“A stranger—an idiot!—strikes his foot with an ax, and you overflow with remedies. But now, nothing. She is to be your wife! Why now, when her life is in the balance, do you have only apologies? Is there nothing that can shake that mysterious medical wisdom from your head?”

A pause.

“Perhaps, Weed—if you went into the apothecary garden—”

“Why do you say that?”

“The plants in there are powerful. If you examine them closely, you may be able to discover a means to help her.”

What? But Weed promised me he would not go into the poison garden again! He cannot, it is too dangerous for him, I will not permit it—

“Perhaps you are right—but I am afraid—let us talk elsewhere, please.”

They leave me.

I am alone, again.

If Weed ever returns, I think, I will ask him to dress me in Mama’s wedding dress. I want him to see me in it, once before I die.

The sky has turned yellow as a dandelion.

The clouds swirl like vicious whirlpools in the sky, as if they would devour all the earth below. When I dare look out the window I feel myself being lifted up, drawn into its leering maw.

I squeeze my eyes shut and wail. I clutch the blankets and cling tightly to the bed. My body pulls upward, eager for the end. It wants to float away and disappear into that roiling, ravenous mouth.

I do not know how much longer I can hold on.

Weed comes to see me and spoons horrors into my mouth. I try to tell him about the sky. I want to ask him to draw the curtains shut, or tie me fast to the mattress so I cannot be stolen by that gaping hole in the heavens. But no words emerge from my lips. No sound from my throat but a tiny, frightened mewing.

This is the only voice I have left—the sound of a newborn kitten abandoned by its mother, sightless, helpless, knowing nothing of life but thirst and cold, and a faint animal instinct rising from the gut, saying this is not how it was supposed to be—to make the long journey from whatever comes before birth, to be brought forth with such effort and wailing, only to be snuffed out again so quickly—

Poor kitten, I think. If mama cat does not come back soon, it will be too weak to cry for help. The end will come quickly then.

At least, when it comes, the black night of death will not frighten a creature still blind from being born. That is some comfort, is it not?

No. No. No. I am no dying kitten. I am a sick girl, sick with something strange and rare. Something Weed cannot help me with. Something the healing plants of the earth stubbornly refuse to name.

Something that Father will soon figure out how to cure.