Elsa Crane's Arc

Chapter 27 of 66

Two days after the gathering in the lane, the Peters girl woke with a fever. By noon the cobbler's twins were coughing into their sleeves. By evening the miller's boy could not keep water down. Clara came to Elsa's door with her braid unraveling and her sleeves wet to the elbow. "Four houses," Clara said. "All the children who touched him." Elsa set down her cup. "Say it plain." "The mothers are already saying it. He came, they touched him, now they're sick." Clara wiped her hands on her apron. "If you don't sit at those bedsides by morning, the crown comes off him before the week ends." Elsa pulled her wool coat from the hook. "Then we sit." She went first to the schoolhouse. Bodhi was at the low table with his chalk stub, drawing nothing, just tapping. Fern stood behind him with a hand on his shoulder. "The children you played with are sick," Elsa said. She crouched to his eye level. "You are going to visit each one. You are going to bring the bear." Bodhi's hand closed on the caramel-colored plush the miller's boy had loved. "What if I make them worse?" "You didn't make them sick. Winter did. But if you don't go, their mothers will believe you did." She held his gaze. "Ask what hurts. Don't invent. Sit until they sleep." He nodded once. They went to the Peters house first. Clara had already boiled willow bark. The mother opened the door with her mouth set hard. Bodhi held out the bear and said, "She lent it to me. I brought it back so she wouldn't be alone." The mother's shoulders dropped a finger's width. She let them in. Bodhi sat on the floor by the cot. He asked the girl if her throat felt like swallowing sand or like swallowing pins. The girl whispered pins. He tucked the bear under her arm and stayed while Clara measured drops into a spoon. He did not fill the quiet with a story. He only sat. They went to the cobbler's house. Then the miller's. At each door Clara went in first with her tinctures and her steady voice, and Bodhi followed with the bear passed forward like a small offering. At each bedside he asked one real question and waited for the answer. By the fourth house it was past midnight. The miller's wife pressed bread into Elsa's hands at the door and would not meet her eyes, but she said, "Tell the boy to come back tomorrow." Outside, snow had started. Clara leaned against the doorframe. "They'll live," Clara said. "It's a chest cold. Three days." "The mothers know that?" "They will by morning. I told each one before we left." Elsa looked back at the lit window. Bodhi was still inside, kneeling by the miller's boy, the bear between them. The blame had not landed. But she could feel the shape of the next debt gathering somewhere in the dark, waiting to be named.