It took about an hour for the brothers to calm the boy, and at that it was more like he'd passed out than settled down. He'd not heard their voices, he'd gotten more frantic when held, and he'd said little more than the words he'd wakened with : He hadn't meant to be bad. He was sorry. He didn't mean it, Josh, forgive him. He was sorry he'd been borned.

And he wanted to go home, that was all he wanted.

Go home, go home. Why was it bad?

Josh tried to tell him he was forgiven, even if he didn't know what for, but Jeremy wasn't hearing it.

Jason tried to remember things that might work, and was coming up with nothing. Holding the boy and talking to him usually got through to him, but neither was working tonight. Josh repeatedly asking what he was being asked for forgiveness for wasn't helping.

"In books, don't they slap them, or throw cold water on screaming people?" Josh suggested.

Jason considered the idea, then shook his head. "He'd probably drown."

Josh started to say something, but Jason held up a finger for silence. Something was stirring in his mind. Something buried. Maybe? Something – something to do with Mama. ?

Just after they had moved into their mountain home. Josh had been just past a year old. Da had been out exploring his property. Jason had been doing lessons. Mama had been happy and singing for several days, and Da smiling at her at every opportunity.

Mama had put Josh down for a nap.

Mama put herself down for a nap.

Jason was outside stacking wood when he heard her calling him.

She sent him to go after Da, who always told them what general area he would be in.

When he and Da had returned, she had been frantically pacing and crying and carrying on pretty much like Jeremy was doing now in his sleep. Da had calmed her. How? Cold water was involved somehow.

Jason rubbed his forehead and his jaw, trying to remember. He was pacing the floor, slowly, himself.

Josh read the body language, and remained silent. Jason was on the trail of some thought. He wasn't going to make him lose track of what he was pursuing. He just repeated that it was okay whenever Jeremy asked him to forgive him again. Hands off.

Neither brother was touching Jeremy. He had wrapped himself in his covers so they wouldn't touch him, but was still sobbing wretchedly, occasionally bursting into his bits of talk.

Jason stopped and snapped his fingers. "Josh, get the heaviest cloth you can find and get it as wet as you can. About the size of Jeremy's head. Probably one of our undershirts will work."

"Cold water?" Josh hurried to comply.

Jason nodded.

"Wrung out?"

"Not much."

When Josh brought him the dripping cloth (and a dry towel), Jason ordered him, "Make some music. Sing. Doesn't need to be sad, but does need to be calm."

"You think he'll listen to singing?" Josh was getting out his guitar as he spoke.

"I don't know. But maybe the music – 'Music soothes the savage beast' – maybe something like that heartbeat thing he did when Da – the night before –"

"Yeah, I know." Josh started tuning his instrument, and that was enough to ease the whimpering.

Jeremy turned over and spread out, flat on his back, exposing his face.

Jason, tentatively, wiped the boy's face, starting with the tear stains, although tears were still rolling. He stroked the forehead with an edge of cloth.

Josh started singing an old ballad.

Jason patted the side of Jeremy's face,down the temples and around his ear and along his jawline, then along his throat.

The sobbing was stopping, and the boy lifted his head to allow the touch of the cold cloth.

Jason nodded, and ran the wetness behind the boy's neck. The back of the neck was warm; too warm.

When it came out the other side, he repeated the patting in reverse order.

As he reached the (also warming) forehead, Jeremy's hand crept out from the wrapping and he rested his small hand on his brother's large one.

Jeremy sighed, and sank into what Jason hoped was sleep. The boy's breathing fell into the rhythm of the music filling the room.

Josh looked up when Jason sat back and mopped his own face with the wet cloth. Jason nodded for him to keep playing and he did for a while, more slowly and quietly, until the music was less than a whisper.

"Whew!" Josh said, setting aside the guitar and starting a pot of coffee. The older brothers wouldn't be sleeping the rest of the night. "What made you think of the music?"

"I remembered Da playing for Ma, once when she acted like that."

"I know she could be – excitable, at times. Don't remember anything that bad."

"No, she didn't do it often. And it was less severe as we aged." Jason shook his head.

"Did something happen? I mean. Why would she – ?"

"Get that frantic? I don't know. I was a kid and you were a baby still. We were here, on the mountain. That about sums up what I know."

"Maybe one of them diary-ed about it? Or maybe some of the old ones know? We could ask?"

"Maybe. Do you think it's that important, Josh? Maybe it was something they thought best forgotten."

"Maybe if they thought that, they were wrong."

"It's possible, I suppose." Jason looked over at the beds."I wish I knew."

TWO DAYS LATER

Jason returned to the boy in the bed and washed his face before removing the pillows from behind his back. His fever was gone, thank heaven, and he'd taken in more soup, and it almost seemed like he was participating (anticipating?) in the eating process. He should be waking up before much longer., if experience was anything to judge by. These emotional excesses… !

As he lowered the boy's upper half, he saw the eyes were open. And he smiled. "Decided to rejoin us, have you? How do you feel?"

Jeremy raised a hand to his forehead and rubbed it back and forth.

"Headache, huh? Are you thirsty?"

Jeremy nodded slowly, and waited while Jason fetched him a cup of water.

He drank slowly, then looked at Jason with a furrowed brow, and whisper/croaked, "What h-happened?"

Jason sat next to him on the bed. "I'm not sure where to start. You woke us up screaming, wouldn't let us near you, wouldn't listen to us. Fought us for about an hour, sobbed yourself into hiccups, and then went silent. Started a fever, and that's what it's been for a couple days now."

Jeremy turned his head. "J-josh?"

"He's working. Laying road." Jason studied Jeremy briefly. "Is there something you have to say about Josh? Or maybe to him?"

Jeremy shook his head, then reddened and looked away.

INteresting, Jason thought. "Whatever it is, he says he forgives you. Sometimes just being a brother is enough to make anyone cuss or condemn."

Jeremy smiled."D-did he r-really say all th-that?" Jeremy reached for the cup. His voice was getting stronger. Jason counted it a plus that he was speaking at all, and fairly articulately.

"More or less." Josh had used a lot more words. He'd also told Jason to find out, if he could, what he was forgiving him for, not that it mattered, really.

Jeremy handed the glass back to Jason and closed his eyes and went to sleep.

Jason sat , looking, for a long time, then brushed the boy's hair away from his face and took the glass to the dish tub. He still had questions, but more importantly, he still had his youngest brother. This was the best recovery he'd made from one of these episodes, too.

Maybe he would outgrow them. Someday.

/

When Jeremy woke up again, it was night, and the walls glowed in the lamplight, and firelight, and it was warm and smelled like food, and Josh and Jason were at the table talking and laughing.

The food smelled really good, too.

Jeremy sat up. No headache, no dizziness. That was good.

Jason said, "Ready to get up? Are you hungry?"

"Uh-huh."
"Need help?"

"Nuh-uh."

"Oh, just go pick him up and bring him over here," Josh advised.

"Only if he needs me, Josh." Jason wanted to laugh at Jeremy's glower at their brother. He might have to apologize or ask forgiveness for what he was thinking at that moment.

Jeremy crossed to the table and climbed into a chair. Jason poured him a cup of coffee and handed him a biscuit, and Josh served him a bowl of stew, heavy on liquid.

"Slow," Jason said.

Jeremy shrugged, dipping the biscuit into the bowl. He knew how to eat. Eat and not get sick, he corrected his thought, and he did slow down. Just a little.

" 'sgood," he mumbled. He wondered how awful it was for people who didn't eat real food for a real long time. They must be hungry, and it would be horrible to have to eat slower than slow.

Jason and Joshua watched him eat, occasionally glancing at one another. This – this still-a-boy was markedly more composed than he had been as a child. Their baby brother was growing up, and they were all going to have to get used to it. Time was, he'd be fussing at them for looking at him, let alone watching. He'd not have been speaking to them at all, as if the fever renewed the cause of his stutter. He'd have complained about his headache earlier, and refused to go back to sleep, maybe even crying himself back to sleep, which was always a problem, since crying was part of the cause. Time was, they'd have had to take his bowl from him to slow down his eating.

Time was – a lot of things that didn't matter now. The sturdy boy sitting with them was a long way from the scrawny child that had been, and when had it changed?

Time was – change, Jason concluded, as Jeremy sat back in his chair with a sigh of satisfaction.

"Is th-there m-more? For l-later."

"We're not going to starve you," Josh answered. "What did I forgive you for, that's what I want to know. If you can remember."

Jeremy looked at Josh and grinned. ""For k-kicking your b-butt."
"You never did that. I'd've known."

Jeremy licked butter off his fingers. "W-would you?"

Josh laughed and turned his chair around, while Jason refilled their cups and set the emptied pot aside. "Okay, smarty-pants, where was I when this happened?"

Jeremy smirked. "Wouldn't you l-like to know.?"

"And why don't I know about it?"
Jeremy grinned and didn't answer.