With a huff Jemima said, “As if everybody weren’t talking about me already. You can keep your lies to yourself, missy.”

Birdie sat down on a stool next to a table where a tray with a bowl of broth and a piece of bread had been left untouched.

“Usually people lie because they don’t think they can get what they want by telling the truth,” Birdie said. She was glad she had someplace to sit where she could watch Jemima that was more than an arm’s reach away, because her face had gone pure red with irritation and she seemed the kind to strike out. “That’s what Curiosity says. So why would I lie about knowing you were sick? And anyway, don’t you hear the music? It’s Fourth of July, so I doubt many people are talking about you, if any at all.”

Very slowly Jemima said, “Go away now, and leave me be.”

“I won’t stay long,” Birdie said. “I don’t have many questions.”

Jemima turned her face to the wall.

Birdie said, “What do you want with the Bleeding Heart?”

Jemima turned back. She looked like she was going to spit or laugh or both.

“What?”

“The Bleeding Heart, Callie’s apple tree. What do you want with it? Do you want to take over the orchard?”

Jemima’s mouth fell open in surprise. “Who told you I wanted the orchard?”

“Well, don’t you?” Birdie wished she had written down all her questions because it was hard to keep track.

“I don’t care if I never see another apple or apple tree or orchard,” Jemima muttered.

“But maybe you wanted it anyway,” Birdie said. “People sometimes want things they don’t need. They fight to get them and then they don’t want them after all, all they were after was the fight itself. Is that what you’re after? Or maybe your husband wants it.”

“If I could get out of this bed,” Jemima said, “I would box your ears.”

“Ma says, if people change the subject that’s usually because they don’t want to answer a question.”

“You can spare me your mother’s wisdom,” Jemima said.

“But you still didn’t answer my question,” Birdie said. “Do you really want the orchard, or was it just the fight you want?”

“I want what’s mine,” Jemima said.

Birdie thought for a minute. “The orchard is a lot of work, you know, and it’s not Callie’s anymore anyway.”

“So I hear,” Jemima said, her voice hoarse.

“Well, if you’re not here for the orchard, does that mean you came to take Nicholas away? Because I hope not. He likes it here and we like him. He’s very good at games. He’s not book-clever, but he’s quick in other ways. He was the first one who figured out about chicken number two.”

Jemima closed her eyes and shook her head, and Birdie took this as a sign she didn’t understand. So she explained about the last day of school and Curiosity’s chickens, and how it had worked exactly the way she had planned with the little people, everybody running around the school-house after the chickens until they got the ones marked “one” and “three” and “four” and then running around again because they couldn’t find “two.”

Jemima’s forehead creased. “You’re saying Nicholas found a missing chicken?”

“No,” Birdie said.

“Then what did he do?”

“The chicken wasn’t lost. People just thought it was.”

“So who found it?”

“Nobody,” Birdie said patiently. “Because there wasn’t a second chicken. There was just ‘one’ and ‘three’ and ‘four’ and Nicholas was looking for ‘two’ like everybody else, and then he jumped up on the teacher’s desk and waved his arms over his head and shouted, What if there never was a second chicken?

“And then Daniel and Martha began to laugh—did you know Martha was teaching too?—and everybody laughed. The whole village laughed when the story got out. Except Curiosity, who was mad that we borrowed her chickens. She’s fond of her chickens.”

Jemima had turned to the wall, and her shoulders were shaking. After a while she got quiet. Still looking at the wall she said, “Who sent you to talk to me?”

“Nobody,” said Birdie. “Nobody knows I’m here. I tried to hear what Hannah was telling but I fell asleep, and so I thought I better come down here and find out for myself. And I’ll get in some trouble when they find out.”

Jemima looked affronted at that idea, so Birdie tried to explain. “Ma wouldn’t want me to be here, because she’s afraid of what you might do. But I’m not, at least not now. Because I can run faster than you, and I could even if you weren’t sick,” Birdie said. “You are very sick, aren’t you. I can see it in your face.”

What Birdie saw in Jemima’s face was the mask that came when somebody was sick unto death. She had seen it before, and more than once. She had seen it when Many-Doves was sick, though she was too young then to explain to Hannah. Many-Doves had understood without being told, and she talked to Birdie about what it meant to see such things, how it was a gift from the Maker of Life and with time she would learn how to use it to help people pass into the shadow lands. Because sometimes that was all a doctor or a healer could do, take the sick person’s hand and get them ready to go. Especially white people, who were afraid of the dark.