Send Them Away
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"...So it's not bad. What do you mean, not yet? Please, Mem, please, just spit it out? I won't bite your head off, I swear it. Just tell me how bad it is now so I can be ready when I get there, all right?"

There was a long dark pause. Slowly, his left hand tightened around the phone's sleek edges, and from her vantage-point behind her desk she could see his face starting to turn a little pale in the noonday light washing in through the clear glass double doors at the entrance. Usually he would have gone in the back to take a call, but today something was urgent, and he'd stopped even in the act of going to listen hard at the earpiece until he got answers from whoever it was on the other end, somebody whose voice she'd heard for only a moment but who she could swear was related to him by blood. A brother, maybe? He hadn't sounded old enough to be father material, not for a man her boss's age at any rate. And he'd had a nice voice, but he wasn't the usual caller either. Some true emergency had to be brewing.

The usual caller had a lovely voice, but it was much different from the one that she had just heard. Softer, for one thing, and she might have said it was a woman except for that inexplicable pitch that said it just had to be male. It was a shy voice, too. Someone who wouldn't be comfortable in crowds, would be good with animals and kids and would probably enjoy reading a lot. The other voice, the new one, was deeper and smooth, like aged polished wood, and it made her imagine dark gentle eyes and a mild sort of smile. What she would have given for friends like that...

Over the course of her job there, she had gotten very good at reading telephone voices. In the first place, because it was her job to keep the desk and answer the telephone (and a boring job it was) but more importantly because it was just about the only way she could learn anything about her mysterious, if fairly normal-looking, employer. She had never met a man more clammed up! Surely he had to have children; it was obvious from the hours he kept that he had someone to go home to, and there had been that whole fuss about five years before to back her suspicions up. He had looked just like her old boss when his wife had their second. There had been problems with that one. But anyhow, no new father coming back to work that she ever saw could go for more than a few seconds without pulling out pictures, telling the story, or something. From this one, there was nothing at all except that little smile that crossed his face now and then. There were no pictures in his office. His wife, if he had one, had never called. (She suspected that might be because the shy voice on the phone was his 'wife', but there was really no way to be sure.) All in all he was the most frustratingly interesting person she had ever worked for. She did love a good mystery.

"All right," he said finally, his voice strained. He took a deep breath and the grip on the telephone loosened the least bit. "I can do that. I'll be there as soon as I can. Tell him I'm coming, okay?" A pause. "Both of them. All three of them. Good." The phone left his ear and was returned silently to the cradle.

"I've got to leave," he told her absently, fingering the top of the black plastic instrument. "Reschedule- no, cancel my appointments for the rest of the day, please. I don't think I'll be in again a for a while. I'll call you this evening, is that all right?"

"Yes, that's fine," she said, trying to be cheerful. He looked suddenly very old and tired. "I hope it's not anything too serious?"

He looked up, and all at once he smiled. It wasn't a happy smile. In fact, it reminded her more than anything of a wolf she'd once seen at the zoological park in a bigger city near her hometown, baring its teeth through the fencing. Threatened.

"Sickness," he said. "And I hope it's not too."

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The front door was closed when Spruce got to the house he had once called home. His da rarely left it closed in hot weather, but he ignored that and opened it with pointedly quiet mind, taking the time to shed his suit coat and shoes before pacing soundlessly on into the cooler depths of the house. Jade would be scared, and the twins would be too, though he doubted Amber would show it. Amber never showed much of anything.

The front hall was totally void of sound, but as he reached the back rooms he could hear faint noises of crying. His ears, if they'd been able to, would have pricked up, and in any case they did so metaphorically, pinpointing its source with the cool, near glazed air that always came over him in trouble. There were two actually: one was Lupin in one of the bedrooms, the other Sineult in the kitchen, with Fern whimpering in the background. He'd thought for a minute that it was Jade, but no. Jade would be in the room a little further along where Jessamine put the ones who were either too ill to go home, or whom he wanted to watch over for a night, staying with the twins until Spruce came and things could get sorted out.

Sure enough, there was sound behind that door when he came to it. Jade's soft voice, muffled to his ears though the door, telling the twins something where they lay together on the bed. The springs were creaking as they shifted, probably trying to get in a cool position for resting; the heat was truly vicious even in the cooler shade of the house's insides. He reached down and slid the door open.

Jade looked up. The expression that crossed his face when he saw who it was passed relief by a mile or two. He met Spruce half into the room with a kiss and a hug that was more desperation than greeting, and Spruce returned it with equal force, hoping that, if there was nothing else he could do, a little companionship might help his husband. His brother and da were the healers in their family; if it was repairs Jade wanted, he would have to look to Jessamine and Hemlock.

There was a rustle from the bed behind them.

"Papa!"

"Your papa's here now," Jade reassured, letting go of Spruce only slowly and reluctantly and clinging to his hand even afterward. Spruce somehow got a smile out for him as they walked over to the twins where they were now perching together against the soft, feather-fattened bottoms of the pillows. Beryl looked boiled, dazed, and above all, disgruntled.

"They've been waiting for you," Jade said, taking one of the two chairs next to the bed and patting the seat of the other. One of his hands stole up to wipe at his eyes, then darted back to his lap and pretended that it hadn't as he went on, "Hemlock said you'd be coming soon."

"As soon as I heard." Spruce settled himself in the offered chair, then turned to face the older of his two cubs. "How do you feel? Your talé says you've got a fever." He reached out and rubbed the cub's hot cheek with the palm of his hand and Beryl's bottom lip quivered, his eyes filling up with tears. Uncomfortably he twisted himself into a newer position.

"Too hot..." the elder twin whimpered. His brother's serious eyes regarded both he and their father with equal stoicism, but Beryl got a squeeze of their linked hands as well. Spruce nodded, trying to be sympathetic and not worried.

"Your grand-da was trying to give you a bath, wasn't he," he pointed out softly. "Your talé Hemlock says you didn't want it. But if you're hot, little bit, wouldn't that help you to be cooler?"

Beryl sniffed. "Smells yucky," he explained petulantly, twisting again so that his hot skin slid moistly against his father's wrist. "I don' like it. Tastes... yucky." With a whimper of frustration he abandoned his words to twist a third time, hitching the covers into a circular snarl under him and dislodging his brother, who curled without complaint into as close a copy of his old position as he could and went on watching.

"Papa! 'S too hot! Fan me 'gain? Please, Papa?"

"I was fanning him off earlier," Jade explained quickly, his forehead creasing in quiet worry as he watched his cub twist and turn on the bedsheets. "But my arm got tired, so Da went to look for an electric fan instead. He said he thinks Lupin and Mem have got one in their room, but he hasn't gotten back yet, so I don't know. I was using that." He pointed to a sheet of paper lying on the bed which had been folded into a simple fan and Spruce let go of Beryl's small face to pick it up, creasing it carefully back into precise sharpness before wafting it experimentally in front of the twins.

"Is that better?" he asked them, and for once Beryl looked a little bit relieved. He nodded.

"Mm-hm."

Spruce smiled. He felt a little better himself now that Beryl was showing some sign of his normal personality, and Jade definitely looked a bit less like tearing his hair out, and he hoped that it would last a bit longer. Just enough for him to get his head in order and decide what in the names of all the gods they were going to do.

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As things turned out, Hemlock had already gotten his head in order. Spruce was more than willing to follow his brother's lead.

"They have to go somewhere else," Hemlock explained, leveling eyes as dead serious as anything Spruce had ever seen at the two other males in the room. He had come in by himself, not too long after Spruce's arrival at the house, with that look fixed firmly on his face and a resolution in his very movement. It comforted Spruce, to know that someone had found some strength in the whole mess, but Jade had other ideas.

"I can't just leave them here," the redhead was arguing. His forehead scrunched painfully like it did when he was wanting to cry. "You and Da will need help, and Beryl! I can't just go and leave him like this!"

Beryl's bottom lip started to quiver. "Da..."

"Shh, it's okay," Jade soothed, turning back to the bed long enough to scoop the whimpering cub and his silent twin into his lap. Hemlock grimaced. Over against the opposite wall, Onyx was shaking his head, tucking long, sweaty strands of orange behind his ears while he watched the scene.

"I don't think Jade should go back," he admitted grudgingly, casting a sympathetic glance at his brother. "Honestly, I would rather see you far away from here, but I don't think that's going to help your mental health any. And he is right," the redhead concluded, focusing once again on Hemlock, "I doubt Beryl will be much inclined to get well if he hasn't got something comforting to fall back on. No offense, but your treatments can seem pretty mean to a sick cub. You're going to have to get some water in him."

A lull settled over the room, during which Beryl seemed to fall asleep, cuddled in a hot, exhausted little bundle in his da's arms, until finally, a deep, defeated sigh escaped Hemlock's chest. For a second, he seemed almost to fold in on himself, but that passed quickly.

"There is good logic in that," he acceded in a huffed breath of decision. "But that one's not my decision, that's for Spruce and Jade to talk over between them. In any case, Lupin is going home. He doesn't want to, but he agreed. There are... more important things hanging on his health now than just him. He did suggest, though, that we send all of those who are leaving to the same place; sort of the same atmosphere as one of those human support group things." He waved a dismissive hand in the air. "Again, since I'm not going, it would be better for those who are to decide that. One thing I do know though, is that everyone who needs to decide must do so fast. When things get worse, I'd like everything else to be taken care of so we can concentrate on Beryl. All right?"

All around the room, heads nodded one by one.

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