By late afternoon the black spear had begun to weep.
A bead gathered under the lowest barb, swelled, and fell onto the paving. It made no sound. Ysabet watched another follow it. Where the first had landed there was a pale stain and a little grit, nothing she could lift with the edge of a tile.
“Do you want a bucket?” Mara asked.
“Not underneath it.”
“I wasn’t proposing to wear it.”
Mara had tied a rope between the old pump and the bathhouse corner. Beyond it lay the broken tiles, the split lath, and the pointed growth that had lifted both. People kept coming to look from the lane. They asked whether it was poisonous, whether another would appear, whether the Ashen Spear had paid for the roof. Mara answered the last question with increasing volume.
Inside, Pip tried to stand.
The small middle leg on its left side bent at a joint that had not bent that way before. It made no attempt to put weight on the curled toes. Ysabet slid a folded sack against its flank, keeping the pigeon hamper beyond easy reaching distance. The creature rested its jaw on the sack and stared at the wicker.
There was clean clay beside it. Earlier it had taken two mouthfuls and brought the second back, a wet gray pellet on the floor.
“Little amounts,” Ysabet murmured.
She scraped a sliver onto a spoon and put it within reach. Pip touched the spoon, touched her finger, and ate the clay. Heat crawled up her arm.
She withdrew at once.
The heat stopped climbing. Her sleeve was dry; her skin had not reddened. She sat on the cold floor until her heartbeat slowed.
Chaska crouched in the doorway. “Again?”
“Yes.”
“From the bird?”
“Pip isn’t touching the bird.” Ysabet looked at the thin folds around its back. “I don’t think so.”
The pigeon had taken a little water from the edge of a spoon. Its head remained upright, its breathing quieter. Ysabet could judge those things without touching anything except bird and cloth. She wrote them down, then wrote the times of the three contacts that had made her hot.
Chaska set a cup beside her.
“Drink. You keep looking at water and forgetting you have a mouth.”
Ysabet drank. It tasted of the old copper kettle and the smoke still in her nose.
Outside, a tile struck the ground.
They both stood. The upper branch of the spear had narrowed enough to release the broken piece it had caught. The point sagged against a roof beam. With the sun low behind it, the dark surface showed long pale channels, like the inside of a root exposed to weather.
The cooper’s brother arrived carrying two trestles. He put them down outside the rope.
“Mara said you needed the hole covered.”
“When it comes down.”
“What if it comes down tonight?”
“Then we cover it tonight,” Mara said.
He looked at her, looked at the spear, and went to fetch another man.
A gray carriage waited beyond the well at the end of the lane. Ysabet could see only a wheel and the noses of the horses. Once, a dark sleeve moved behind the carriage glass.
She shut the bath room door.
Pip lifted its head at the sound. She wanted to tell it the man was gone. Instead she moved its water closer and sat where it could see her.
At sunset the spear folded.
There was no great crash. The point softened, bent through the gap in the roof, and broke into wet lengths that collapsed on themselves. The shaft followed, shrinking as it fell. What reached the stones was a scatter of pale flakes and dark threads. A draft lifted several flakes against the laundry wall; they crumbled there.
Pip convulsed.
Its feet struck the floor in a scrambling rhythm. Ysabet put the folded sack between its head and the wall, and it clamped a forefoot around her wrist.
Heat struck through her. She smelled scorched grass where there was no grass, felt the weight of something above her shoulders, and heard a sound too wide to be made inside the room.
Then she was on her knees beside Mara’s skirt.
“Let go of her,” Mara said, loudly and uselessly.
Chaska unwound Pip’s fine toes one at a time. The pressure ended. Ysabet retched into the empty wash basin. Her right hand throbbed as though she had put it in a fire.
Pip lay still. The mouse moved in its pouch.
“I’ll take it,” Chaska said.
“No. Wait.”
Ysabet could not have lifted the creature anyway. She held out a hand for the spoon instead. Chaska gave her the cup of water.
“First this.”
They settled Pip on a flat cushion, with the mouse’s box against its open pouch. The mouse climbed out by itself and drank from its shallow lid. Its bad hind foot dragged across the cloth. Pip watched it until it disappeared beneath the box’s cover.
The heat in Ysabet’s body ebbed slowly. She did not know whether what remained was borrowed or her own. Mara brought a cool rag and checked her forehead with the back of her wrist.
“You’re going to bed.”
“The roof—”
“Has people with ladders under it.”
“The bird—”
“Has somebody with two hands staring at it.” Chaska raised both. “Though one of them is usually employed.”
Ysabet tried to smile. The effort made her teeth chatter.
Mara helped her into the linen room. From the bed she could see the cushion, the hamper, and the corner of the mouse’s box. She could also see a little way through the window.
The carriage waited until the lamps were lit.
When it finally moved, Edris leaned forward, looking back toward the yard. Ysabet lay with the cool rag over her eyes and listened to his horses leave.