Some time later, Aerise was briefly awakened again by the noise of the tent flap lifting. Cloud entered. Aerise feigned unconsciousness, but watched from beneath the fur.
Cloud undressed by simply turning to her phantom form and letting her garments fall. As she leaned over the candle she solidified again for a moment to have the force of wind to blow out the flames. For a moment the nearness of the illumination accentuated the detail of her body. Cloud's bosom rode as high on her chest as a maiden's. Her lower belly, between the wide hips so well configured for the birthing of children, bore no stretch marks.
* * * *
In the morning, Fern and Cloud showed they meant their pledge to see that the baby was well fed. Before Aerise had been awake more than a few moments, Cloud was setting down milk and eggs and more porridge in front of her.
Aerise was perfectly willing to cooperate with that particular duty. It was different when Fern ducked under the flap carrying a bucket of steaming water.
"What's that for?" Aerise asked.
"We will bathe you," they said.
"I'm clean enough for now."
The two women moistened rags in the hot water and wrung them out. "Strip," Cloud said.
"No," Aerise said. She stood and folded her arms. At full height she loomed over her hosts.
Cloud cleared her throat. "We are smaller and weaker than you, it is true. But if you do not yield, we will call in some of our menfolk to hold you down, and we will bathe you anyway."
Aerise had known Cloud only a matter of hours, but she could already tell the woman did not make empty threats. Sighing, she slipped out of her clothes.
Little did she imagine what the shadow women meant by "bathe." They scrubbed her until her skin was red.
"How many times are you going to do that?" Aerise objected when Fern lifted her arm to wipe an area she had already attacked more than once.
"If we are to share this tent, we don't want to smell your stench."
Aerise's jaw dropped. She pride herself on her grooming. "Well, that's easy enough to deal with. I don't want to share a tent with you. If my odor bothers you, put me with the broodwhores."
Cloud tipped Aerise's chin until they were gazing straight at one another. "Morel requires that we look after you. But while we are leashed to one another, Fern and I decide what we will and will not endure."
"Do I really smell that bad to you, or do you just enjoy tormenting me?"
"Every night we fade. Our lice, our fleas, and the dirt and sweat on our bodies stays behind when we cross to the dream realm. We start each day fresh. This is the standard you will observe."
But having said that, Cloud wrung out her cloth and nodded to Fern, who did the same.
"I take it I am fresh enough now?" Aerise quipped.
"We are weary. This will have to do."
Aerise threw her gown on, picked up the bucket, stepped outside, and heaved the water away. She turned to confront Cloud and Fern as they emerged.
She held up the bucket. "Where do you heat the water?"
The two women shared a glance. "We do not," Fern said. "We get it from the hot spring in the meadow."
"Tomorrow, I will rise early and fill the bucket, and I will bathe myself. I am sure I will meet your standard."
Cloud gave another of her infuriating shrugs. "May it be so."
A deep male voice sounded just behind her, making Aerise jump. "I see you have recovered some of your strength."
Aerise spun. It was Morel.
"And some of her spirit," Cloud added.
Aerise scowled at them both, wishing she had not yet emptied the bucket so that she had water to fling at each of them.
"Is there aught I can provide?" Morel asked.
"You can leave me alone," Aerise replied.
He pursed his lips. He gazed steadily at her. She glared back. Finally he gave her a short bow.
"As you wish," he said.
She blinked. "Truly?"
"Until the child comes, I will leave you be." He strode off. He did not look back.
Aerise found herself the subject of another round of Fern and Cloud's cold stares. "You are the poorer for your choice," Cloud said. Then she added, less harshly, "But it is better this way, I think. Clearer."
* * * *
Morel did as he had said. Over the next few days, Aerise only saw him from a distance. He usually remained in the encampment—Cloud assured her he would never be far away while she might go into labor. His tent stood near the center of the enclave, beside that of the elders. Young as Morel seemed to be—gradually Aerise came to understand that among his people, he was no further along than she was among her folk—he seemed to hold considerable status.
Her efforts at cleansing each morning were enough to save her from the humiliation of having Cloud and Fern handle her. The women dropped enough insults to imply they might have to take over, but she knew they were happy to be spared the task.
It was not long before Aerise began to appreciate the benefits of the ritual. The Cursed Folk really were astonishingly clean and well-groomed. Even the children began each day without grubby hands or feet. Their nostrils had no caked mucus. In the whole camp, only the broodwhores failed to maintain the same level of hygiene. Aerise saw the looks of contempt they received.
As the final days of her pregnancy wound down, Aerise spent much of each day outside in the open air, trying to stay cool. She observed many small examples of alienness. Children slipped in and out of their corporeal state as they ran about. Small enchantments kept candles burning longer than they should, made mosquitoes stay away. Yet to her surprise, for the most part the Cursed Folk lived their lives as anyone would. They prepared meals. They gathered firewood. They talked. They laughed.
"You are more like my own people than I was led to believe," Aerise said as she sat in the open with Cloud and Fern, digesting a meal of brook fish and spiced acorn mash.
"Are we not all children of the First Man and First Woman?" Cloud asked.
"No. How could it be so?"
Cloud clucked her tongue. "We were one great tribe until a small group of fools sought out the god of dreams. All who descend from them bear the legacy of that misstep. If we were so different, could Morel have gotten a child upon you?"
"I have not heard this tale before."
"Your people have chosen not to tell it. When we remind you we are related, we are disbelieved. Nevertheless we are as you would be if you were continually swept in and out of the dreamgod's realm. You would never be a natural mother, because no child quickens in a womb that does not remain in the solid world for nine months."
"I see." Aerise slid her hand along the bulge of her belly. "Are you telling me then that I would condone rape?"
Cloud folded her arms over her chest. "Is it rape when it is a not a product of depravity, but one of necessity?"
"Yes," Aerise replied unequivocally. "But I suppose you and I will never agree."
"Indeed. We never shall."
"Morel had other means open to him. Why did he choose as he did, if not for lust?"
Cloud grunted. It almost sounded like laughter, but Aerise suspected it was astonishment. "Look at yourself. Look at them."
The "them" the shadow woman pointed to were the broodwhores, sitting beneath their arbor as they usually did. Aerise had seen them every day, but she looked at them anew. The three women were unlike anyone else in the camp. They did not smile. Their sole activity, aside from suckling the babies, seemed to be endless rounds of runesticks, often punctuated by accusations of bungled castings. All three were marred in some way—awkward posture in one, a huge chin on another, pocked skin on the third. And of course, the sort of common dirtiness Cloud and Fern had demanded Aerise rid herself of.
Aerise, on the other hand, had smooth, well-complexioned skin. Her frame was solid and her flesh abundant, her hips wide, her eyesight keen. She had no birthmarks, no large moles, no warts. Duran had called her beautiful. He was biased, but even her riva
ls among the young women of Nine Vineyards had granted that she had no need to feel humbled by either her body or her countenance.
She was the sort of woman a man selects when he wants to choose a mate to bear his children. The broodwhores were...dregs.
Cloud had just tendered her a compliment. Aerise wished she did not deserve it. If she had been less appealing, she would not be where she was.
* * * *
The baby came right on time, a fortnight after her arrival. Feeling contractions in the middle of the night, Aerise awakened Fern and Cloud. Experience told her she had hours to go yet, but if she were going to be sleepless, she wanted them to share the misery.
As midwives, her companions were well schooled. They took her to a lean-to at the meadow's edge, where they had plenty of clean, hot water close at hand. They helped her walk back and forth to speed things along, get her water to break. They reminded her when to push, and when to breathe.
She sent her mind elsewhere when the agony reached a crescendo. She came back to full consciousness when the pressure between her legs abruptly eased, and a newborn's cry resounded through the forest. She opened her eyes. Cloud was cleaning the baby's face. She lowered the girl to Aerise's bosom. Fern lay a light blanket atop them while the older woman turned her attention to the umbilical cord and the delivery of the afterbirth.
The baby continued to wail. "Shhhhhh," Aerise said, holding its head gently against her chest, snug enough to be near the reassuring thump of her heartbeat. The little one calmed down.
Aerise gazed at the tiny hand, the tiny mouth, the shiny eyes. She tried hard to find some fault, some aspect she could recognize as Cursed and therefore hate, but she failed.
* * * *
Even after the arrival of the baby, Morel remained clear of Aerise as much as possible, letting Cloud and Fern be his intermediaries, but he did not avoid his little daughter. He played with her, swayed her to sleep, let her nap in the crook of his neck. Aerise realized he was spending more time with the baby than she herself. The foster parents were loath to let her take possession of the child at all save for feedings.
One afternoon, three weeks after the birth, Cloud suddenly announced, "You may leave tomorrow, if you wish."
Aerise's head jerked up so abruptly it jostled the baby off the nipple. "What?" she asked, restoring things before the young one fussed.
"It is customary that a broodmother weans the baby before her service is done," Cloud said. "But Morel bids us set you free if you desire. The broodwhores can serve as wet nurses."
"Or you can stay until next summer begins," Fern said. "And in so doing, earn a greater reward."
Leave? Aerise hesitated. Part of her wanted to leap to her feet and scamper off toward whatever future awaited. But where could she go? The nights were growing crisp. The forest held no more welcome than it had the first time. She had not yet made a plan.
"If Morel had not insisted, would you have made me this offer?"
Cloud and Fern glanced at one another, then back to Aerise. "No," Cloud admitted. "We pled the needs of the child. A mother's milk is best."
Aerise stroked the baby's cheek. The tug at her breast was strong and regular, a bittersweet reminder of the time not so long ago when her second-born had nursed in her arms just that way, before the bog fever swept the village, first stealing away the appetite of the child and then taking her life, along with the life of her toddler brother.
"I will stay," Aerise replied.
Fern actually smiled. Cloud let out the breath she had been holding.
"You truly thought I would leave?" Aerise asked, as if she had not been tempted.
"Your anger is deep," Cloud said.
Aerise nodded. "So it is. But none of what was done to me was her choice." She lifted the baby up and gave her a little kiss before cradling her in the crook of her neck to burp her.
Cloud lifted the tent flap. Morel was standing twenty paces away. Cloud gestured in the sign-talk the Cursed Folk used when they were insubstantial and incapable of producing sound from their throats. Morel's expression brightened. He gazed at Aerise long and appreciatively.
"Close the flap," she demanded. Cloud sighed, but obeyed.
* * * *
The months passed. The baby thrived. When frost whitened the forest floor, the Cursed Folk moved their camp to an even more remote area, where the game was less wary of hunters and meat would be plentiful through the cold months. Snow fell thrice and it stuck to the ground longer than Aerise was used to from living nearer the coast. The Cursed Folk tents remained extraordinarily warm and snug, demonstrating the enchantments upon them.
Aerise never felt as though she were a member of the enclave. The denizens did not seek her out, invite her to join their games of chance or storytelling circles. Even the baby's presence could not meaningfully assuage her loneliness. But her turmoil remained at a simmer. She bickered less with Cloud and Fern. She deigned on rare occasions to mutter a few words to Morel or even accept the child directly from his arms when she cried to be suckled. She was made comfortable and kept well fed in all the ways that would keep her milk both good and abundant. The days blended together until a day when birds were nest-building in the trees and mushrooms were sprouting thickly on rotted logs. It was the day the broodwhores left.
Aerise was watching from her favorite nursing spot, a long flat log near which Cloud and Fern had pitched the tent. The matriarch of the Cursed Folk met with the broodwhores in the center of the encampment. She handed the one with the pocked skin a phial containing a winedark liquid, which the woman quickly secreted away in a pouch, which she further hid away beneath her cloak.
The younger women received a purse made of deerskin. The woman immediately untied the drawstrings and upended it. A cascade of silver coins and copper bits dropped into the lap of her skirt. Counting, the woman restored the money to the purse.
"The Mother's Bounties," Aerise said.
"Yes," Cloud confirmed.
"Why do you give that one money? Why not a potion like the other? Did you find her service poor?"
"She served adequately. She wanted nothing magical. She chose thus the first time, and now wishes she had not."
Aerise hesitated. "The first time?"
"She bore a child for members of our enclave two years ago. The baby died of a pox when it was not yet weaned, but that was not the mother's fault, and so we honored the pact. At her request we gave her a snare otters would find irresistible. Her folk are fur trappers and she imagined she would rise high in their favor. Instead they recognized what she must have done to acquire such a treasure, and cast her into exile. They kept the charm, of course. I'm told they had good luck gathering pelts this past season."
"She spun you a tale," Aerise replied. "Her own kin would not treat her so."
"Did she cut off her own ears, then?"
Aerise jumped. Something about the broodwhore's features had always been disturbing. Cringing, Aerise finally perceived how the hair that the woman always kept down along the sides of her head hung too freely, without flaring around earlobes as it should. All at once she recalled the words shouted after her as she fled the village, telling her how lucky she was to be leaving with her skin intact.
"I never told you, did I, that the strain of yeast that makes the wine of your village so remarkable was once a Mother's Bounty."
"You lie," Aerise said, but her voice barely rose above a whisper.
"Your village was founded only three centuries ago. I was a girl when that sorcery was cast. I could introduce you to the man who wrought it, if you wish, though 'twould require us to journey to the next enclave to the south."
Aerise searched for a way to disbelieve what she was hearing, but all she could think was how many times she had heard, from her own people and from everyone at the fair at Traders Hollow, how the vintages of Nine Vineyards consistently surpassed those made anywhere else in the region.
"If she spun us a tale, it was one we had heard before. The Un
cursed are glad enough to own and benefit from our creations, but the mothers themselves are condemned for consorting with us. This woman takes coin because she can conceal how she obtained it. Maybe she will be more fortunate this time. She knows to seek out a life where her face is not known, and spend the money a little at a time, never revealing how much she has in reserve."
The broodwhores shouldered their packs and set off upslope. Aerise guessed they would try to join a settlement of the Shepherd Folk on the other side of the range. The older woman, the one who had never served as a wet nurse during the whole time Aerise had lived in the enclave, trailed after the other two.
The latter had received no reward. Cloud anticipated Aerise's question and said, "She was paid long ago. Her childbearing years have passed, but we let her stay as long as the others were here. But when you leave us, we will move the camp again. We will accept no new broodwhores until we are reestablished."
It was the first time in many weeks she had made reference to Aerise's leavetaking. Aerise studied the fretful, tentative pace of the trio as they vanished among the trees. The one whose ears had been cut off looked back four times before she passed out of sight.
* * * *
One evening, as twilight lingered far into the night and the warmth of the day clung like a garment, the baby suddenly felt light in Aerise's embrace, and the tug at her nipple vanished. All at once the child...faded. She slipped right out of Aerise's grip and out of her swaddling clothes and tumbled to the floor, landing silently. She lay there on her back, arms and legs waving, clearly wailing in surprise but producing no audible noise. Her form was misty—nearly transparent.
Fern transformed into her ghostly state, her clothes falling away. She picked the baby up, and held her close. Soon the baby stopped crying. A smile brightened her little face. Fern began playing their favorite game of pat-hands. She obviously—though silently—giggled when Fern swept her through a tent pole, and she passed right through.
Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress XXII Page 13