The hare tried to lift its head when Ysabet touched the board.
“Easy,” she said.
It could not have understood her. Its front legs worked against the wood, pushing in the direction Chaska had carried it from. Ysabet folded the sack along that edge to keep it from falling. The hare pushed once more, found cloth instead of open ground, and let its head rest.
“Should I fetch someone?” Chaska asked.
“Who?”
Chaska looked toward the gate.
Ysabet wet a clean piece of linen. Most of her work was with animals that had injured themselves in ordinary, expensive ways. A torn harness strap. A broken nail. A swollen foot that an owner had failed to notice until the cart stopped moving. She had seen burns. She had also seen what smoke could do when there was very little to see outside.
She put the wet linen gently against the uncharred skin bordering the worst patch on the hare’s shoulder. It twitched. Its mouth opened with each breath.
Chaska brought the water nearer.
“More?”
“Not over its face.”
“I know.”
“Yes.”
Ysabet looked up. Soot had gathered in the corner of Chaska’s mouth. There was a red line on her wrist where the sack’s coarse seam had rubbed through her skin. She was still standing with her shoulders lifted, waiting to be sent somewhere useful.
“Sit by its head,” Ysabet said. “Keep the flies away.”
Chaska sat.
Beyond the yard the shovels struck again. A man called for a rope, and someone farther off shouted that he already had one. The bell had stopped. Ysabet had not noticed when.
Pip came as far as the bench leg.
Three noses appeared at the edge of its pouch, close together. The original mouse had a pale scab above its bad hind leg; Ysabet recognized it as it turned. That, absurdly, steadied her. Something small was where it ought to be.
She brought the warm basket alongside Pip and waited until the mice began to climb out. One newcomer jumped straight to the floor and vanished under the feed bench. The other followed the scent of the grain Ysabet scattered on the lining. The original mouse paused at the pouch rim, descended awkwardly over Pip’s forefoot, and settled beneath the folded corner of cloth.
Pip watched each departure. Then it put its narrow feet on the bench rail.
“Not up here.”
The hare’s hind leg struck the board. Pip dropped back down.
Ysabet moved the board to the ground beside the shelter, away from the draught through the gate. She could reach the burn just as well there. Chaska moved with her, carrying the pan and the small bunch of leafy stems she was using to keep off flies.
The hare’s eye rolled toward Pip.
Pip lowered itself until its jaw was almost against the earth. Its pouch opened. The hare was too large, even without the stiff burned spines along its back. There was no possibility of drawing it inside.
It tried anyway. One foot touched the hare beneath the chin.
Ysabet laid her left hand on the board, between Pip and the raw shoulder.
“Here.”
Pip stopped. She drew the corner of the sack aside to leave the hare’s uninjured belly free. Pip eased close to that side and rested the warm fold against it.
The hare jerked once. Then its legs became still.
For a little while the breathing seemed quieter.
Chaska let her own breath out. Ysabet continued washing grit from the edge of the burn. She would have liked the change to mean something larger. Pip had warmed the mouse; the mouse had lived. A frightened, chilled animal might breathe more easily when something warm lay beside it. None of that told her what was happening inside this hare’s chest.
She changed the linen. The used piece came away brown.
“Does it eat clay because it makes heat?” Chaska asked quietly.
“I don’t know.”
“If we brought more—”
“There is some under the bench.”
Chaska rose to get it. Ysabet almost stopped her, because clay could not do what she wanted it to do. Then she saw Pip’s rear legs trembling with the effort of holding its weight at an awkward angle.
“Put it where Pip can reach.”
Chaska brought a handful. Pip picked up a little piece without moving its chest away from the hare. Its sideways jaw worked carefully. The amber eye stayed on the animal’s face.
Mara came to the shelter. She opened her mouth, looked at the board, and shut it again.
“Water?” she asked.
“We have some.”
“There’s soup later.”
“Thank you.”
Mara put her hand on Chaska’s shoulder for a moment and went back to the lane.
The hare’s next breath scraped.
Ysabet stopped cleaning. She bent close enough to see the movement of the chest. A pause came, longer than the others. Its front foot drew back toward its belly. Then another breath, suddenly large, made the burned spines shift against the sack.
Pip pressed closer.
Ysabet laid her fingertips against the hare’s ribs. She could feel movement beneath the skin, quick and irregular. It slowed while she was feeling it.
“Ysabet?”
She had nothing useful to tell Chaska. She kept her hand there.
The hare breathed twice more. The last was so slight that Ysabet waited for the next before she would acknowledge having seen it.
Pip moved its foot under the jaw.
The hare’s head rose, fell back, and stayed where Pip put it.
Outside, a cart rattled past with wet sacks heaped over the sides. Someone laughed at something the driver said. The laughter startled Ysabet more than any cry could have done.
She stayed crouched by the board until she was certain.
Then she lifted her hand.
Pip clicked.
It was a small sound, almost the kettle tick that had given it a name. It made the sound again and shifted its warm chest against the hare’s belly. Its forefeet pushed at the board. One caught beneath the sack, pulled, and brought the dead animal a little nearer.
Chaska set down the leafy stems.
“Pip,” Ysabet said.
The creature got its jaw beneath the hare’s neck and lifted. The body sagged heavily against its forelegs. Pip could not carry the board. It climbed off the edge instead, dragging the sack and the hare with it.
Ysabet caught the burned shoulder in the cloth before it scraped the earth.
Pip turned its eye on her.
She saw accusation. There was no reason it should have known that she had reached the end of what she could do, and no reason it should have forgiven her for that end. She had been there beside the bench, touching the body, changing cloths. Nothing had improved.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Pip thrust its narrow foot against her right hand.
The contact caught before she could prepare for it.
Warmth, and something heavy against her chest. A pressure where there ought to have been movement. She knew the shape of a small body nestled into a hollow, but not whether she was remembering the mouse or feeling Pip’s cramped hold on the hare. There was a repeated reaching in it, an effort finding the same blank place each time.
She had mistaken that eye.
Or she might be mistaking it now. There were no words behind the sensation, no question she could hear. But the shock that crossed with it was naked enough to stop her breath: an answer had failed where an answer had existed before.
The contact broke. Ysabet’s hand was still on the ground. Pip pressed against it again, then turned back to the hare.
Chaska was watching her.
“What?”
“I think it’s surprised.”
Chaska looked at the motionless body. “So was I.”
Ysabet folded the loose sack beneath the hare. She did not draw it away from Pip. They could leave it here awhile. The shelter was shaded, the flies could be kept off, and there were other things to do without taking this one from it at once.
She put fresh water beside the basket. The original mouse emerged far enough to drink, favoring its bad leg. One of the newcomers ran out of the shelter and along the wall, quick and straight.
Pip watched it go. Then it looked down again and laid its jaw against the hare’s ear.
Ysabet changed the dirty linen for a clean, dry piece. She covered the burned shoulder and left the face uncovered. Before returning to the hare, she shifted the original mouse from the temporary basket lid to its familiar half-covered box. It gripped the wooden access strip with its front feet, climbed in and turned beneath the cover.