and went to her. I was used to waking up every few hours. The thin towels we used for diapers soaked through easily, leaving Isabelle wet and uncomfortable, needing to be changed many times a night. But when I went to the box, Isabelle was not there. I walked through the hut, looking for her, but there was only Anna, asleep at the far side of the room. A slap of fear stopped me cold. I imagined an animal sneaking into the hut, perhaps a wolf, sliding past my cot, taking my child in her teeth, and dragging her away. I understood with a terrible clarity the anguish Greta must have felt upon discovering Joseph missing. I felt a deep, instinctual longing for Isabelle, a physical need to have her against me, to feel the compact warmth of her, to see her hard, glimmering eyes, to hear her pink lips sucking at my body. This longing—this unbreakable connection between me and my child—was stronger than anything I had known before—stronger than hunger, stronger than pain. Even stronger than the loss of my own child. I was not Isabelle’s biological mother, but nature had made me her mother anyway.
Isabelle cried again, and I followed the sound outside, just beyond the hut, where she lay cradled in Uma’s arms.
“She woke up,” Uma said. “You are tired, Kryschia. You didn’t hear her.”
I was so relieved that Isabelle was safe, so exhausted and emotionally unsettled from the weeks of watching her die, that tears came to my eyes. “Give her to me,” I said, taking Isabelle in my arms.
But something had caught Uma’s eye. She stared at me, her brow furrowed, as if she were not quite sure she could believe what she saw. I looked down and found my tunic wet. My breasts had swollen with milk and leaked. I gasped, overwhelmed by joy and confusion as Uma lifted my tunic and placed Isabelle at my breast. The milk came slowly, but Isabelle was soon full.
For many years after I left the village, I believed that the milk that saved Isabelle was a miracle. How else to explain such an impossible gift? But recently, after doing research online, I found that lactation without pregnancy is not impossible, and that in certain parts of the world where maternal mortality is high, it is still common for an adoptive mother to breastfeed. Certain natural protocols—all of which Uma had known—could produce milk and save a motherless baby.
With regular feeding, Isabelle grew stronger and stronger. But even as Isabelle thrived, Anna drifted further away from the world of the living. I sat by Anna’s bedside, Isabelle at my breast, and tried to coax the girl back to health. I told her stories of dragons and princes and castles tucked into the mountains. I sang songs and asked her questions about her parents. But she rarely gave a sign that she heard me. She never smiled and she never spoke. If I brought her food—roasted vegetables and milk from the goats—she refused it. She took a bite or two of meat, if I brought it from the grotto, but it didn’t help. She grew thin and pale as she wasted away. If I said her name, she turned away. Her only expression was a solemn, shocked stare, numb and terrified. She grew listless and dull-eyed. I wasn’t sure if it was the broken arm or her terror of Uma, but her suffering had slowly begun to undo her.
Uma made medicines from herbs, distillations of mountain flowers and grasses that she gave Anna to drink. They had no effect. By the end of the first month of Isabelle’s life, Anna eyes were glassy and unfocused, her skin pale and clammy. When I brought the other children to see her, a flicker of interest played over her face, but when Uma stepped near the bed with water, terror flitted through her eyes and she faded away again. Uma tried her best to heal Anna, but her best wasn’t good enough. I knew Anna would not live long unless I got her real medical attention.
Thirty-Five
I woke in a panic, Isabelle’s cries ringing in my ears. I looked around the hut, ready to comfort her, but I had only imagined the crying. She slept soundly in her wooden box, a finger in her mouth. I pulled a blanket over her to shield her from the cool night air, when I saw that Uma’s and Anna’s beds were empty.
Possible explanations flooded my