They fight all night and into the morning, and for two hours of pure hell while the dawn, bringer of hope, breaks over the world around them, Jessamine and the roomful of watchers are certain that all hope is lost. Beryl lies still beneath their ministration as if he was a wet rag and refuses to fight-either them or the fever that rages through him like a brushfire, deadly and filled with greed. The birds sing. Amber crouching shutter-eyed at the foot of his bed, Beryl quavers out breath after breath, each weak enough to be his last.
And then the heat begins to leave.
By breakfast-time, the fever has broken, and Amber's twin sleeps soundly and naturally through the sound of his family weeping and hugging in a frantic mill of sweet relief.
As soon as Beryl is better and Da is done crying, Amber is put to bed. He's too tired now to argue after the last long night and all the ones before it, all of which is not half so tiring as just feeling this bright, sunny relief that he's never felt so deeply before. Soft pillows sink under his head as his da tucks the sheet in around him, sniffling and smiling the whole time, and he is so very tired that he doesn't even have the strength to fight to be put in the room with Beryl. His da says that he won't sleep if he can see Beryl, and Amber knows he's right, so his own feelings will have to be enough for now-he'll just have to be careful not to sleep too deep to know if anything bad happens. If he doesn't get some sleep he won't be any help to Beryl.
So, when he finds himself sitting by Beryl's bedside, with the pitcher of water next to him and the heat of summer ringing in his ears, he knows he must be dreaming. But he's not ruffled by this. Beryl in a dream is still Beryl, and it's Amber's job to take care of him.
Amber's twin's sleep lasts a long, long time. Amber watches all the way through till his Beryl wakes up again in case the sickness might sneak back in when he's not looking, grabbing its chance to make Beryl sick again. He's not sure if simple watching can keep sickness away, but he's not watching for that anyway; he just wants to know if it comes back, so he can tell somebody.
Whether Amber's watching helped or not, Beryl wakes up like himself. (This means murmuring a little into the pillow-which he got all damp with drool while he was sleeping-then yawning big and wide, moving out of the icky spot and turning over a couple of times so that the covers get all tangled and Amber has to fix them so they're covering again, and finally, opening his eyes.) Soon as that happens Amber is ready to get up and see what Beryl needs, but as he does he sees that something is wrong. Beryl doesn't see him; his blue eyes, just like Amber's but so much prettier, are cloudy and blank as a piece of paper with nothing on it.
For the first time in his short life, Amber Taur-Danon wakes from a nightmare. He does this as he does everything else: calmly.
Lying flat on his back in the middle of his borrowed bed he realises that, somewhere in his Tala's house, he can hear his brother screaming in a voice like a dying kitten. He pushes back the covers and pads off on silent feet to investigate.
"Papa!"
Spruce was out of his seat in an instant and running upstairs, his heart pounding in his throat. That was Beryl's voice, lifted for the first time since the beginning of this entire bad dream, and the tone in it was pure panic. Jade was upstairs, watching over the cubs while they napped and Spruce consulted with his brothers and his da over how many of those in the house should take the suggested migration to the Rante farm, and Spruce had been sure that Beryl would sleep for another hour or so at least. What had gone wrong? Beryl might be a little frightened after his long ordeal, would certainly feel weak, but why on earth...
He nearly ran Jade down in the hallway; the redhead was coming out of the twins' bedroom at a tearful stumble, Beryl screaming and twisting in his arms. Footsteps quickened over the hardwood in the hallway behind him, and he paid them no mind.
"What's wrong with him?" Spruce asked, reaching out to comfort his younger cub, only to recoil in bewildered panic when Beryl screamed louder because of it. His heart twisted sickeningly. He let his hand fall.
"I don't know!" Jade sobbed, juggling Beryl to prevent dropping him. "He keeps saying it's dark, and he asked me to turn the light on but it's broad daylight, Spruce! He's scared! I don't know what's wrong!"
"Where's Amber?"
Jade swallowed another sob. "I put him to bed in our room-he was so tired... He won't sleep when he's watching Beryl." Between them their cub went on seeking jerkily through the air with his hands, sucking air in and wailing while Jade's tears dripped in his hair.
"Beryl," Spruce said helplessly, trying with all his might not to reach out and touch again. "Beryl, we're here. What's wrong, little one?"
Beryl's screams softened to sobbing interspersed with hiccupped words. "Papa! I can't see where y' are, 's all dark! Make the dark go away, please? 'm scared! I wan' Amber! Where's my Amber at?"
"He's sleeping," Spruce told him, reaching out tentatively to hug his husband and son to him. "Do you want me to go get him?"
"Uh-huh," Beryl whimpered, gripping his da's hand tightly. "I don' want 'im to sleep, I wan' him here wif me. 'm so 'fraid, Papa... Why can't y' make th' dark go 'way?"
The patter of small feet creaked on the floor, and Amber's seldom-heard voice cried out for his brother. "Beryl!"
Beryl gasped, choking on tears, and twisted again to shriek Amber's name at the top of his lungs in the voice's direction. "Amber! Amber, where are y'?"
"'M comin'," Amber assured him, scrambling over the last few yards, the long t-shirt Jade had put him in to go to sleep in the hot, dry air tangled about his bare feet. "Put 'im down, Da."
Jade obeyed, and Amber's arms closed at once around his crying twin. He whispered something into Beryl's ear.
"Can't see," Beryl quavered. "Ev'ything's all dark."
"But th' light's on," Amber told him gravely, petting his hair, and the small head nodded in tearful agreement.
"Da said so," he hiccupped. There was a sudden panicked flail. "'S m' eyes broken, Amber?"
Amber turned his solemn gaze on his parents.
"I don't know," Jade gulped in a tone implying that he did yet desperately wanted not to, shivering even as his husband gathered him up into an embrace. "I don't know what's wrong."
The small male studied him a moment more, then shifted his attention back to Beryl.
"Shh. Tha's okay," Amber soothed, hugging his brother tight. "You don' need t' see. I can take care of y' so nothin'll come close. Y' know that, right?"
Beryl paused before nodding, as if this had only just occured to him in his fright, and shoved two fingers into his mouth to suck on. "Mm-hm," he agreed. The uncontrolled terror in the face that surrounded his blankly staring eyes began to calm down.
Amber hugged him tightly once more. "'Kay." He rocked back on his heels, still hanging tenaciously onto his sibling's unresisting hand, and let his own face slip into a thoughtful frown as Spruce watched, wanting more than anything for him to work it all out himself and feeling horrible for it. He, Spruce, was the father and husband, the one who was supposed to have the answers; he'd never had any problem with the responsibility before, even when the decisions were painful. Now, he found himself wishing his cubhood back into existance just when his support was needed most.
Wasn't that the way things always went.
Beryl's crying had subsided, at least, and that had been most of what was panicking Jade. Their little cub-bearer cried as much as any other healthy cub his age, but never before had he sounded quite like that.
Like his mate, Spruce was in denial. He knew that he was; it was comfortable to stay like that, because he knew exactly what his cub was worried about. Beryl wasn't afraid of the dark, but he had an active imagination, caused by taking after his da's side of the family and exercised constantly and colourfully by his brother's scientific approach to life in general. If Beryl and Amber were one being, Beryl was the creative half of the brain, which, like all creative minds, knew the greatest rule of survival: fear the unknown. There weren't many things that Beryl was afraid of: after all, Amber could explain almost everything away. But to be faced with an unknown-the darkness-and then to have a parent tell him that he didn't know what was going on...
Of course, his heart knew exactly what was physically the matter as well, and Spruce wouldn't have admitted that for the world. Knowing, he could live with, but saying it out loud made the horrible permanence of it too real to bear. One of his cubs, forever in darkness... It was too cruel to understand.
"Ber," Amber was saying now, somehow managing to speak in monotone and be comforting at the same time, "do y' wanna sleep? Da c'n put you in my bed, an' we c'n have a nap so y' won't be tired."
"Uh-huh," Beryl warbled tearily when he had thought the proposition over. He scrubbed half-heartedly at the damp stains on his face with one hand, continuing to clutch his brother with the opposite one, and snuggled close with his cheek pressed to Amber's napping shirt. "On'y, Da's gotta carry me."
Jade started to bend down immediately, as if on a spring. "I-"
"No!" Scowling, Amber braced himself on short, sturdy legs and pushed at his da's knees. More out of shock than from the push itself, Jade stopped bent halfway to the floor. His face was out of Spruce's sight; the mix of pain, confusion, and anger in his voice made his expression clear enough without.
"Amber, your brother is scared! Let me-"
"No!" Even as he repeated it something flashed in to replace the scowl, twisting the younger cub's mouth into a hurt knot for one glowing second that made Spruce understand. His own frustration with his son disappeared. Amber knew what he was doing.
"Jade," Spruce interrupted, taking his husband by his upper arm and pulling him upright again, back into Spruce's embrace, long enough to whisper in his ear.
"He needs to walk. No, listen to me," as the thin body tried to squirm indignantly away, "I know it's cruel! He has to get past this before he learns to be afraid of it. His legs aren't hurt, and he can walk in the dark as well as you or I can. He's only afraid. He has to... He has to get used to it!"
With those words, Spruce felt some shield, some barrier, snap inside himself and inside his mate. Jade dissolved once more into tears, and, confronted with the realisation of what had been lost, Spruce felt that he just might join in.
