[15: Stormy Weather]

There were six lambs born, right after each other, and three ewes still pregnant, bleating uncomfortably but quietly. The six lambs had stood and moved about, shakily, and then fallen down, exhausted, and were asleep, little damp dots in the straw strewn about the pen. Dick had stoked the fire in the corner of the lambing shed again, and the excitement had worn Meera out, too, and she'd curled up in a pile of straw with her coat over her.

Dick sat quietly, watching the sheep and Meera alternately.

❧

Meera stepped into the house, trying to be as stealthy as she could. She figured Uncle Ram was in the drawing room, sitting so he could keep one eye on the front door, as always, making sneaking back in impossible, but the house was silent.

She crept up the stairs in the pale morning twilight, relieved that nobody was awake to witness her stealthy entrance. Uncle Ram's bedroom door was ajar, and she frowned a little. He never left it open, whether he was inside or out, and it felt almost forbidden to even walk past when one might see inside. Meera couldn't help glancing, but it was as ordinary as one might expect. A bed, a lump of covers on top, Uncle Ram was probably asleep, but she crept past and tried to avoid the squeaky spots in the floor.

The house was silent, the snow had muffled even the low moans of the wind, and she felt a chill.

She turned down the second hall, where her own room was, across from her sister's, and she felt another chill.

"Something's wrong" she thought to herself.

Sama's door was wide open, and there were tracks of heavy boots and bits of mud on the carpet, she could now see. Sama wasn't inside, the covers on her bed were thrown aside in a heap. 

Meera's mind raced, trying to figure out what was going on and what was just her mind playing tricks after being awake for most of two days. 

She half ran back to Uncle Ram's room, and pushed the door aside, trying to be quiet and hurried at once. She could see more clearly now that he wasn't in it, and the covers to his bed were a heap in the middle, looking like he was still there in the darkness of the twilight.