The door of the house creaked as she approached it; the vines on the walls made the handle almost impossible to find. She shuddered as she entered, the cold air creeping down her spine, chilling her down to the bone. She knew she had the illness. It could not have been avoided. She had taken every precaution to avoid the miasma: she had left Everard at the moment of his death, she had not gone near any of the infected, she had collected the few flowers still growing on the trodden grass-path and kept them near her nose. She had done everything she knew to do, but it hadn’t even mattered. Maybe God was mad at her, she thought. Maybe this was His punishment.