Birth: A Novella Read online

  In the communion I see it through Dominic’s eyes, like looking in a mirror: my spread thighs and the familiar opening between them, once so small, now stretched so wide it’s unbelievable. And there, showing in the gap, a thatch of dark hair, not mine, black and thick like Dominic’s.

  It’s the most hideous thing I have ever seen, the instrument of my destruction, this giant hairy sphere that will break me apart.

  You see? he says. It’s our daughter’s head, right where it should be. He sits up, squats behind me as before. Just push a little more and it will be over.

  Another contraction comes, but it’s not a contraction, it’s my insides coming out. I scream, no words this time, just noise, and Dominic echoes me in his harsh parade-ground shout, startling Magali where she hovers over us.

  There’s a mess of blood and all kinds of disgusting stuff on the floor. Me, I think. That was me, what had filled me up, occupied the space between skin and bones, front and back, side to side. All out now. Emptied, weightless, I collapse against Dominic, as Magali catches up a large portion of the innards in her arms.

  “Perfect,” she says.

  Magnificent, Dominic is thinking.

  Dominic picks me up, carries me to the bed and lowers me gently. It’s wonderful to lie on a soft mattress, although I want some of those warm blankets over me. I’m only two-dimensional now, flattened and juiceless, and I get cold with nothing to warm me from inside. The last of my stuffing slides out, warm and oozing, clumping between my thighs.

  Some strange creature chokes and splutters, then gives a long indignant wail. There is the splashing of water from the bathroom, and Dominic is holding his dagger, moving toward me.

  The tournament! I remember now. I’m sorry, Dominic, I say, or try to. He doesn’t hear me. He glides past me, toward the bathroom, where the crying is coming from, where I can’t see him.

  The room is getting smaller all the time. A large black border around it is growing wider and wider, narrowing the little remaining circle of light that is the hearth and its fire. I’m down at the far end of a cone, the pointy end, gazing up to the round wide top. Two tiny faces are peering back at me. Dominic and Magali, I think, ticking them off in my mind, so I’ll keep it straight. There’s someone else there, too, someone I don’t know but feel I should. My mind can’t seem to work it out. It doesn’t matter, I decide. Dominic loved me once, but that’s over now, and I’m much too tired to care.

  ***

  That night Dominic was like a stranger. He didn’t shout at me or threaten me or acknowledge my existence in any way. He came in for supper, bathed and sat at his place at the table, eating rapidly and never saying a word to me or looking in my direction.

  I broke the silence. “I’m sorry. I was frightened when I saw them coming at you with knives—”

  Dominic put his knife and fork down slowly, carefully, as if otherwise he might hurl them at me. “I see,” he said. “You naturally assumed I was incapable of defending myself against a couple of commoners with pocketknives.”

  “No, I just—”

  “I see,” he said again. “You did think I was capable, you merely wanted to save me the trouble. At a tournament, a swordsmanship exhibition, my wife has to use her woman’s dagger to protect her husband from men with knives.”

  I sat staring at my plate.

  “I lost the match, you know,” he said. “Because of you.”

  “You conceded,” I said. “You could have left it a draw.”

  “So you spied,” he said, “as well as interfered.”

  “Why did you want me to come and watch it?” I said, shouting.

  “Because I’m crazy,” he said. “Because I thought you’d enjoy it. The gods help me, I thought you could behave yourself for an hour or two.”

  “Behave myself?” I was screaming by now. “You’re talking to me like a child, like that slave-wife I was afraid of becoming.”

  “Yes,” he said, “I am. But you’re a little old for a child, and since you can’t obey the simplest instruction you’re not much use as a slave, either.”

  That’s when I slapped him. I didn’t leave my chair or even use the prism in my dagger. The sheer force of my anger somehow solidified through my crypta into an extension of my body, and this spectral arm and hand reached out and smacked his head so hard it bounced against the high back of his chair.

  He was on his feet and drawing his sword before he knew what had happened. When he figured it out he stood, breathing heavily, the way I had seen him in the tournament ring. Then he walked quickly to the door of the suite.

  I got up, ran after him. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  He didn’t turn around. “Why? For doing what comes naturally? You’re a termagant by nature. Don’t become a hypocrite as well.” He called to Ranulf for his cloak, threw it around himself and walked out into the night. He was gone a week, and when he came back it was to say that he had broken with Stefan and was I happy now.

  ***

  I open my eyes to gray light. Dawn or dusk? No, even twilight on a rainy winter evening would have more color. I must be in the telepathic ether. I don’t care for the ether; it’s too easy to get lost. Sometimes people don’t return, their bodies left as if in a coma, their minds drifting on waves of neural electricity to nowhere.

  A voice comes from the direction of where I think my body is. “She’s bleeding too much for me to stop it by myself.”

  It sounds like the voice of someone I know, but I can’t identify it. Like seeing that third person in the room before, the one I didn’t recognize but should have. It’s frustrating, like trying to remember an actor’s name from hearing one small line of dialogue. I’m too tired to play guessing games, so I stop thinking about it.

  I move along in the murk of the ether, not walking exactly, but not floating or flying either. More like rowing, only there’s no boat, just my shell of a body that has lost its vitals, propelled by the oars of my fading consciousness. Slowly the gloom dissolves until I can make out a few details: a trail through dense forest, and snow-covered slopes off to the side. There are people up ahead; I can sense their minds. Not the thoughts, only the presence of human intelligence. They’re separated from me by some big divide, and when I get close I see it’s a crevasse, like in the high mountains. I push myself to the edge, looking down at the people milling about at the bottom.

  There! There’s my mother! She looks so young—younger than me—but I would recognize her even without having seen holosnaps of her at this age. I know her mind, maybe better than I know my own, from the many times I shared her thoughts. She was the one person on Terra whose thoughts I could tolerate, overflowing as they were with love for me and an unshakable belief in my abilities that allowed me to go on trying. It was when she died, and I had known that I was now, truly and forever, alone, that I had felt free to leave Terra.

  More than anything I want to be with her again, to experience that joy she always felt when we were together. “Janet!” I shout. I simply can’t, being older, call her “Mom.”

  Her rather grim neutral expression softens at the sound of my voice. She looks up, sees me, and on her face is the same beaming smile I knew from my earliest infancy up to my last piece of good news before she died—a promotion at work I inflated into something meaningful to let her think things were okay. “Amelia, darling!” she calls. “Oh, Amelia, how good it is to see you. I’ve missed you so much.” She reaches out to me, opening her arms wide, and I know I can jump down into her arms, that she will catch me.

  There are footsteps behind me, someone or something running fast. I turn around, scared. Who runs in the ether? It’s Dominic, out of breath, weary and distraught. Also young—heartbreakingly handsome, innocent and sweet like the face in his portrait. In communion, if we have any visible existence, it is merely the other’s view of us, but in the ether, it seems, we project our own image of ourselves, and our minds can’t update this picture as rapidly as time ages our appearance.

 
; “Please, Amalie, don’t leave me.” Dominic’s voice cracks like an adolescent’s. “If you go, I will follow. I swear by Helios and all the gods, I cannot live without you.”

  I stand poised on the edge of the precipice, trying to choose between the peace of floating down to my mother’s waiting arms, or struggling back uphill—I know it will be hard going—with this young man who loves me so much. Do I love him? I ask myself. I know the answer. I love him more than life itself. But right now I’m tired, so very tired, and life itself is an easy thing to give up. It just means leaning back. I can shut my eyes and spread my arms and fall into space. So I do.

  But the fall isn’t so pleasant after all. There’s a sickening rush of air and my stomach heaves, like when an elevator descends too quickly, and something breaks my fall and I’m back on the ledge. The young man is holding me and he’s crying, and I’m holding him and crying, and I look into his eyes, and it’s Dominic now, forty-two-year-old Dominic.

  My love, he says in communion. My love. You stayed with me.

  There is a soft sigh, although I haven’t breathed. Dominic lets go of me and slumps to the floor, his skin as white as chalk, his lips stretched in a grimace, his eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling, clouding over like misted glass.

  ***

  I had no reply when Dominic told me he had ended the relationship with Stefan. I could no longer shout and shoot light beams at him. The passion of our earlier fights had drained away with the loss of communion, the shame of what I had done at the tournament, the weeklong absence.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, again and again. Then, thinking over the implications for our three-person marriage, “Do you want a divorce?”

  He had stared at me as if I had turned into something not human. “You knew when you took the oaths, Amalie,” he said, “that marriage by the ‘Graven Rule is forever. Until death, and beyond.” He sighed, weary of explaining things to someone who could not understand. “We can live apart, if you prefer, but we will always be married. When we die, and are laid in our tomb, our flesh will still bear the brands. When our flesh has rotted and crumbled to dust, the pattern will remain, seared into the bones.” These facts seemed to give him some satisfaction, for he smiled as he said it, tired, unshaven, wearing the same clothes he had gone out in a week ago.

  What about the oath he and Stefan had sworn, I wondered, the oath that made them companions, not simply lovers?

  “He abjured it, not I,” Dominic said. “It is his prerogative.” He would tell me nothing more.

  During the next few days it seemed clear that, whatever Dominic thought or felt, our marriage was over. There was certainly no communion between us, other than picking up the stray thought that will happen with anyone, gifted and ungifted alike. Dominic kept more regular hours, leaving for the Military Academy or the Sanctum of ‘Graven Assembly immediately after a quick and early breakfast, and coming home, usually after supper, but not so late as before. The Military Academy and the Assembly Sanctum are part of ‘Graven Fortress, as are the family suites, so Dominic did not have far to travel between work and home. He would go to his room on his return, although he seemed to sleep little. I would feel his mind churning and rumbling with an incoherent misery before I fell asleep at night, and of course he was always awake before me in the morning.

  But though our marriage was ended, I was certain Aranyi had become my home. If I would always be ‘Gravina Aranyi in name, then I wanted to live in my home. And I wouldn’t wait until after the child was born. Every day, every hour that passed in this disconnected state was worse than any danger of travel or weather.

  “I want to go home, Dominic,” I said one morning at breakfast. I had made a point of rising early, to catch him before I spent another long day alone. “If you can spare me some guards, I want to go now, today or tomorrow.”

  He looked up startled from his plate, his face growing pale. I waited for the anger and recriminations, to be told sarcastically that he would not stand by while I ran off to the mountains and made a fool of him again, but he still managed to surprise me. Something changed inside him as he absorbed my request, and he answered me courteously and gently. “Let’s say tomorrow. I’ll wind things up here, and we’ll go together.”

  “But the Assembly?” I asked. “The Military Academy? Don’t you have to—”

  “No,” he said, “it’s not important. All they’re doing in Assembly is dithering about ceremony—debating what titles to use when negotiating with Terrans.” His snort of contempt was the most affectionate sound I had heard from him in weeks, not aimed at me, but drawing me in to share his disgust at time and opportunity wasted. “And the Academy has only a couple of weeks left until the Midwinter break. I’ll deputize a couple of the ablest cadets to teach the others. The responsibility will be good for them, although they’ll be insufferable when I get back.” It was the first time in the city that we had come close to deciding something together, and he left the breakfast table eagerly, satisfied at the quick conclusions he had reached and in a hurry to carry them out.

  Our journey back to Aranyi was as slow and comfortable as our journey from it had been rushed and unpleasant. Dominic fussed and worried over the danger to me, riding on trails slippery with ice, that could be blocked at any time by a blizzard, and that are too narrow and rugged to accommodate any kind of conveyance. Despite his usual disdain, he found a sidesaddle and showed me how to use it. He insisted on our making only short stages each day, and arranged ahead to stay overnight at manor houses and fortresses along the route. We could not always find a gentry family to put us up, as we did not always cover the full length of one holding in our slow day’s ride, but the lowliest laborer’s cottage felt sumptuous compared to the travelers’ shelter.

  At night we shared a bed by necessity. No one had two spare bedrooms suitable for Margrave and ‘Gravina Aranyi; no one would understand if we asked for separate accommodations, since Stefan was not with us. The first two nights we slept on the edges of our opposite sides, careful not to touch. On the morning after the third night I awoke to find myself in Dominic’s loose embrace, his hand cupping a breast. When I opened my eyes he let go and moved away, muttering an excuse, “Force of habit,” which was silly, as we had not slept together for a month or more in Eclipsia City. That night we agreed that as the bed was narrow and the covers inadequate, it made sense to cuddle. By the time we reached Ormonde, the last stage of our journey, we were accustomed again to the light touch of communion, the intimacy of the bedroom.

  ***

  I open my eyes, see Lord Roger Zichmni and Tariq Sureddin. “Hi, Roger,” I say, speaking Terran. “Hi, Tariq.” They must wonder why we’re all here. “I saw my mother.”

  They seem to stand motionless for hours, staring down at me. We’re in weak communion, enough for me to see that I’m lying uncovered in a pool of blood, that they’re frightened and exhausted. They’re standing at the foot of the bed, both of them with their daggers out, the prisms catching the light from the fire. Magali stands at one side. The three form a broken circle around the bed, as Naomi, Stefan and I had done to heal Dominic’s arm—

  Dominic! I remember now. Where is Dominic? Why don’t they do something?

  Roger, I think to him in the insubstantial communion. Help Dominic. I try to use Eclipsian—if not formal ‘Graven speech, then at least not Terran—but my brain can’t do this. Everything’s scrambled, buried, lost in the smoke and rubble of my last visions. Roger, Dominic, the sword... Now I remember. “Lord Roger,” I say.

  The young men crouch on the floor beside the bed, lifting something. Dominic. Roger carries the shoulders and supports the head while Tariq, smaller and lighter, lifts the feet. They lay him beside me and pull the covers over us. “He used all his strength bringing you back,” Roger says. “You must keep him warm while Tariq and I do what we can.” Magali watches from the side, holding, for some reason, a baby.

  Dominic, too, has been using his prism; the dagger is still clutched i
n his fist. I try to close my hand over his. My fingers can’t reach all the way around, but I form the first level of communion with him. His outer eyelids are still open, the silver of his inner eyelids tarnished with the dull gray of the telepathic ether, and I fall in, pulling him after me. My twenty-five-year-old self looks into the face of this young man she has married, whose child she has—

  Who died? I ask. Me or the child? I can’t bear it either way.

  Young Dominic smiles at young Amalie. Neither, he says. I did.

  No! I say, thoughts rising in a soundless wail. That’s worst of all.

  He laughs, although he’s too weak, and it comes out more like a baby’s cry. Beloved, he says, if mother and child both live, that is best.

  CHAPTER 4: Domestic Disturbances

  I was leery of staying at the home of Stefan’s parents, who had so resented my intrusion on their son’s great chance in life, and who had disdained me as improper and lowborn. Now that I was in sole possession of the man whom their son had cast off, they would have a genuine grievance to escalate dislike into true animosity. The sun was low in the sky; we could not reach Aranyi this day. Maybe one of their tenants could house us, I thought, and we could avoid imposing on Lord Karl and Lady Ormonde.

  Dominic knew my thoughts. Where he would have scolded and frowned in Eclipsia City, he now smiled and spoke kindly. “We have no reason not to request shelter here. Stefan and I parted as friends.”

  We were welcomed with elaborate and embarrassing ceremony, shown to a spacious suite with separate bedchambers and bathrooms. A maid knocked on the door of the wife’s room almost the minute after I entered, curtsied and offered her services. I looked to Katrina, who had ridden all the way astride, not being so far along in her pregnancy, and who had had to bed down where she could in the smaller houses, on the floor sometimes, or three to a bed with other servants, and decided she had earned a day off.