a thing, and all that silence led Rue to believe that something had passed between them, some sort of dispute. He’d been the loser, Rue figured, and then Sarah had come to find her.
Rue knew what to expect from Bean, but she was still shocked to see it. The froth and fever, when she’d sought out the right mixture to fix the symptoms, had sounded in her head as ordinary. To her, sickness—death and birth—did have the habit of growing ordinary over the seasons, until one case cropped up to shock her. And this was it and, worse, it was of her own making.
Bean’s breathing came in wet shards, a wretched sound like someone drowning. He was not fighting but lying still, as if weighted down by something only he could make sense of. He locked eyes with it, this oppression in the air, and did not stop staring it down, even when Rue and Sarah drew near.
Rue rested her palm on his forehead. She felt exactly what she knew she’d feel. Fire. She couldn’t keep up the pretense long and drew her hand away, hid it in the apron of her dress as though it had been branded to tell of her guilt.
Rue slipped from the room. There was only so much she could do, and she’d done too much already.
In the outer room she found Jonah risen from the floor. He’d put the children in a rocking chair in the corner. They huddled together in the seat, fighting a doze and losing.
She could sense his distrust from across the room, as thick as though it were a thing he could hold in his hand. A stone to throw. Jonah did not like her looking at his children. Rue looked dead at him, feeling suddenly bold. I am still your witch, she was about to say. So you best be scared of me.
Rue opened her mouth to speak, to cuss, but it was Sarah’s wailing that came, mournful and absolute from the other room. Rue rushed back, but Jonah was quicker, and she followed after him as close as she dared. He stopped himself in the doorframe with his hands braced against each wall. Rue had to slip beneath his arms to get past him. She near had to climb over Sarah crouched at the foot of the bed. Bean’s strange eyes, Rue saw, had shut.
“What’s the matter?” Jonah was asking. His voice was urgent and aggressive, like he was ready to fight with the truth if it came to it.
Rue put her hand to Bean’s mouth and felt no breath. She put her hand to his neck and felt no rushing blood. She put her head to his chest, hoping, hoping to hear a distant pounding there, but there was nothing to hear and no way to hear it besides. All Rue could hear was the sound she knew well, Sarah’s howl, the desperate sorrow of a mama who already knows.
Still, it fell to Rue to pronounce it like it always did. Like it always would. “Bean,” she said. “He dead.”
WARTIME
There is a new fox in the wood. Miss May Belle jokes that she’s gonna go out and skin it, wear it for a coat when the season gets chill.
It’s a woman. Ma Doe says the right word for a woman fox is a vixen. It’s brown and bold, been seen prowling round the House like it thinks it belongs there, pawing at the front door trying to get an invitation in.
Miss May Belle got herself a new ring that don’t belong to her, come off a bigger hand, it only fits on her thumb. Word is it used to belong to Missus, who isn’t even yet cold in the ground. Did Miss May Belle thieve it? Did Marse Charles gift it?
Lord, but that Miss May Belle is uppity.
Who can say—except that a thief would never be so proud. The only time Miss May Belle’s seen to take off that ring is when she’s birthing. Says it’s bad luck, she does.
The fox prowls. Missus’s grave chills. The South divorces the North, wanting its freedom.