Lilli's Quest by Lila Perl

Author:Lila Perl
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781939601544
Publisher: IG Publishing
Published: 2015-10-29T04:00:00+00:00

Ten

“Hey, hey . . . Hey.”

I was slowly rising to the surface of some dark and fearsome place, yet the words in my ears were wondrously soft, and the barking of the hysterical hound had vanished. I opened my eyes to the whiteness of a sailor’s middy and, above it, the fresh face of a young man with searching blue eyes.

The next moment the pain in my leg struck with such fierceness that I cried out.

“Yeah, you got a pretty deep gnashing there, girl.” The voice now became a bit husky. “Take a deep breath, because I’m gonna lift you up and carry you. By the way, my name is Roy.”

“Helga,” I managed to breathe.

“Oh, a German name.”

I wanted to answer, to explain that I was a Jewish refugee from Germany, but I must have passed out again. The next thing I heard was the revving of an automobile engine. Roy was strapping me into the passenger seat of a car. “I’m taking you into town to see the doctor. Can you hear me? Do you understand?”

“Yes, yes,” I said. “You really mustn’t trouble yourself.” I looked down at the calf of my leg, which was now wrapped in white bandages stained with small rivulets of blood. “It was only a dog bite.”

“Only,” Roy mocked. “We’ve gotta get you a tetanus shot. Just cross your fingers that dog hasn’t got rabies.”

Rabies! My head began to whirl with visions of foaming at the mouth, hallucinations, paroxysms, brain disease, and death. “Do animals in America have rabies?”

“Sure. Bats, skunks, raccoons, foxes, wolves. A dog can get it from a wild- animal bite. But,” Roy patted my knee, “there haven’t been any reports of rabies around here for a while. So calm down. Where are you from, anyway?”

I told him briefly about Germany and then England.

“Oh, now I get it. Hey, I’m going to try a little homegrown German on you.”

To my amazement and delight, Roy broke into my birth language, and I could make sense of his comforting words. It turned out that he was Irish on his father’s side, but German on his mother’s, and had been brought up partly by his grandmother.

More than an hour later, Roy drove me back to Shady Pines. The doctor in the nearby village of Harper’s Falls had treated my wound with antiseptics, re-bandaged my leg, given me a tetanus shot, and assured me there had been no recent cases of rabies in the entire county. Still, I was given a list of symptoms to be aware of in the coming days, just to be safe.

Roy parked in the Shady Pines lot, and suggested that I lean on him as we approached the broad sweeping lawn that fronted the main building of the hotel. Already, I could hear a loud buzz of voices—I had been missing for hours. Once again, I had brought unwanted attention to myself, and had surely worried my relatives.

I made my appearance walking beside Roy, and limping as slightly as possible.

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