by Jade White
“Of course, child. We will bring this baby into the world happy and healthy,” she promised.
“Thank you,” Grace said with a smile.
“It will be my honor. You will come once a week to see me,” she ordered.
“That often?” Shannon asked.
“I just want to be sure, since it is her first,” Aria explained.
“We will see you next week, then,” Shannon said as they made their way back to the jeep.
From that day on, they continued their research as planned, taking time out only to go visit Ms. Aria one day a week. It was three months later and things were progressing as well as could be expected when everything changed.
They were at Dalton’s point, observing as usual, when they saw an unusually large lion that was familiar to Grace.
“Look at that male,” she pointed out.
“Larger than average,” Shannon observed.
“That's the one who intervened with that odd group of females I told you about.” She looked up at the creature and was a bit surprised to see that he was staring at her intently. There seemed to be some spark of recognition. Its eyes met hers and it was as if the world around them faded away. Then, the animal’s eyes dropped to her pregnant stomach and he let loose a loud roar.
“He seems very focused on us now. Perhaps we should move along,” Shannon said, sounding worried.
“We are fine. He isn't being aggressive,” Grace said, brushing it off.
“Yet!” Shannon said.
“You're treating me differently because of the baby,” she said with real annoyance.
“That is usually what people do with pregnant women,” Shannon pointed out.
“You promised me that you wouldn't!” Grace argued.
“Well, excuse me for not wanting you to get mauled by a lion,” she said with mock sincerity.
“If he gets aggressive, we will leave. He just seems curious.” Her eyes lingered on the lion as she spoke.
“OK. We haven't noticed any excess aggression in these local prides, so I guess it's OK,” she compromised. “It's odd that we haven't seen him around before today,” she said, returning to her notes.
“Yes, it is,” Grace said, distracted by the way the lion was staring at them. She could not recall seeing anything like it.
“Look, there are the three females I told you about,” she said as she gestured to the group coming across the ridge.
“They are abnormally large,” Shannon said as she wrote the note in their book.
“And fixated on us,” Grace pointed out.
“Now can I take you home?” Shannon asked.
“No, I'm fine,” she assured her.
“Alright.”
They sat silently to observe the situation for a few moments until Grace spoke.
“Shannon,” she said gently.
“Yes?”
“I think you should take me back,” she said with a grave look on her face.
“No, you were right. They are no more a threat than the lions we see every day,” she said, realizing that she had over reacted.
“That is not why I want you to take me home,” she explained.
“Why then?”
“Because my water just broke,” she whispered.
“That's impossible. You are only four months pregnant,” Shannon gasped.
“Shannon, I'm scared,” she said in a grave voice.
“No, no don't be scared. We will get to Aria and everything will be fine. I'm sure it's false labor or something like that.”
With that, she threw the jeep into gear and sped towards Aria’s. The old woman stood in the yard as they approached.
“Gracie girl, what are you doing here? I wasn't expecting you until Friday,” she said, looking surprised.
“Ms. Aria, the baby's coming,” she cried.
“What should we do? Should I call a doctor? It's so early.” Shannon looked stricken as she spoke.
“Oh, children, this baby will be just fine. You come with me. Let's get you comfortable. I'm sure the baby will be here in no time at all.” Aria wrapped a gentle arm around Grace and led her in to the cabin. Though it brought her some comfort, the terror did not go away.
“I’m so scared. It’s too soon. It can’t survive,” she said as Aria settled her in to the bed she kept ready for her expectant mothers.
“Child, nature has a way and I have a special feeling about this little one. Don’t fret,” she smiled.
“I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose it,” she cried.
“We won’t let that happen. Shannon, get over here and hold your friend’s hand. I need to get some water boiling. Then we will get settled in. There’s nothing more magical than a baby making its way in to the world, even if it isn’t the way you planned it would be.” She buzzed about, getting things in order.
Shannon leaned down and said, “You hear that? She is going to take care of everything.”
“How can she? How can I have a healthy baby here?” she said with tears in her eyes
“Women have been doing it for centuries and I think that Aria has been delivering babies for just as long,” Shannon said with a forced smile.
“I never knew I wanted a baby until I got pregnant, now I want him so much it hurts,” she admitted
“Him?” Shannon asked in confusion.
“Yes, only a guy would come this early and throw all my plans to hell,” she said with a forced laugh.
“Well if it is a little boy, what will we name him?” Shannon asked to distract her.
“I can’t think about that. What if I lose him?” she cried.
“You aren’t going to lose him and you have to quit talking like that. You need to be positive about this. You are going to give birth to a healthy baby boy and I want to know what we are going to call him.” Her words brought Grace some peace.
“Luke, we will name him Luke,” she said with conviction.
“Why?”
“It seems like a nice name, doesn’t it? The name of a guy you could trust,” she said with a smile.
“A guy you could trust not to knock you up during a one night stand in the middle of a nature preserve in Africa?” Shannon teased.
“Right?” Grace laughed.
“We are going to do right by this kid. Two moms has to be better than a dad, right?” Shannon asked with a serious look on her face.
“We better hope so, because it's the only option he has,” Grace said, taking comfort from Shannon’s support.
“What if it is a girl?” Shannon suddenly asked.
“It’s a boy,” Grace repeated. “I can feel it.”
“Well, OK then.”
Grace labored for many hard hours, but in the wee hours of the morning, the baby was finally born.
“Your son. Your beautiful son,” Aria said as she handed her the baby.
“He’s so big. How is he so big?” she asked in disbelief.
“I told you he was a healthy little thing,” Aria replied with a knowing look.
“Thank god,” Shannon said.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Grace argued. “I was so sure he would be too young, too small, but he is perfect. He looks like I carried him to term. I know I was only four months pregnant. It is not possible. He is a miracle.”
“There is certainly magic to it, Gracie girl,” Aria said as she patted her on the head.
“The whole thing has been other-worldly,” Grace murmured.
“There is a story that our people tell that I think you need to hear,” Aria said after Shannon drifted into an exhausted slumber.
“Tribal mothering techniques? I would love to. I worry that I’m not up to raising him here,” she said honestly.
“Oh, I’ll tell you those tales another time, child. This one dates back hundreds of years. It’s not a tale of mothers. It’s a tale of a father and of love and a curse.” Her eyes grew dark as she thought of the tale.
“Sounds like a story I should tell him one day,” sh
e said as she gestured to the child in her arms.
“Yes, you should. Are you up for it? Should I begin?” the old woman asked.
“Please do,” she nodded.
“Many moons ago, a group of sailors and their servant women made their way to these very lands searching for riches. They used our people and our land without care. They took all that they wanted, when they wanted. They were greedy and heartless. They did not honor the land or the sky. They saw the merit of things only in their value.
“In those days, there was a wise old chief who was blessed with the magic of nature. The gods saw that our people would need a defender and so they made sure that he was ready to face any evil that might come. The old chief cared very little about the sailors when they first arrived. They stayed some miles off at first and he saw no threat from them. It was not until they crept closer and closer to his village that he began to realize that life here would never be the same.
“Now this old chief had seven daughters, each more lovely that the one before. They were kind girls, skilled in the ways of life here. They were hard working girls, but romantic. Their father had been very much in love with their mother, you see, and they had come to expect nothing less from the men with whom they would share their lives. In the men of the village, they only saw a life of struggle. It was when the strangers arrived that they began to realize that they could have something more.
“The men, for their part, were enamored of the chief’s daughters. They were so capable, so strong. It didn’t hurt that they wore little more than animal skins, a far cry from the buttoned up women of their own society. Any one of the group would have gladly claimed one of these women for his own, but it was the group’s map maker who fell deeply in love with the chief’s eldest daughter. This young man was dashing, so the stories say. He had none of the brutish ways of his companions and it wasn’t long before the chief’s daughter loved him with all of her heart. Each night, they sneaked away from their camps and met at what we now call Dalton’s point.”
“Was Dalton his name?” Grace asked.
“Yes, child. He was a sensitive young man, not cut out for the seafaring, plundering life that he had landed in. Once he fell in love with Tanis, his thoughts were consumed by the life that he could have with her as his wife. If her father had approved, the story might have ended that way, with the map maker and the chief’s daughter building their own little hut and starting their life together, but the fates are not always that kind.
“The chief forbade his daughters to go near any of the sailors. He saw in all of them the wastefulness of their society. The women they seduced, the animals they killed for sport, and the land they destroyed in pursuit of their treasure were abhorrent to him. They killed lions by the dozens, for nothing more than sport. All of the locals looked on them with horror, but could do nothing for fear of retaliation.
“His daughter knew that there was no way that she could change his mind, so she decided to sacrifice all that she knew to leave with her sailor. It took her nearly a month to find the right night, one where the clouds covered the moon and allowed her to escape in darkness. She crept away, silently, without even bidding her father or sisters farewell. She knew that if she did, they would try to stop her and her heart demanded that she go.
“As soon as she got to the camp, her lover greeted her warmly. He had arranged with the ship’s captain to marry them as soon as she arrived. Within two hours of her flight from the village, she was happily consummating her marriage under the stars. She had a full heart, knowing that her whole future was ahead of her. They weren’t entirely sure what the next step would be, but they were desperately in love and sure that their love would help them conquer whatever was in store for them.
“When the chief realized that she was gone, he knew instinctively that she was with the sailors. In anger, he unleashed his magic upon everyone in their camp. Though he could not force his daughter to cast the sailor from her heart, he could ensure that she never left her ancestral lands. In his rage, he cursed all of those in the camp of the sailors to live half-lives. He damned them to live the other half of their lives as the lions they had so ruthlessly slaughtered.
“It is said that the sailors chose to stay on here. They moved their camp to the center of the driest part of the plains, sure that they would be left alone. There, their descendants have continued to live under their curse. They creep near the village when they can, leaving our women with child or killing our warriors to keep us vulnerable. So it has continued for centuries and so it continues now.”
“Aria, you can’t believe that,” Grace said in disbelief.
“It is the truth, child,” she insisted.
“It is a fiction. A folk tale to scare children into listening to their parents,” she rationalized.
“You need to heed my words,” she pushed.
“Why? It's a little late for me to listen to my parents. I just gave birth to the child of a
one-night stand in the wilds of Africa,” she joked to lighten the situation.
“Do not joke. You need to know this. It affects your son,” the woman insisted.
“I don’t understand,” she said, her brain muddled from exhaustion.
“Your child will be one of them. You’re going to be raising a cursed child,” she said plainly.
“Aria, I am too exhausted for this,” she implored.
“Rest now, child, but heed my words. You need to know that the road ahead of you will not be smooth,” the old woman said as she lifted the baby from her arms and returned him to his crib.
CHAPTER FOUR
Two days later, Grace and baby Luke were allowed to go home, though Aria made her promise that she would still bring the baby to see her once a week, just to be on the safe side since he had been born so early. There were no signs of ill health, but it made everyone involved more comfortable to know that Aria would keep looking after them.
Grace waited nervously for the woman to bring up the subject of the curse again, but she never did. She only fussed over Luke and his big blue eyes and sweet little face. After hearing her call him cursed, Grace had been half-afraid that the woman would refuse to help them, but she couldn’t imagine anyone being sweeter to a baby than Aria was to Luke.
Since the baby had made his arrival so early, Grace was worried about taking him home to her very unprepared hut, but Shannon told her that everything would be fine and she was really too exhausted to argue with her. She was surprised when Shannon pulled up in the jeep to pick them up, with a state-of-the-art car seat sitting in the back seat.
“How did you do that?” Grace gasped.
“What?” Shannon asked innocently.
“Get a car seat in the middle of the African desert!” she exclaimed.
“I am wounded that you don’t think I am capable of doing something as simple as acquiring a baby seat,” she said with all the insanity she could muster.
“How did you do it?” she pushed.
“A magician never reveals her secrets,” she replied with a mock bow. “Get in. If you think this is impressive, wait until you see what I did to your cabin.”
“What did you do?” she asked, wondering what she could have managed in just two days.
“I told you that everything would be OK.”
“That isn’t an answer,” she said warily.
“It is the only answer you are getting until we get you both home. We need to show him his home and I want to get there before dark.” With that, Shannon jumped behind the wheel and gestured to the passenger seat.
“Alright,” Grace mumbled. She crawled in the back seat with the baby, but was so tired that the motion of the jeep put them both right to sleep. She did not wake up until the brakes screeched in front of her hut.
However, it couldn’t really be called a hut anymore. It had nearly doubled in size, with a substantial addition connecting it to Shannon’s hut. She gasped aloud, sure that what she would find in the new room was a nursery for the baby,
though how Shannon could have accomplished it in such a short time, she had no idea.
Shannon couldn’t hold in her expression of glee as she led the way inside. Grace’s room was unchanged, with the exception of a new door in the portion of the cabin she used as a bedroom. Shannon did not speak, instead gesturing towards the door. When Grace opened it, with baby Luke held tightly to her chest, she was floored. The room was large, larger than either of their cabins had been before the addition. The walls were covered in shelves that held carvings of all of the animals that she and Shannon had studied from around the world. There was a large crib in the center of the space, filled with linens made of a patchwork of local fabrics and surrounded by netting. There were a few stuffed animals in the crib already, and a rocking horse in the corner. Next to it was a beautifully carved rocking chair and beyond that, an equally ornate changing table. It was fully stocked with everything from diapers to any medicines that a baby might need.
