Chapter 12
Fever
I'm so cold. No matter how many blankets they put on me. Jo keeps wiping my face with a wet cloth, and it makes me colder. I try to tell her, but my throat hurts so badly, I can hardly swallow.
I hear them whispering, and it frustrates me because I can only make out isolated words like "Marmee" and "worsen" and "Aunt March." Every time Jo wets my face, I think of the melting snowflakes and worry whether Ahren returned home and what happened when he did.
It's night, but the lamp stays on, and my sisters bustle through the house. I watch the stars blur, making odd streaks across the pain like Amy is painting with light.
I try to swallow again, but my throat is so dry that everything sticks, so I can't finish the swallow. The light trails circle the birds on their ceiling... no, their vines... vines on the wallpaper. I blink the birds away.
Then the snow is back, coming through the windowpane, dripping down my face, but it's a large flake that scrapes my cheek. I move my head away, searching the blackness because Ahren's out here somewhere. He's in the forest. He didn't go home.
I see him kneeling in the snow. He looks up, His mouth forms my name, but his voice sounds like Jo's.
"Beth... Meg, she's burning up."
I shiver and swat the snowflake away, but when I try to reply to Ahren, my throat only rasps a grunt. Ahren reaches for my hand, but when he takes it, heat pours into my arm, moving across my chest, spreading into my legs and head at the same time.
His skin is burning and swollen, and his blood hisses as it hits the snow. I try to ask him what happened, but he lifts his eyes. Then darkness drops around us, and I'm falling, falling, until I hit the bed.
"Belladonna," Meg says. "Try Beth. Just a little."
The blankets are so heavy. I squirm, trying to lift them, but I can't move more than my fingers. And there is the doctor, come at last to save the baby. I blink, flinching as he presses something cold against my chest. The doctor grew so much older. He was young...almost as young as Ahren and how his hair has turned gray. I look for the baby but find only the doll tucked into bed with me.
"The doll..." I choke. "Save the... the baby."
Baby. Not a doll.
But..but the baby is dead. It turned into a doll.
"I think," says the doctor, "you'd better send for your mother."
I look for Marmee, wondering where she is. In the woods, I suppose, with Ahren. It's not hard to find him. He's melted all the snow, and now he's laying in the mud where he shouldn't. His cuts could become infected. I step toward him but startle the green birds, and they fly into the air all around me. I scream. Then Jo is there, holding me.
"There aren't any birds, Bethy. Those are the vines on the wall."
But there are birds. Pip is with them, a flash of yellow with the green. "Pip," I say, but it only sounds like a puff of breath.
The girl hugs me. "Marmee's coming, Beth. Laurie sent for her yesterday. She's on her way."
"Where'd the horse come from?" a man asks, and I think his name is Laurie, but I only get a glimpse of him holding a tiny horse before it grows into a real horse prancing through the woods.
"I won't let you fall," someone says, but it's not Ahren. It's Mr. Hummel, and his arm is crushing my chest against him. I can't breathe, but no matter how hard I shove, I can't move his arm.
I grab the horse's mane, and the melting snowflakes are back, settling on my face and sending a chill through me. It's so cold out here that we won't last if we don't find a fire soon.
"Ahren," I choke out so softly he can't possibly hear me, but somehow he does. I hear his shout carry through the trees across the snow. I can't move my head, but I search with my eyes and glimpse Pip's cage, almost as big as the trees. Pip's flown off with the green birds, but Ahren's in the cage.
"He interfered," Mr. Hummel says. "He interfered, so the baby died."
I shove and fall off the horse, but the ground knocks my breath out. I keep gasping as I stumble to Ahren. His hands are so cold. He forgot his gloves again. He always forgets his gloves.
He grabs my hand through the bars.
"Bethy, wake up," he says. "Please, please wake up. We need you here. We need you to play the piano and keep us all sweet and good."
A girl tries to pull me from the cage. I lose Ahren's hand before the cage slides down the hill, carving snow between the bars. The snow fills the cage until Ahren is buried.
I scream, shove against her, and then it's black again. I'm so thirsty, but the snow is too hot to drink.
"Jo!"
One clear thought comes, and I stand still, screaming for my sister. The brave one who will find me no matter how dark it gets or how long it takes. "Jo!"
Why won't my voice work?
"I'm here, Beth," Jo says. "I'm right here, dearest."
But she's not. I grasp in the dark, hitting an arm, a hand. It clasps around me, and then Mr. Hummel is back, clinging to me no matter how hard I try to escape.
"Beth."
I don't remember the voice right away, but it's calming. "Beth, Marmee's here, sweetheart."
Marmee.
Marmee's here. Marmee wil save him.
"Ahren's drowning," I try to tell her, but I don't know if my head or my mouth is forming the words. "He's drowning in the snow."
"Who is Ahren?" Jo asks.
My heel hits something porcelain, and I glance down, seeing Susan laying in the snow, her rag body soaked. Someone's been using her skirt to wipe my face. I look again, but she's gone, and there lies the baby instead.
The baby. Or maybe it's a doll. I can't think of a baby, though I feel sure there was a baby somewhere. Or perhaps I'm wrong. Maybe it was a doll. A little porcelain doll. Somewhere...
