"I will sit with him for a while haltija," Aunt Jaana whispered into my ear as we stood near the end of the stranger's bed quietly watching him sleep. "You go and rest until I come for you," she directed me gently.

I smiled gratefully at my sweet aunt and kissed her weathered cheek before slipping out of the room. I was so very unsettled now that I really wanted nothing more than to go to sleep myself at that moment. However, it wouldn't do to go to sleep on the aunts when they had asked me to stay up all night with our sickly guest.  I had come, just for that purpose after all.

Scolding myself for such selfish thoughts, I took a quilt from the cupboard, wrapped myself in it and sat in the rocking chair near the hearth. I would sit here dutifully with Emmi until Jaana's watch was over. Aunt Emmi sat in her usual comfy chair and took up her knitting. We passed several hours this way – I dozing in and out of sleep while aunt Emmi's needles went click, click, click together.

Shortly after the clock in the hall struck midnight I heard my aunt stir from her bedroom, which lead me to stretch and get up from the rocker with a big yawn. I threw the quilt around my shoulders and padded over to the table where Aunt Emmi and I both waited on Jaana.

She gave us a tired smile and it was obvious that the late hour was wearing on her. My aunts were not the least bit use to staying up this late. They were early to bed and early to rise. I imagined there might not be any early rising tomorrow for these two dear souls given this late night.

"How is he?" I asked softly.

Sighing heavily and looking pensively over at Emmi, she confessed, "The poor young man still has a fever. You'll have to watch him very carefully tonight haltija."

Aunt Emmi grabbed my hand and gave it an encouraging squeeze when she saw my countenance fall.

"A fever is normal under the circumstances," she offered. "He's young and strong. He'll be just fine. You mark my words haltija."

I gave her a nod and a grateful smile.

"Better head in there now," Jaana told me.

I kissed both my aunts goodnight, and walked into Janna's room. Jaana had left a candle burning by the bedside, which gave me plenty of light to see my way around the still room. Closing the door quietly behind me, I sat in the chair she had pulled up beside the bed. I watched his sleeping face as I listened to the aunts talk quietly and then retire up the stairs to Emmi's room.

I could still hear muffled voices and the creak of floorboards for a little while longer before the house fell into absolute silence. I had never been alone at night in the house before - not like this. Though I had slept here more times than I could recollect, the aunts and I were always awake together or all sleeping soundly. It felt peculiar being awake while they slept. The house moaned and creaked in eerie ways while everyone but me was swept away in dreams.

I did feel a bit like a sentinel standing guard over everyone. This night, at least, I would do everything in my power to be the haltija my aunts claimed me to be. Through prayer and diligence I would watch over this man the sea spat out like his own guardian angel.

Standing up from the chair, I took hold of the candle so I might get a better look at his face now that he slept. I sat on the edge of the bed and, though it creaked and the mattress sunk under my weight, it did not wake him. He stirred very little at all, which I hoped meant he was in a deep peaceful slumber.

I leaned in and brought the candle as close as I dared. There on his forehead were beads of sweat, which were the tell tale sign of his fever. It was early yet in May and the room was cold without the benefit of a warm fire. The beads of sweat were very much out of place. I dipped a wash cloth in a basin of water by the bed and wiped his forehead, cheeks, and neck, which still retained an unnatural blue tinge. The blue was made darker and more peculiar by the dim light.

Afraid I might burn him with a drop of wax, I set the candle down on a little table by his bed and dipped the warm cloth back into the cool water. Pressing the cloth to his forehead, I openly admired his beautiful face. It was heart shaped with a wide forehead, well defined cheekbones and a jaw that tapered into a narrow chin. The proportions appeared exaggerated and lent to his overall foreign appearance.

His eyes, now closed and not searching my inner most being any longer, were large but deep-set and fringed with thick, soot-coloured lashes that were impossibly long, and straight as a bone. I admired those lashes. They softened his dark, penetrating eyes, when he was awake. And when he slept, they cast long delicate shadows across his pale cheeks. In a way, his lashes added to his otherworldly beauty. Especially under candlelight.

Curiosity being what it is and getting the better of me, I reached out and touched his lashes with the tip of my index finger. Satisfied that they were as soft as they looked, I then explored his thick, straight eyebrows. I was delighted to find them silky smooth under my finger.

Watching carefully and feeling sure he was too deep in sleep to stir at my touch, I decided to fully give in to my curiosity as I boldly touched the hair of his head to see if it was as pleasing. I expected, after being bandied about in the sea, that the salt water would cling to it and make it dull and rough, but I was completely mistaken. The long black locks were as satiny and supple as if they had been bathed in oils. It was a singular mystery to me and a wonder.

Sitting back a bit and taking up the candle once more to have another good look at him, my eye was drawn to his slightly parted lips as his tongue flicked out to lick them. It was the very first sign of movement I'd seen in him since I came into the room. I supposed he was thirsty and set the candle down to take up a cold cup of willow bark tea, which was on the bedside table.

Slipping a hand under his head and through his lustrous black hair, I lifted his head gently from his pillow and brought the cup carefully to his lips. Without waking, he took a sip from the cup and then another. It was a great relief to me that he would drink, even in his sleep.

I laid his head back upon his pillow and set the cup aside before taking up the cool cloth again to bath his face and neck. Afterwards, my eyes fell upon his lips again. There was nothing else to do that night but to make a study of him. And I was pleased to do so given that he was extraordinarily handsome.

His lips were cracked and dry but had a shape all women must envy. Both the top and bottom were long, full and well defined – as if they'd been sculpted by a master sculptor. Since no one was about and I thought there was no harm in it, I leaned in still further to touch the edge of his upper lip with my finger while I gently followed the line of his lips till I had traced his whole mouth. I heard my Mother's voice in my head warning me not to fall in love with him and, with a start at my own brazenness, I sat back quickly.

This sort of behaviour would never do. She would be ashamed of me if she knew I was more interested in his exotic looks than in his fever. After all, I had a job to fulfill and ogling him was not it. I went back to my duties, which consisted of bathing his face and neck with a cool cloth, and offering his perfect lips a cold drink of medicinal tea from time to time. All the while though, I scolded myself repeatedly for my shameful conduct.  I hardly knew myself that night it seemed to me.

I did not have long to dwell on my sins though. A little while later the tossing and turning began, and then the delirium. When the delirium came I felt sick with unease. He was not the first person I had treated who suffered so. When the Irish fever had come through our little fishing village, I had to nurse many. Not all made it.

But this situation was differnet. Unlike the sick I had treated in the past, who were weakened by typhoid, our guest was abnormally strong. This made it very difficult to hold him down and keep him from hurting his injured leg further as he struggled continually to sit up and get out of bed.

And then, in the wee hours of the morning he took to fits of talking and shouting in his delirium. I thought for sure he would wake the poor aunts and I half expected them to walk in through the door at any moment. But, they never came. The house was still and quiet except from him raging in his native tongue.

I had thought, initially, that he could not speak. He never uttered a word to my aunts or I when he was conscious. And, though Father and the Doctor had not said anything explicit, I had the feeling he had not spoken with them either. So, it came as a bit of a shock to me when I heard him mumbling to himself in a language I had never heard before.

It had a melodic cadence and I did wonder if I had, sometime in my life, heard something like it. But, even as the night drew on and he talked more and more, I could not place it. It was not French, Dutch, Italian or Spanish. The village saw its share of foreign fishermen, and I had heard most languages spoken in and around these coasts. His was something altogether different from those languages, and yet, oddly familiar to me for reasons I could not fathom.

Though glad he could speak because it meant we might be able to communicate with him and find his people if he survived the night, I was almost in tears when I could not quiet him despite my efforts to sooth him. His excessive restlessness and distress caused me untold dread. What if he didn't make it to the morning? I was not the least bit confident that my heart would survive unscathed by another fever induced death. I had never truly recovered from the deaths during the '46-'49 epidemic.

As the grey light of early dawn broke through the little window in the room I knew we were both exhausted. I would live to see the day dawn but I could not say the same for him. It seemed that he had spent all his energy in his feverish state and now he was as silent as the grave. I could scarcely tell if he was even breathing.

I prayed to God to keep him – to see him through - and wept over him as I sat down upon the bed and wiped his face with yet another cool cloth. His flesh was still burning hot with fever and I despaired for him as I wiped tears from my eyes.

Unexpectedly, his eyes fluttered open and he looked directly at me for the first time since the previous evening. I'd forgotten how impossibly dark and intense his stare was. A shiver ran down my spine, but I smiled warmly at him all the same. I dearly wanted to convey to him that he was safe and in good hands – that he should not worry.

He blinked a few times and then looked about, as if seeing the room for the very first time. Predictably, he tried to get up, but I pushed him down gently by pressing my hands to his shoulders and putting a little pressure there. I was so exhausted from struggling with him all night that if he protested I wasn't sure I had it in me to stop him. He did not protest though. Instead, he simply looked around the room in confusion.

The fog of fever had not lifted and he was not in his right mind just yet. I wiped away my tears absently as I reached for the cold tea and pressed the cup to his lips. He drank greedily at first. The second cup I poured for him he drank more slowly. I then resumed pressing my cold damp cloth to his forehead, cheeks and neck. He seemed to still and I thought he might fall asleep again.

Perhaps all would be well, but often people would have a moment of clarity or normalcy before the fever seized them again and they died. I'd seen it happen before. I told myself not get my hopes up.

And then, to my great astonishment, I heard him singing. It was low and quiet. Almost inaudible. But, when I gazed at his lips I could see they moved and it was a song, like a ballad, that arose from his lips.

I leaned down to turn my ear to him that I might hear him better. I was sure if I could only catch a phrase or two I might have some idea what he was speaking and then we would have a better idea of how to reconnect him with his people. I tucked stray strands of hair, that had fallen from my loose bun, behind my ear and hovered as close to him as I dared.

To my great surprise and horror, he seized me and drew me down to his chest. I would have cried out in alarm but he swallowed my cry with a kiss – a deep and thirsty kiss. I had never been kissed so in all my life. Not even by the French and Spanish sailors who sometimes came to the village and liked to kiss the local girls for sport as they passed by in the streets.

I struggled in his arms until he stopped, but he did not let me up. Instead, he pinned me with a glare as if I had done something awful to him and not the other way around. Tears filled my eyes and spilled down my cheeks and onto his face. I could no more control them than I could the trembling in my limbs. I did not tremble from passion but from fear. He was impossibly strong for such a sick man and he still had not let me up. Worst of all, I was terrified he was not in his right mind.

Upon seeing me cry so, his demeanour changed and the expression on his face became almost tender. While still holding me with one arm firmly about me, he reached up with his other hand to touch my face. I cringed and tried to pull away. I wanted to be free. But, to my obvious astonishment he drew me nearer, grasped my face in his hand and brought my tear stained cheek to his lips – his dry, cracked lips.

I cried the harder expecting he'd force himself on me again, but this time he startled me by kissing my tears. It took me a moment to realize that he was trying to drink them up. I was dumbfounded and lay perfectly still allowing his rough lips to brush up and down my cheek in no particular pattern.

When I ceased to struggle he ceased to hold me like a vice, and I ever-so-gently pushed myself up from his chest - careful not to move to quickly or to look him in the eye. I was not sure what would trigger him.

Sighing with relief, I realized he was still in the throws of his fever and that it was a fevered mind that had grabbed and assaulted me in such a peculiar manner. It was comforting to know that he was not himself. Fever did make the sufferer do strange things. I knew this from experience. It appeared our guest was not immune to the whims of fevered thoughts and actions. To preserve his dignity and to save my reputation, I vowed to myself never to mention the kiss or what proceeded afterward to another living soul. 

Regardless, the experience I'd just suffered unsettled me. I rose up from the bed and busied myself with the cloth I'd been using to mop his forehead. I rinsed it out again, but this time I applied it to my own burning cheeks. I wiped away all signs of my tears and diligently scrubbed away the feeling of his cracked lips on my skin as they slid roughly along my cheeks. I remained so until my heart stopped racing.

Eventually I returned the cloth to the bowl and rinsed it again. This time I turned my eyes slowly on my charge. I was not sure what to expect. His big black eyes, though glassy with fever, were watching me quite intently. I froze. I was afraid to be near him. What if he grabbed me again? What if he tried to force himself on me a second time? He was impossibly strong. I bit my lip and looked down at my hands holding the cloth.

He said nothing and made no move toward me. He remained perfectly still in the bed. And, after several minutes passed, I found the courage to look at him again. I was relieved beyond measure to see he'd nodded off to sleep. With his eyes closed he seemed less threatening. I took this opportunity to lean over the bed, though I did not sit on it again, and began bathing his face with the cool cloth. I still had a job to do and duty to fulfill no matter how strangely i had passed the early pre-dawn hours with him.

No sooner had I pressed the cloth to his cheek, then I realized his fever had broken. How my heart rejoiced knowing he was no longer burning to the touch. Perhaps the worst was over and the last quarter hour had just been some mad fit of fever. I thanked my lucky stars the aunts had not been tending him. What a fright they would have received.

A giddy laugh escaped my lips at the thought and I fell into the chair Jaana had left by the bed. Exhausted in both body and spirit, my laughter turned to tears as my limbs trembled with fatigue. I earnestly hoped never to spend another night like this ever again.