| |
A shock of lightning ripped open the sky, like a nail torn screeching from a hull. The blaze it left behind stayed only a moment, imprinting like shadow on the eye. There had been many such flashes that night. So many that the old woman kneeling on the ground had lost count.
Hers was a bloody business, and she had set herself to the task. Trickles of water ran the creases of her face and there was a hunching set to her shoulders—hands always reaching forward.
Another burst lit up the sky. A desperate wail was quick to follow.
“Breathe, Cora! You must breathe!”
A woman lay on the ground in front of her, screaming like she was being beaten from the inside. The straw beneath her was soaked in blood. Her forehead was damp and drawn, while pools of rain marked the outline of her fingers. There had not been time to get inside. There had not been time for anything but to fall upon the ground and hope that someone would find her.
She’d been screaming for hours, but still, the baby wouldn’t come.
“Just get it out of me,” she hissed, every muscle cracked with strain. A strip of leather had fallen from her mouth, pricked with a crescent of teeth. “Do what you must, just get it out.”
As if to answer, the winter storm surged anew. Clouds churned into darker clouds, like the entire sky was boiling. A howling wind descended upon them, as the trees bent under sheets of rain. She writhed beneath it like a dying thing—clinging from breath to breath, from moment to moment.
“Push.”
The women didn’t know each other. They’d never seen each other’s faces until that day. But while the younger was flailing, the older was a rock. She had delivered a hundred nameless babies over the course of her life, urged on a hundred weeping mothers. Some of them had even lived.
“You are nearly there—a final burst of strength,” she commanded firmly, anchoring the mother’s legs. Her eyes flashed up for a brief moment. “I can see the head.”
It has a head.
By now, the girl was half-convinced it was a monster. She’d felt it stretching and growing for months on end. It had seemed like spite. She had taken the herbs, just like everyone else. She could not believe it when her body had started to swell. But now here it was, and with a head.
“Push! Eyes open—and push!”
Another slash of lightning. Another scream for the night.
Then suddenly, that scream merged into two.
Considering the stretch of those agonizing hours, the end came rather quickly. There was a rush of warmth, a sting of pain, and then a great feeling of release. The old woman lunged forward swiftly, then straightened at half-speed. A tired smile warmed her eyes, a tender softening.
“It’s finished,” she said quietly. “You did it.”
Cora hitched onto her elbows, craning for a better look.
Tell me it’s not a boy... Tell me it’s not a boy...
“It’s a beautiful baby girl.”
The infant was lifted into the air between them, screaming to the heavens, little fists caked in blood. Her eyes were open, but it was too dark to see the color. Only the cord connected them now.
The woman drew out a pair of shears and it was cut.
“A girl,” Cora repeated faintly, taking the child in her arms. She pressed a trembling kiss to its cheek, then dropped her head back to the straw. “Thank the gods...”
There was a rustle of feathers above them as a hawk settled on a nearby branch.
The rest of its kind had taken shelter at those first pounding drops, but this one was staring with fixed attention—tilting its head as mother and child came together for the first time. It had taken a while to find them. It hadn’t counted on the storm. But no sooner had it alighted, than it let out a wild squawk and took off again—losing itself quickly in the swirling clouds.
The old woman glanced up with a start, then wrapped a blanket around the child.
“Do you know what you’d like to call her?”
A clap of thunder rumbled the sky and the mother slumped down in exhaustion, holding the baby to her chest. They fitted together perfectly, one curved in the hollows of the other’s arms.
“I only wanted her to live,” she mumbled, half-asleep. “I hadn’t thought that far.”
Maybe that will be enough. Maybe that’s what I’ll call her.
* * *
The wind was still blowing when Cora opened her eyes, shifting the curtains and revealing a crack in the window. She couldn’t remember falling asleep. She couldn’t remember anything after laying her head upon the straw and closing her eyes. If she’d awoken on the same patch of bloodied straw, it would have made greater sense. Yet here she was, indoors.
The old woman must have carried me.
She frowned at the thought, trying to imagine it.
She must be incredibly strong.
The next thought likely should have come first—it was for the baby. But she was new to motherhood and a part of her still couldn’t believe herself a mother at all. She had never planned on having a baby. To attempt such a thing, unmarried, was a common death. Not that she would have married the child’s father. Not that she would have borne his children at all. Very little of what had led her to that point, had been within her control. And yet, there she was.
And there is my baby.
She rolled onto her side, wincing against a dull ache, and gazed at the face of her sleeping daughter. It had been too dark to get the full image of her the night before, and what few memories she had were muddied by blood loss and exhaustion. But she could see her clearly now.
They say all babies look the same, but she would swear this one was different. There was a finer cut to her bones, a delicacy to her features that defied the squash-faced infants she’d seen mewling around her village. She was sleeping now, but Cora wished she would wake up. She wanted to see those eyes—the ones she’d missed the night before. She wanted to know their color, to see them light with a hint of recognition, or even a fledgling smile. The birthing bed was often a death sentence, to both the mother and the child. They had survived it. There was much to smile about.
She curled her finger around a single wisp of hair.
We didn’t survive on our own. We had help.
For the first time, she lifted her eyes and looked around the room.
It was sparse, nearly bare, with a dirt floor and single chest of drawers that had been partially opened to reveal a stack of knitted blankets. One of these had been tucked around her legs and another was wrapped around the baby. A pitcher of water had been placed on a table beside the bed.
She reached weakly for the glass, then dropped her arm. She looked instead to the baby.
She must be hungry. I should try feeding her.
With a great deal of clumsiness, she shifted them closer together and attempted to lift the child to her breast. There was a bit of squirming, a snuffling sound she’d never heard. But her daughter was fast asleep. She tucked her back inside the blanket, lifting to her feet instead.
There was more pain than she had imagined. And she had imagined quite a lot. A surge of old blood ran down her legs the second she was standing, staining itself into the dirt. The room swayed and she took a moment to steady herself, clutching the drawers and clenching her teeth.
She moved slowly, one foot after another. There was a noise coming from just beyond a thin wooden partition. She ventured hesitantly around the corner, pausing in the frame.
“Good morning.” The old woman spotted her immediately, glancing up from her washing at the sink. She flashed a quick smile, looking girl over. “The baby lives?”
Cora nodded stiffly, swaying on her feet.
“She lives,” she answered, then added suddenly, “I was thinking of calling her that. Liv.”
It was a common name amongst their people, but never had it seemed more appropriate. A girl who had survived against all odds. A girl who had clung to breath, amidst the raging of a storm.
The old woman smiled again, drying her hands on a rag.
“It suits her. My name is Karmen,” she continued, finishing the rag’s work on her apron. “I told you that last night. Do you remember?”
Cora stared a moment, then shook her head.
There wasn’t much she could remember from the night before. How she’d gotten to the village, her daughter’s first breaths. She had no idea who this stranger was, or how they’d managed to find each other. But they’d been laboring together for hours. It was a heavy debt she owed.
Best case scenario, she would be allowed to work it off.
Worst case scenario, she would not be allowed to leave.
“What is your profession?” she asked quietly.
Perhaps it was something simple like washing or mending. Perhaps it was something harder like farming or hauling in the nets. She couldn’t imagine it was anything worse, the woman’s age wouldn’t allow for such hardship. But theirs was a hard people, there was much they could endure.
“I am a midwife.”
Cora blinked.
Three weeks, she’d been wandering through the woods—tearing her hands on nettles, eating whatever roots she could dig from the frozen ground. Three weeks, she’d been fending off animals, sleeping in the clothes she was wearing, growing too big to see her own shoes. There seemed no end to the perils that followed her, to her unending, unending bad luck.
But she’d stumbled out of that forest...and into a midwife.
She said nothing, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Did you think it was something worse?” the woman asked softly, reading her expression from across the room. “Did you think I meant you some harm?”
Yes.
“No,” Cora replied quickly. “Nothing like that.”
An awkward silence fell between them, filling up the little room.
There was nothing to be seen from the window but plants and trees. Winters were hard so far north, and the dusting of snow that had fallen in the early hours of the morning had painted everything the same. But there was a village nearby, close enough to catch the occasional echo of sound, and an unlikely garden of herbs had been kept growing outside the kitchen door.
The woman had gathered some of these and was cutting them with a hefty knife on the table, using the flat of the blade to press loose the oil and gather it into a tiny jar.
“You know what these are called?” she asked, when she caught the girl staring.
It was blessed thistle, used to coax a mother’s milk.
Cora deliberately shook her head. “No, what is it?”
“It’s thistle,” Karmen answered briskly, flushed with the steam. “You boil it with fennel to make a sort of tea. It’s good for nursing mothers. Have a cup.”
She poured what she had and offered it between them.
Cora took it tentatively, warming her fingers on the sides. She had been cold for so long, it no longer registered as a feeling. Her body didn’t even shiver, until it touched the steam.
“That’s better,” Karmen murmured, watching as she took a tentative sip. The girl was skin and bones, paler than the newly fallen snow, with traces of a bloody birth still smeared upon her ankles. But there was a grit that kept her standing. The same grit that had brought her through the woods. “How long were you wandering? There is nothing in that forest for days.”
Longer than that. There had been nothing for weeks.
Cora took another sip, proceeding with caution. “I lost track,” she admitted. “I come from a place on the other side of the mountains. I know it’s death to travel after the first freeze...but I had little choice in the matter.”
The old woman regarded her carefully, reading between the lines. “I’m assuming it has something to do with the baby?”
The girl flashed a look, but said nothing.
“And will the father be searching for the child?”
For the first time, there was a glint of steel beneath those pretty eyes—a hint of that same unwavering tenacity that had carried her through the mountains.
“He will not find her.”
It brought an abrupt end to the conversation, one that neither woman had particularly intended. It was quiet a few moments, then a wailing cry echoed from the other room.
Cora listened distractedly, sipping her tea.
“That is for you,” Karmen reminded her gently.
Of course!
With sudden haste, she set the cup down and shuffled toward the sound—remembering her newfound companion at the same time. It would take a while to get used to the idea, she was so used to being alone. Perhaps she could stitch it into her clothing. You have a child, now. Do not forget.
The old woman followed her, watching from the doorway as she lifted the baby from the blanket, cradling her against her chest. She didn’t yet know how to soothe, the instinctual rocking hadn’t yet settled in her bones, but the mere proximity seemed to be enough. The child made a kind of coo, and they rested their heads together, sharing warmth and drawing in deep calming breaths.
Karmen tilted her head, watching with a faint smile. “She will be strong, that one. She came on the wings of a storm.”
Cora’s eyes flitted to the window, afraid that storm followed them still.
“Then she will be the strong one,” she answered quietly. “I will have to keep pace.”
It was a response the woman hadn’t been expecting, one that caught her off guard.
Almost sixty years, she’d been living in that same village—weathering the seasons, watching the same people go by. Almost sixty years, and she was already an elder. The land was harsh and wild, demanding tribute. Youth was snuffed out quickly, before it had a chance to gray. No doubt this girl and her child would venture out, and come to the same fate. Either in a few weeks, or a few years. In order to survive, one needed a tether. Something stronger than a newborn babe.
“I’m going to ask you a question, and I want you to answer it plain,” she said sharply, eyeing the girl all the while. “Are there people coming after you? Are you in trouble, sweet child?”
Cora looked at her in surprise, like she’d been worlds away.
“There’s no one coming,” she answered. Her eyes drifted to the baby, resting on the top of its head, before she added reflexively, “I have no one.”
The woman regarded them for a moment, then came to a decision.
“You have someone now.”
END OF SAMPLE
ADVERSITY available now
PREQUEL: Adversity
Series:
Warrior
Defender
Contender
Affinity
Heroine
Victory
