Prologue
Johanna
“There’s nothing I can do,” Dr.Roberts said, shaking his head and packing his case on the nightstand next to Johanna’s mother’s bed.
Her mother lay pale and thin, her head turned away from the doctor, eyes closed, as if she had already given up.It made Johanna’s throat clog, so she could not even respond to the doctor.His dark eyes were sharp in his wrinkled face.
“If you won’t let me bleed her…”
Johanna closed her eyes, shaking her head, though she could not bring herself to speak yet.
“Absolutely not.”Rose crossed her arms over her chest, glaring at the doctor and speaking for Johanna.
If not for her cousin Rose, Johanna would have been inclined to listen to the doctor, out of sheer desperation, but her mother had worked with Rose in the stillroom quite a bit.Johanna did not have the skills that either of them had; she tended to get her plants mixed up and certainly couldn’t tell the difference between them once they were powdered.She trusted Rose fully, and Rose was saying no.
“She is already weak enough, and you want to make her weaker?”
The way Rose scoffed at the doctor bolstered Johanna’s courage.When Dr.Roberts looked at her, she shook her head again, this time more definitively.
Rolling his eyes, he closed his bag with a snap.
“Then there is nothing I can do here.Since you think you know so much better than I what to do, I’ll leave you to it.”He stalked out of her mother’s bedroom, nose in the air, thoroughly offended.
Johanna doubted he would be back.Not that they had the money to pay him to return, anyway.Just this visit had cost them dearly, and they had completely run out of things to sell.Her neighbors, the Blackstones, had sent a package when her mother had fallen ill, but with a family of five to feed, they’d gone through it so quickly.There was nothing left.And her mother was dying.
Sinking down onto the chair beside her mother’s bed, Johanna covered her face with her hands.
“It is alright, darling,” her mother murmured, reaching out a skeletally thin hand to pat Johanna’s side.“I did not want to be bled, anyway.”
“But…” Johanna’s voice hitched on a sob.She turned toward the bed, taking her mother’s hand.Her fingers felt cool, despite the warmth of the air, and so frail that Johanna was afraid to squeeze them, worried she might accidentally break her mother’s brittle bones.
Rose went to the other side of the bed, to the woman who had raised her as her own.Rose’s mother had died in childbirth.The bastard of Johanna’s mother’s cousin, she’d been taken in by Johanna’s family when Johanna was a small child, after Rose’s father went exploring at sea and never returned.They’d been raised together as sisters, though they could not have looked more dissimilar.
Rose’s brown skin came from her mother.
Johanna’s pale countenance, which burned so easily in the sun, came from her father.
Rose had black curls and dark eyes, while Johanna’s white-blonde hair was stick-straight, and her violet eyes looked oddly colorful on her otherwise light features.
They were both far too thin now due to the lack of food.Johanna was uncertain how the family would survive the upcoming winter.The spring and summer were difficult enough, despite the warmer weather and the ability to grow at least something in the garden.The last of their reserves had been used this past winter, and she did not see how they would be able to stockpile more.But she could not think about that right now.She had to focus on her mother, who she was worried would not survive until summer.Everything else would come after.
“You be good girls, and do not worry about me.”A whisper of a smile curved her mother’s lips.“I am tired now.I need to rest.”
Resting was all her mother did lately.She was wasting away right before Johanna’s eyes, and there was nothing Johanna could do.Tears burned as she swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded her head.She glanced at Rose, whose normally fully lips had flattened into a thin line.
They left the room together.
“What do you think?”Johanna asked in a low voice once they reached the hall.Her brother and sisters were several rooms over, playing some sort of game.She could hear their exclamations while they waited for Johanna and Rose to come tell them the news.
“I think she is over her illness,” Rose said softly, meeting Johanna’s gaze.The hall was dark, but for the lamp Rose held.They had to conserve their fuel as much as possible.“I think she is starving to death.And… Johanna… I think she is choosing to do so.”
Johanna closed her eyes against the pain.She’d had the same suspicions, but she hadn’t dared voice them aloud.Hadn’t wanted to think that her mother would deliberately leave them.
Leave her.
“She thinks she is saving us,” Rose said in a low voice, full of sorrow and anger.Not anger at Johanna’s mother, but at the situation.“One less mouth to feed.”
Johanna straightened, resolve stiffening her spine.
