15

The day that Little Bird fell ill, Adelaide did not notice. She spent the afternoon unpacking all the glorious supplies that Catherine had bestowed. Her little cabin in the woods was a veritable grocery store, filled with delicate fresh fruits, canned vegetables, beans and all manner of bottled goods. Rice and powdered milk and preserved meats and fragrant teas. Adelaide unpacked instead of mourning the absence of her daughter. She snacked instead of worrying about next season’s supply run. She cleaned with her new disinfectants, and wiped with her new dishcloths, and replaced the clock batteries, and she didn’t notice anything odd about Little Bird.

The next day brought a lethargy to Little Bird, and a loss of appetite that Adelaide might have noticed had River not snatched the bread and cheese slices from his plate when Adelaide’s back was turned. She did not notice that he could no longer hold on to his gray elephant, the animal slipping from his fingers. Adelaide tended to Henry and Zelda and shoveled snow from the doorway, and even scooped some snow into cups, topped with a drizzle of honey, for the children. Adelaide did not notice that Little Bird’s cup melted into sticky water that leaked through the cracks between the floorboards when he knocked the cup from the table.

But this morning, River shoves Adelaide’s shoulder until she wakes. The girl’s eyes are large, her face wet with tears. She leads Adelaide to the living room where a barely conscious Little Bird lies strewn across the floor, his face slick with sweat, his skin hotter than the fireplace.

Today, three days since Catherine’s departure, Adelaide notices Little Bird.

His legs dangle askew from the folds of Adelaide’s elbows, his sweat dampening her coat, as she rushes through the front door. River trails behind, stumbling over snow ridges. The sun is warm today, a glorious complement to the frigidity of the air. But lovely as it is, Little Bird does not need warmth. Little Bird needs cold.

Adelaide runs to the river, but finds it still frozen, so she turns at the bank, heading to her secret spot. She hopes the grand canopy will bestow a miracle on her Little Bird.

Behind her, River squawks and yelps.

“Follow me, little one. Stay right close. We’re almost there. A little farther. Can you make it?”

River chirps. It’s a Yes.

“Good girl, River. We must help your brother now. I need you to be a strong sister.”

Little Bird is listless in Adelaide’s arms. His skin is aflame, his eyes open but seeing nothing. She runs faster.

Adelaide doesn’t remember the trail to the eddy being so strenuous. It’s as if the heat from his little body has penetrated her skin, her bones, and she is plummeting to the ground. At this rate, they may only reach the eddy by way of crawling on all fours.

They arrive at last, and Adelaide collapses to her knees, laying Little Bird down onto the chilled earth.

How blind she has been, so lost in her tedious chores that she has failed to notice this for days. Some mother she is. Some second chance.

She places her hand on his forehead, and though his body floods the clearing with heat, his skin is cold and wet.

“Little Bird,” she whispers, “look at me.”

He does not.

Adelaide pushes open his eyelids and it seems Little Bird is not looking at anything at all.

“Little Bird, River is here. Your sister. Your sister is here, and she’s right beside you. Can you look at her?”

He trembles.

Adelaide places her hand on River’s shoulders.

“Your brother is going to be okay. But he’s sick, and we must help him feel better.” Adelaide hopes she understands. “You can trust me. Have I ever let you down?”

As the words escape her lips, shame drops like a steel trap to the deepest part of Adelaide’s gut.

“River,” she says, enunciating every word clearly, including the girl’s name. “River, I need you to gather snow and wrap it around Little Bird’s body. Can you do that?”

Adelaide gathers small handfuls of snow, tucking them against his thighs, under his neck, in his open hand. She looks at River. “Just like this. We need to cool him down. He is too hot.”

As River takes up the task of mounding snow around her brother, Adelaide holds her fingers to his wrist to count his heart rate. The number seems impossible. Astronomical. This cannot be right.

She places her hand on his warm chest, and his heart thunders beneath her palm. Adelaide can’t remember the last time she was sick. It doesn’t happen out here in the mountains, secluded as she is.

She thinks of Alice, her granddaughter, coughing on her sofa, her floor, only days ago.

“Garden-variety cold,” her daughter had said. No doubt. But these children have never before been exposed to other people, and their other-people germs. They are defenseless against an infection in their sinuses, a virus in their lungs. Adelaide scoops Little Bird into her arms, tucking fresh snow beneath his ears and against his neck. He moans. She buffs it into his chest like a menthol rub, and smears it along the soles of his feet, squeezing them with her quaking hands.

Everything is so large around them—tree trunks wide as cars; the canopy above, bony and expansive; the frozen river stretching from one bank to the next; the narrow dirt road and the mountains that look down from great heights; the snow falling from somewhere so profound and otherworldly, it is a wonder it falls to earth at all.

And the three of them—so small and insignificant in the middle of all this grandeur. Forgotten. Abandoned together. One sick, so very sick. And Adelaide unable to help. She lifts her head to the bare branches above, locking her stiff fingers together so tightly they may never unlatch. And she begs for someone—anyone—to help her Little Bird.

The girl is scared, and she is no mother. If she were a mother, she wouldn’t be scared. If she were a mother, she would know how to help.

Something is wrong with brother. She feels his hurt like there is something wrong with her, too. The girl wonders if she is strong enough to take away brother’s hurt, and she tries to hold on to it, tries to make it bigger, heavier. She feels hot, then cold, and she rolls her eyes back into her head, and tries as hard as she can to feel all the bad things for brother. But when she looks at brother, he is not better. She did not take away enough of his hurt.

She can feel brother slipping further, like he is going away forever.

The girl moves her lips and her tongue and tries to distract herself with all the woman sounds she has learned. The words she and brother used to practice, before he got very sick. She makes the ooo sound and the eee sound and the mmm sound, and many other sounds, but she can’t put them together in her mouth at the same time, like the woman does. The girl wonders what she must sound like to the woman. The woman makes funny sounds that aren’t words. But maybe the woman thinks she and brother make funny sounds that aren’t words, too.

The girl leans against brother’s damp body and rests her head on his lap. She has so many things to figure out, but she can’t think about anything anymore. She is too scared. So she falls asleep on brother, twining her fingers into his fingers.

Adelaide spends the afternoon dripping water into Little Bird’s mouth. When he begins to shiver, she holds him until he stops. When his body becomes a furnace once again, she places him back onto the snow.

Little Bird opens his eyes, he whispers something to his sister, and River immediately stands and runs away. Adelaide does not know where the girl is going, and she does not call after her. If River knows what’s best for her, she will run far away from this place. Far away from Adelaide and the tragedy she has brought upon these children. But soon enough, River reappears under the canopy by the eddy, returning to Little Bird, food in hand. For the first time all day, Little Bird sits up and eats the bread his sister has brought him.

River kneels beside Adelaide, knees touching, and Adelaide resists the urge to scoop the girl into her arms, squeeze her tightly, and thank her for not abandoning them. Abandoning her. Adelaide is beginning to feel as though she needs the children more than the children need her.

Little Bird finishes his meal and vomits into the snowbank.