16

When the sun begins to set, the wind becomes too cold for Adelaide and she scoops up a sleeping Little Bird, carrying him back toward her cabin. River follows. For every step Adelaide takes, there is a smaller, child-size step just behind her.

And a larger, adult-size step on the other side of the frozen river.

Adelaide scans the bank but sees nothing—only a spattering of snow adrift on the breeze.

The amber glow of her windows is like a beacon, promising warmth, shelter. Little Bird shifts in her arms but remains asleep.

Again, a noise from across the river.

Adelaide stops so suddenly that River runs into the back of her legs.

River begins to growl a low, rumbling hum. Such a fierce sound to escape the lips of a child. River drops to all fours, her body rigid. She curls her back, staring across the river at something Adelaide cannot see in the darkness.

Safeguarding her homestead has always been Adelaide’s primary concern. But right now, the sweltering child lying unconscious in her arms is her only priority, and so Adelaide turns away from the river and continues up the path that leads them home.

River follows closely behind, lobbing threats and spittle into the unknown.

River slumps beside Adelaide on the sofa, tucking beneath her arm, and Adelaide pulls the girl closer. Little Bird lays motionless across Adelaide’s thighs, the bump-bump-bump of his racing heart hammering her skin. All she can do is stroke his moist hair, blow cool breaths across his face, and feel the bump-bump-bumps.

Adelaide fetches a wet rag from the side table and wrings the excess water into a bowl before laying it across his forehead. She can keep him cool when he sweats, and she can embrace him when he shivers. But there is nothing more she can do for Little Bird; there is no medicine to be found here. Little Bird no longer eats, no longer drinks. What she forces into his mouth simply drips from the corner of his lips. She fears he may soon begin to inhale the water, and so she has stopped trying.

A few miles down the mountain, there is a town. And a hospital. She was there once, after her accident in the garden. She listened to their beeping monitors, swallowed their bland pudding, and accepted their narcotics.

She could go there now; they might make it. If River could keep up, that is. And if Adelaide could carry Little Bird for miles over mountains and snow. It’s certainly possible. But what then? Adelaide would arrive at the emergency room with two dirty, naked children—one nearly dead, the other quaking with fear and barking at the nurses.

She would lose them for sure. And that can’t happen.

A shadow approaches her living room window. Palms against the glass. Face obscured by night.

Adelaide holds her breath and tightens her grasp around the children as she studies the silhouette.

This time, it is not one of the men from the farm. The figure is smaller, thinner, shoulders bent and slumped forward against the glass.

It’s all come down to this. She can avoid it no more.

The wild woman is here, on the porch, staring through the window at Adelaide and the children on her sofa. The feral mother. Both thief and beast.

But there is no snarl on the wild woman’s face this night. Her eyes are hollow cutouts above her sunken cheeks, and her fingertips leave spots of fog against the glass. She does not spit. She does not scream. She places her forehead against the window and Adelaide fights the urge to let her inside. The children tucked within her arms are not her blood. She has failed them, harmed them, though all she’d wanted was to protect them. She is a curse, and she should have died in that river so many weeks ago.

If she had any guts inside her at all, she would rip the door from the hinges and place these children in the arms of their real mother. But she is a coward, and instead, she hugs them closer.

The wild woman makes no effort to break into the cabin. She does not bang against the walls or attempt to smash the window. The wild woman drops her hand and turns, her matted hair leaving streaks across the glass. Adelaide imagines she will sit on the porch all night, and Adelaide thinks that would be okay. If the men show their faces around here tonight, they will have two angry mothers to deal with.

Somewhere outside an owl trills, its hollow song swaying from tree to tree. Beyond that, silence. Miles of powdery snow has smothered all sound, insulating her cabin from the rest of the forest, but tonight, Adelaide is not sheltered. This particular night, she is forsaken.

Adelaide no longer feels Little Bird’s heartbeat against her thigh, his bump-bump-bumps evaporating into the soundless winter’s night, and for a moment, her heart stops as well, but she can’t bring herself to look down.

Perhaps she’s wrong. Dear god, let her be wrong.

When Adelaide finds the strength to place her hand against his forehead, she knows for sure, and she bites her tongue to keep from crying out. To keep from waking River. To keep from alerting the wild woman outside her window. But Adelaide doesn’t know how long she can stifle her screams.

She wants to squeeze him, beat his chest, beat her own, howl into the night, gnash her teeth, cry until the sky splits open and the trees blow away and there is nothing left in this very spot but earth and rock. And no children ever existed in this spot, and no heart was ever torn from its chest in this spot.

Adelaide hates. It wells in her skin, this hate. It grows taller and rips through her scalp. This hate is consuming, and submitting to its power is the only thing she wants to do right now.

But next to the dead child in her lap is a very live child who needs her now more than ever.

Adelaide takes a breath, forcing the oxygen into the deepest part of her lungs. She flexes her fingers, tries to calm herself. The hate in her heart does not leave, but it goes still for just a moment.

Adelaide looks to the window, and the wild woman is once again plastered to the glass. She knows. Of course she does. The wild woman locks eyes with Adelaide, and Adelaide freezes. She is a murderer at worst. Negligent at best. And the wild woman sees her for what she is.

Adelaide looks down at Little Bird for the first time. She turns him over in her lap, and his body acquiesces. Adelaide touches his small fists, strokes his eyebrows, runs her thumb across his soft lashes. She does not cry.

Perhaps Adelaide is dead herself. She wonders where her brain has gone. Where her heart has gone. She is steel and cement, not even human. She pushes a few stray hairs from his face and leans forward to place her forehead against his own.

Outside, the wild woman begins to howl.

Adelaide loosens her grip on Little Bird. There is nothing to hold on to any longer.

River stirs, and Adelaide places her hand on the girl’s back, feeling her heartbeat through her ribs. It is strong and insistent. If River hasn’t yet become ill, perhaps she’ll be okay.

River turns over and peers at Adelaide, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She sits up, looking to the window and to her mother beyond. Then River sees Little Bird and shrieks into the night.

Adelaide heaves the little girl into her arms, and buries her face in the child’s unruly hair, while outside, the wild woman bellows for them both.