The wind picked up and the fragile wing fluttered in her hand, and then took flight, whorling up through the air and disappearing.
“What is it, a stor?” her father had asked.
“It’s just sad, how brief their lives are.” There was more to it than that, but she couldn’t express all of it, only that it made her want to cry and run at the same time.
Her father had put an arm around her then, giving her a reassuring squeeze.
“Even a life numbered in days can be beautiful,” he said.
And it was then that she had cried for the transitory nature of butterflies, which were born and yearned and died so swiftly.
“Pamela?” Jamie’s voice seemed to come from a vast distance, as if he was speaking through a phone on one of those old transatlantic lines, crackling with interference. “What are you doing?”
“There’s a butterfly on that branch,” she pointed up at the oak branch thick with snow. “I need to catch it so it doesn’t die,” she said, wondering why he was looking at her so oddly. The snow felt wonderfully cool on her feet, and she thought perhaps she should lie down out here, and it would douse the fire in her head. If she slept in the snow, it would take away the pain. All of it. She sat down at the foot of the tree, between a gap in the roots, the butterfly momentarily forgotten. She put her back up against the tree. She could feel the snow soaking through her pajama bottoms, but she didn’t mind, it felt rather nice.
Jamie’s face hove into view, the green eyes dark with worry.
She touched his face, one cold palm cupping his jaw. “You’re very lovely, you know,” she said and tried to smile, but found it hurt too much. She grimaced, her peripheral vision a soft cloud of grey on each side. There was something wrong about that though she couldn’t quite think what it was. Jamie put a hand to her forehead and she sighed with relief, it was icy cold against her skin and it felt wonderful.
Jamie didn’t seem to think it was wonderful, though. “Pamela, how long has your head hurt like this?” His voice was sharp with worry and it made her vaguely uneasy.
“Since a few hours after I arrived at the police station,” she said, trying to find a spot to lie down properly. She was horribly tired, and it was getting dark so quickly, even for a November day.
Jamie hauled her unceremoniously to her feet and then picked her up. “Come on, I’m putting you to bed, and then we’re going to see what Shura can do for that fever. You’re hotter than a branding iron.”
“Promise me you’ll go back for the butterfly, it will freeze to death out there.”
“I promise,” he said.
“Good, I know you always keep your promises, Jamie.”
By the time Jamie put her in the bed, she could only see a narrow field directly in front of her. She closed her eyes; her eyelids throbbing with blood and heat. Every joint ached, and she thought she could see them, each smooth and shiny round of cartilage and the tension of the muscles, scarlet and pulsating with pain.
She felt like she was drifting, and though she could not see, she sensed that the landscape was changing around her, the room melting away to become something small, like the cutouts in a pop-up book, pretty but merely a Potemkin façade.
Behind her someone said her name, and she turned and saw a field of snow stretched out to the edge of a dark wood. She must have walked outside again, she thought, seeking the cold. She longed to lie down in it and just stop for a while until the crimson wires of pain weren’t strung so tightly through her body.
Her name again, and a man’s voice, beckoning her to where he stood in the shadows, only his silhouette visible to her eyes. She knew him, she thought, though she didn’t quite know how. She walked toward him, the snow cold and crisp beneath her feet and the woods dark and deep and welcoming.
“How high is it, Shura?” Jamie asked.
Shura looked up at him from his position by the bed, his dark eyes unreadable.
“High, but we will keep an eye on it. If it gets worse, we maybe should consider hospital.”
Jamie nodded.
“I am going downstairs to make something for this fever,” Shura said. “I will tell Maggie and Vanya, so that the babies are attended.”
“Spasibo,” Jamie said, his mind on the woman in the bed. He had put her in his room, central to the upper floor and the warmest of the lot. She looked lamentably small and fragile in the midst of his big bed, and terribly pale. His thoughts briefly flickered to the last time she had been in this bed. She had been nineteen and attempting to seduce him. It had very nearly worked, in fact if he hadn’t had too much to drink that night, it likely would have. How different everything might have been had he—but no, he shut the thought down as quickly as it came.
He was shocked by how frail she felt when he picked her up. He cursed himself for being so unaware. She tended to hide in her clothes these days but he ought to have noticed how thin and white her face was, the bones lying starkly close to the surface. She was exhausted, ill and grieving and trying to cope with everything that had come at her since Casey’s disappearance.
He built a fire in the big hearth that graced the west wall of his bedroom until it was a hearty blaze that dispelled the chill of the early winter night. Maggie brought in gin jars that were hot enough that they smoked slightly when applied to the sheets. Shura was right behind her with a tray of hot tea.
A smell, somewhat akin to what one might imagine the borders of hell to smell like, was wafting in drafts of steam from the large tea pot on the tray. Maggie, her nose wrinkled in revulsion, gave him a look that spoke volumes. Shura shrugged and put the tray down.
“It is smelling bad, but is good, you understand? You have to make her drink now.”
He woke Pamela, though he hated to do it. Shura was right, they needed to do whatever they could to get her fever down now. Waking her was like trying to bring a drowned woman back to life, despite the fact that it was clear her sleep was anything but restful.
She drank the tea with reluctance, grimacing her way through the first few swallows. He made her drink all of it, though she glared at him when he insisted. Finally she lay back against the pillows, clearly exhausted.
“I feel a bit ridiculous,” she said.
“Don’t, you’re just sick. We will look after everything; you’re not to worry yourself.”
“Where are the babies?” she asked.
“Downstairs with Vanya and Maggie. They’re fine, sweetheart, please don’t worry about them. I’ll look after them.”
This seemed to give her some small but necessary peace, for she fell into a restless sleep again some minutes later. He got a basin of cold water and a small pile of washcloths to soak and put on her forehead. She muttered something that he thought it best he didn’t quite catch when he put the first cold cloth on her forehead. The evening passed in this way, with Pamela tossing and muttering, and by turns throwing off the blankets and then huddling in them shaking with cold.
Vanya stuck his head in at one point, Isabelle’s tousled head on his shoulder. She was fast asleep, dressed in a castoff pair of Kolya’s sleepers. One down, two to go. Conor was such a fixed star, that he adapted to whatever surroundings in which he found himself. As long as someone pointed him to a bed and read him a story he would be fine. Everyone in this house loved Pamela’s children as if they were their own.
Shura came in a little later with a fresh batch of cold water, and a pot of tea for Jamie to drink. He went to the bed, and put one thick-fingered hand to Pamela’s head. He wore that inward look that physicians or healers often wore when assessing the condition of their patient.
“She is a bit cooler, and she is sleeping better, da? You go, spend a bit of time with the babies and eat. You won’t be able to help her if you are sick too. I will call you if she is worse. Maggie tells me the phone line is out, I thought you should know.”
Jamie nodded, it wasn’t uncommon for the phone to go down, the slightest bit of rough weather and it packed it in. “Than
k you, Shura. I won’t be long.”
Maggie had left a plate for him in the Aga’s warmer. He sat down to eat, realizing how tired he was. He hadn’t done more than snatch a few minutes of sleep here and there since Tomas had tracked him down in New York and told him Pamela had been taken in for questioning. The several hours after that had been a blur of calling in favors and catching a flight home. The flight across the Atlantic felt like it took twice as long as it normally did. By the time he was on the ground in Dublin, his phone calls had begun to bear fruit.
Vanya came in the kitchen then, Kolya toddling at his side. He made a beeline for Jamie and clambered up into his lap. He then proceeded to help himself to what remained of Jamie’s dinner. He had turned two just the week before. Jamie kissed the top of his red-gold head, enjoying the little boy’s robust good health and energy. Kolya never stayed put for more than a few minutes and was soon down and away playing with Conor’s collection of wooden cars and trucks. Conor had gone down to the byre with Jake directly after his dinner to visit the new pony and possibly, Jake had said, to have a ride around the paddock. Jamie had been grateful to his stable manager, because Conor loved horses the way Pamela did and the pony might be the one thing that would keep the child distracted from worry over his mother.
Vanya sat across from him, sliding into the chair with his boneless elegance, the smell of the fresh snow wafting off of him. He had been outside with the children earlier.
“You are worried, Yasha?” he asked, quietly, the remarkable amethyst eyes viewing him with sympathy.
“Yes,” he replied, “I am. She’s not as strong as she ought to be.”
“It is grief,” Vanya said, “you know this, you have seen it kill before. It wears masks—illness, accident, suicide or simply becoming a ghost in the flesh. In the end, it is still just grief.”
“Yes, it is grief,” he agreed.
“She believes she cannot live without him.”
“I know she does, but she’s wrong,” Jamie said and stood, the anger in his veins like a white-blue light, banishing his weariness. If there was one thing he understood about grief it was this—he would rather fight with a disease any day, but he was damned if he was letting Pamela kill herself through mourning.
He returned to his bedroom to find Pamela sleeping a bit more restfully. He went to the windows and looked out over the yard. The snow was lit with diamonds everywhere that the paddock lights touched. Beyond that small halo of light was a deep hush, the absolute quiet of woods and snow and cold.
He watched out over the yard as Conor came back with Jake and the snow continued to fall, building up in the yard, a few flakes sticking to the window through which he gazed, each one a thing of delicate and unique wonder. How long he stood there he didn’t know but at some point he realized he was praying, a silent emanation from himself to the night beyond. It was formless, not so much a petition as a plea, not so much asking as hoping that the power beyond would not take Pamela to itself and remove her from those who needed her.
“Jamie,” said a small voice from the doorway of his room. He looked up startled, realizing he had been half asleep, his forehead touching the frosted windowpane.
“Conor?” The boy stood there in his pajamas, bare-footed, a blanket clutched in one hand. There was worry in the child’s face, worry that he understood all too well. “Come here, Conor, it’s all right, your mama is just restless tonight.”
Jamie sat in the big armchair that looked out over the grounds and Conor crawled up into his lap. Jamie wrapped the blanket around the boy’s small form and then put his arms around him, knowing Conor needed the reassurance of an adult right now. He smelled of toothpaste and soap, his neatly set ears glowing a soft shell pink in the light of the fire and the small bedside lamp, his turf of curls still slightly damp from his before bed wash. He looked up at Jamie, small face grave.
“Is my mama going to die?”
Jamie gave him the respect of looking him directly in the eyes.
“No, she is not going to die, Conor. She is sick, but she isn’t going to die.”
He nodded, but Jamie could see he wasn’t entirely convinced. After all, people had told him his father was going to come home, hadn’t they? He had learned the hard way not to trust the word of adults.
“I won’t allow her to die, laddie and that’s all there is to it. I’m the boss here and I get to say what happens and what doesn’t.” It was, of course, an enormous lie, but Conor needed a man who seemed entirely in charge of things right now, not a man who understood that a person could actually die of grief.
“Jamie.” The little voice was very serious and he dreaded what question Conor might ask now.
“Yes, Conor, what is it?”
“I love you.”
Jamie put his face to the damp curls and kissed the boy’s head. “I love you too,” he said and Conor sighed, as though in relief, and promptly fell asleep.
They sat so for a long time, Conor’s little body like a hot water bottle against the chill of the night. Jamie looked over to his bed, where Pamela tossed and turned and reached out toward invisible things in the air, and he prayed over the slumbering body of her son that he would able to keep the promise he had made to him.
He was awakened in the wee hours by Shura gently shaking his arm.
“Yasha, wake up.” He came up out of sleep like a diver returning from the deeps. Conor was still fast asleep on his lap and his arms ached from holding the child tight for hours.
Vanya was there, too, and he took Conor from Jamie and left the room in that silent way he had. He would see Conor safely to bed.
“What is it?” he asked, alert now, the worry there in his brain and body like a drum pounding insistently.
“She keeps talking to something that isn’t there.” Shura looked over his shoulder as if he wasn’t entirely certain there wasn’t something that only Pamela could see, hovering there in the room. “She calls for you, she calls for her husband, she seems to be seeking and not finding. It is making her very—how would you say?”
“Agitated?” Jamie was out of the chair and beside the bed without any consciousness of his movements.
She had thrashed the blankets onto the floor and was pushing against some entity only she could see. He touched a hand to her forehead, horrified at how hot she was now. The fever must have climbed at least another two degrees while he had slept. While he had carelessly slept. Panic coursed through him.
Shura was wringing a cloth out in icy cold water. He put it to Pamela’s forehead, and she cried out like she had been shot. “Yasha, we need to be action.”
“It’s time to take her to the hospital, I think,” he said, inwardly cursing himself for not taking her the afternoon before.
Shura looked up at him, the dark eyes worried. “Yasha, look out the window please, there will be no taking her to the hospital.”
Jamie went and looked, and felt a thrill of horror shoot through him. He had never seen snow like this outside of Russia. The snow had already reached the top of the paddock rail; it would be impossible to get a car down the mountainside, not to mention too dangerous lest they get caught in a snowdrift and weren’t found for days. The safest place for her was right where she was, with fire and medicine and water readily available. He only hoped he hadn’t made a fatal mistake in not getting her to a hospital the afternoon before.
“Yasha?”
He took a breath and nodded. “Yes, you’re right Shura, we have to be action. We’re going to have to be merciless. Go fill the tub with lukewarm water,” he said grimly. “We have to get her temperature down now. We can’t afford to wait for the morning anymore.” It wasn’t worth mentioning that dawn was unlikely to bring any redemption, for the snow was only going to be deeper come morning.
Shura nodded and went off. Jamie could hear the water start to thrum through the pipes. He was going to have to prepare the house for a loss of power as well, which with snow this heavy was likely an inevitability. He wa
s surprised it hadn’t happened already.
He went and looked out the window again, as if the few seconds would have somehow changed the grim view. He remembered tales of such winters. He had lived through one himself, though he had only been eleven at the time, and it had seemed like a grand adventure. Driven by easterly gales the snow had covered the entirety of the island, filling every valley and hollow, capping all the mountains and rising in places to the height of the telegraph wires. Cars, bicycles, busses and lorries were abandoned on the roadsides and many elderly, trapped in their homes without adequate food or fuel, died. Livestock wintering out in fields had suffocated in the drifts. Men out cutting peat were found frozen to death days later, packs of turf stuck with ice to their bodies. At home, safe and warm, and too young to really understand how devastating such weather could be, he remembered it now as a time of sledding for weeks and building a snowman so big that it didn’t completely melt away until April of that year. The country had been shut down for six weeks, with hard frosts coming down early each night. If they were stuck up on this hill for more than a day or two with a woman who required urgent medical care…it didn’t bear thinking about.
A sharp cry from the bed caused him to whirl around. Pamela was sitting up in the bed, reaching out toward something invisible to his own eyes, but he had no doubt that she was seeing something, or someone, there in the air before her.
“Do you see him?” she asked, “Do you?” she was breathing heavily, as though she had been running for a distance.
“See who?” he asked, fighting to keep the panic from his voice. She was hallucinating, which meant her temperature was dangerously high.
“Casey. He’s right there, but he can’t seem to hear me. Jamie, the snow is so cold, where are my shoes?”
“The snow?” Christ have mercy, where had her fevered brain travelled to? He remembered the episode in Russia where he could have sworn she had traversed half the world in spirit to pull him back from the grave’s edge. The woman was half witch, and frankly that scared the hell out of him right now.
In the Country of Shadows (Exit Unicorns Series Book 4) Page 42