Maria's coughing ended quickly, but it worried Anne. Meav MacEilan, their mother, had started her sickness that led to her untimely demise by coughing.
The room was silent for a moment as the occupants of the cottage looked at her with worry. Maria's brown cognac eyes had lost some of their usual sparkle, and her little forehead wrinkled in confusion.
"Is something the matter?" she asked, cocking her little brown head. The color was gone from her normally rosy cheeks, and Anne took her by the hand.
"It's time we calm down," she said. Maria pulled her hand away, looking slightly hurt.
"Why?" she inquired, confused, her head still cocked. "We were having so much fun a moment ago."
She looked as though she wanted to say more, but she started to cough again. Emma put her sewing into the wicker basket. She set the basket hurriedly on the floor, and Anne didn't think she seemed to notice that it tipped over, colorful thread spilling onto the wooden floor, cloth pouring like liquid onto the rough pine boards. Emma rushed over to Maria, scooping her up into her arms awkwardly and patting her back.
Anne was petrified. It was just like several short years before. Their seemingly healthy mother just collapsed one day with a cough. The next day she was weak. She gathered a fever, and each day the light would leave her once- bright gray eyes, leaving them colder and emptier than the gray clouds they resembled as the tuberculosis ate away at her body. As Anne looked at the coughing five- year- old, the little face turning red from want of air, all she could see was Meav, although they didn't resemble each other in the slightest.
Mary, too, stood paralyzed, the same horror in her eyes as was in Anne's. Emma patted Maria's back, trying to ease the hacking cough that racked her thin body. It was plain to see that Lizzie and Jane were scared- almost terrified, even, and when the coughing finally stopped, Maria started crying, wrapping her thin arms around Emma's neck. Anne got her courage back, breaking from her world of memories that she'd been trapped in, and pulled down the folding ladder that led to the loft where everyone but Anne and Emma, and Iain when he was home, slept in. Taking the girl gently from Emma, she carefully, and ever so slowly, carried her up the ladder, one hand on her back, the other grasping the wooden rungs of the ladder, until they were in the low- roofed loft.
Maria was still crying, but softly, vulnerably, and it broke Anne's heart as she set her down on her bed and covered the child with a quilt. The poor lass, she thought. Within a single week, she's lost her father, her mother, and everything that's dear to her, everything that's familiar to her, and now she's sick here, in a cottage full of strangers.
Carefully, Anne pressed her hand to Maria's forehead, seeing if it was any warmer than usual.
It burned.
*****
"Mother?"
Anne was ten years old, and she pushed aside the tent flap. Meav MacEilan lay on the ground- well, technically, it was her bed. However, everyone slept on the floor of the tent; the family could afford nothing more.
"Yes, love?" came the weak reply.
"Iain said you wanted to see me and Emma."
"Emma and I, dear." She coughed once, trying to hide the bloody spittle. "Yes. I did." Emma came in nervously. Both girls' eyes were red from crying. They both knew that their mother was close to death. somehow, they knew in their heart of hearts that this was the end. Already the terrible consumption had taken baby Matilda and little Adalyn, and Matthew had not gone long before. Though Iain was only eighteen, he and fifteen- year- old Mary had been forced to bury them. Their own siblings they had lain in the cold, unyielding ground! Anne and Emma had to cover the graves that had been dug on the edge of the property with dirt, leaving little mounds. There were no markers on the burial places. Now they were to lose their mother as well.
Meav continued on after a silent moment. "Ye both have been lucky enough not to have caught the disease. I'm terribly sorry that I have to leave you behind." A tear slipped down her pale, trembling face. "I don't want to go." She began to cry, as did her daughters. "Don't cry for me when I'm gone. I want you to be happy when you think of me." Her crying had only worsened the condition of her voice. Meav coughed for a long time, Emma and Anne softly sobbing and kissing their mother's hands. It was all she had let them touch of her. "I love you. Tell your father- tell him..." Her coughing became to awful to speak. Then, when she had finished coughing, just a thin trickle of blood ran from the corner of her lips. Emma gently wiped it away as one final, shuddering breath lifted the gaunt chest, and then it deflated and was still. It was final. The four MacEilan children were orphans- all alone in the cruel, unforgiving world, without a mother to guide them.
They would never know what her last sentence was going to be, and they would never know what to tell their father if he ever found them.
*****
Night and day, for three days, Anne sat by Maria, never letting Emma or Mary or even Lizzie and Jane near her. The extra beds in the loft were moved back to their previous positions downstairs.
On the fourth day, Saint Patrick's day, she was still sick. As Anne was laying cool, wet cloths on Maria's forehead, the girl woke up from the fitful, fever-induced sleep.
"I'm cold," she whispered weakly. Sweat ran down her pale, small forehead, though, and Anne wiped it away.
"Hush, child," she whispered softly, pulling Maria's heavy pile of blankets further up, nearly to her nose, and took a cup of water from the floorboard it had rested on. Willingly, the girl drank from it, just a sip, and as she set the cup back down on the loft floor, Anne pulled back the curtain and looked out the window.
Outside, the snow had melted and the noon sun shone on the other girls, out in the fields, plowing the wide, rolling hills they owned. It was still too early to plant, but there they were, tilling the soil in preparation, out in the warm Colorado spring. She sighed. How she longed to be out there with them!
Maria had slipped into another restless sleep. Anne hadn't slept hardly at all the past few days, and her hair was falling from its careful plaits, and dark circles were under her eyes. She shivered, realizing that she was cold, too, even freezing, and so, so very tired. Quietly, so as not to disturb sleeping Maria, Anne lay down on the floor of the loft, right next to the remaining bed, and pulled a bit of the blanket toward her, falling into a deep, exhausted sleep.
Sorry it took me so long! Stupid laptop! I hope the next update will be quicker. And yes, in case you're wondering, it does snow and have 65 degree Fahrenheit weather in the same week in Colorado. Really truly.
As always, remember to vote and comment!