Sometimes Heather and Brendan bring the girls to the centre and Heather gets out her pencil crayons and teaches the children how to draw. Annie has salvaged colouring books and crayons from the grocery stores. Tasha can’t draw but tries anyway. The children squeal with laughter at her attempts.
The children like to draw Tasha as a small stick figure with a black stethoscope around her neck, putting bandages on bleeding knees and stitching cuts together. In one picture by a little boy named Tom, she is sewing a severed arm back onto a body. When he gives it to her, she laughs and hangs the picture up in the clinic.
Heather draws on the community centre walls like a woman possessed—her movements quick and sure, a whole world tumbling from her hand in a matter of minutes. She sketches the children at various points on the wall—her babies, Tom and his older sister. Nina and Frederic. Other little faces in between. The children love her pictures. Brendan has told Tasha that Heather still goes for walks, though Tasha hasn’t come across her in the forest again. (Tasha has seen her footsteps. She always sees her footsteps.) It is more difficult, walking through the forest in the snow. But not impossible.
One night during a blizzard, they cram as many people into the community centre as they can to share the warmth. Heather and Brendan arrive with dark bags under their eyes, the twins restless and feverish. Tasha takes one baby and Elyse takes another. They sing—Tasha sings as badly as she draws, but she tries anyway—until the girls are smiling, then they walk them until each twin is asleep. The strain in Heather’s face eases a bit and she goes to where the other children are drawing, then slides down onto the floor beside them. Beneath the loose hang of her clothes, the soft curve of her belly is unmistakable.
She draws a mountain on the wall, and winged things that fly close to its summit. Fairies, Tasha sees, as she comes closer. Unicorns run down the side of the mountain, and still other beasts lie shadowed in the trees.
“What kind of mountain is that?” a child asks.
“This is a wishing mountain.” Heather’s hand doesn’t stop. “It’s filled with magic.” She glances up and sees that Tasha’s watching. She looks back at the mountain. “Magic that will make our world better.”
“Is it like our mountain?” Another child—brown-haired, dark-eyed Sasha. She reaches up and touches a fairy’s wing.
Heather smiles. “It can be like ours,” she says. “It can also be different. It can be whatever we want it to be.”
Tasha’s breath catches in her throat. The twin on her shoulder coos softly in her sleep. Despite how delicate they are, the twins’ heartbeats are strong. They don’t know any different. This is their only world.
It might not be so bad, she thinks. Next spring they will plant again. In the meantime, they have the community centre, they have each other. Others might have much less.
Heather draws a bright thing, falling from the mountain. Then another, then another.
“What are those?” Tasha asks.
“These are fire-birds,” Heather says. “They fall from the sky.”
Tasha’s heart thuds hard in her chest. “What did you say?”
Heather doesn’t look at her. “Fire-birds,” she repeats. She draws another one hitting the ground, a great gaping hole opening beneath it. “They burn holes in the ground, the way the meteors did.”
Tasha tries to swallow. “Once there was a bird who was jealous of the sun,” she says.
Heather looks at her, sharply. “What?”
“Once there was a bird who was jealous of the sun,” she repeats. “No matter how high the bird flew, the sun was always higher.”
Heather watches her for a moment, and then whispers, “Why should the sun fly higher than we do?” She holds her pencil crayon in mid-air.
“We work so hard to stay in the air but the sun sits up there and does nothing. It’s not fair.”
Tasha swallows. “How do you know that story?”
“My father made it up for me.”
“My mother made it up for me,” Tasha says. “When I was a kid, I had dreams about birds that burned holes in the ground. She made that story up so I wouldn’t be afraid. How—how did your father know it?”
Heather puts her pencil crayon down, then shrugs. “My father once said that stories don’t belong to anybody,” she says. “He said they belong to the world.”
“Yes,” Tasha says, a little louder now. People turn to look at them. “But that exact story? Don’t you think that’s a little strange? Did our parents know each other?”
“I don’t think so,” Heather says. “My father never left these mountains. Did your parents travel here?”
Tasha shakes her head. “They wanted to. They always talked about coming. But they never did.” She looks at the children, who have stopped listening to them and are back on the floor drawing their own pictures. “Why did your father tell you a story about birds who fly higher than the sun?” she says. “What were you afraid of?”
“I wasn’t afraid of anything.” There’s a strange smile on Heather’s face now. “My father, on the other hand…” She shrugs again. “He was afraid of a lot, as it turns out. I should have clued in when the birds in the story flew higher and kept burning.”
Tasha frowns. “But that’s not how the story ends.”
“Isn’t it?” Heather stands and reaches for Jilly. Again there’s that flash when they touch—clouds and air, the high-pitched sound of screaming. Heather blinks and Tasha wonders what she sees—The smoke again? The fire?—but then Brendan appears by their side and takes Greta from Elyse.
“You can stay here if you don’t want to walk home,” Tasha says. Stay. Stay and finish the story. “You can have the mattress in the clinic, if you want. Or stay here with the others—lots of people will be sleeping here tonight.”
“We’re fine,” Heather says.
Stay, Tasha wants to beg. Rest. Let me help you. Please tell me what all of this means. Instead she only nods. “All right,” she says. “Just—hold on a minute.” She moves to the doorway, then steps outside into the snow and makes her way to the clinic. She lets herself in and rummages through the shelves that Annie has organized so neatly in the back. She finds the bottle she is looking for and closes her hand around it, then walks back to the community centre. After Tasha stamps the snow off her boots, she holds the bottle of prenatal vitamins out to Heather. “For you.”
Heather looks at the vitamins in Tasha’s outstretched hand. “What good do you think those will do?”
“Who knows, at this point,” Tasha says. When Heather takes the bottle, Tasha feels a small thrill at being able to help her, even a little, and watches as she and the girls and Brendan head out into the swirling white.
“You spend more time worrying about Heather than you do about Annie,” Elyse says, beside her.
“What?” Tasha says, confused.
“Annie would do anything for you. And you keep pushing her away. Don’t you know how lucky you are?”
“Elyse, I’m not pushing—”
“Yes, you are. You don’t deserve her.”
Tasha sighs. “Elyse, we’re all tired. We’re all working too hard.”