While Beauty Slept Read Online Free

baby lay in her lap, ominously still. I closed my eyes, resigned to death.
    Yet that was not to be my fate. After what might have been hours or years, I became aware of the sweat-stained pillow against my cheek, felt the weight of the blanket spread across my chest. My eyes burned with exhaustion, yet the fever that had so tormented me had subsided. I saw Nairn lying next to me, his face red and distorted with swelling. I heard his breath laboriously draw inward, then wheeze out. The rest of the bed was empty. Across the room faint embers glowed in the fireplace. Our house, usually bustling and crowded, was silent.
    I sat up too quickly, for my head pounded with the effort and I had to shut my eyes to block out the swimming images before me. After the rushing sensation quieted, I looked again. By the dim light of the dying fire, I saw a pile of clothes thrown on the floor. Again Nairn took a shuddering breath and seemed as if he might expire from the effort. I looked at the heap of clothes and saw a movement.
    A rat, I thought. They made their way into the house from time to time but rarely lingered, as we ate every crumb we had. I pulled myself from the bed, willing myself the strength to stand and shoo the intruder away. It was not until I had walked unsteadily across the room that I realized the pile of clothes was my mother.
    I collapsed next to her. She was wrapped in her cloak, with the hood pulled over her head. Her legs were pressed up against her chest, her hands hidden in the folds of her skirt. I plucked the hood away and was confronted with a terrible sight: my mother’s face, drawn and tired in all the time I had known her but with faint traces of loveliness still, had been transformed to that of a monster. Red sores that oozed pus and blood had erupted from her skin. Her neck was disfigured by a massive swelling, and her lips, stained with blood, were frozen in a rigor of pain. Her eyes slowly opened. They had once been blue and kind; now they were pink and empty of all feeling.
    “Mother.” It was all I could think to say. I was not sure she knew me.
    Her body did not move, but one hand emerged from the fabric and reached toward me. Her lips parted slightly, and a sound escaped. It could have been my name, it could have been a moan of pain; I could not tell.
    “Please, come to the bed,” I urged. I could not think of any way to tend to her, but it sickened me to see her there, lying on the floor like an animal. She deserved better than such a fate.
    “Elise.”
    This time I recognized my name, and I smiled. If she still knew me, there might be hope yet.
    “Come.” I pulled at her shoulders. She lifted them slightly and reached toward me with her arms, but she was not strong enough to stand. I dragged her as best I could across the room, hoping her skirt would lessen the impact to her legs, but she did not complain. I draped her head and arms against the side of the bed, then leaned over to lift her lower body upward. My head ached with the effort, and by the time I had laid her next to Nairn, I was afraid I might faint. I crawled into the bed beside her and began stroking her arm.
    “Mother, the others . . .” I began, then stopped. Her watery eyes stared into mine, confirming what I could not put into words. They were dead. In the time I’d been lost to fever, my family had vanished. I remembered seeing the baby in her lap, so small and so still. I hoped it had been quick for him at least.
    Yet I lived. Which meant this pox, this terrible scourge that had laid waste to my family, could be conquered. Weak as I was, I could feel my head clearing, my body gathering strength. I wrapped my arms around her body—so very thin, little more than bones—willing the life to return to her.
    “Please,” I begged, “do not leave me. I cannot bear it here without you.”
    “Agna.” She said it so slowly and quietly, barely even a whisper. The swelling in her neck must have made speaking unbearably