By spring it's clear that Rose is ill, but Sarah can't find the reason for it.
There's no fever she can feel, no congestion of the little girl's lungs, no swellings, nothing broken, no anything she can find. The child eats as much as Sarah can feed her, but can't seem to do anything but waste thinner and thinner; she drinks as much water as anyone can give her, but she's always thirsty still.
She sleeps like she can't stay awake and when she is awake doesn't seem even to have the strength to play with Jane, although she won't let anyone take the doll away. Nothing hurts, she says; she just feels "bad", and Sarah can't get more than that out of her.
By choice, she curls up in her little bed with Leaf for extra warmth, or she sits on Jack's lap or in Sarah's arms. Sarah wraps her in blankets and wraps her feet in fur.
Eric watches, frowning, and says little. Sarah thinks through every herb, dried plant, leaf or potion she knows. She tries many of them, all of them that might serve. None of them seem to do anything at all.
Some neighbours visit, as the weather clears a little. All of them have advice, and none of it helps either. Isabel, who's taken to haunting the church and sitting for hours in front of the candles inside, says that the only hope is prayer. Sarah forces a smile and nods; when Jack sees her out, he spits quietly out the door at the idea.
May just sits in silence, watching her daughter and chewing at her fingernails.
That night, after the third time Sarah gets up to check that Rose is still breathing, she can't get back to sleep when she goes back to the bed. She's been staring into the darkness for near an hour before Eric shows he's awake, turning over to wrap an arm around her waist.
"I don't know what to do," Sarah whispers, and she doesn't. It isn't even like Isabel's boy, where she knew there was a chance even if it held risks, even if it might not work. "I've tried everything that I know."
"Tomorrow I'll go to the forest," Eric says, and adds, "Fresh meat can't hurt," before Sarah can protest. And it's true. She bites her lip. "You stay here with her, in case something goes wrong."
"She has sores on her feet," Sarah says. "I've been trying not to show May or Jack. I don't know why she has them - she hasn't so much as walked more than a few feet in the past handful of days."
Eric kisses her temple, and doesn't say anything else. It's probably wise. Sarah doesn't think there's anything to say.
Coaxing May to do chores takes its own strength; as Rose gets weaker, it seems like less and less of the world exists to her mother, and if not given a task May will sit on the old bed hugging her knees and staring at her daughter with wide eyes. She doesn't refuse to work, no - but it seems like she can't think further than the moment in front of her, not even to chores and tasks she's been doing for years.
Jack does his own work silent, scowling, and with a roughness unaccustomed. Sarah coaxes Rose into drinking new milk and then tries to turn her mind to everything else she has to do.
Her mind feels as unruly as May's.
She airs the beds and moves Rose in a bundle of blankets to a comfortable corner so that her little nest can air as well. She sweeps the floor and shakes out the straw mats, scrubs the table and scours pots and wooden bowls and the rough pottery bowl she's given over to Rose's use as a bedpan, because it's easier than carrying the girl to the privy each time.
She takes a rough comb to the snarls in the dogs' coats and looks over their paws. She sluices out the privy with soapy water. And when she goes to the cow-shed, May follows her and stands in door, arms wrapped around herself, biting her lip. As Sarah rakes out the soiled straw and begins to lay down fresh, she turns, sees May, and her patience breaks for just a moment.
"Don't you have something to do, girl?" she says, and even in her own head her voice sounds like her grandfather in a temper. She leans on the rake and swipes her fingers over her brow. "May," she says, beginning to think of kinder words.
"I don't want her to die," May says, and Sarah stares at her.
The voice isn't much more than a whisper, and it's rough and uneven, and Sarah's never heard her say so much as a word before. May's face is pale and there are circles under her eyes, and she says, again, "I don't want Rose to die."
Sarah doesn't know what to do. Her hand goes to her mouth and then she lets it fall and says, helplessly, "I don't want her to either, love."
"Can you make her better?" May asks, in that same whisper-rough voice, barely loud enough to hear. Sarah opens her mouth and closes it and tries to think how to answer and ignore when her throat closes and her eyes try to water.
"I don't know," she says, truth the only thing she can offer. "I don't know May - I can try, I am trying, I will try everything I can but I don't know what's making her sick, and I don't know what would make her better."
May bites her lip and says, "You . . .you go. To the forest. It's magic in there. Maybe something - ?" and she stops as Sarah looks upwards, widening and blinking her eyes against the tears, that they'll go back to where they come from rather than spilling down her face.
When she manages to speak, her voice is nearly as hoarse as May's. "It doesn't work like that, love," she says. "I don't - I just know how to go in and get out alive. I've already tried everything I know, every medicine and flower I bring back, I - " And she has to stop as May's face crumples and the girl starts to cry.
Sarah leans the rake against the shed wall and takes the girl into her arms for a moment. Then she pulls May outside and calls, "Jack! Jack, come here!"
It sets the dogs to barking; there must be something in her voice. Both grown ones come bounding over when Jack comes, eyes wide and fearful. He stops when he sees them and stares at May as Sarah leads her over to him.
"Take your sister," she says, still hoarse.
Then she leaves them and goes to the house. Rose is asleep, peacefully enough, though the bedpan's no longer empty and the water-cup is. Sarah refills the later, checks that the little girl is warm enough, settles Leaf back down over Rose's feet.
Her hands shake as she fills her littlest pot with water and brews camomile in it. When it's done she wraps herself in her cloak even though it's not that cold and sits beside the door with the mug in her hand. She doesn't move when Jack takes his sister, spent with crying, and tucks her into bed, or when he comes back out and hesitates beside her like he's got something to say but can't find the words. Eventually he leaves.
Sarah stays. Grip comes and lays himself out by her feet; later, Bale whines and comes to put her head on Sarah's lap. She drinks half the camomile. The rest gets cold in her hands.
It's not quite sunset when Eric comes into view, carrying the carcass of a young buck over his shoulders. When he sees her she thinks she sees him pale and quicken his step, but she shakes her head and sets the camomile aside. As soon as she thinks he can hear, she says, "Nothing's changed. Rose is the same."
She knows the first two words are a lie.
Rose eats half the venison Sarah lays out for her, and feeds the other bits to Leaf with her fingers.
#
In the days that follow, May doesn't go back to her silence. It startles Eric the first time he hears her speak, because in the turmoil of her mind Sarah doesn't think the warn him; something in Jack's face is caught between delight and anguish every time May opens her mouth.
Sarah knows why.
She doesn't bother May for much, either. The girl sits with her child in her lap, singing little songs and saying silly things in a voice that's still quiet and fragile, and it reminds Sarah of how young May is, and how much younger she would have been the years before when Rose was born, and -
And that's where thought stops, because it won't go further.
The little bed goes mostly unused, because May won't let go of her daughter even to sleep. Rose doesn't protest; sometimes she rouses enough to tell her mother little stories about the things that Jane does while everyone is sleeping. Jack gnaws the skin off his second knuckle watching them both, and Sarah doesn't think he sleeps much.
Eric sits up with Sarah one night, neither of them doing it for any good reason, Sarah telling herself she should snuff out the candle to save it and go to bed, and not doing so over and over again. Eric's watching her face and says, quiet, "You're afraid if Rose dies her mother will go with her."
"I don't know what I'm afraid of," she says. She wraps the blanket she's got around herself and works her toes into Grip's warm fur and says, "I think I'm angry, Eric. I don't think Rose dying is what let May speak. I think even if the girl had died three years ago she'd be silent as the grave, but now she's made her way back far enough that she can and her baby's going to die and I can't do anything about it. I'm angry and I don't even know who I'm angry with."
Eric's answer comes after a moment, and with an arm around her as he sits beside her on the bench at the table. "That anger I know," he says, and Sarah sighs and leans her head on his shoulder.
"I thought you might," she says.
On the night Rose dies, Sarah wakes to May shaking her shoulder, hard and violent and frantic, crying and saying, "Wake up, wake up, wake up you have to come, wake up, Sarah - "
Sarah comes awake all at once and pushes May back with one arm, because there can't be anything else that May would call her for in the middle of the night. "Light a candle," she says, pushing past the other woman, "I need light - "
The dogs set up a howl and she snaps, "Get them outside!" and thinks she sees Eric move to obey.
Something on the floor trips her and she falls into the table, corner digging hard and painfully into her hip, but she ignores it. Rose lies on the bed, eyes closed and panting, curled around her stomach. She's shivering violently as Sarah kneels by the bed and touches her, lays a hand against her face and against her neck.
There's no fever, but Rose shakes; she doesn't seem to be awake but she throws up, even though the mess on the bed makes it clear she's already done that until there's nothing left in her stomach, some of it gritty and strange and dark.
"Rose," Sarah whispers, and then half-cries, "Rose," as a candle gutters into light, and another, and another, so many of them, and Sarah hates herself for the momentary thought to the cost of each of them and how little good the light will do her.
Jack holds May, arms wrapped around her and holding her still, saying something in her ear that Sarah can't hear, can only see when she looks back to them through blurred eyes. She looks at her husband and finds no help, only the closed face of someone who knows death when he sees it, and then turns back to the little body shaking and whimpering, and the mess already on Sarah's hands.
She's going to die, Sarah knows. Knows it here and now like a breaking blow with some too-heavy club to her chest, because she doesn't know, doesn't know what's happening, doesn't even know what's killing the child in front of her. But Rose is going to die, and knowing it knocks her head clear, so that she understands the only thing there is to do.
"Eric, get me water," she says quietly, "and get me a clean blanket."
She strips the soiled clothes off the girl and wipes her clean, then wraps her tight in the blanket; she makes Eric move the bench against the wall and pushes May to sit on it before putting the girl in her arms.
"Here," she says, putting a thickly folded cloth on May's shoulder and then leaning Rose's head against it. "If she throws up again tell me, and I'll give you something clean."
May's face is blotched in red even in the candle-light as she wraps her arms around the little body and stares up at Sarah with every pleading in her face. Sarah shakes her head and crouches down.
"I'm sorry, love," she says, and May starts to shake her head, face crumpling up again, "I'm so sorry but all we can do is make sure she's warm and safe and doesn't hurt too much." And she reaches up to touch May's twisted face and then stands up while May starts to cry and rock the girl in her arms back and forth.
Sarah pretends she isn't crying, and can't hear the coughing hacking sobs behind her, because there's no use in it yet and there are things still to do. "Help me," she says, and her voice chokes off so she clears her throat and says it louder, looking at Eric and ignoring the wet that she blinks out of her vision, "Help me, there's a mess that needs cleaning."
She strips the sheets and blankets off the bed, and Eric helps her strip the canvas cover off the straw. He takes the soiled straw outside and Sarah puts more water from the butt outside into one of the bigger pots and builds up the fire. She folds the soiled linens and puts them aside, throws out the soiled mat and blocks Leaf from trying to come back in the house.
Tries not to hear May as she cries and cries and rocks her dying girl, and tries not to see Jack as he stands staring like something carved out of dull wood, eyes glistening and mouth half-open in sound arrested, hands clenching and unclenching because there's nothing to do and nothing to fight.
When the water starts to boil Sarah pulls out a tub and puts the canvas in, wets soap and scrubs it over the dark stain until it's covered with white and then makes Eric pick up the pot and pour the boiling water over. She leaves it to soak and sets more water to heat.
Outside, the dogs whine and sometimes howl.
Come dawn, the cow kicks up a fuss and Eric goes to milk her. The soiled bed-things are all scrubbed and hung about the place to dry, the canvas spread out over the remains of the straw in the bed. It'll be a mess to tidy later, but it's spitting rain outside and there's nowhere else.
May's long ago stopped crying, but never rocking the bundle in her arms. Until the moment she does, and moves the blanket back from Rose's hair. Then she gets up and carries her burden over to Sarah and holds it out to her where she sits.
"She's not breathing," May whispers, letting her go. "And I can't feel her heart."
Sarah can't see, as the light of morning replaces the light of candles as Eric opens the shutters and lets it in. But her voice is steady enough when she says, "Jack, go and find the priest. She'll be buried in sacred ground."
Things take time, digging not the least of them. It's well-near evening by the time they lay the little girl down for her last sleep.
The blanket does as a shroud, as they haven't much else. May takes the little wood-and-straw figure of Jane out of her daughter's arms and kisses her eyes and then starts to cry again, sitting down by the grave while they fill it in because she can't stand. The priest says some words, but few, and Sarah doesn't remember them. She doesn't remember much except what her eyes see, as dirt falls on cloth and then obscures it - not the touch of air or rain, or the sense of cold or warm, or even Eric's arm about her shoulders as he guides her home.
She sits on the bench, still against the wall, and sees the straw and scattered cloth and doesn't think much on it until Eric pushes a warm mug into her hands. Then she looks down at it, knows that their little joyful girl is dead, and starts to cry.
It hurts her chest and her throat and her head, like trying to cough up something dark and ragged that's lodged inside her and won't go. More than once the choking sobs make her retch, though there's nothing in her to come up. And she can't see the child inside her head or feel her against her body or even remember her voice, not now, but she doesn't have to because there's something else that's gone and won't come back, can't come back, will never come back.
She cries like she's dying.
You can't do that for very long, and after a while grief staggers and stumbles to a pause, even if it doesn't stop. She knows Eric's arms are around her and her head is on his shoulder, that his shirt is wet with her tears and that her throat feels like raw meat and her eyes like they've been scrubbed with sand.
"May wanted to stay at the church for the night," Eric says, and his voice is rough and soft. "I couldn't see any harm in it. Her brother stayed with her."
"I want to sleep," says Sarah, and if it's a lie, when she's led to blankets and sheets and rest, she sleeps anyway, for a while.
#
May comes back in the morning carrying Jane, her brother in tow. Without saying anything she washes the doll in the water that's left and sets it by the window to dry. Then she turns to the dry and drying bedclothes and makes her brother help her refill the canvas bag, makes up the bed again and empties out the tub.
Or so Eric tells Sarah, when she wakes sometime near noon. Truly wakes, instead of half-waking to the ache and then twisting back into dark and dream as fast as she can. By noon she can't anymore and so she wakes up and finds May making porridge.
She sits at the table and May scoops her out a bowl, pouring around it the cream that had been going to Rose, trying in vain to make her less thin, less frail. Sarah takes up her spoon and stares at the food for a while before making herself take small bites and swallow them down.
May sits beside her on the bench and stares past the walls for a time before she says, "She could have grown up here." And in its own way, it's a question. "She could have been happy. I didn't - " she stops and then says, "Life wasn't ruined for her." She turns to look at Sarah, who puts down her spoon.
"No," she says, reaching over to lay her hand over May's folded ones.
"I didn't - " May starts again, and then, "I - " and then she stops and wipes at her eyes. When she speaks again it's in the false-brisk tone that somehow everyone knows, at times like these. "Eric took m'brother out to look at the fields. T'think about planting, he says. He says it's better to find work than sit."
Sarah looks around the house, all put back in order and breathes deeply in and out. "He's right," she says.
"But I can't think of anymore work to do," May says, voice shaking a little. She looks down at her hands and spreads them out and says, "I'm going t'keep the doll."
Sarah nods. May picks at the dirt under a fingernail. "I don't know why she died," she says. "It's not fair. Why my Rose? She could have been happy."
Sarah shakes her head. "I don't know," is all that she has to say.
May looks up, all the way to the roof and the sky beyond, maybe. "Father Watt says the good go to Heaven. D'you think she's in Heaven, Sarah?" As if what Sarah thought means more than the priest could.
Sarah remembers talking with her husband before he was, in a forest she hasn't seen in months. She says, "I think if anyone's in anything like Heaven, Rose must be," because it's the best she can do for truth and she can't stomach a lie right now.
"Maybe she'll be happy there, then," May says, and then looks back down at her hands while tears fall on them again.
Sarah gets up and goes to the door, lets the banished dogs back in. They nose around her hands and whine and lick her fingers; Leaf goes to the empty branch-bed and sniffs at it, and then sits beside it with a whine.
Jane sleeps in the branch-bed, and May chases the dogs out of it - but Leaf sleeps beside it and never anywhere else.
The wheat goes in and the garden's planted. People come by with gifts, now and again, the way they used to come by with advice, until someone else dies and the tragedy is supplanted. May cries often, but she doesn't stop speaking, so in the end Sarah supposes that's well enough.
Sometimes people who are ill ask Sarah for help, and she makes them something for it, and most times it works. And she never knows why it doesn't. And for weeks and weeks after they put their little girl in the ground she feels like her soul is wrapped in smothering wool. She can't stand it, but she can't cut through it either. She knows Eric watches her with worry in his face, but even knowing that doesn't seem to make a difference.
She plants and cleans and cooks and sews and eats and drinks and it's all so far away.
And the day before midsummer she says, "I want to go to the forest."
The forest is the same.
Some people say it never changes, but Sarah doesn't believe it. In the end she believes her grandfather's stories, that it once lived and thrived and if it was dangerous, it was only dangerous in the way of wild beasts, not in the way of rotten magic. She believes that one day it began to change and after it had changed Ravenna came and killed the king and took the kingdom and tried to burn it, but that it ate up her messengers.
These things might not be true, but she believes them anyway.
The trees are black claws against the sky, with leaves ragged and cramped and far between. What plants grow here are hidden or look half-rotted to hide themselves, and there's no predator larger than a weasel, because the forest itself eats the deer. This is where the forest finds your terror and uses it to drive you mad. Where the trees themselves watch you and decide whether or not you're an enemy.
Eric doesn't think it's a good idea that she's here. He hasn't said anything, not since she decided to come, but she can read the line of his shoulders, the quiet of his face, the rhythm of his walk. But she doesn't say anything until night's fallen and their little fire reaches defiant fingers at the night.
Tonight, like some other nights she's seen before, it feels almost like the trees are glad of the fire and lean over to warm their branches.
"I don't think I'll find her here," she says, aloud. This time they brought Bane with them, leaving Leaf and Grip for May and her brother, and in the warmth of the fire Bane lays her head on Sarah's foot.
Eric looks at her sharply, and Sarah smiles, shaking her head. "Rose," she says. "I'm not looking for her here. I know that's why you thought I wanted to come." She looks up past the branches and the fire, at the stars beyond it, and says, "I just needed to come here. To remember who I am." She looks at her husband and this smile is sadder, or wryer, or more something. "To remember that if this forest can exist in the world, I can't expect to understand all of it, or be able to do anything against it." She shrugs. "I think sometimes I forget."
Eric's eyes search her face, she thinks; in the end, he says, "Y'do enough."
She leans over and kisses him.
May does stop crying, but she doesn't stop talking. In the end, Sarah can be content with that.