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“No.”
“Mara, please.”
“No.”
“Mara, I promise you’ll feel better.”
“I won’t,” Mara says, crossing her paws over her chest and glaring at Urthstripe with all the indignance a badger cub of only two seasons can muster. “I won’t feel better.”
“Try it,” Urthstripe says. “How else will you know for sure?”
Mara uncrosses one paw for the purpose of coughing into it. “No.”
Urthstripe is ready to throw up his own paws – in exasperation or supplication, he’s not sure which. Late autumn in Salamandastron is illness season. Nobeast escapes without a little sniffle or a bout with the flu. Even Urthstripe’s not immune. He’s only just recovered from his autumn sickness, a low fever that sapped his strength and made every individual fiber of his muscles stand out, twinging with pain. Mara’s own, caught from Pikkle Ffolger, is a high fever that brings with it slight fatigue, slight loss of appetite. Mara seemed listless, quieter than usual, but on the whole Urthstripe figured that she’d come off fairly well. But that was before the nightmares.
Oh, the nightmares. Some asking around revealed that every leveret who caught Mara’s illness suffered from vivid, inescapable nightmares during the course of it. Typical hare protocol is to shake the child awake when it becomes clear they’re having a bad dream. The sick leverets may not have slept well, but at least they slept. Mara hasn’t slept for two nights, and she’s growing sicker. She’s sick, short-tempered, and above all exhausted. But nothing Urthstripe says or does can convince her to close her eyes and rest.
“What if I promise to wake you up if you have one?” Urthstripe asks. He tried this tack yesterday, without success, but maybe she’ll be more receptive to it now.
“You wouldn’t know,” Mara says, coughing. “Hare families all sleep in the same room. Pikkle’s mom knows what a nightmare looks like.”
“And I don’t?”
“I don’t know.” Mara slumps back against the pillows, then immediately wrenches herself upright. “We don’t sleep in the same room.”
Urthstripe sighs. “Mara, you wanted your own room.”
“This isn’t about that!”
“Then what is it about?”
Mara coughs again, rubs her eyes. “You couldn’t understand. You’re not scared of anything.”
“I’m scared of several things,” Urthstripe says.
“Not real things,” Mara says. “You’re only scared of things that can’t ever happen. Like Salamandastron getting overthrown or me getting hurt.”
Urthstripe envies her certainty, her utter confidence. “What are you scared of, then?”
“Monsters,” Mara says.
“Yes?” Urthstripe sits down on the bed beside her. “What kind?”
Mara wraps her arms tighter around herself, the pose morphing from defiance to defensiveness. “I don’t know,” she says. “They’re always there and they’re always waiting for me to – to –”
“To what?” Urthstripe asks.
She covers her face with her hands, eyes peeking out between her blunt claws. “To stop looking,” she says, and suddenly, Urthstripe understands.
Even upon waking, Mara still plays by the rules of her nightmare. It’s one of a thousand superstitions children carry. Step on a crack, break your mother’s back. If you break a mirror bad luck will follow you. Urthstripe had a full complement of his own as recently as his first winter in Salamandastron. Keep your weapon close, lest the vermin cut your throat. If you don’t cover your tracks, someone will stab your back. It’s a child’s way to make rules to keep out bad luck, to believe the events in your life are even somewhat under your power. They are to be outgrown.
But not for Mara, not yet. Let her stay innocent a little longer. “How about this,” Urthstripe proposes. “I am well-rested, and as you said, I fear nothing. You may sleep safely. I will watch for you.”
Mara looks up at him, and Urthstripe fixes his gaze on the corner her eyes just left. The sight seems to encourage her. “Really?”
“Of course,” Urthstripe says. He straightens up and turns down a corner of Mara’s bed, making space for her to climb in. After a moment’s hesitation, she does. “Sleep well, Mara. I promise, things will look better in the morning.”
Mara snuggles down under the covers and Urthstripe tucks them up under her chin. She blinks up at him. “What if I have a nightmare?”
“I’ll wake you up,” Urthstripe says. “I may not know how you sleep, but I know about nightmares.”
“Okay,” Mara says. Her eyes slide shut, and a moment later, her breathing evens out into sleep. Urthstripe adjusts the blankets around her as she burrows further in. Then he draws a chair up beside Mara’s bed, unhooks his forge hammer from his belt and settles it across his lap. If Mara wakes up – unlikely, but still – he wants her to see that he takes her worries seriously. That if she believes something, he will believe it with her.
Behind him, on the bed, Mara begins to snore softly. Urthstripe leans back in the chair and settles in for a long night.