by E A Comiskey
“What will you name it?” they asked me.
I shrugged, using the excuse of the needles in my hands to avoid answering, but I thought about it all the time. It isn’t my child to name.
The closer it came to my time, the more Risa left Hala’s side to be by mine. She fussed over my swollen ankles, demanded that I eat meat cooked to a dry leathery consistency, and chided me for taking walks alone.
“What if something happens? What if your water breaks?”
I ached everywhere. When I stood, my back throbbed. When I sat, the baby was so low I felt like I was sitting on his head. I was tired all the time and it seemed I could never sleep. I ached to push her away with my will, but something inside me stilled my hand.
With all my heart I wanted to be finished with the pregnancy. With all my soul I dreaded what would happen when the baby came.
~*~
Signs went up all over the village. “In three days’ time we will celebrate a Feast of Thanksgiving.”
I was walking, too restless to stay in the house. It had to be fall, but summer was slow to release her hold on nature in this southern place.
The little town was taking shape. New, freshly-painted buildings rose up where there was only grass before. A transport hovered past me, buzzing with energy. There were only two, but more were already being built. A group of teenagers had shown an aptitude for such things, and their energy was boundless.
I saw Hala with Dragon and Charlotte and turned to avoid him, but a moment later his hand was on my shoulder.
Love welled up within me, and I struggled against the urge to wrap my arms around him and press my cheek to his heart. I settled for brushing a finger over the gourd that hung in that spot.
“Someday you’ll have to tell me what this is.”
“Someday I will.” He made no further move to touch me. “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”
I let my eyes roam over his strong features, highlighted when he had his hair pulled into a braid. The bronze skin of his broad shoulders gleamed in the sunlight. He wore leather pants with fringe on the sides, explaining that it was a style his mother’s people had loved. When my gaze met his again, something inside of me broke, and a great release poured forth from my soul.
“No,” I said.
He blinked. “What? I just wanted to ask…”
“No.” I stepped back from him. “I don’t want to talk to you. You’re not my mate and you’re not my ruler. You have no hold on me.” I remembered Puah smiling down on me, her thumbs laced together, fingers flapping like a bird. “I am free.” I was astonished to feel myself smiling.
If I hadn’t turned my back on him, I wouldn’t have seen the explosion on the edge of town. Time stopped, giving me ample opportunity to notice that the lights inside the greenhouse, the nearest building, had gone out, which could only mean the generators had blown up.
As if in a dream, the Fae appeared, riding through the streets on their tall white horses. I saw the woman nearest us. Her long blonde hair streamed out behind her. She drew an arrow from the quiver on her back, just as Risa stepped out from the greenhouse and turned in her direction. It seemed like everything moved underwater, sluggish and surreal.
The rider’s attention turned toward Risa. “Traitor!” she called, aiming the bow.
Risa, who was matched to the man I loved. Risa, who had taken me in when I had nowhere to go.
I was between them in an instant, unable to remember making the decision to move. LEAVE! I commanded, silently, with all my will. The rider pulled up her horse, turned and disappeared once more.
Hala stood in the street, gun drawn. All around us, from the tops of the unfinished buildings and from window ledges of homes, guns fired.
Risa’s arms clasped around me so tight it was impossible for me to ask her why she was screaming.
With the realization that an arrow stuck out from my abdomen, time started up once more. On the heels of time came breathtaking pain.
I sank to my knees on the road, the edges of my vision going black with agony. Risa fell with me, unable to bear my weight. Her lips moved in rapid patterns, but I could not think to interpret them.
Hands were on me, under me, lifting me. A new spasm wracked my body and a great pressure began in my core, growing to a misery as great as any I’d known. Blood and water ran from me. I curled up against the pain, only then realizing that Hala ran with me in his arms.
All of this was so familiar, and I knew I couldn’t be dying. Not if he was there to save me.
Twenty-Four
The healing center was nothing more than clean rooms with narrow beds. I was placed on one of these, flat on my back. The position felt wrong in every part of me, and I struggled to shift my weight.
“Jax.” Risa held my hand. She bent over me so I could see her. Hala stood at my head, pinning my shoulders to the table. “You have to let Jared take care of you.”
Jared. The healer who had traveled with the nomads.
I nodded. Yes. Something was wrong. I understood. I felt the wetness growing beneath me. Fire in my belly pulsed with each beat of my heart. I felt another great gathering of pressure and braced myself for what was coming. The agony washed over me like a molten wave.
I thrashed on the table, fighting to be still, but unable to control my body.
A cloth was pressed to my face.
Hala’s beautiful green eyes fell upon me. “Stay with me, Jax. Stay here. I need you.”
Darkness.
~*~
Tall grass grew all around me, fragrant and soft. The sun was a single degree away from being too hot. I lay stretched out upon my back, and the shadow of a woman blocked the light from searing my eyes.
“Hello, Jax,” she said, her voice low and musical.
I scrambled to my feet. “I can hear you!” I exclaimed.
My hands flew to my mouth. I had spoken!
The woman smiled. “Yes. In this place, there are few limitations.”
I realized then that I could hear the grass rustling in the gentle breeze. Far away, a bird sang out and another answered.
“I died.”
She tilted her head to one side. I knew that expression. I knew the silky black hair, the high cheek bones, the full lips. This could only be Hala’s mother. “Have you ever felt more alive?” she asked.
My body was strong. I could run and never grow weary. I needed nothing. I drew sustenance from the air.
“Where is everyone? Where is my baby?”
“The baby isn’t here, Jax. There is only you.”
“And you,” I said.
She smiled, showing perfect, white teeth. “Let’s walk.”
I followed her through the tall grass, marveling at the sound of the dirt crunching beneath my feet. “Where are we?”
“We don’t have long to talk,” she said.
In the distance, a baby cried. My breasts ached with milk.
“My son carries a heavy burden. Many would have broken already under such a weight, yet he strives to please That Which Is above all else.”
I stopped walking and turned to face her. So much of him was there, but her warm brown eyes did not light my soul as his did. In her presence, I could think for myself in a way I could not when I was with him.
“I love him, but I cannot be what he wants me to be.”
“He would say the same, if he were speaking about you.”
“I was wrong to push Risa. I was wrong to… I should have gone my own way.”
She waved the words away and started walking again. “Time wasted in thinking of what should have been done is an insult to the One who guides us through our days.”
“So it was all planned?”
“No, not planned, yet allowed to be part of a pattern that creates a Whole far greater than any of us know.” She picked a flower and inhaled deeply of its fragrance.
“I don’t know what to do now,” I confessed. “Should I keep my word? Let Risa have this child
for her own? How can I give her the baby I created with the man I love? Should I keep the baby and move into a home of my own? Raise him by myself? How can I do that to them? Hurt them in that way?”
She held my hands in hers. “You are your daughter’s mother, no matter what. You are the one who gave her life. You cannot change the circumstances of her conception, just as I could not change the circumstances of Hala’s. But you can move forward, striving to do that which is right, even when it is far more difficult than what is comfortable.”
I blinked back tears. “I don’t know what is right. Someone will get hurt, no matter what I do.”
“You’re a mother, now. Your little girl needs you.”
She had said it before. “A girl? But…”
In the distance, the baby cried again. Before my eyes, Atsheena began to fade, turning to a mere shadow on a dimly lit background.
“I don’t know what to do,” I cried out to her. Oh, the bliss of crying out!
“His greatest desire is to please That Which Is. His greatest fear is that it is in his very genes to always fall short. He doesn't understand that it is the human in him that falls short. Not the demon.” Her voice was dim and far away, much further than the baby’s cry. A great ringing buzz rose up from the insects in the grass, muting all else…
A dim light glowed in the corner of the room, illuminating Risa, sitting in the single chair, a bundle in her arms. She looked up and met my eyes.
“Oh! You’re awake!”
I nodded, tried to raise my hands to speak, but it was as though lead weights held them to the bed.
“No, don’t move. Be still.” She rose and, with one hand, pushed the chair closer to the bed. Sitting there, she turned the bundle so I could see the little face.
Pale like me with Hala’s dark hair. So impossibly tiny.
“She’s very small,” Risa said, as though in answer to my thoughts. “Too early, really, but Jared says she’ll be alright. She’s strong.”
She brushed a single fingertip through the dark fuzzy down on the baby’s head, and the child opened her eyes. Green eyes that blazed like fire.
Risa laughed. “So much for a brown-eyed boy, huh? She’s so beautiful, though. Like Hala.” Her chin trembled. Tears filled her eyes, but did not spill over. “Thank you, Jax. How can I ever thank you?”
I lay on the bed, aching to hold my child and unable to lift my arms. I surrendered to the sleep that pulled at me.
~*~
Darkness folded back, revealing the dimly lit room once more. Risa paced back and forth, bouncing the child in her arms. Her movements looked blurred and awkward to me. I blinked. Everything cleared for a moment, but immediately the strange fog crept toward the center of my vision again.
Beautiful golden eyes met mine. "Oh, give thanks!"
She hurried into the hall, and I let my leaden eyelids fall shut.
Jared, pressing a hand to my shoulder. "…me, Jax?"
I tried to nod. It must have worked, because he said, "Good. Listen, the baby needs you. She's strong and healthy, but very, very tiny. Your milk is her best chance."
Another nod. My hands were bare, my voice stripped away.
"OK. We're going to get you a little more upright. It's going to hurt."
Hurt? I was an empty shell. How could I hurt?
Risa lay the baby on the chair and came to stand on the other side of me. As one, they slipped their arms beneath me and slid me upward to lean against a pile of pillows they'd stacked near the wall. Knives slashed through my midsection. I felt blood pour from between my legs. The blackness pressed down on me, and then I was still and Jared's hands were on my face.
"…now. Stay… you… strong… this."
I blinked and pushed back against the fire that raged within me.
"Ready? We're going to bring her over now, OK?"
I nodded. Yes. The baby. Bring my child to me.
More pillows were placed under my arms, across my legs, over my stomach. Risa lay the little bundle on my lap. I managed to lift one arm and wrap it around the impossible tiny child. Her miracle eyes flashed up at me. Her features blurred behind a veil of tears. Risa's hand was at my breast, under the child, pressing my arm to the baby's back, and then came a gentle tug on my nipple. My breasts tingled, not painfully, but it was a strange sensation. I watched her little mouth working to draw nourishment.
My daughter. I was feeding my daughter!
I found the strength to lift my other arm, and I held her against my breast and wept with wonder over the magic of this little girl's existence.
Risa lifted her and helped her burp, laying her at my other breast. Her tiny eyes drifted shut, and mine did the same.
Twenty-Five
Morning sun streamed through the windows. I wiggled my fingers. I had control of my limbs again. Pain, immense but manageable, throbbed in my midsection.
Risa sat next to me with the baby.
"Hello, there," she said to me.
I lifted my bare hands.
"We took the gloves off while we cleaned you up. Here." She fetched them from a nearby closet and handed them to me.
"Thank you," I said. A thousand words created a logjam in my mind. Those were the only two I could manifest into the real world.
Dark circles I'd never seen before shadowed Risa's eyes. "Can you feed her? She's been fussing for a while, but I didn't want to wake you."
Could I feed her? I would hold her to my breast and never let go, if only I had the strength. "Help me up?"
"Let me get Jared." She disappeared, returning just a moment later with the healer. They lifted me up, as I'd been before, and once more my daughter was in my arms, the tiny weight of her body the perfect expression of love.
Leave me alone with her, I thought. I caught the intention before it left me. I couldn't use it on Risa. I wouldn't. Not yet.
With the baby in my arms, I was silenced once again. For a long time, Risa sat and said nothing. Then, "Hala hasn't seen her yet."
I met her eyes, raising my eyebrows.
"The dragon guards the building. No one comes in or out."
The dragon?
She laughed at my expression. "Yeah. We don't understand, either. The villagers tell us she's lived in the forest for years, but she's never done anything like this before. As far as we can tell, she's guarding you. Or the baby. She'll let people leave food on the step, and she'll let us collect it, but that's it."
The baby drifted to sleep and Risa took her from my arms, holding her close to her own breast once more. Weariness prevented me from resisting her.
"I hurt," I said, simply. They may have been the truest words I'd ever spoken.
"I can imagine." Tears glistened in her eyes once more. "You've done so much for me. You've given so much."
Not as much as you think. I haven't given her to you. Not really. You don't know yet, but she's not really yours. I lifted my hands and said, "You have given me much as well." Her friendship. Her possessions. Her match.
Her eyes stayed on the baby. "I thought… when you fell… I saw the arrow… It was right in your stomach. I don't know how it missed the baby. Jared says being pregnant may have saved you. Organs that would have been there had shifted. Still, it was a bad wound. And you were too badly hurt to deliver the baby, so he had to take her from you."
Take her from you. What perfect words she chose.
"He says you'll be alright though. You are very strong. You'll recover from this except… well… we'll talk about that later. Anyway, the sleepiness is from the painkiller he gave you as much as from the injury."
I hadn't been thinking about it, but at the mention of sleepiness the blackness began to creep in to the edge of my vision once more.
"Go ahead and rest. We'll be here if you need us."
In seconds, I was gone again.
~*~
Jared pressed on my ribs. "Does it hurt there?"
"Not so much," I lied.
He narrowed his eyes at me. "I
get it. You're determined to get out of this bed. So be it. That's on you, but I'm begging you to listen to your body. You came within an inch of your life. Literally. Do you understand that?"
I nodded, then I glanced at Risa. She was fussing over the baby. "I need to get up."
His lips pressed into a thin line, but he said no more about it. Instead, he offered me a hand, and I gingerly slipped from my seat on the side of the bed. My feet touched the floor. Pain raced through my torso. I swayed, held on tight to the healer, and waited for it to pass. When it did, I lifted my shoulders, standing as tall as I could manage. With slow, shuffling steps, I made it to the wash room where I cleaned myself and put on a fresh gown.
I had planned to ask to go to the front door. I wanted to see the dragon. Why was it there? Would it let me pass? But I had to admit, today was not the day for that. Clenching the healer's hand the whole time, I sank back down onto the bed and lay back against the clean sheets that Risa had stretched over it.
She brought the baby to nurse. "I can hold her there for you, if you need."
"No. I can do it." Drawing from strength I didn't know I had, I stayed awake long enough to nurse my daughter.
Twenty-Six
"She's growing so fast," Risa said. She sat on the side of the bed, playing with the baby's tiny toes while she suckled. It was true. Already, some of the "newborn" look was gone from her features. She was the most beautiful baby I'd ever seen. I studied Risa as she watched her. The adoration on her face must have mirrored my own.
When the baby was done, I kissed her head and handed her to Risa.
"I'm going outside,” I said.
She looked at me for a long moment. "Bring Hala in. Let him see his daughter."
"Does he know it's a girl?"
"Yes. We can speak, we just can't get close."
It was one of those statements that could mean so many things. I left it alone. "I will try," I told her. It had been two weeks since I'd delivered Hala's child. For all those days, Jared and Risa had been trapped in this building with me. The dragon never left, not even to eat. They never complained, so far as I was aware, but they must have been desperate to be free again.