Part 1: The Long, White Night
The fever did not break with the dawn. Instead, it seemed to feed on the gray light that seeped through the greasy windowpanes, turning Toby’s skin the color of curdled milk while his cheeks burned a violent, unnatural scarlet. He thrashed against the corn-husk mattress, his small fists clawing at the empty air as if fighting off invisible monsters that only his delirium could see.
Maeve did not sleep. The small cabin, once just a drafty prison, had transformed into a battleground where the enemy was silent, invisible, and utterly ruthless. Every muscle in her back ached from hauling water from the half-frozen creek, boiling it over the hearth, and pressing damp, ragged strips of her own spare cotton shift to Toby’s forehead. Her bitten wrist—the wound Toby had given her on her first day—pulsed with a dull, sympathetic throb beneath her sleeve, a stark reminder of how fragile the bond between them still was.
Tess sat crouched at the foot of the bed, her thumb jammed so deep into her mouth that her knuckles were white. She hadn't spoken since the sun went down. Her wide, haunted eyes followed Maeve’s every movement, tracking the ladle, the cloth, the desperate pacing. When Maeve finally sat on the edge of the cot, her own knees trembling with exhaustion, Tess crawled forward on all fours. She didn't say a word, but she leaned her small, heavy head against Maeve’s thigh, her tiny fingers tangling firmly into the hem of Maeve's apron. It was an unspoken surrender. The little girl had chosen to trust the woman her brother had bitten.
“He’s strong, Tess,” Maeve whispered, her voice cracking like dry kindling. She wasn't sure if she was lying to the child or to herself. “Your brother is a fighter. You know that, don't you?”
Toby choked out a ragged gasp, his body stiffening. A terrible, rattling cough tore from his throat, followed by a low, desperate whine. “Cold,” he muttered, his eyes rolling back beneath his fluttering lids. “Mamma, it’s cold. Don’t let the crows get the corn.”
Maeve’s heart squeezed. She didn't know anything about their mother—Gideon had never spoken her name, and the cabin held no traces of a woman’s touch before Maeve's arrival—but she knew the sound of a child calling for the dead. It was a sound she had made herself in the dark corners of Uncle Amos’s house.
Desperation sharpened her mind. She remembered an old mid-wife in Red Creek speaking of willow bark and wild mint to cool a boiling blood-line, but Gideon’s meager stores held nothing but salt, flour, and dried meat. She had to find something else. Leaving Tess to watch over Toby, Maeve wrapped her thin wool blanket tightly around her shoulders and stepped out into the blinding white fury of the mountain morning.
The wind nearly took her off her feet. The rocky shelf where the cabin sat was entirely engulfed in a swirling vortex of snow. The pines groaned under the weight of the ice, their branches cracking like rifle fire in the distance. Maeve stumbled toward the tree line, her boots sinking deep into the fresh drifts. Her fingers grew numb within seconds, but she forced them to claw through the snow at the base of a young pine, searching for the bitter, resinous needles and the hidden, buried roots of wild wintergreens.
As she dug, the skin over her knuckles split from the intense cold, bleeding dark red into the pristine snow. She didn't care. She gathered what she could, her mind consumed by the image of Toby’s gasping mouth. She was so focused on her task that she didn't hear the heavy crunch of snow behind her until a massive, gloved hand gripped her upper arm and violently yanked her backward.
She gasped, slipping on the ice, and looked up into the dark, fierce face of Gideon Reed.
He looked less like a man and more like a vengeful winter spirit. His beard was frozen solid with icicles, his canvas coat stiff with frost, and a massive, bloody buck was slung across his broad shoulders. His dark eyes flashed with an anger that made Maeve freeze in terror.
“What are you doing out here?” he roared over the wind, his voice booming like thunder. “Are you simple? You want to freeze to death on my ridge?”
“Toby!” Maeve screamed back, her teeth chattering so violently she could barely form the words. She shook his hand off her arm, holding up the frozen pine needles and roots she had managed to salvage. “Toby has the lung-fever! He’s burning up, Gideon! He needs medicine, he needs a doctor, he needs—”
Gideon stiffened. The anger in his face didn't fade, but it hardened into something entirely different—something ancient and terrified. He didn't say another word. He grabbed Maeve by the cloak and hauled her back toward the cabin, shoving the door open against the howling gale.
He dropped the buck onto the floorboards with a heavy, sickening thud, but he didn't even look at the meat. He strode straight to the cot, his massive frame casting a long, dark shadow over his ailing son. He reached out a hand—a hand that had killed wolves and chopped ironwood—and gently pressed his calloused knuckles against Toby’s burning forehead.
Gideon let out a breath that sounded like a groan. “It’s the same,” he muttered, his voice dropping into a register so low it vibrated through the floorboards. “The same as her.”
Maeve stood by the hearth, shivering violently as the heat of the fire began to thaw her frozen face. “The same as who, Gideon?”
He didn't answer. He turned on his heel, his eyes sweeping over the clean kitchen, the washed bowls, and the pot of boiled mint water she had left by the fire. For a moment, the harsh, silent trapper looked entirely lost. He looked at Maeve, really looked at her, noting the blood on her fingers and the raw purple bruise on her wrist where Toby had bitten her weeks ago.
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“Can you keep him alive?” Gideon asked, his voice suddenly stripped of all its roughness, leaving only a raw, bleeding plea.
Maeve looked from the terrifying, hulking man to the small, gasping boy on the bed. She took a deep breath, squaring her narrow shoulders. “I’ll keep him alive. But you have to help me.”
