I don’t think anyone likes infirmaries.

It doesn’t matter how kind the infirmary keeper is, or how frequent your visitors are or whether they let you eat pastries rather than nettle soup.

An infirmary is still an infirmary. You’re only there for one reason. It’s because you’re hurt or sick. It’s not supposed to be a pleasant experience. It can’t be.

Still, it is different when you have a cold or a titch of the flue than when you have a broken leg or an infected slash.

It’s different yet still when you know that you could spend years in the infirmary and still not get better.

Welcome to the last category, Sam, my poor friend. All the sympathy of the ages won’t do you any good.

Bitter, huh?

Yeah, I guess I’m a little bitter. Not against anyone, though. That’d be stupid. Be bitter against my peers for merely being enslaved, that makes a lot of sense. Or be bitter against the elders for sleeping, that makes sense, too. What if I was to be bitter against the fox and his band? Well, what good would it do? Proper bitterness can’t be directed toward anyone actually evil-anyone can hate evil. The bitter can’t hate anything so clear-cut.

So, at the moment, I’m amorphously bitter. Or maybe bitter at the world, but that’s really just the same thing. 

I think my mom called me brave after it happened. I’m still trying to figure that out. What is bravery, anyway? Jumping on a fox’s back when it would have been better and more in character to slink after him and trace his route or do something likewise useful. Maybe I’m wondering if my bravery wasn’t just a subconscious form of suicide. I don’t tell Mom that, though. She doesn’t need to hear it. And I know what I think it, too. I’d hate to think I lost what I did for nothing. If I was trying to commit suicide, this could be, you know, another chance. If I was trying to save them, really trying . . . then I’m just a failure, just incompetent. A nice gesture is still just a gesture and this is an awful lot to pay for a gesture.

I always thought I’d be okay with losing my legs, if that should happen. Losing my hands would be the tragedy. A poet needs his hands . . . his legs are just there for transportation. Not essential - only essential for warriors and athletes and I’ve never been either. I thought -- rhetorically, because I never thought it would happen - that it wouldn’t be so bad.

Of course, pain doesn’t mean much to those who seldom experience it. I’d figured it would hurt, but I didn’t realize what "hurt" was. This slow throb ebbing in and out with my heart-beat, a throb edged with something far sharper. I can block it out if I don’t think about it, but the moment I think, there it is again. Maybe it will always be there.

They’re making a chair for me, I hear. So I can be carried around without having to be slung over someone’s shoulder or cradled like a baby. They might even put wheels on it, so I can navigate the halls by myself, if not the stairs. I giggle a little when I think of rolling down all those huge stairs and screaming my head off, but it’s rather a morbid giggle. I’d probably break my neck.

You know what? The tactful elders would never, never say it, at least not to me, but I think they’re almost glad this happened to me, although I’m sure they’d rather I’d done it myself. Tripped on Martin’s sword or something. After all, I’m wearing a green habit (wasn’t much left of my black one), my piercings are sealing themselves up, I can’t even bear the sight of my bone ornaments. I’ve been taken down a peg from my aloof rebel status. I might be on my way to being a proper Redwaller, albeit a bit of a brooding one, since anyone permenantly wounded is obligated to brood. I wonder if it occurs to them that this might just be a minor attitude set back, that I’ll be just as asocial and arrogant a cripple as I was anything else. I’ll make "cripple" my identity. I will become "the cripple" until being "cripple" is the thing to be, because it’s what Sam is, and Sam, it’ll be said, is a rebel if there ever was one and rebels are cool.

See, I haven’t changed a bit.

Except I feel older . . . and younger . . . in my sameness, somehow at once.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise. You’re supposed to feel older after trauma like this - it’s supposed to mature you, right? You’re supposed to feel younger when you have the physical capabilities of a very young child, when all those your age are gone and you are the last . . .

I hope they find the others, that they’re not dead. Maybe it’s for a selfish reason - maybe I just don’t want their parents coming back and hating me for surviving - I mean, pity is bad enough. But maybe they wouldn’t hate me. I still don’t want the others to die. I never wanted anyone to die; I’m not the fox. And my peers . . they didn’t hurt me. It was just easier to think that they did.

Maybe I’m lonely. Maybe everyone is. It’s been so very hard without the others.

There was the time of the birds, when I had to be moved from the infirmary and my Mom stood over my pallet, ready to kill anyone who got too close. I slept through a lot of that; I don’t know how, but I did. Maybe they drugged me so I wouldn’t worry, since it wouldn’t do me any good. But those were hard times . . . maybe would have been less hard if we’d all be there.

There’s suddenly a lot of commotion downstairs. I don’t like commotion. I mean, can you blame me? Every time there’s a commotion lately, it’s not a good thing, or it is a good thing veiling a bad thing. I tense up in my bed, because I can’t help it. I half imagine the fox bursting through the door and swinging something onto my chest - it doesn’t matter what . . . my skinnny chest could be cracked by a particularly hard scone at this point. He’s almost there, now, footpaws pounding, laughing in a too-dignified manner, and awfully hard to hate, even though he’s coming for me and he won’t kill me this time either - just break me, add another breaking to my breaking and it’d be another one that wouldn’t heal. This time, I’d be alone, because the fox won’t bother with stealing this time . . . he’ll kill . . . he’ll kill everyone. He doesn’t need a reason. 

Or maybe he’s stronger now. Maybe he’s become a god, a vengeful fox god, and he knows what he’s done to me and he’ll do it to all the others and we’ll all be there, bleeding, on the ground, or in the chair, or in our beds, absolutely helpless, absolutely helpless there forever. And he’ll hurt me again, just because he can, or take me with him, as kind of a personal, I don’t know, mascot - something immortal he can hurt forever . . . he’ll hurt us all forever.

I know I’m babbling, but there really are footsteps now and the commotion is louder and what if it is . . . 

A head slips around the doorjam and I nearly scream . . . and then I nearly scream again.

I close my eyes, try to count to ten, only get to four, and open my eyes again.

"Sam?" The thing-that-is-not-what-it-has-to-be raises a brow cautiously and steps forward.

"M . . . Mattimeo?" 

The mouse smiles wanly and nods.

"You look different," I say quickly because it’s the only thing I can think of. 

"So do you."

Nothing said for a moment. Well, at least I know what all the commotion was about.

"What happened?" I ask lamely.

"Oh," Mattimeo shrugs, "It was long. Kinda painful sometimes, but we all got back. And Slagar’s dead. I’ll tell you about it later." 

"He’s dead?" 

"Yeah, dead. My father and Orlando . . . you haven’t met him yet . . . they saw him die. It’s over."

"I’m sorry." 

Mattimeo gives me an odd look, "Why would you be sorry? As far as I can see, you got the worst end of just about everything. I should be saying sorry, although I’m not sure for what either."

"I’m sorry because I have to be sorry . . . I guess." This isn’t working. I lean back against my pillow and sigh, "I don’t know."

"It’s all right."

Another silence. I hate these. But he really is different - he knows how to stand now and there’s something behind his eyes that wasn’t there before. Maybe I’m sorry because I thought he was a fool before, but that’s not the sort of thing you should apologize for. 

"We were passing through a village on our way home," he starts and I blink at the suddenness of it - and the nervousness in his voice, "and Matthias saw something at a booth that he thought was interesting and he showed it to me, and I thought . . ." He exhales and pulls out a largish, very lumpy bag from his vest. "Um . . ." He quirks a half smile, walks into the infirmary proper, and dumps out the bag roughly on my bed table. "It’s a game."

I blink at him, then prop myself up on one elbow and blink at the pieces. They’re carved and wooden and fantastic - not really one thing or another, I’m not even sure they’re beasts.

"I don’t know how to play it, but the hedgehog who sold it to us gave me this rule paper or something and you’re better than this than I am . . . and I think it looks pretty cool. Do you . . . want to try it with me?"

Another silence and this time, it is maybe because there’s something too strange about this. Mattimeo with those new hard lines in his face, who’s not a child any more, asking me . . . and I expect I look terrible, to play a game. To play a game after everything that’s happened, after we’ve been through, after we’re adults in everything but age, after we’ve become creatures that would scare the average half-child with our grimness, we’re going to play a game.

It’s too much. I have to laugh. But I surprise myself - it’s not really my laugh. I guess my laugh always sounds kinda mean - it’s not intentional, it just does. I don’t know what kind of laugh this is, but it’s not that, and Mattimeo joins in, until we’re just laughing and laughing, until it’s not laughing any more and it hurts, maybe just a little, but it’s all right. For once, it’s all right.

"Okay," I gasp out as the last wave dies down and my paw loosely falls on the nearest of the pieces, "Tell me how this works."