Chapter Text
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For some reason I decided that Grimshire isn't grim enough, and I need to make things worse. Coupled with the fact that it's the only game I have any free time to play so I think way too hard about things while trudging through the mines. Enjoy!
This fic explores potential 'butterfly effect' results of certain characters passing away. Spoilers, obviously.
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Hazel
Hazel's death is a twofold disaster.
Certainly, everyone is heartbroken to have lost a treasured friend, especially in such a violent manner. That initial grief is doubled by the realization that the village has lost its healer, and what that means for the rest of them. Any sickness, injury or accident is going to be nearly impossible to treat without her. Rose is still only halfway through her training, and nowhere near ready to take on the kind of work that Hazel had done over the years.
Rose is a mess at the funeral, devastated over the loss of her good friend and panic-stricken over having to continue her work with so much learning left to do. The Hawthornes feel an extra shred of guilt for Poppy being the reason Hazel was in the deep woods to begin with, and a thought flickers through a few minds unwillingly; that they sacrificed Hazel for Poppy, and it was a poor choice. A trained healer for a child, an able-bodied worker for an extra mouth.
The only villager that feels no guilt, just sadness, is the newest resident; the farmer made a heroic effort to fill the quota for the herb garden despite having only recently arrived on Grimshire, and fell short through no real fault of her own. The others could certainly have worked harder, they know that now. But it's too late now to go back and work harder.
Kai attends the funeral, and though he is quiet and stoic as always he clenches his fists throughout the entire ceremony, and then retreats to his home with his brother in tow, not a single word spoken. Hazel was one of the few villagers he spoke to regularly, if he cared about anybody besides his brother it was her.
Life moves on, as it has to. Rose continues her learning as much as she can, working off of the notes Hazel left behind and whatever useful books she can find in Adeline's library. She's never been a good reader though, and it takes twice as long for her to glean any knowledge than it did when she observed Hazel at her work. She prays every night that no illness or injury hits the village before she can learn how to handle it.
The farmer grows whatever herbs and mushrooms are useful and delivers them to Rose regularly, but then her attention is completely taken by the arrival of the tax collectors and the root cellar quota. Rose forages what she can with help from Lila and occasionally Prudence, but it's not much. The army needs medicine, and if they don't give what they have freely it'll be taken by force. The farmer tries to make up for it by giving Rose extra honey.
The red tide brings in more disaster. Rose knows nothing of this phenomenon, or what effect it has on the body. More and more she tries to stuff her brain with the correct knowledge, spending long nights sifting through old books she can barely read. Lila knows a little more but her focus is on curing the red tide itself, not treating anyone afflicted with it. There is a blanket statement put out by Percy to avoid contact with it or any fish caught in its waters until they know more, and they hope it's enough.
A knock on the Hoppers' door comes late at night; Kai is the last person who would reach out to the village for help, so the situation must be dire. Rose is rushed out to the marsh with what poultices and potions she has on hand, Kai having to carry her through the water that would rise to her waist if she tried to wade through it.
Hazel spoke to Kai regularly, they used to meet in the forest or on the mountain and pass the early morning together. Had she lived she would have advised Kai directly on avoiding the water and the fish in the marsh, and he would have passed on that information to Tano. Neither of the Lynx brothers heard the missive from Percy, and while Kai was experienced enough to steer clear of fish entirely Tano apparently thought whatever he caught in the swamp would be fine to eat as long as he cooked it thoroughly.
None of the potions or poultices work. Hazel would have treated the illness with a mix of charcoal to neutralize the poison, pepperwort to soothe the burning, yarrow to ease the swelling and honey boiled in water to flush out the system. Rose only knows pepperwort and the honey water, nowhere near enough to treat Tano, not even enough to ease his pain. They spend seven hours trying to save him but he passes away before the rest of the village is awake.
Following Tano's funeral, Kai burns the hut they shared and moves into the deep wood. Nobody hears from him again, not even the farmer. Some of the villagers are convinced he has died at the claws of the same creature that killed Hazel, others think that Tano and Hazel were the only things keeping him from being a wild creature himself and he has just returned to his preferred way of life.
The red tide eases, but with two villagers dead and one disappeared, filling the root cellar is a challenge. The farmer's farm becomes more efficient and she donates the most every week, but dinners in the homes of everyone else are being watered and scraped down. There are more bones in the soup than meat, and more bellies rumbling throughout the day.
Disaster hits again when one of the ranch's prize alpheeps is killed. Initially they believe that it's a case of theft from one of the hungry carnivores; there are no hunters among the villagers now, and none of them recognise the signs of an invading creature from the deep forest. Hours and then days are wasted accusing Oliver, then Rowan, then Gruff of breaking into the alpheep pen, more days spent hunting up alibis and questioning other villagers about their neighbours' movements.
The predator isn't discovered until it attacks Prudence one afternoon as she's returning from visiting Gruff at the forge. She cries out loud enough for Rowan and Gruff to both come running with pick and axe in hand, and between the two of them they manage to kill the beast. However, it's too late to save Prudence. She bleeds out long before Rose can be summoned to do anything for her.
In the aftermath, Gruff retreats into his forge and rarely leaves. Everyone has long suspected that he and Prudence had a mutual infatuation that they wouldn't act on for some reason, and now it can never be acted on. There is little need for him to mine much anymore, the farmer is a much more efficient miner, so he stays in his home and broods. He doesn't even visit the tavern.
The children take this new loss especially hard. Prudence was the closest either had to a grandmother, and thanks to thin walls they know all about how violent her death was. Though the beast is dead, they are convinced it will come after them if they venture outside. They won't even attend their lessons with Adeline, so she starts to leave the manor herself in order to teach them. Jack has to be walked to the general store every morning by his father to continue his lessons, and then walked back in the evenings by Oliver. Both children play less, make less noise, creep around with shadowed eyes.
Just as the crows are beginning to make trouble on the farms, Wilfred starts visiting Rose at the apothecary for treatment. He had been taking a regular concoction Hazel had made for him to treat a minor problem with his heart; when she passed away, he stopped. He reasoned he didn't need it, the discomfort the palpitations gave him could be managed if he tried to keep stress out of his life. Then the tax collectors were replaced by pirates, and suddenly stress was impossible to keep out of his life.
Rose finds Hazel's notes for the concoction; a mixture of chamomile, lavender, hawthorn berries and a raw bluggy egg. All of which she has access to, thankfully, with the help of the farmer and some of the dried herbs she has in storage. However, Hazel's notes had become smeared over constant use, and Rose can't tell whether a measurement she reads is a spoonful or a cupful. She goes with a cupful, reasoning that more of the herb can't hurt.
The concoction works, far too well. Wilfred's racing heartbeat slows to the point that he loses consciousness, just as he's facing out on the water of the dock. He drowns in water that he'd been swimming in his entire life. One more funeral for Grimshire, one more pair of hands they can't afford to lose.
A schism grows between Beryl and Greta when they lose Wilfred. He had been the bridge that kept them together even in conflict, and with her father gone Beryl has no reason to keep the peace between them. She moves out of their house and into a room at the manor offered by Adeline, throws herself harder into her research and refuses to catch a single fish from then on. She tries to stay cordial with Rose, though deep down she holds Rose responsible for her father's death, and Rose knows it. Having lost both her daughter and husband, Greta fishes all day and night to distract herself from the emptiness of her home. Good for the root cellar and the ration quota, but bad for village morale as a whole.
The crows become a massive problem, the root cellar quota is only ever met by the farmer's insane dedication. Adeline and Beryl try to work out the problem between them but can't agree on anything, and Beryl is still distracted by grief and anger. In the end she gives up and Adeline forges on with her brazier design, without Beryl's input.
Beryl is half-heartedly foraging in the mountain when the first brazier is lit, when it's placed at a spot where the strong headwind blows it over and sparks a fire that spreads to the manor. She only finds out when she sees the billowing smoke and hears the shouts of the villagers trying to put it out. So she adds guilt to her grief and anger, knowing that Adeline would have put the brazier somewhere else if Beryl had told her so.
The manor doesn't burn entirely, but it's uninhabitable with winter around the corner. Wallace and Rufus are injured putting out the fire, taking two more workers out of action for at least two weeks by Rose's estimate. All of Adeline's research is destroyed by smoke and water, most of the books are burned and anything she had stored for the lean weeks of winter is also gone. She moves into Rowan and Willow's house, too numb with distress to do anything but be escorted there. Beryl moves into one of the tavern's rooms where she locks herself away from everyone.
In all the chaos, Willow comes to Rose with what should be happy news. She's expecting a litter. It couldn't possibly be a worse time to get pregnant, and Rose is aghast that she'd risk it. Willow explains that Rowan has been miserable since seeing Prudence die right in front of him, and in trying to comfort him they weren't as careful as they should have been. There's no going back though, by the time Willow realized she was pregnant it was too late to give her the herbs that would stop it from staying.
Rose is a nervous wreck. Carnivore-herbivore pregnancies are known to be difficult, even when times are good and skilled healers are on hand. All she can really do for Willow is give her some recommended herbs and tell her to go to the farmer and ask for some extra eggs or milk if she has any to spare. It will be borderline impossible for the litter to get the nutrition it needs unless the farmer can do miracles. Even so, whatever extra food she has is probably salted or pickled, which would be bad for Willow in this state.
The gestation is short, as expected from a hybrid litter. Two days before the pirates are due to arrive, at the cusp of winter, Willow gives birth with help from Adeline and Rose. They send Rowan out multiple times to beg for wool, milk, haygrass to staunch the bleeding, all from the farmer. It takes nearly thirty hours and Willow is barely alive at the end of it, the two kits squalling pitifully for their first feed. One is much smaller than the other, and though it cries it's not moving as much as it should be. All three survive that first night, however.
The pirates arrive, place their threats and clean out everything the village has left, and the plan is made to barricade the temple. It's a long shot, they don't have nearly as many workers as they should. The farmer has the supplies, she's clearly been stockpiling for pretty much the entire year, and Gruff comes out to help for the first time since Prudence died, but even so everyone who remains has to pitch in, including the children. The end result looks a mess, but seems stable. They won't truly know until the night it's put to the test.
The farmer has also stockpiled a lot of food, though she admits when pressed that she could have saved more if she'd had more time. All the other villagers have are dried peelings, bones stripped clean of meat and marrow, fruit cores and barely edible nuts and seeds. It looks pathetic next to the rows of jars, haunches of salted meat and bottles of strong wine the farmer has provided, adding another layer of guilt to the villagers' conscience.
They prepare to bunker down but nothing happens. Then Pawton burns, and they prepare again. Everyone grows twitchy, despairing, wandering the town trying to pretend everything is fine. Rose tries valiantly to finish memorizing Hazel's notes, hoping desperately that nobody will get sick or injured when they do lock themselves into the temple. Rowan spoon-feeds his sickly wife to give her the strength to feed their kits. Two days after the burning of Pawton, he carries her and the kits to the temple to stay there, if the pirates turn up on the horizon she'd never get there in time otherwise.
Finally, Fin arrives to sound the alarm. He takes Poppy and Jack with him, Rowan dithers back and forth about whether he should ask Fin to take Willow and the kits with him too but in the end he has to keep them with him. They need Rose on hand in case they take a turn for the worse, and the night air on the sea would almost certainly finish off the weaker kit.
They bunker down behind the temple walls. There's plenty of room, and Willow and the kits are able to take Edgar's bedroom upstairs. When the infected pirates bang on the walls, some of the rocks come loose and everyone holds their breath. It holds, for the time being. The barricade is shoddy but the materials are strong, and though they wobble they don't cave in.
They run low on food and water fast. Too tired and demoralized to try and cook anything, they just open the jars and scoop the preserved food out with their hands to eat as is. There's a lot of wine and mead, and drinking themselves to sleep becomes a natural way to pass the time. The cheese and eggs are saved for Willow, she and the kits need the protein.
Several days in, a stomach bug spreads around the temple. The drinking has lead to excess vomiting, and Rose doesn't know the right combination of herbs to make an anti-emetic. The bug spreads upstairs to Willow and the kits, despite everyone's best efforts to keep clean and keep away from them, and it weakens them even more.
By the time the blizzard rolls in and takes out the infected, Willow and the smaller of the kits are gone. Between the childbed weakness, malnutrition and the stomach sickness, Willow had nothing left in her to fight the cold. The weaker kit follows her an hour later, having lingered on the edge of death since the day he was born. The bigger kit survives, just barely, and emerges from the temple to an unknown future with only his father.
They burn the bodies, return to what's left of their homes and try to carry on. They hold the sunrise festival but it's a hollow affair. Rowan cradles his son with a look of blank shock on his face. Rose looks like she's aged twenty years. Beryl and Greta stand on opposite sides of the river, not looking at each other. Even those that came out of the year mostly intact look shell-shocked, like they're pretending to be alive.
Growing up, Rose always made a wish on the rising sun, usually a wish for the future. This time, her wish looks back. She wishes that they could go back in time and prevent Hazel from dying. Surely if Hazel hadn't died, everyone would have survived! Right?
Rose
Rose's sudden passing sends a ripple of shock through the village. Most of them had already heard that Jack was ill and were waiting on news of his death or recovery. As they arrive at the top of the mountain for the funeral, it doesn't feel real until they see her body on the pyre,
Ericka and Wallace are a wreck, of course. They had no time to rejoice for the survival of their son before their daughter died. Jack himself, still red-eyed and weak from his illness, clings to his mother's skirt for the whole ceremony. Ericka holds onto her composure long enough to say a few words as a eulogy, and then it's over.
Hazel is as devastated as anyone, but much better at hiding it. She's seen more death than anyone else and she's a pragmatic creature above all else. However, Rose was very much a social bridge between herself and the rest of the village. About a week after Rose's funeral, she lets it be known that she's looking for a new apprentice.
This angers many of the villagers, who see it not as practicality but as callousness. Hazel would like to tell them that she can't gather all the medicinal plants, process them into medicine and treat the ill and wounded all by herself, but she can't find the words. The angry glares of the villagers that she passes on her foraging trip make her unbearably anxious, so she spends as much time as possible locked in the apothecary away from everyone.
The arrival of the tax collectors softens the anger towards Hazel. The village has been in dire straits before, and the memory of those hard times reminds them that they have to be mercenary to survive. Willow is the first person to volunteer; she doesn't really have a job other than painting, and she spends her spare time at the temple or out enjoying nature. She might as well make herself useful.
Her tenure as an apprentice is short and not sweet. She enjoys picking the herbs and cataloguing them, drying them and observing the changes in colour, but she is too squeamish to treat even a minor wound. She's distressed at the sight of blood to the point of fainting, and she is too anxious to pick anything that might be even slightly poisonous or irritating. Hazel grows tired of her presence and her easily rattled nerves, and dismisses her. Willow cries for almost an entire day when she's sent away (though Rowan suspects they're tears of relief, she wanted out of the apothecary as much as Hazel wanted her out.)
When the red tide rolls in, Hazel grits her teeth and warns everyone, in person, to stay away from the water and especially any fish that's caught in the ocean or the marsh. This includes Kai and Tano, as they tend not to be kept updated of news in the village. The mirebinding project is voted on, and given that Lila was the one who came up with the idea, Hazel thinks she might make a good apprentice.
While everyone (especially the farmer) works hard at filling the box of materials, Jack's behaviour begins to worry the villagers. Rufus catches him throwing stones at the ranch's alpheep, and Prudence spots him just as he's about to pour a bucket of toxic red water over her flower bed. He's taken to wandering around the village on his own, and when he's scolded he doesn't protest or whine the way he used to, but stands and stares at the ground, full of unspoken defiance.
They try to be understanding. Jack's home is full of sadness, and reminders of the big sister he lost. Wallace goes to the tavern in the evenings and drinks far too much, and usually brings a bottle home for Ericka too. Jack is also old enough to feel responsible for Rose's death, but not old enough to really process the guilt on his own. He caused his own illness by sneaking into the mines when he was told over and over that it was dangerous, and Rose died instead of him. He can't fill the gulf she left behind, and probably will never be able to.
So he wanders the island, throwing sticks at birds in the trees, picking and stamping on the wild fruit so it's inedible, chasing the wild critters until they run into the deep forest. Poppy stops playing with him entirely. He's too rough with her when they play, she tells her parents when they ask. He's turned mean. Beatrix tries to bring up the issue with Ericka when she visits, but when Ericka starts weeping she can't bring herself to keep going. She just resolves to be understanding.
When the mirebinding project is complete, Hazel cuts a deal with Rusty and Lila. If Lila is able to study herbalism with Hazel in the mornings, she has time to forage in the afternoon and work at the tavern in the evenings. Rusty's not exactly happy about it, he worries for Lila's energy and health, but he tries not to protest too much. If he forbids it he knows that Lila will double down out of pure stubbornness.
They never completed the mushroom hut, so they need to rely on the farmer and whatever they can forage in the wild to stock the medicine shelves. Jack's rampaging sometimes destroys whatever herbs he comes across as well as the fruit. Both Lila and Hazel spend a long time walking around the village looking for anything useful. Hazel's greatest fear is that the tax collectors take all the medicine they have and leave nothing to treat sickness with. Lila tires easily but doesn't complain.
Two nights after a predator kills one of the ranch's alpheep and plans are made to hunt it down, Lila fails to come back to the tavern after a foraging effort. Rusty panics and organizes a hasty search party, convinced that the predator has taken her as well. They find her just before dawn; exhausted after walking back and forth across the mountain looking for yarrow, she'd slipped and fallen off of the ledge and knocked herself out on a rock. Her bad leg was twisted in the fall, and after lying in the dark for hours she catches a chill that takes a full bottle of heated whiskey and all the honey the farmer can spare to treat.
Hazel loses her second potential apprentice. Rusty is pale and nervous for days afterwards and forbids Lila from doing any work even when she recovers. Lila, for her part, was shaken by the incident and isn't quite as defiant as one might expect.
Kai catches and kills the predator, and he arrives at Hazel's door the next day with a deep wound on his arm from the battle. Hazel has very little to treat the wound, ideally she would have mint oil and a lavender poultice but all she can do is wash it with salted boiled water and apply a clean bandage. She sends Kai away with stern instructions to keep the wound site clean.
Neither Oliver or Logan are willing to train as apprentices, not that Hazel thinks either of them would make good apprentices in the first place. Logan is too flighty and Oliver is more interested in rocks than plants. That leaves Beryl and Adeline. She briefly considers the farmer as well, but the farmer is so completely occupied by her farm and meeting the ration quota that there's no room for anything else. It's a shame, because the farmer seems to be good at just about everything and would probably make a good herbalist.
Adeline takes some convincing to be trained, she's interested in the field from an academic point of view but she doesn't usually get hands-on with her work. When she enters the apothecary for the first time she's enchanted by all the labelled shelves, the overhead racks for drying the plants, the many little notebooks full of ratios, statistics and properties. Hazel holds out some hope that it'll work out.
It doesn't.
Adeline insists on washing her hands every time a drop of liquid from a plant gets on them, up to thirty times in a single hour, until she's actually washing bald spots into her fur. She's useless at foraging, hates the outdoors and gets distracted by the wind tousling her fur. The best use that Hazel can get out of her is having her arrange her notes in alphabetical order, which Adeline does with great enthusiasm. She seems relieved when Hazel dismisses her, happy to return to her books and her collections at the manor.
Just as the first murder of crows flaps their way onto Grimshire, Hazel makes one last attempt and asks Beryl to train. Beryl seems enthusiastic if nothing else, probably because it's another excuse she can give her mother so she can avoid fishing. And on her first day she starts off well, catching Jack kicking down the structure of what should have been the mushroom hut, scolding him and sending him on his way.
The recently-arrived pirates have caused Jack to escalate his bad behaviour, and the villagers are on high alert. Between Jack's destructive streak and the crows, filling the root cellar is an ordeal. Out of desperation some of the villagers are donating their dinners and chewing fruit peels to quell the hunger pains. If it wasn't for the farmer's powerful work ethic none of them would even have those fruit peels.
Beryl divides her time between the apothecary and the frenzied planning for the crow traps. She's got good instincts for gathering herbs and she makes the poultices like she's been doing it forever, but she's so restless that she gets sloppy with her measurements and just skims the notes. She tips over beakers of fermenting potions more than once on her way out to fiddle with the cage designs. Still, she can be made useful, Hazel thinks, once the crows are taken care of...
One morning brings a new calamity. Jack has been seen messing with a dead tree in the forest, pushing on it until he got too tired to keep going. It didn't seem like a big enough deal to scold him about but then a strong wind blows it directly onto the roof of Rowan and Willow's house. Rowan or the farmer would have gotten around to chopping down the tree before it collapsed, but they'd been so focused on sawing planks for the crow traps that they forgot all about it.
Rowan and Willow move into the manor, for the time being, and Rowan sets out every morning back to his equipment to saw more planks. Before, they might have asked Wallace and Ericka to help out as well, but neither of them are really fit for work, or much of anything really. The crows are a dire threat to their winter plans, so Rowan works himself to exhaustion every day. Between his work and the farmer's, they just about manage to get all of the traps ready and set.
It's a success, they catch their first set of crows and it's enough to convince the majority of them to fly somewhere else, but it comes at a cost. Rowan hasn't set anything aside for the upcoming winter and he's pushed himself so hard that he falls ill. Lack of adequate food made him weaker still, and there's nothing Hazel can do for him besides advise him to rest up and eat better. He'd been chewing on dry bones for weeks.
The farmer steps in, slaughtering one of her girtles and gifting Rowan several iron-rich black puddings and two tureens of blood soup. It's enough to take him out of danger at least, but it's another gap in the shelves of the root cellar. The farmer is meticulous with what critters she slaughters and when, saving Rowan threw her whole system out. To her credit, she brushes it off with a shrug and carries on salting the meat from that carcass.
Willow has to forage on both her and Rowan's behalf, but can't get herself together to get enough for the both of them to save for the upcoming winter. All she can manage are a few mushrooms here, a chunk of ginger there, a little sunroot to bulk up their soup. It's tasty, because she's always been a good cook, but it's thin and watery. She hasn't been this close to possible starvation since she was a child, in a family with too many mouths to feed and not enough working adults to keep it going. The rest of the village won't let them starve, she thinks. The farmer won't, at least.
Hazel has a quiet period after treating Rowan's illness, enough to replenish some of her stores at least. Then Tano drags a heavily panting Kai into the apothecary, and the smell filling the room tells her straight away that he has a badly infected wound. Sure enough, she checks what's left of the bandage she gave him when he was first wounded and it's soaked through. She should have known better and given him clearer instructions back then, but there's no use dwelling on it.
She uses all the herbs she's just collected and excises the wound, but there's too much tissue damage. The only solution is amputation. Kai is strong even if he's barely conscious, so she sends Tano to fetch both Rufus and Logan to hold Kai down, and on the way he grabs a bottle of strong fruit wine from the root cellar. Hazel hasn't had to amputate a limb since the early days of the war (it had looked like the best solution when Lila had her accident, but they were just about able to save the leg.)
Kai is fed wine until he's on the verge of passing out, with his brother cradling his head, and Rufus and Logan are wrapped around his left and right sides. His flesh is rendered numb by a pepperwort and mint poultice so he doesn't feel it when Hazel makes the first incision, but when she starts to saw through the bone he thrashes, nearly shaking the wolves off of him. It's astonishing how strong he is, even sick and drunk as he is. He passes out when the arm is taken from him fully.
He spends two days in the sick bed at the apothecary, and when he comes around fully he doesn't seem to have any strong reaction to the loss of his arm. Hazel knows him better than anyone, except for his brother, and she knows that the stoic mask he puts on is hiding deep turmoil. Hunting, providing for himself and his brother, is his entire life. Losing a limb doesn't make it impossible, but much, much harder. And he's far too proud to accept help from the village. His future is uncertain until he finds a way to compensate for the loss. This close to winter, it's a personal disaster.
They manage to fill the cellar, once again thanks to the farmer. Hazel looks down on the farm from the cliffside of the forest from time to time, and every available space is crammed with drying racks and preservation barrels. Most households only have one or two, ancient things passed down the generations. Even in the harshest winters they've never needed more. The farmer's collection of barrels are brand new, handmade and constantly working. She spends massive chunks of her day flitting between them, pouring honey and vinegar onto her freshly picked crops.
Jack tries to get onto the farm, once. The farmer catches him before he can do any damage and it's not known what passes between them, but he never tries again. Before his sister died, Jack thought the farmer was the coolest person on the island. He still has a small slice of respect for her, more so than anyone else.
The pirates arrive for their quota, and to demand even more. Hazel sneaks a glance at the captain's bite wound, and she recognises the panic behind the pirates' aggression. The wound is infected already, she can smell it from where she stands. When they take their rations and leave, the town is despondent. Surely even the farmer's factory of a farm can't save them now?
The plan is made to barricade in the temple. Hazel hates the plan. Close confines, no access to running water, low nutrition... it'll turn into a hive of disease within a couple of days. There's no real source of heat either. Serious illness is inevitable. But... she doesn't have any better ideas. She packs up her preserved medicinal herbs and moves them to the temple.
The building of the barricade is slow, far too slow. The materials are no problem, the farmer has been stashing them away in her usual fashion. The actual work of putting it together is where the hardship is, two of their best construction crew are still paralysed by grief and Rowan does his best but he's still weak from his illness. Tano and Logan stop by to help but they have no idea what they're doing and get confused even with the simplest of instructions. They complete it just before Fin arrives to warn them of the approaching ship.
Fin is begged to take the children with him, but Jack refuses to go. He kicks up such a screaming fuss and runs off so he has to be chased around the island for nearly the entire day, putting everyone in danger. Fin has to take Poppy and leave Jack behind as night falls, and when the bell tolls to gather everyone into the temple, Jack is dragged inside by Oliver and Logan, kicking and hollering all the while.
Inside, he quiets down for a while. The noises from outside scare him and he cowers behind his father. But after a few days he begins throwing tantrums again, a mix of fear and hunger and unprocessed grief turning him into an angry whirlwind. He knocks over valuable jars of food during his fits. The racket he makes riles up the ferals outside, they pound and scratch at the walls with renewed vigour when they hear him.
One of the walls develops a crack. The wood splinters and the rock falls away, the gap between the sheets of metal widens with the force of dozens of arms reaching in to grab at something, anything. A hasty repair is made, the arms are pushed back but in the process Rufus gets clawed badly. He held two planks in place as his son nailed them shut despite the talons raking him almost down to the bone. Hazel manages to save him before he bleeds out, she can't stitch the wounds and has to settle for cauterizing them as best she can.
It couldn't get any worse, she thinks. She is wrong.
Logan, always a sensitive soul, is heartsick at the state of his father, and worried that another crack will form and someone else will be injured as badly as Rufus. Jack wakes one night from a nightmare, screaming that he wants his sister back over and over as the ferals snarl and bash at the barricades. Logan grabs Jack and puts a hand over his mouth to try and quiet him, just long enough for the ferals to disperse.
Always a sensitive soul, and always unaware of how strong he really is.
When he releases Jack from his grip, Jack drops to the ground like a stone. Glassy-eyed with a trickle of blood oozing from his mouth, Hazel doesn't need to check his pulse to know he's dead.
Ericka moans low, wordless in the face of this new tragedy. Wallace stares at his son as if he can manifest a breath in the lifeless body. Logan shrinks up against the wall, clutching his head and whispering to himself. The stay like that for what feels like forever, the others watching this horrible tableau not knowing what to do.
Hazel is pragmatic, and has seen terrible awful deaths many times. She can shut off her emotions like a tap when she needs to. She carries the body upstairs to Edgar's bedroom and covers Jack with a sheet, they can give him a proper burial later. She has Wallace and Ericka drink a fortified blend of fruit wine, pepperwort and yarrow to sedate them. She assures Logan that what happened isn't his fault, a tragic accident, it could happen to anyone. It rings false and she can't make it sound true, but it's all she can do.
The next day, Logan is gone too. They find him hanging from the rafters of the bedroom, a few feet from Jack's body. Guilt is a hard thing to live with, even for the most stoic of people. It's understandable that Logan couldn't keep going. Rufus cries quietly, and he can't even wipe his tears away due to his injury. Two families destroyed entirely.
They survive, somehow, and they emerge to give their loved ones the proper funeral rites. They walk around as if they're in a dream, tidying their wrecked houses and cooking simple meals that they only pick at, going through the motions of a life they once had. Poppy absorbs the news of her best friend's death with hysterical sobbing that lasts for days, until Beatrix has to go to Hazel to ask for a sleeping draught to help her.
The only one who seems relatively unscathed is the farmer, who returns to her work as if nothing happened. Perhaps throwing herself into her ceaseless industry is her way of coping with the horrors. She sows new seeds and welcomes newborn critters, the smoke from her smelters and smoking huts rising into the sky to be seen from all over the island.
Wallace and Ericka don't last long. Beatrix goes to check on them, to bring them some food, and she finds them in their marital bed together. Three bottles of wine and a plateful of mushrooms known to be poisonous in high doses lie on the bedside table. They are burned, their ashes scattered with those of their son and daughter, and their house and shop are boarded up.
Everyone keeps an eye on Rufus after the couple pass away, but he stays with them. He drinks too much in the tavern at night and occasionally his eyes glaze over and he stares at nothing, but he doesn't seem to want to leave the world behind. Tano moves closer to town and helps out at the ranch in Logan's honour. Kai is forced to move as well, since he can't provide for himself without Tano. He is miserable in town though, and chooses to sleep in a nearby cherry tree rather than the room set up for him at the ranch.
They hold the sunrise festival, but it's a ghastly experience. No food, no drink, just a collection of people staring into the sky waiting for the sun to come up. Ordinarily they would have made a wish, but they honestly can't think of anything to wish for.
Three weeks after the festival, Lila comes to the apothecary, late at night when she knows her father will be distracted at the tavern.
She's pregnant.
She doesn't want to be.
For an awful moment, Hazel wonders if this was a consensual encounter or if they have to worry about harbouring a criminal in such a lawless time, but Lila clears it up a moment later. She was comforting someone in deep pain, and things just got out of control for them both. It was only that one time. She doesn't want to reveal the father's identity, or even tell him. She just wants the herbs to end the pregnancy. This world they live in right now is no place for a baby.
Hazel is conflicted. On the one hand, a baby could be an excellent beacon of hope for the village. They've lost people, one entire family, their world is shrinking around them, a baby would mean a future to strive for. Poppy would have another child to play with, to soothe the pain of losing Jack. Someone to keep the island thriving after everyone else has grown too old and sick. They need a new generation.
On the other hand, Lila is right. This is no time to bring another hungry mouth into existence, a loud needy creature that will grow up with death hanging over its head. A child that may face hunger, terror and pain beyond what any child should ever experience.
Hazel gives Lila the herbs, and no more is said about the potential baby.
There may be time for babies later, for rebuilding families and starting new lives in the shadow of what went before. They are grateful for the people they have left, if nothing else.