What had driven her mother to flee through a blizzard on Christmas Eve? But she knew fear when she saw it. Real fear. The kind that settled into bones and stayed there. Thomas had looked at her like that once.
In those last days, when the fever took hold and the world stopped making sense, he had looked at her with eyes full of terror, asking why she couldn't make it stop, why she couldn't make him better, and Clara had had no answers to give him. The memory threatened to pull her under. She forced it back. Forced herself to stay present in this moment with this child who was still alive, who could still be saved." Your mother is going to be all right," Clara said,"not knowing if it was true, but saying it anyway.
Because children needed lies, sometimes needed hope, even when hope was thin as winter ice. You're safe here." The girl said nothing, but after Clara turned away, she heard the soft sound of the blanket being pulled close and something in her chest unclenched just slightly. By midnight, the woman's fever had climbed higher. She thrashed in her sleep, speaking words Clara did not understand. Apache, she assumed, or maybe Spanish, the sounds blurring together in delirium.
Her skin burned beneath Clara's hands as she pressed cool cloths to her forehead, her neck, her wrists." She needs a doctor," Eli said from somewhere behind her." The nearest doctor is in Ridgewater." 12 miles through a blizzard." I could try. You'd die." And then she'd die anyway, and I'd be left to bury three more people I couldn't save.
Clara's voice cracked on the last word. She had not meant to say it had not meant to let her grief show, but exhaustion and fear had stripped away her defenses. Eli was quiet for a long moment. Then he crossed the cabin, knelt beside her, and put his hand on her shoulder. The touch was brief, barely there, but Clara felt it like a brand.
"You're not alone tonight," he said." Whatever happens, you're not alone." She wanted to believe him. Wanted it so badly that the wanting itself felt like weakness." There's yarrow in my medicine box," she said, pushing down the tightness in her throat." And dried elderflower.
If I can get the fever down before dawn—" "Tell me what to do." They worked together through the darkest hours, Eli, following Clara's instructions with the steady competence of a man accustomed to crisis. She made poultices from the herbs she had gathered last summer, pressed them to the woman's chest and throat. She spooned thin tea between cracked lips, coaxing fluid into a body that had been pushed past all reasonable limits. And somewhere in those desperate hours, as the blizzard howled outside and the fire crackled within the woman's eyes, opened, dark eyes, deep as wells filled with fear, and something else, a fierce burning will that had kept her walking when her body wanted to die." Kaya," she whispered.
The word came out cracked, desperate." Where is Kaya?" Clara turned to look at the corner. The little girl had fallen asleep beneath the blanket, her small body curled tight as a fist. But at the sound of her name, she stirred." She's here," Clara said.