The first miscarriage was odd, but not odd enough to cause alarm. The flesh dripped out wrong, in pieces unfamiliar, not human, all pink gummy flesh and blood clots. Her husband only sighed and did the duty of his labor: he buried the meat in the yard under the oak, then took her to bed again.

She told him that she had seen a rabbit that morning, before it went wrong. The rabbit looked at her, its black, little eyes big and round, and she had been afraid.

He told her not to speak of it.

Her belly grew from that night, and after the heavy months passed she went into labor again. Her mother-in-law, who was called in because she was a midwife, and because her husband suspected the first had been mishandled, came into the birth late, and by the time she arrived there was no baby, but skinned parts of lean legs, a purple liver and lungs, and curved ears with long veins.

Her husband fed the pieces to the cat and took her to bed again.

The next birth had him pacing outside her door. When his mother came out with the offering, it was of three long legs with tufts of black fur around its ankles, a long vertebrae with no extensions for arms or legs, and guts winding around the lump.

His wife told them she was dreaming of their cat, which had run away not too long ago, and she thought of it, then, when she was pushing.

Over the next few days, when her husband went to lie with her again, she said she was too ill, and when they woke up there were black eyes and brains between her legs.

At a loss, her husband called in the doctors, who did not believe in such miracles, and they examined the newest parts and said they were too carefully butchered—knife scratches on the bones—and told him to lie with her again. Then, they tied her legs together and tied the rest of her to the bed, only allowing her to sip spoons of vegetable soup. They shuttered the windows, so that she might not see any animals, though she still heard the birds outside, twittering their songs, and at night, the scream of the rabbits as they were butchered for the doctor’s meals.

After the months passed, they untied her and pushed on her belly. A skinned young rabbit with broken teeth flushed out under her dress, as well as so much blood. The cord was still attached to it, and when they pulled on it, it came out from under her as if it had been connected to nothing.

Madness, they told one another. It is pure madness.

They bet their degrees on a hoax and informed the husband that he should lie with her one more time. This time, they allowed her to move, but they watched her carefully in shifts so that she was never alone, and kept her diet strictly to cabbage and oil. Against propriety and her wishes, they sat in the corner of the room as she birthed, smoking cigars and rubbing their foreheads.

The rabbit came out alive, twitching and squealing.

“My child,” she said to it, and asked it to be placed in her arms.

The mother-in-law made to do so, but the doctors snatched it from her arms and threw it against the wall. Then they fell on her as one, tearing the clothes from her body as the women screamed at them to stop. When the mother was naked and sobbing, they backed away from her. The mother-in-law stepped forward and dared put her hands in the space between her legs to feel the soft, gray fur covering her from thigh to belly.