I jerk away and stumble back. “No.”
“Rose,” he says, like a moan.
I know that I’m hurting him, that my reaction will make him think all the wrong things about how I feel—how I wish he’d have kissed me instead of saying those words—but all I can seem to do is move farther away.
“Why?” I ask suddenly.
His brow pinches over his nose and he shakes his head. “Why what, Rose?”
“Why are you telling me this now?” Tears rise into my throat, choking me. “We were happy. It was all getting better. And Becca. You’re supposed to love her. You can’t want me. I—” But I don’t finish. I can’t see his face and say what I was going to say. I can’t let him know the truth of what I feel for him.
We stare at each other, across a million miles of pain and horror.
Too late. It’s too late.
I turn and run. The sound of him calling my name echoes off the mountain, following me into the trees.
*
I stay out in the forest for several hours before I take the path back to the shack.
Becca waddles into the doorway, holding her swollen belly and immediately starts scolding me. “What were you thinking? Luke’s worried sick! He went out looking for you.” Accusation rings clear in her voice. Even though she doesn’t say it, I hear it in her words:
It’ll be your fault if he dies out there
.
I stare at her, unable to speak.
“What, in the name of Heaven, got into you? You know how he fusses over you. How could you do this to him?”
Fusses over me? My heart beats faster, remembering his words, how his body felt near mine. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do anything horrible. I just needed to get away.”
“Away?” Her voice is different then. Like she knows something about what happened. “What’d he do?” She looks like Mamma when she asked me the same question about Pa.
I rise to Luke’s defense. “Nothing! He didn’t do anything at all.”
But Becca doesn’t seem convinced. “He should’ve known better. I warned him about what happened to you. I can’t believe he’d—what a fool. Men are such fools!”
Her words send a chill up my spine. “What’re you talking about, Becca? He didn’t do anything. I swear.”
“Oh, Rose.”
And that’s all she says.
Oh, Rose
. But it’s enough to see she knows what I’m not saying. But why isn’t she more upset if that’s true? The man she loves tried to touch me, he said words men say to women they care about. Doesn’t she hate me for that?
She shakes her head and walks back to the wood pile. “We best get a good size fire ready. You’ll both be needin’ a warm-up when he returns.”
I follow after her to take the wood out of her hands that she’s picking up from the pile.
She shakes her head and grabs another two pieces.
“Stop that, Becca!” I say. “You shouldn’t be carrying all that.” She’s so annoyingly helpful all the time now that she should be resting.
“I’m not an invalid. Stop pestering me.”
I’m relieved the conversation’s taken a turn away from Luke, so I go along, even though I’m worried about her doing too much. “Fine. You make the fire. I’ll wait and watch for Luke.”
I carry in the wood I rescued from her, bring in a few more pieces, and then go back outside to wait.
It’s odd sitting here again, at the wood pile. I haven’t sat in this spot for so long—not since the miners’ visits. So much has happened. I’m close to seventeen now. Becca’s going to have a child in only a month or so. And Luke. Everything’s changed with Luke here.
Inside me.
The words he said to me in the snow float back to me. “
You were so beautiful, so small and feminine
...”
Am I really the Ice Witch the men say I am? Do I show them something they can never have and drive them mad with it?
Pa.
Hunt.
Am I driving Luke mad?
I can’t bear the thought.
I know that I’m driving him away from Becca, and that in itself is horrible. I won’t hurt Becca anymore.
I can’t stay if that’s what’s coming.
Someone in this family deserves a life, a family, love. Becca’s been through so much. And I’m not made for happiness. All I ever do is hurt people.
The image of Pa’s back disappearing into the flying snow burns at my eyes. What’ll they think of me, though, if I leave? That I’m like
him
? I can’t be that to them.
I shake with the pain it gives me. Somehow I need to make Becca and Luke see…
…that I love them.
*
Luke returns but he doesn’t say a word to me about what happened. He comes up the rise and only pauses a second before passing me by. “Are you okay?” he asks, his jaw tight.
I nod. Too many words surface to choose, so I keep silent.
He goes inside and I follow. Becca starts to bustle around us, immediately, getting us warm. She soon had us both in our skivvies, wrapped up in wool blankets. Then she begins baking oatcakes and making tea, humming to the baby in her belly as she moves back and forth from the flames.
I peek at Luke several times over the blanket, but his gaze stays locked on the fire. I need so badly to let him see what I’m struggling with, to show what I can’t seem to say. The words are lodged in my throat, words that might break us all if I’m not careful.
Becca sets the hot tea cups in our hands, and smiles down on us. “There, now,” she says, reminding me so much of Mamma it hurts to look at her. “Now, I think we should talk. Would you like to start, Luke?”
My heart starts thumping as I watch him shift uncomfortably in his chair under Becca’s gaze. “I think I’ve done enough talking for one day,” he says finally.
Becca rolls her eyes and sits on the pallet beside us. “Well, I assume my silent sister won’t volunteer either. I just hate all this hard silence. It’s like walking through cotton in this place, the air is too thick with unsaid things.”
My heart gets so loud it’s impossible to think.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
They both turn to me.
Becca’s eyes grow. “What, Rose?”
“I’m sorry,” I say a little louder, shocked I said it once, let alone twice. “I’ve been awful to you, Becca.” My throat clenches and tears make the fire look blurry. But now that I’ve started it flows out of me like a river of repentance. “I’m ashamed of things I’ve said. Things I’ve done. I don’t want to be like—I just…My heart’s been all wrong. There’s been darkness, so much darkness. But you’re my sister, and I…I love you.” And I can’t say anymore. There’s too much boiling over in me. Tears soak my cheeks, my chin.
I let my eyes stray to Luke and try to make them say what I can’t speak in front of Becca.
Her hand finds mine and squeezes. “I love you, too, my sweet Rose.” And she leans over to kiss my cheek.
But then she goes stiff and gasps, clutching at her belly.
Luke lunges and I reach for her in the same moment. We both cry, “Becca!” trying to catch her as she falls.
There’s the sound of dripping and the smell of salt, then I see fluid spreading out from under her legs. It darkens the wood floor and runs through the cracks, thick and final, tinged pink with blood.
“Oh, God,” I say, my hands shaking.
The baby.
Becca just lifts her head to us and smiles. “It’s coming!” She squeezes my hand again. “See what you’ve done with all your crying. Now the little thing wants to come and meet her aunt.”
I smile with her, but my heart’s focused on the blood and torment to come.
*
The labor is on and off all the rest of that day and night. Becca grows tired and weak, unable to lift her head or hands to drink, conserving her energy for the trial. I push back at questions I can’t answer: what if the babe never comes? What if it slips out blue and limp? My head is full of all the horrors that might be coming next, as Becca cries out over and over, filling the small shack with screams that tear the air.
It all pulses at my skin, pressing worry and doubt into me.
I direct Luke in things he can do to help and he listens intently, following orders well. He gets the water boiling and rinses the rags as they fill with blood. He tends the fire, to keep the room warm. I see my own fear mirrored in his eyes, but we hold our feelings secret. We just stay busy and do what needs to be done.
And as night turns to day, the blood comes, thick and insistent, spreading out around her like a dark presence. It grows so large it seems impossible she has any blood left in her veins.
The sun rises, marking another day of torment and no progress. The room glows with light, showing all too clearly how much damage the labor’s doing to my sister.
“Just pray, Rose,” she gasps between her pains, which come faster and faster. “It will be well.”
It’s like she’s comforting me.
Me.
But it’s not me in a pool of blood. Blood that would never be, if it wasn’t for those men. If it wasn’t for Hunt. And Pa.
Anger boils through me, rocking me to my core. Becca doesn’t deserve this.
How could you?
I hiss at God. And then in the next breath,
Please, help us.
Becca seems to sense time’s short. Her cries become more than pain. She stares at my hands, sticky with her blood—there’s so much blood. Tears run through the crimson stains on her cheeks, creating pink pools on the pillow.
It’ll be over soon. We both feel it, shivering at the air. My teeth chatter. My head aches. I cling to her and plead with my magic to work. To save her.
I wish and wish and wish...
The peace we’ve found can’t be stolen. I should be leaving, not her.
Please...please...
I’ll bottle up some of her blood, I’ll mix it with ash and smear my face—maybe I can trick Death, maybe he’ll think I’m Becca and take me instead.
“You have to take care of her, Rose,” Becca gasps. “She needs you—” But she chokes on the words, she lets out a sob and grips my wrist so tight I imagine the bone cracking, but her words are even more painful. My body turns cold and icy as they echo through me.
“P-promise me—Promise you’ll...do this. Love me, Rose. Don’t let her go.” Her face twists in torment again and she screams. “Please!”
I try to pretend that I don’t know what she’s asking, I can’t.
But I know.
She wants me to save the baby. But to do that I’ll need to cut into her.
The chill in my blood turns so cold my body goes numb with it.
“I promise,” I whisper. But I can’t do what she’s asking. I can’t.