Page 80 of The Lustrous Dark
If Hind doesn't care enough, isn't strong enough, to make good decisions, Shay will do the caring. Shay can be strong. Ghita taught her many useful things, but the lesson she liked least may prove most useful now. Love isn't necessarily kind and soft. Sometimes, love is firm and unsympathetic.
Maybe that's the kind of love that can save her mother.
The sky beyond the lopsided cottage has gone from black to blue, starlight fading like melting snow. Morning draws near, bringing no warmth with it, only the cold wash of clarity. No bright spread of buttery hope. Only hard-boiled conviction.
For now, this too must be enough.
26
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Shay carries a tray upstairs, heaped with crisp toast and an array of fresh fruit cut into bite-sized pieces. She hesitates at the door with a murmured blessing.
For days Shay has found Hind either convulsing with chills or delirious with fever. She has been met with sweat-soaked sheets in need of endless washing and bout after bout of vomiting or diarrhea or worse—both. But Hind is finally awake and sitting up.
Shay approaches her with a tender smile.
She takes one look at the tray and blanches, her lip curling in disgust. “I can't eat anything.”
“The tea will help you feel better,” Shay insists gently. She foraged the herbs herself: sour terraparam for lowering temperature and golden hyssop for pain relief. She sets the tray on a wooden stand and cracks the window to air the room. “You must try to eat something. For the baby.”
“Keep that shut. It's freezing in here.” Hind rubs her thin arms roughly and rolls her eyes with disdain. “And don't start on me about the baby. You know what? If you care so much, cut the thing out of me and leave me to die.”
Shay flinches. She sighs and closes the window, despite the room being uncomfortably warm and so stale that the walls are beginning to peel. Her voice is soft when she speaks: “You don't mean that.”
“I would rather die than feel this way.” Hind moans, flopping back against her pillows. She flails from side to side. “It hurts. Everywhere. Everything. My skin is on fire. My bones are melting. My organs are shriveled. I need one sip. Please. Just to take the edge off.”
“That's not an option.” Shay creeps closer. Hind has torn a hole in one of the socks Shay tied over her hands the last time she clipped her nails. A new batch of thin red ribbons have joined the older scratches on her arms. “Look what you've done to yourself. At least let me put some nigella nettle on your wounds.”
Hind grunts, which Shay takes as compliance. She retrieves a bottle from a nearby drawer. Sitting on a leather starmia next to the pallet, she uses a clover bean leaf to dab the juice generously over Hind's skin. “Is that better?”
“It is nice and cool,” Hind says reluctantly. She rubs her nose and snuffles.
“Mezyan.” Shay smiles as brightly as she can, imagining Hind as a cat gone feral whom she's been tasked to tame. She readily remembers the restingseason she spent in this same room, hiding under layers of blankets, sinking through levels of despair. Then Khawla came. Hind is going through a hard thing, but she doesn't have to go through it alone. “How about just a sip of tea?”
Hind nods and props herself up on one arm. Shay pours a glass, filling it only halfway. Given her recent fits of shaking, Hind is liable to burn herself. On second thought, Shay brings the glass to her mouth, to be safe.
The moment the liquid meets her dry, cracked lips, Hind shoves Shay's hand away. Tea splatters in an arc, spraying Shay's skin in a hot flare. The glass sails from her fingers and shatters against the wall. Long wet streaks trickle down in trails and run together, making it look like the cottage is weeping.
Muted light hits the glass lying scattered on the floor, the way the sun must glitter off ocean waves even when someone is drowning.
“Are you trying to poison me?” Hind scowls. “What did you put in that concoction?”
“Nothing bad.” Shay's voice trembles. She fetches a clover bean leaf and wipes her arm, her skin puffing in pink splotches when she lifts the leaf. “Ghita taught me well about herbal remedies. The tea is perfectly safe, and beneficial.”
Hind blinks. Her face softens, looking almost contrite, which makes her next words all the more shocking. “The midwife? Have you spoken to her lately?”
