previous result changed what came next.

Loose nonliving objects under five kilograms might float for forty seconds. One paper or textile item might bloom to four times its volume for eight minutes. Two unfastened objects under ten kilograms might exchange places. One rigid object no more than a metre across might soften for thirty seconds, then harden wherever it had been left. Twenty litres of rain might fall. Or one loose object under a kilogram might make seven copies for five minutes, after which only the original remained. Selection reached no farther than three metres and only through Nuala’s direct sight. An opaque barrier stopped it. The coral lights and the same descending three notes meant only that in two to four seconds something would happen.

I had mistaken that small warning for something reassuring when she first described it. Now I understood it as a fire alarm that declined to mention the location of the fire.

I taped the cupboards shut. I moved the glassware behind the closed kitchen door, because an opaque barrier stopped the working from selecting what was beyond it. I shoved magazines into drawers, tied the keys to the radiator, and filled a shopping bag with every loose object I could see under five kilograms.

Nuala watched me from the floor. Her drink rested between both hands.

“Bathroom,” I said. “No loose objects. Tile. Door. We put you in the bath with blankets, case by the sink, and I stay outside the three-metre range.”

“No.”

“It’s the smallest closed room.”

“Yes.” She frowned at the effort of making me hear the flaw. “Small.”

I had already picked up the case.

Nuala held out her palm. I knew that sign from work nights and costume fittings: stop your hands, not merely your mouth.

I stopped.

She took my phone, opened the drawing screen, and sketched a narrow rectangle. A blue line for the bath. A black block for the toilet. Crosses along all the hard edges. Then she drew one red arrow at the door and trapped it under three looping circles.

“One exit,” she said. “Water. Mirror. Pipe. Hard—soft, then stuck.”

“We can pad the edges.”

“With cloth.”

Cloth, which might become four times its volume for eight minutes. I looked at the towels in my case.

Coral pinlights pricked into view above the phone.

The chime descended.

“Case shut,” I said, moving before thought could catch up.

Nuala slapped the lid closed. I snapped one latch. The second stayed open as she sneezed.

The packet of tissues wedged in her overskirt pocket flowered outward. Paper pleats billowed across her lap, over my hands, up into the doorway. They did not grow longer so much as acquire impossible abundance, every folded layer shouldering four layers’ worth of space. Nuala vanished behind a white wall with two rose buttons showing through it.

“Nuala?”

Her hand came out, fingers spread: wait.

The mass blocked the doorway and my sight of most of her body. I could have torn into it. Instead I watched the narrow gap at floor level until her phone slid through. On its screen she had drawn a green circle, then the number eight.

Eight minutes. Stable. No rescue requested.

I sat on the floor outside the paper bloom. “I’m timing it.”

Her thumb appeared from the folds.

When the working released, the packet contracted with a long papery sigh. Half the tissues had torn along their perforations; the split packet sagged from her pocket. The shreds did not mend.

I abandoned the bathroom.

The disused washroom in the basement had a floor drain, bare concrete walls, a deep utility basin, and two doors on opposite sides. Nuala had taken me down there once to wash dye out of thirty metres of ribbon. I could picture the clear floor and the second exit. I could also picture two flights of stairs, a fire door, and the narrow turn at the landing.

“Basement,” I said. “If you approve the route.”

She marked a green circle around the washroom on my sketch. Then she drew a red line through a stick figure lifting another.

“I wasn’t going to carry you.”

Nuala stared.

“I am no longer going to carry you.”

She nodded and handed the phone back.

We prepared the route together. I could inventory hazards, but Nuala knew what each working left behind and which barrier actually counted. A cupboard door shut between its contents and her direct sight was protection. A clear shower screen was not. A towel over a shelf was an opaque barrier until the towel itself became a possible target. Something buckled while soft would harden buckled. Rain ran down a drain; water trapped in a case stayed in the case.

I closed doors. Nuala chose what came within three metres of her. She made me take the loose cape from her shoulders, but kept her boots and dress on; the reinforced outfit was made for her work, and changing clothes would cost time and privacy she had not offered. She clipped the dark brooch more securely. It did nothing for the cold. It was hers, and she wanted it there.

At the front door, I tried to shoulder the care case while holding it upright.

“Wheels,” Nuala said.

“Unfastened. Eligible.”

“Still wheels.”

I extended the handle. “You walk in front. I stay one stair below. We stop at every landing. Signal means feet wide, hands on rail, no grabbing.”

“No grabbing me.”

“No grabbing you. If you ask, I support at the waist.”

“Elbow.” She tapped it.

“Elbow.”

Her mouth moved in a soundless rehearsal, then managed: “And wait.”

“And wait.”

The apartment fire door had swollen in its frame years before. I pulled. The care case struck the jamb, and because I was still convinced momentum was a kind of reasoning, I forced it.

The coral lights kindled along Nuala’s sleeve. Three notes fell.

“Hands off,” she said.

I let go. She sneezed.

The wooden repair block covering the jamb’s damaged lower half softened like warm wax. It was a separate piece, less than a metre long. The case rolled through, dragging a deep curve into it. I caught the case on the other side while the block sagged against its screws.

“Thirty seconds,” Nuala said. Even blurred by fever, the diagnosis was exact. “Prop. Not push.”

I jammed the metal doorstop under the lowest part without trying to straighten it. When the wood hardened, the door could still close, although the gap was shaped like a tired mouth.

Nuala tapped her elbow. The correction cost her less breath this time.

I offered my hand under it. She set the amount of weight.

We descended seven stairs before the pinlights returned. Their spacing, brightness, and coral color were identical. The chime sounded exactly as it had for floating mugs, swollen paper, and softened wood. No hint.

We braced.

Nuala sneezed. My care case vanished from beside my ankle.

In its place appeared an empty plastic bucket that had been sitting in the landing alcove. The case struck the far wall where the bucket had been, tipped, and rolled out of sight below us.

I lunged one step.

Nuala’s hand closed on the back of my jacket. Not strong, but deliberate.

“Imogen. Wait.”

The case was no longer within reach. Nothing was falling. I looked at her, not it. She showed me two fingers and pointed down: two of us, then the route. She was right. One went nowhere alone.

We took the landing together. The case lay against the lower wall with both latches closed. Its medicine had survived because Nuala had closed the lid before the paper bloom and I had finally remembered to fasten the second latch.

I retrieved it. She watched my feet.

The next warning came at the second landing, three minutes later. We planted our boots and waited. Nuala’s sneeze brought twenty litres of rain down inside the stairwell.

It arrived all at once, straight and cold. Water slapped my shoulders, sheeted over Nuala’s rose skirt, and ran down the steps. The case seals held. The landing did not become less tiled because I disliked it.

I dragged the bucket close and used it to push water toward the stair drain. Nuala stayed against the wall where she had direct sight of my hands and both routes out. She raised a closed fist when I moved too fast, opened it when the next tread was clear, then counted each step with her fingers. No speech wasted on what we could see.

At the basement door I asked, “Breathing?”

She rocked her hand: not good, not worse.

“Dizzy?”

One finger: a little.

“Can we continue?”

Green card.

It was the first card she had taken from the packet in my case. She held it in front of her chest until I nodded. Then she put it in my palm, because she had no spare pocket now that the tissues had destroyed theirs.

The washroom was as empty as I remembered, which was not empty enough. I moved a mop, two bottles, a wire basket, a stool, and a cracked plastic bin through the far door. I fastened the basin taps with cable ties so they were no longer loose. I taped an opaque rubbish bag over the shelf of cleaning supplies. I checked both doors opened freely.

Then I placed my care case beside Nuala’s chosen wall and unlatched it.

Her expression changed.

“Everything here,” I said. “One supply point. I can reach you and the case from either door.”

She pointed to the three-metre tape measure in my tool roll.

“The case stays with me.”

Nuala took the blue, yellow, red, and green cards from me. She laid blue beside the water, yellow beside medicine, red on top of the case, and green near the far door. Then she drew the room on my phone: Nuala in the center, a ring around her, supplies separated outside it. Two arrows entered from opposite doors. Inside the ring she drew only a mat, one covered cup, a small towel, and her repair roll.

“If rain hits everything—” I began.

She tapped the red card.

“All right. But medicine outside means a handoff.”

She held up two fingers and pointed at the doors.

Two handoff routes.

I heard myself say, “Splitting the kit doubles the retrieval points.”

Nuala shut her eyes, either from fever or because I had used a sentence like that while she was sitting wet on a basement floor.

I gave her the phone. She typed with both thumbs and turned the bright screen toward me.

ONE CASE = ONE WET CASE.

Then, beneath it:

YOU CAN WALK.

I had arranged the room around my reach, as if the only capable body in it belonged to me.

I moved the water through one door and the medicine through the other. Towels went on a high shelf behind an opaque cupboard door. The tool roll stayed with Nuala because she chose it. We taped a three-metre ring on the floor, leaving both exits open. On my phone, I made four full-screen colors she could call with a tap: blue for water, yellow for medicine check, red for stop, green for ready. On hers, she drew six plain icons for the possible effects, not as predictions but as after-the-fact diagnoses when words failed: arrows up, a widening square, crossed places, a bent line, rain, and eight small circles.

The nurse answered while I wrung stair water out of my sleeves. Nuala nodded before I put the call on speaker. I reported the temperature, when she had last taken the medicine named on its label, how much she had drunk, and that she was alert but congested. I did not ask the nurse to solve magic. The nurse asked ordinary questions about breathing, chest pain, confusion, keeping fluids down, and worsening fever. She told us what changes meant urgent help, to follow the labeled dose, offer small frequent drinks, and keep Nuala comfortably cool rather than chilled.

Nuala answered what concerned her body. “No chest pain. Breathing… nose. Water stays.”

When the call ended, I held up yellow. Nuala checked the time herself and nodded. I brought the medicine to the edge of the taped ring, set it down, and backed away. She took it, swallowed it with water, and returned the cup to the same mark.

For eleven minutes, nothing happened.

The fever did not break. Sweat darkened Nuala’s hair at the temples. She sat on the mat with her back near, but not against, the concrete wall. I crouched beyond the ring and counted the intervals between her sips instead of touching the case, because the case was now in two cupboards and three stations and was functioning better for it.

Coral lights appeared over her knees.

The three-note chime descended.

We moved through the routine we had built. Feet planted. Hands clear. Eyes on Nuala until the working declared itself.

She sneezed.

The small rubber drain guard made seven copies. Eight identical black discs sprang across the concrete. Two landed on the drain, overlapping it. Another rolled beneath Nuala’s skirt. She pointed to the icon of eight circles, then to the timer on my phone, and held up five fingers.

Five minutes. Only the original would remain. I marked the original with chalk where it lay and used a broom from outside the room to nudge all eight clear of the drain. Nuala watched the broom head, correcting me left and right with small motions. When the copies disappeared, the chalked guard remained. The scuffs from pushing them did too.

Four minutes later, the warning repeated.

“Ready?” I asked.

Green shone on Nuala’s phone.

She sneezed, and the flowered cooling cloth beside her opened into a soft, monstrous acreage. Its printed roses became broad as plates. It climbed the basin and curtained the near door, cutting off my sight of her.

I went to the other door. That was why it was open.

Nuala sat behind the cloth with one hand gripping the mat. She showed red until the fabric stopped shifting, then pointed to the widening-square icon. Eight fingers, shown in two groups of four. Her breathing had gone too rough for speech.

I stayed at the second door. The cloth was not hurting her. It was only between us, and only from one direction. I held up blue. She shook her head. I held up green as a question. After a moment, she answered green.

At the fever’s peak, the intervals shortened. The pinlights remained identical. The chime remained useless for anything except those few seconds of preparation.

Loose tools floated next. Nuala’s shears, a spool, two clips, and the little steel awl rose from the mat. We kept our hands down. The awl drifted point-first into the plastic light cover and cracked it with a sound like ice under a shoe. I flinched toward her. Nuala flung up red.

No grabbing.

For forty seconds the tools pressed and wandered near the ceiling. Then they fell onto the mat and concrete. Nuala covered her head with her arms. I waited for the last clip to stop bouncing before I entered. The light cover held, split but not shedding pieces. I switched off that fixture at the wall and moved the tools out by their roll once Nuala showed green.

The next sneeze softened the rigid splash guard I had clipped to the utility basin. It folded under a shallow pool of rainwater left in the basin, drooping across the drain. Nuala pointed to the bent-line icon and held both hands out: don’t correct it while the working lasted. We let the water pull it crooked. Thirty seconds later it hardened that way, useless but stable.

“My guard,” I said.

Nuala coughed into her sleeve. “Your… excellent guard.”

It was not a quip so much as accurate ownership. I had added the thing after she approved the room because I could not leave a clear basin alone.

“Repair list,” I said, and wrote it down.

She tapped blue.

I brought water from the far station. Just inside the ring, coral lights lit the drops on the cup. The chime fell through its three notes.

I set the cup down and stepped back outside the ring to brace.

Nuala sneezed. The covered cup and a folded rubbish bag exchanged places. Water struck the floor from inside its lid, a hard splash but not a spill. The bag appeared where I had stood. Neither object had been fastened; both had been in her direct sight, less than three metres away.

I looked at the cup. Then at Nuala.

She pointed to the crossed-places icon. Her hand wavered, fell to her knee, and stayed there.

“Can I come in?”

She looked at my green screen for several seconds. Then she nodded and pointed to her elbow.

I entered without rescuing the cup. I offered my forearm under hers. Nuala decided the pressure, used it to shift onto her side, and let me place the small towel beneath her cheek. She was shivering now. I fetched a dry blanket from behind the opaque cupboard door, held it up for her to see, and waited. Green.

The blanket stayed folded below her shoulders so it could not pin her if it bloomed. I checked her temperature. Lower by two tenths, which was not a cure and was not nothing. She drank from the displaced cup after I brought it back. We darkened the uncracked light. I put the prescribed interval into my phone and showed her before setting the alarm.

The next quiet lasted eighteen minutes.

Her breaths became easier through her mouth. The fever still made her face too bright, but she tracked the blue card when I raised it and chose two swallows. Light, card, screen, hand, and sound carried the parts of the work that speech could not.

Coral pinlights gathered once more beside her shoulder.

Three notes descended.

Nuala opened her eyes. She planted both palms. I stayed beyond the ring with the doors clear.

She sneezed.

Twenty litres of rain fell inside the washroom. It drummed on the concrete, darkened the rose and cream of her dress, rinsed chalk from the drain guard, and poured away through the open grate. Water escaped beneath both doors. The medicine was dry in its cupboard. The spare towels were dry in theirs. The covered cup stayed upright.

Nuala wiped her face. She looked at the blue card, then at me, and raised one finger.

One drink.

I brought it to the tape. She drank, passed the cup back, and pointed to the mat. Then she held up green.

I dried the floor beyond the ring first so I would not slip if she called. I put the next measured drink outside the three-metre line and made its position a blue square on both our screens. I propped the fire door open with a second stop, set alarms for water and temperature, and started the repair list: light cover, basin guard, jamb, tissue packet, washroom floor, stair landing, dress hem. Upstairs would wait until she could choose the route back.

Nuala slept in her wet, brave, handmade gold piping while the coral lights stayed gone. I sat between the two open doors, close enough to see her phone change color and far enough to leave both ways clear.