| |
SEVEN YEARS BEFORE THE EVENTS OF THE DARK OF WINTER...
The baby was coming. She felt an overwhelming urge to push but remembered her mother saying not to. Not yet. Wait until the head was lower; conserve her energy for she would need it to get the baby out quickly and safely. Speed was essential during that transitional period, when the babe was half in and half out. Trian, Quiverquarrel’s wife, had recently lost hers. White had been quick to wrap the poor soul in warm furs as soon as it had slid from its mothers privates. Cradling it he quickly disappeared outside and Trian never got to see her baby.
Herre groaned, squatted on the floor and grabbed her husband’s legs to push and pull and thump when the pain got too much. Stoneman locked his knees in place and took it. It was the least he could do. “I feel so helpless,” he repeated again and again.
Herre screamed, the baby was coming, the urge to push so great she had to. “Get White!” she gasped. “I’m pushing too early. I can’t do this alone.”
“My love you are not alone. I’m here.” Stoneman reached down to touch her hair from out of her eyes like that would help. “Your waters have still not broken. You’re pissing blood.”
“Get White, now!”
Stoneman hurried from the hut, pulling the door shut with a determined snap. It was a bad night to be birthing. The north wind, Murdriel, was battering the village and snowflakes the size of chestnuts swirled around in the angry wind, cutting any foolish enough to be out like tiny blades.
Yet even above the sound of the storm Herre fancied she could hear Straightback on his liddum. She tried to focus on the faint and haunting notes as they travelled around the village. Intermittently she would lose it only to pick up on the familiar tune when she stopped screaming or the wind lessened its drumming against the outside of her hut.
She was alone. Why had she sent Stoneman away? Most of the villagers were in the Chieftains hut. A bastion of defiance against anything Murdriel could throw at Sumner. Its merry making inhabitants could well be oblivious to the gathering snow storm outside. Sevenfoot had declared the stone with Iona and the whole village had attended the marriage. Sevenfoot had come by earlier, his wooden pole legs laced with boccium flowers.
Iona would be round in the morning, he had promised, to see the new addition to the village. Herre had wished both him and Iona all the best for a happy marriage, hoping it would prove fruitful.
Now alone, in pain and scared of losing her baby, she secretly wished that hers to Stoneman had not been so. The baby had to come out, the pain was unbearable and yet still her waters had not broken. In desperation she threw herself on all fours on the cold mud floor and pushed through her arse as hard as she could. Her waters would break and that baby would come out quick and simple.
But nothing came, she just bled more.
“In here, she’s in here.” Stoneman threw the door open and Herre startled. She craned to see if White was with her husband.
“I can see her arse,” Frida rolled her pipe from one side of her mouth to the other. “Get them cripples Clawhand and Leftside to clear the snow from the door. We may need to move fast.”
Herre cursed her luck. She did not want Frida, she wanted White. “Where’s White?” she asked feebly.
“The old fool has had too much to drink. His nose is as crimson as Redface on a grumpy day,” Stoneman retorted humorously but he would know how disappointed Herre will be with scary old Frida as midwife.
Frida squatted down to face Herre. “I’m going to examine your cunnie now,” turning to Stoneman she shouted, “go and get the cripples, keep the door shut and build the fire up you useless man.” She sucked on her pipe and blew out a cloud of scented smoke. “Now!”
For the second time that night Stoneman hurried out of the hut, this time cursing the hag under his breath.
“You may need to move fast?” Herre panted, repeating what the hag, Frida, had stated. Cold sweat beaded her forehead. She would worry about those words. Like she did not have enough to worry about.
“What?” Frida hefted a pail of melted water closer to the fire in the centre of the hut. “How old is this water?”
“Fresh this morning,” Herre managed to say before she pushed again gasping in pain. She tried to stop pushing but that hurt too. The contractions were so close together now. She was going to die with the babe locked in her guts. She knew it. “You want to move fast in case my baby dies, like with Trian.”
“Trian’s babe had two heads, it throttled itself on the way out.”
“AArgh!” Herre squeezed, feeling hot blood gush from her body to pool on the ground beneath her.
“Bite on this.” Frida jammed a Ton stick in Herre’s mouth. The stick was from a Tonpan tree she harvested during the brief summer months. When wetted the strange chemicals in the bark reacted in such a way that it numbed anything it is rubbed against. “Bite harder, like your life depends on it, gag over it.”
Herre tried to speak.
“No just bite, break the bark.” Frida washed her claw-like hands in the cold water and, without drying, wiped her hands all around Herre, moving the copious blood around to see better. “Your waters not burst. Give me that.” Frida snatched the stick out of Herre’s mouth and started to rub it over Herre’s genitals. “You do it,” she ordered, forcing the distraught Herre to put a hand between her legs and apply the wet Ton stick around her anus too.
“I’m going to break your waters for you.” Frida bit at the nail on her index finger, fashioned it into a precision tool. “You’re going to feel me inside you. When I pull out then the baby will come. Then you need to push. You’ll know when, trust me.”
“Frida it hurts so much already. Make my baby live.”
“When the baby is out then you need to birth the shadow baby, the afterbirth. I want that. Consider it my payment. Do you agree?”
“Anything,” Herre uttered breathlessly. “Take anything. Help me get this baby out. The pain is too much.”
“Put the Ton back in your mouth and bite. I’ll use your blood as lubricant. The moment I push my finger inside you will feel everything. As soon as you bite down I will go in. Understand?”
Herre chomped down on the stick and grunted.
The wind howled and the shutters suddenly flew open. Frida smeared her finger in blood and pushed it inside Herre.
Herre spat the Ton out, threw her head backed and screamed.
“Good girl,” Frida congratulated. “You’re so brave, braver than any warrior. You’re popped, squeeze the little bastard out now.”
Herre pushed down on her guts, finally feeling movement. “It hurts!” she wailed but pushed when her body told her to. Her legs felt like leaden weights, her head pounded and her whole body burnt with a pain only relieved slightly when all her muscles converged to force the baby out.
“Keep it up. Don’t worry about the blood and the water, push. I can see the crown.” Frida picked the Ton off the dirty floor and rubbed it around Herre before the top of the head emerged.
“My arse hurts,” Herre spluttered, not understanding that it had ripped.
“Push, one more push.”
The door flew open again and Stoneman stopped in his tracks. In the orange glow of the fire he could see a head and shoulders hanging out the rear of his wife. Frida massaged blood around the baby in an attempt to lubricate its passage.
“Shut the door man, too cold as it is. Make yourself useful and build the fire up.”
“Is it alive? Is it breathing?”
Frida ignored Stoneman. She turned to Herre, saying, “One more push and it will be out.”
Herre groaned through her barred teeth, feeling parts of her body move in unnatural ways. A muscle tore, flesh ripped, blood drained from her parts and finally the baby slipped out and into Frida’s old taloned hands.
Stoneman leaned back into the door and it banged shut. Just the other side the cripples Clawhand and Leftside could be heard shovelling snow away from the side of the hut. The couple made a loud show of proving they had seen and heard nothing regarding the birth when indeed they had seen stuff and certainly heard everything.
“Something to wrap it in?” Frida asked of the room. Herre made to collapse but Frida kicked her. “Not yet,” she chided, “got to get the shadow baby out.”
Stoneman instinctively removed his shirt and handed it to Frida. It was warm and smelt of him and was perfect for the baby. He would not feel the chill. The rock hard testicles that grew all over his back and tops of his arms were not like the ones between his legs. They proffered him a form of armour; the cold could not touch him.
“Is it, normal?” he dared to ask of the hag.
Frida daubed the worst of the blood off the baby before she swaddled it in the shirt. “Seems to be. Though it’s a girl.”
“Then Threecuts wins the wager.” Stoneman did not seem too disappointed.
Herre began groaning again. The afterbirth was coming.
“This will be easier,” Frida comforted Herre, placing the Ton back in her mouth. “Bite down. Two pushes and it will be out.”
“Can I do anything?”
“Stand over there.” Quick calculation and then the hag added, “Have you got a spindle-thorn and some catgut?”
“Yes, I believe so.”
“Fetch dog, fetch.”
Just as it seemed her fragile body could take no more, Herre pushed one final time. Her entire body shook with the stress and finally the afterbirth came out. Gratefully she collapsed in a bloody, sweaty, exhausted heap.
“Carry her to the cot,” Frida gestured for Stoneman to pick Herre up.
Stoneman lowered his wife onto their bed. Frida placed the Ton back in her mouth instructing her yet again to bite hard. Next she gave her the swaddled baby to cuddle and to feed whilst she tidied Herre and stitched her wounds up tight.
“Thank you Frida, thank you for all your help.” Herre had fed the baby, fallen asleep and now was awake again. The hag had finished sewing and was part way through giving Stoneman his instructions. Clean water, fresh clean furs for the bed. Clean Herre twice a day. Keep an eye on the stitching.
“You have a healthy normal baby girl, Herre. You are blessed I guess. Have you thought of a name yet?”
“My mother’s name was Reina so I think we will call her that.”
Stoneman sat on the cot, putting an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “And I won’t let anything happen to either of you. I will never leave my girls.”
Herre kissed her daughter on her soft white forehead. “Wild friels could not drag me away from you my darling baby.”
––––––––
Frida left the family alone and went out into the cold and the dark. The blizzard winds did not bother her for her hovel was not far away. She passed Twotimes’ hut. Music and laughter emanated from the building and a rowdy villager heaved his guts up outside.
“I feel something,” she confided to Murdriel. Surreptitiously she slunk around a tall snowdrift and foraged down inside her cloak. “I think my time may nearly be up.”
Shielded by the drift, the dark and the swirling snow she pulled the afterbirth out. Hungrily she put it to her mouth and gorged upon the warm meat. “Children always make me hungry,” she said to the cold and the dark and the dead.