So they bathed the cubs in water hot as they could make it, the room around them filled with billows of scalding, stinging white steam, and when that was finished, they wrapped them both up in warm blankets and carried them back to their room, where the sun-heated air now felt good to the caretakers' touch and the cubs would cool slowly. Tired beyond comprehension, Hemlock and his da settled in to watch for signs of change. Oak and Sedge curled up together on the living room couch and tried to sleep while there was time and space for such a thing; they had refused to go to a bedroom so that if anything happened, Jessamine could yell down the hallway to them without needing to leave Hazel and Hyssop's bedside. Spruce and Jade had gone to sleep as well, right in the midst of their vigil over Beryl, and it was next to this drowsing pair that Hemlock and Jessamine set their own watch up.
As to Hazel and Hyssop, nothing appeared to happen, but five hours after the bath had been administered, Beryl subsided into a dopey half-doze which spiraled all too quickly into the kind of sleep the older twins were having. Amber curled into a ball beside his head, staring stoically at his closed eyelids, and when the adults picked the small cub-bearer up and took him to be bathed the younger twin followed to sit in the steam and watch through half-lidded blue eyes.
Back in the bed, soaked into the wrinkled form of a prune and wrapped in two warm quilts, Beryl's smooth expression looked as still as it had when he fell asleep. Hazel and Hyssop were still showing no sign of waking, but their fevers had risen, even beyond the degree of heat which had been reached before their baths.
"The crisis is coming," Hemlock's da announced softly when Hemlock, who had been the one to check the twins, told him. It was almost a relief to hear it.
They went and woke the sleepers, and together Hemlock, Oak, Sedge, Spruce, Jade, and Jessamine collected buckets of water and cloths, to set up their watch once more while Jessamine looked in on the newer sick ones and took them their noon meal. He took Hemlock with him; first to the kitchen for cooking and laying out of trays, then into the room where Ginger was keeping his own patient, solitary watch over Birch and Willow. Willow's mate and several other members of the Rante clan had been in for a visit earlier that morning, but in all the excitement of new developments no one but Ginger had really taken much notice, and they had gone away again before Beryl's descent into sleep.
The reception into the room was much the same as it had been into any of the others. Birch's eyes followed the movements of his bearer and his brother with unrelenting dislike, bordering on fearful hatred; Willow's, no longer sane, did the same. Jessamine and Hemlock handed over the nourishment to Ginger, then left them in his capable hands once again and went to look in on Sineult.
Onyx looked tiredly up when they came in. On the bed's clean pillow, Sineult's blond head shifted too, his green eyes looking at the visitors with vague, glazed indifference. He swallowed and the sound, dry and difficult, seemed to echo painfully.
"Is it time for his medicine?" Onyx asked softly, brushing hair out of his face. "Are Beryl and the twins okay?"
"They're still sleeping," Jessamine returned, shaking his head briefly. "Their fevers have gone up, but in this condition it's easy to make them take water. All that's left to find out now is if it's too late for that to help anything.
"Here, this is his lunch."
Silently Onyx took the tray, placed it on the bedspread, and reached out to prop Sineult's limp yellow head higher on the pillow. That done, he gave the two healers a wan smile over his shoulder.
"I can do it from here. You two should be getting back to Beryl and them, in case something happens. Have you already looked in on Mica and Topaz?"
"No," Jessamine sighed, rubbing the back of his neck, "I haven't. I'm going there next. You're sure you don't need anything more?"
"I'll be fine. Anyway, he's too small to be any trouble. Go on and see what you can do with the others."
Topaz's room was just across from the room in which Beryl, Hazel, and Hyssop lay, deep in their slumbers; he and Mica were its sole occupants, because Mica had insisted on being left alone for the most part to take care of his twin as he thought was needed, and though Mem had made clear his disagreement, Jessamine and the others had settled into a truce of sorts with the young cub-bearer on the subject. Medicines were an exception to the rule; even Mica, stubborn as he was, knew that he couldn't administer those without help. Otherwise, all healing, feeding, and cleaning out of both room and sick one had been taken over and neatly conquered by Topaz's brother. After seeing it, Hemlock could hardly help but be impressed at the strict, if very unorthodox, way in which the youngling had tackled the job, though he still felt guilty for nearly separating himself from these newer patients in favour of the original ones. Mem had hardly seen them since their arrival in the house: Jessamine had been the only one handling Ginger's twins, da, and husband, while Hemlock remained caught up in caring for the others.
Yet Mica appeared none the worse for being neglected. Neither, for that matter, did Topaz, who was as alert as Hazel, Hyssop, or Beryl had been in the earlier stages of their sickness, and Ginger had certainly not been upset. Like Hemlock, Ginger was assistant to his da's healing when extra help was needed, so it wasn't as if he didn't know what he was doing. Looking at Mica, supporting and caring for Topaz in the smooth, nearly lordly way that only Mica could pull off in spite of the frightening, wild wrath lurking behind the normally peaceful male's every move, Hemlock could only think that Ginger had taught his cubs well.
Mica accepted the food from Hemlock's hands with a polite dip of his head. "Thank you." He carried the tray to the bedside with Topaz's interested eyes on him all the way, then laid it gently on the floor and sat down crosslegged in front of it, beckoning to his brother.
"Come on, Topaz, it's lunchtime. That's your half," he pushed the two plates that held Topaz's medicated food toward the vacant side of the tray, "and this is my half. Come down and sit with me, okay?"
Topaz scrambled silently off of the bed and, watching his twin with neutral yet wary eyes, took up his designated spot. Hemlock and Jessamine left them there, the sound of Mica's cheerful, bossy chatter soothing their ears.
At least someone still believed that things would come out all right.
Lunch for their own set was small - more of a snack than any true meal - yet for once unhurried. The six of them sat on the other side of the room from the sleepers' beds and kept watch while they ate, every so often stopping to go across the room and pass the wetness of their cloth over the cubs' heated foreheads, and when they had finished with their lunch they sat down in varied spots about the room and talked in low voices. The companionship which they had been denied through hurrying soothed, like cool gel on a throbbing burn, and yet there was no possible way that it could overthrow the deeply buried heartache and fear that each was feeling. The food was without taste, and the talking was only a little less.
The day dragged. Twice more they carried the twins and Beryl in turn to be bathed, and water was constantly being trickled into their throats through straws; in addition there were Sineult, Birch, Willow, and Topaz to be kept filled with food and medicine by turns of the clock. Beyond those things, there was absolutely nothing in the house to be done. Hemlock wondered how Lupin and Fern were getting along: before, when the plans had been to send them somewhere safer and less alone, he hadn't been so worried about them as he was now. Leaving a pregnant cub-bearer alone wasn't ever a smart thing to do, much less a kind thing. Pregnancy took a lot out of any cub-bearer, both emotionally and physically, and Lupin was worried over losing the cub as well...
There, he'd done it again. Hemlock felt a surge of unhappiness and self-loathing. Even knowing that their little male wasn't going to make it, there was no reason to just pass him off as if he had never been! Yet Lupin was the only one who ever referred to both cubs; Fern had as much as denied from the very beginning that there was any such thing as a second cub and Mem himself hadn't even taken the time to help think of a second name, as if the pain of their loss could be held off by ignoring its existence.
He should be there with Lupin, to help and comfort him through the loss of one of the cubs whom he obviously loved equally in spite of their likelihood to live or die. On the other hand, he should be here, helping his family and friends through the hardships of this sickness, which could very possibly results in the deaths of everyone who had fallen sick so far and more.
And if he left now, who was to say that he wouldn't carry the infection to his mate?
One of the twins began to stir.
"Hazel!" Sedge breathed sharply, rising first to his knees, then scrambling to his feet and heading for the bed with his mate and all the rest of the room in tow. The youngling moaned, sounding like a wild thing nearing its final reserves of strength, and kicked the covers off.
Hyssop's eyes flew open, too.
Wide and unseeing, Hazel's gaze swung once over the room, his eyeballs rolling so that the whites showed and Hemlock knew he couldn't have been able to see anything. His breaths were irregular and raspily hitching, loud even against the sound of his parents asking frantic but perfectly nonsensical questions and Hyssop beginning a near-fit of the same kind his twin was having. Nearly as one entity the twins began twining across the bedspread, two beings sharing in an exquisite form of agony that Hemlock had never seen before.
The watchers huddled around the bed in a cramped circle. Tentatively, Jessamine reached out to touch the nearest twin's flushed face. His hand jerked back in a split second.
"Their fevers have spiked! Mem, I need one of the cups, maybe they'll still take water from us! Hurry!"
Hemlock sprinted back the way he had come, snatched one of the cups off of the floor where the six had been sitting, and carried it in shaking hands to his da, who promptly poured a trickle of it over each of the cubs' foreheads. The cubs cried out in surprise, but neither of them fought or tried to bite.
The very walls seemed to let out their breath in a relieved sigh.
"They're back," Jessamine whispered, reaching out to smooth a faintly trembling palm over Hazel's tightly-screwed eyelids. "We've got a lot of work to do still, but... they're them again. This... this will be the cleansing.
"Do you understand, Sedge?" he asked hoarsely, showing his emotions for the first time as he whirled around to squeeze the cub-bearer to his chest. "You can talk to them again, and they'll know you."
Buried facefirst in the front of Jessamine's shirt, Sedge burst into shocked yet happy tears.
