Mayla leaped up from the porch as she saw the shadow approaching through the trees. Her first instinct as always was to reach for her sword—that was something that she could no more control than she could control her need to breathe—but she knew at once from the shape of the shadow and the way it moved that it was Karni. She watched with anticipation as her sister wife reached the backyard of the hut, cradling something in her arms.
Mayla sprang forward. “Karni!”
She hugged her sister queen warmly, genuinely happy to see her. “You were gone so long, I imagined all kinds of things. But now you’re back.”
She saw Karni wince. “Are you all right?”
Karni smiled. “Never better.”
Mayla looked down at the bundle in Karni’s arms. “You have already delivered Grrud’s child? But you were only gone one night and half a day!”
“Time moves differently in the Lord of Wind’s realm. Much, much faster. Had he wanted, he could have returned me a year from when I left, or a decade, or even a century or a millennium later. Yet to you here on Arthaloka, it was as if I spent only a night and half a day away.”
Mayla’s eyes shone as she stared at Karni, trying to see some difference, some sign of overnight aging. She saw nothing that was easily visible, except perhaps that look of strain on Karni’s face. “Are you sure you are well? You seem . . . strained.”
“I would like to put her down. She is heavy.”
“Oh. Let me take her,” Mayla said brightly, taking the baby from Karni’s arms.
“Careful!” Karni warned, still keeping her hands on the bundle.
Mayla had once been engaged in an argument with her brothers, one of many such arguments that girls and women faced all their lives. This particular argument was about the relative difference in strength between women and men. They had all been lifting wood blocks of increasingly larger sizes and weights to prove their superior strength. Until then, Mayla had succeeded in lifting every block her brothers had lifted. Frustrated, her brothers decided to increase the odds. They had pointed to a wood bole taller and wider than any of them, lying on its side, and demanded that she lift it to prove that women were stronger than men.
The bole was much too heavy for any of them to lift either, but because she had made the challenge, it was up to her to try first and prove her strength. She knew they would also fail when their turn came, but she wasn’t ready to listen to their whistles and jeers as she struggled with the impossible task. So she came up with an idea.
The bole was too broad for her to pick up in its current position. To pick it up, she needed to put her arms around it and hug it tightly, so she could use the larger of her muscles—of the legs and back. It would be the same for any of them when they tried to pick it up, she pointed out. She insisted that they help her position it first, so they could all take turns picking it up the right way so as not to injure themselves.
They agreed, grumbling a bit, and she supervised the eight of them as they took hold of parts of the bole and raised it to a standing position.
“There,” Mayla said, clapping loudly. “I did it.”
How could she say that? they had exclaimed. She hadn’t even touched the bole yet!
“Exactly,” she said, “I manipulated all you boys into picking it up for me, proving that women are stronger than men—not always in body, but definitely in mind!”
Mayla was reminded of that incident now because the instant she tried to pick up Karni’s second child, she felt as if she had finally picked up that tree bole. She was the heaviest thing Mayla had ever lifted in her life!
She exclaimed and would have dropped her had Karni not still been keeping her hands on the bottom of the bundle. As it was, she gasped and bent over double from the weight, forced to use the benefit of her years of fighting and training to even keep her balance. Somehow she was able to stay on her feet and not fall over, but it took every bit of her strength.
“Let me,” Karni said, and took the child back, lifting her with a single grimace.
Mayla stared at her. “How? I mean . . . she must weigh . . . well, a lot! How can you just lift her up like that? She’s the heaviest child ever born. She must be!”
Karni smiled at Mayla. “I am her mother. I birthed her. I can carry her.”
Shvate had heard their voices and emerged from the hut, holding their firstborn in his arms. His face lit up at the sight of Karni—and at her little burden.
“Happy day!” he said.
Karni showed him her bundle. “Our second born.”
He kissed the baby, and then the mother. “I am a proud father and a proud Krushan.”
“I am a tired mother and tired Krushan,” she replied. “But happy as well as proud.”
Mayla wagged a finger at Shvate. “Don’t try to pick her up. She’s too heavy! Karni seems to possess some kind of new maternal powers—otherwise it’s impossible!”
Shvate looked at Karni, who smiled tiredly. “What she said is true. Let me go put her down for a minute.”
They all went into the hut together. Karni placed the baby with an effort on the cot. Shvate placed the elder child down beside his sibling. Both of them stirred a little, then went back to sleep.
Mayla slipped an arm around Karni as they went outside again. “What was it like? Tell me everything.”
Karni looked back at her with her typical enigmatic smile. Mayla could tell from that smile alone that Karni wasn’t going to tell her anything. It was so unfair. She wanted to know so much.
Shvate was staring at the sky. He had a certain look on his face, that look he got when he had been thinking about something important and had come to a conclusion.
Mayla looked at Karni and found Karni looking back at her. Both of them arched their eyebrows in sisterly empathy. They knew what he was going to say next.
“Karni . . .” he began slowly.
Karni sighed. “No,” she said.
He looked at her. “But I haven’t said anything.”
“I know what you’re going to say.”
“How can you know what I’m going to say before I say it?”
“Because I’m your wife. I know you.”
“At least let me say it before you answer.”
“You already have my answer. No.”
Mayla tugged at Karni’s elbow. “Sister.”
Karni glanced at her, brow puckered. “No.”
“What?” Mayla replied, indignant. “Don’t say you know what I’m about to say too! You’re not my wife!”
“I do know, because I know you, Mayla. And the answer is no.” She pointed at Shvate, then at Mayla. “To both of you!”
They had been arguing for only a few minutes when there was a sudden loud sound from the hut. They felt the jolt in the ground, as if a tree had just been felled, or something equally heavy had dropped from a height.
They ran inside together, crowding the little space.
The grinding stone that they had cleaned and kept inside as a barrier, to keep the baby cots from toppling over, lay in pieces, shattered as if struck by a boulder dropped from a height. It would take something that heavy to shatter the massive flat stone.
Sitting amidst the shattered pieces of rough black stone was their second born, clutching the tiny fist of her elder brother. She looked up unsteadily at them as they entered. She smiled at them, then returned her attention to her brother. Putting both arms around her brother’s pallet, she cradled him and picked up the entire bundle, baby and all. A loud, wet, smacking sound came from the point where her mouth connected with her brother’s belly. She kissed her brother and then set him down slowly, carefully, as easily as Mayla might lower a kitten.
Then she rolled over and went promptly to sleep. After a moment, her thumb found its way into her mouth and she began to snore lightly.
They went out of the hut again without saying another word. Mayla wanted to ask if they should pick up the pieces of the broken grinding stone, then thought that if the baby was strong enough to have broken it into pieces by falling out of the crib, she was probably strong enough not to come to any harm lying on the pieces. From the ease with which she had fallen asleep, Mayla thought this might be the case.
“She’s strong,” she said. “And heavy.”
Karni and Shvate looked at Mayla together, then at each other. Karni was smiling. Shvate frowned, as he tried to read Karni’s mood.
Mayla understood what Karni was feeling and thinking. She smiled back at Karni. They linked arms and shared a sisterly moment of consonance.
Finally, Karni turned back to Shvate and said, “Only once more. And then I’m done.”
Mayla whispered in Karni’s ear: “Please.”
Karni sighed and said, “And if Mayla wishes, she can use the mantra too. But only once.”
Shvate nodded, thinking so hard Mayla could see his eyes rolling up in his head. “So that’s once more for you, and once for Mayla.”
“It’s not fair that you should get three turns, and I only get one,” Mayla said.
“It’s not fair that you’re able to consume five times as much wine as I can and still not put on weight,” Karni said. “But that’s life.”
Mayla thought about that and then nodded, smiling. She patted her flat belly, feeling the taut abdominal muscles beneath the skin. “I suppose that’s true. Very well, then. I accept.”
Karni smiled at her as if Mayla had told a big joke. “Only once, Mayla! No tricks! I know you.” She turned to Shvate and pointed at their husband. “And after, we’re done. Don’t think you’re going to get us to procreate an entire clan fathered by the gods!”
Shvate put his palms together and bowed his head in mock submission. “Yes, my lady, I accept your terms.”
Karni drew in a deep breath and released it slowly. “Very well, then, let us get it over with, so we can get on with the business of raising our children, before they grow up before our very eyes!”