Birth: A Novella Read online

  “Only then, when I said– when I told Dominic—”

  I stare at him mockingly, my eyelids drooping, thinking of what Dominic told me. Show her who’s master, Stefan had said.

  “Don’t you want him to?” Stefan asks, confused by my obvious derision. “Don’t you want Dominic to be the master?”

  “No,” I say, “I’m not in the Royal Guards.” I regret my acerbic tone as soon as I see its effect on Stefan. He hangs his head, not used to having to be afraid of me, still seeing me as on his level, someone he can talk to without having to watch his every word. He’s only repeating what everybody says about marriage. The fighting, that was bad enough for me and Dominic, must have been devastating for him, the age difference just right for him to regard us as surrogate parents.

  “I’d never heard married people talk like that,” he says. “Dominic said it’s the way of ‘Graven, that the wife is equal to her husband and doesn’t have to obey him or be submissive.”

  “He said that?” I can feel a sappy look of love coming over my face.

  “Yes,” Stefan says. “That’s why he got so furious when I said he should have– you know. But I think he was just excusing himself for not—” He watches for my reaction. “—for not keeping order in his household. I mean, what kind of marriage can it be if the wife doesn’t obey her husband? ‘Graven or not, it doesn’t make any sense.”

  It’s a genuine question he’s asked, and I don’t have a real answer. Our kind of marriage, I think. Crypta-love marriage. I want to stay angry with him but I can’t. Love is flowing out of me like milk. I ask him a question instead. “If that’s how you felt, what made you come back?”

  “I wasn’t going to,” he says, “until I went home for Midwinter. And my parents were just bursting with it, what went on when you and Dominic spent the night.”

  It’s my turn to hang my head. “I didn’t want to stay there,” I say. “I just knew it was a mistake.”

  Stefan laughs, relieved to see me suffering from the same kind of embarrassment. It’s easy to talk again, just like at that Midsummer dinner when we met. “No, Amalie,” he says, able to call me by name now. “It was great!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The way you yelled at Dominic, right there in their house! And the things you said! Did you really say you’d cut his finger off and shove it?” He can’t bring himself to repeat it exactly.

  There’s no point in holding back; I’m the one who’s been promoting honesty. “More or less, yes. But I only said it because Katrina was spouting a lot of nonsense about men beating their wives. Anyway, what’s so great about Dominic and me fighting?”

  Stefan frowns, thinking how to explain. “My father said he’d been disappointed at first that I broke with Margrave Aranyi, but after seeing the way his wife behaved, and how he allowed it, he felt I’d done the right thing. That was when I began to think maybe I’d been wrong. And then my mother said she was relieved to know I wouldn’t be living in the same house anymore with such a harridan.” He smiles impishly. “That’s when I really thought I’d been stupid.”

  Eclipsis has no tradition of adolescent rebellion. Insulated from Terra’s culture of instant gratification and easy living, young men and women more often wish to emulate adults than to revolt against them. But Stefan has discovered what all young people do at some point: that parents don’t always know what’s best for their children.

  “I knew you loved each other,” Stefan says, “even though you fought so much. And it made me think about me and Dominic. I shouldn’t have been so soft, breaking with Dominic just because he yelled at me. He’s my commanding officer, just like he’s your husband. We both have to obey him. But that doesn’t mean we have to be afraid of him. And I may not be ‘Graven, but I am gifted. So I decided that if you could stand up to him, so could I.”

  It’s different for me, I want to warn him. If he stays, I resolve, I must be open with him, not keep a part of myself cordoned off behind the great lie Dominic has asked for, that I’ve been only too happy to maintain. Dominic’s companion deserves my entirety, just as Dominic does.

  It’s like the ocean, I will say. The sea. On Terra, it’s so warm you can swim in it. You have to dive under the big waves; if you don’t, if one breaks on you, you can be knocked unconscious, sucked under, drowned. But if you do it right you can get on the other side of them, before they break, and you go up and down with the swells. It’s like being rocked in a great mother’s arms, a force as immense as the Earth itself, gentle if it suits her to be, but always with that undercurrent of danger. It’s fantastic, like nothing else...

  Stefan is rapt, watching my face as I think, caught up along with me in my memories.

  I’m already telling him, can conceal this no longer, the reality of having been born on Terra, having lived my entire life there. “Sometimes, later at night, when I was lying in bed, I’d feel it still, rising and falling, floating, looking at the sky. I’d remember a big wave that almost hit me, the undertow, the current pulling me sideways, and I would be terrified reliving it. How did I ever do something so dangerous? I would think. I must have been crazy. But at the time, when I was in it, had given myself up to it, it was ecstasy, heaven, the best experience I’ve ever had.

  “Being with Dominic—our communion—is like that. When our communion is functioning there’s only joy, passion, affection between us. I’m conscious of Dominic’s dangerous aspects, just as I know how rough the ocean can be after a storm, but the communion protects us, prevents any expression of it. It’s like swimming in an ocean that’s always gentle. Not that its power doesn’t exist, only that it will not be turned against me. But it all depends on us having that communion. When things go wrong with it, or we close ourselves off from it, it’s like trying to swim in a hurricane—”

  “It’s the same for me!” Stefan says. “I’m never scared of him when I’m with him. I know that part of him exists, but it doesn’t have to ruin things. We can still– I still—” He can’t say it, any more than Roger could, but at least he can think it. We can still love each other. I still love him.

  He has it, too, the communion of love. For both of us, the power of our gift has become an equalizer, not fully realized until now. My shrewish behavior has inspired a sort of courage in Stefan, a self-confidence that was lacking and that he will need in order to become an adult, a man, an officer.

  “You must try to find your way back to intimacy,” I say.

  Stefan shakes his head. “It’s hard to know how.”

  “No, it isn’t,” I say, taking the chance, touching his hand with mine, sticky with milk. His hand, warm and dry and tingling with emotions, rests under my grasping palm, ready to slip out at the slightest suggestion of hypocrisy.

  He looks up at me with his handsome face, young and fresh and innocent, and it’s all I can do not to devour him. I’ve been feeling it from the moment he walked into the hall, the first physical desire I’ve had in months. It’s too soon after the stretching and the tearing of birth, but I don’t seem to care. I want to kiss him with open mouth, wrap my arms around him, pull his head down to suckle where Jana’s lips are draining the last drops of milk…

  The silence wakes Katrina, the flow of words stopping. She sits up, blinking, stares in disbelief. My hand is on Stefan’s cheek, not as smooth as it looks. How long since he started shaving? Jana lies burbling in my lap as I lean forward, spilling out of my open dress. Stefan reaches to cup a breast, fingering a gummy nipple. I’m ready to explode with pleasure at the touch of his hand on a sensitive place…

  “My lady!” Katrina gasps in shock. She had never thought to actually have to exercise her office of chaperone. “‘Gravina! Master Ormonde! What are you doing?”

  Oh, we say, drawing back. There’s the answer. We recognize this sensation easily, having had months to become familiar with it—it’s Dominic’s desire. In my husband’s weakness I’ve become his conduit, acting out for him what he’s unable to perform himself
. Even Jana feels it, mouthing Stefan’s fingers, basking in the love of her third parent.

  “What will I tell Margrave Aranyi?” Katrina is still dithering in fright.

  “Nothing,” I say, smiling. “He knows.” To Stefan I say, judging from Katrina’s reaction, “Maybe it’s safer for you to go through my bathroom into the Margrave’s bedroom.”

  Amalie. Dominic’s thoughts are in my mind. There will be no more melodrama in this house. As I will discover when we return to Eclipsia City and can go out for an evening’s entertainment, it’s the plot of every Eclipsian farce: the wife, the companion and the ‘Graven bedchamber arrangements. And tell Stefan to get his butt in here, on the double.

  “You will walk in the corridor like an honest man. Is that clear, Cadet Ormonde?” I hear Dominic’s words to Stefan in a nanosecond of delay. The three-sided communion is working again.

  Stefan stands up, answers Dominic, gives Jana a quick caress and is gone through the door.

  I lift Jana in my arms and kiss her cheek where Stefan’s fingers rested a moment ago. “Don’t worry,” I tell Katrina. “I’m myself again.” Not that I wasn’t before; I am most myself when I am with Dominic, when I am Dominic, when we are one. But why confuse my friend?

  ***

  In the years ahead, Dominic and I will find our way to live in the city, just as we found our way to each other, and to love. Dominic will take his prescribed sabbatical through the summer. Jana will be eight months old when we return to Eclipsia City, saying her first words and taking her first steps, keeping me happily occupied. I won’t be the bored, pregnant wife waiting for her husband’s notice to give her life meaning. Jana and Isobel and Katrina and I will form our own little female nucleus within the cell of the household, going for guarded walks outside, or in the inner courtyards of ‘Graven Fortress. A forbidden screen-reader and some bootleg “loaded down” books, obtained with Dominic’s deliberate ignorance, will feed the one addiction I can’t shake.

  When Dominic comes home in the evenings there will be no underlying frustrations and resentments to build a wall of anger between us. We’ll be able to talk: about Assembly sessions and Military Academy business, books we’ve read, gossip and current events, everything and nothing. It’s the manifestation of our mysterious bond of love, what connects us despite all our differences—we find each other’s company more exhilarating than anyone else’s.

  Secure in my marriage, comfortable in my life, I will enjoy supper parties and the theater, balls at ‘Graven Fortress and mid-season festivals at home. Developing assurance will smooth over the tentative missteps of timidity, and lead to graciousness. I will behave like ‘Gravina Aranyi because I will feel like ‘Gravina Aranyi. Like myself.

  With Dominic’s undistracted attention and tutelage making up for the missed spring term, Stefan will return to the ‘Graven Military Academy as a third-year cadet, enjoying more freedom along with greater responsibility. As a colonel, Dominic will be entitled to an aide who can share his quarters in the officers’ barracks. Allowing for the demands of duty rosters and rotating schedules, he and Stefan will have a few nights together during the week, just as Dominic’s seniority and higher rank will allow him some nights at home with his wife. We can maintain a semblance of family life until Stefan receives his commission as a second lieutenant, and can choose to live as a member of our household.

  Berend never will find any suitably entangled land records for Dominic to straighten out by bestowing the property on his companion. The task that had burdened our steward at Midsummer is simply forgotten, as Stefan and Dominic forget they were ever separated. There is no need to change Stefan into an independent landowner, just as there is no need to change me into a lord’s daughter.

  At the next Midsummer, it will be Berend’s wife, Laura, who spends the festival night with Stefan. Her second child will be born the following spring, a beautiful girl with dark curly hair and perfect features. If Berend has any doubts of paternity he will hide them. Children conceived during festival night are not uncommon, and a man must accept his wife’s child without prejudice, just as he may have put his own child into another man’s family. In fact, Berend will dote on this girl almost as much as on his son, and the little family will be happy once again. It is not only within gifted couples that the wife knows her husband’s mind, and how to salve his wounds.

  Magali, too, will give birth to a healthy daughter in the spring, Katrina to hers in the summer. But Dominic’s little kitchen maid, too young for motherhood, will produce a premature, deformed thing soon after. Not Dominic’s: she had the sense to find herself a more suitable lover, closer to her own age—Dominic’s stable boy. The baby will die, mercifully, an hour or two out of the womb, but the girl herself will be sickened from it, and it will take all Naomi’s skill to save her. And Luisa, Lady Ormonde, worn out from so many pregnancies, will die in her husband’s arms after presenting him with another son. When we attend the funeral, Sir Karl, looking old and grim, will accept Dominic’s embrace without flinching, as if his gift has expired along with his wife.

  Three years later, I will give Dominic a trueborn son, Valentine-Zoltan as he must be named, a small, quick, red-haired boy who is as much my child as Jana is Dominic’s. Later, when the moment is right, I’ll suggest an issue, dear to my heart, for Dominic to introduce before ‘Graven Assembly: birth control, freely available, not just for the healer or the gifted. No more children conceiving before their bodies are ready; no more enduring ten pregnancies for six live births; no more motherless broods of a dozen.

  For Dominic it’s a practical, essential step toward conservation of Eclipsis’s precious resources, a way to relieve the pressure on the virgin forests and the fragile mountain pastures of an expanding human population. It’s all right for you, some will grouse at Dominic in debate, with your trueborn son and daughter, and your natural-born son. But what about the rest of us? Dominic, still reeling in shock at my reversal, my unexpected choice of motherhood a second time, will not admit that’s it’s personal for him as well. It’s right for everyone, he will say, for all who want to preserve our world, not despoil it.

  ***

  For now, it’s enough to know that our idyllic life at Aranyi can continue. As my body is healing, so is my marriage. My moment with Stefan has forged a link, connecting our two sides in the triangle of a family. The last step in the process of restoring the bond between my husband and me leads to the beginning of the same process for my husband and his companion.

  With the reestablishment of true communion will come the return of physical desire; mental lovemaking will cease to be the chore that Dominic and I have shunned since my release from La Sapienza. We will give pleasure to each other in our thoughts while our bodies gain strength to share the work once more.

  I settle myself in the bed, holding Jana, enjoying her presence, that third person in the room I didn’t recognize when I was spiraling down into death. She’s clean and full of milk, ready for her own siesta. I smell her sweet breath, hear the faint gurgling sounds of her digestion. I will not abandon her again.

  As I drift off into slumber, I sneak one last peek of empathetic connection before leaving my husband alone with his companion. Dominic is lying in bed, Stefan sitting on the edge. They’re engrossed in conversation, holding hands, allowing the deep communion to emerge and envelop them. In a day or two, when Dominic is ready, they’ll make love: first with minds only, then in the gentlest acts of the body, until they are partners in every sense.

  My family is complete, and I can sleep content.

  PREVIEW: CAPTIVITY, Books 5 & 6 of Lady Amalie’s memoirs

  The first four books of the ECLIPSIS series of Lady Amalie’s memoirs tell the story of how Terran Amelia Herzog became Eclipsian “Lady Amalie,” and of how she met and married Dominic, Margrave Aranyi.

  Forthcoming books will relate some of the adventures Amalie had in her married life. The next two books, Captivity parts one and two, take place after Amalie an
d Dominic have been married six years. Part one of Captivity will be published in November.

  CAPTIVITY

  “Halt!” The shout shattered the stillness of the summer morning, ringing out from the edges of the forest. “If you value your lives, halt and give up your weapons!”

  They were on us before anyone had a chance to react. Bandits, a whole army of them, swarming silently down the steep embankments on both sides of the trail. With swords drawn, knives and daggers at the ready, in belts and boot tops and in teeth, the outlaws forced our little group to a standstill, unhorsing and disarming our four guards without having to strike a blow. We were neatly ambushed, at this natural choke point along the trail to Aranyi.

  I had been riding bareheaded and with my third eyelids lowered, a way to enjoy the warmth of the summer morning without being damaged by the direct sunlight. And I had blocked off my crypta with a strong mental shield. Telepathy can be a burden on the spirit; I had not wanted to spend a long day’s ride listening to any resentful thoughts I might pick up from my small band of traveling companions, annoyed at my sudden decision to travel home without my husband or a suitable escort.

  The shield lowered, my gift merely confirmed what my eyes and ears had already shown me. Forty-some men—I counted quickly, trying to calm myself by a simple task. And there were more I couldn’t see, lurking behind the trees. In my innocent imagining, bandits had sounded glamorous, like pirates. The illusion died a quick death. The men were filthy, their stink, even outdoors, enveloping our little group in a miasma of foulness in the warm summer air. Their hair was long and matted, greasy beards and mustaches partially concealing scarred and spotted faces. They wore rags, the remains of what had once been ordinary shirts and breeches, now held together with pieces of rope or cord, encrusted skin showing through the gaps. Only their weapons and the leather scabbards and sheaths were in good condition, the essential tools of their “trade” kept in top working order.