Brood of Bones

by A. E. Marling

  Mister Obenji left the room to confer with Deepmand. I gestured Maid Janny to lift the coverings, and I observed that Sri’s hip was well splinted. A mass of bloating purple skin still protruded from her side, rivaling her pregnancy in size.

  Sri touched her lips with thick-jointed fingers. “Hiresha, what do you think of Mister Obenji? Is he not dashing?”

  “He seems competent.”

  “Yes, but is he potent?” Sri cackled.

  “While under the poppy’s influence, you should endeavor to speak as little as you can. To maintain your dignity.”

  “I’ve had enough dignity for four lifetimes,” she said. “I winked at him. Do you think he noticed?”

  “You did not wink.”

  “I did so. Five times.”

  “Those were most decidedly blinks.”

  “It takes practice,” Janny said and displayed a most inappropriate lowering of the eyelid. “I’ll help you learn.”

  “You will do nothing of the kind, Maid Janny. Lady Sri, once you are healed, I must insist you walk with a cane. In fact, I will require all mothers over sixty to do so.” I grew conscious of my own cane, which would place me in the same class as grandmothers. “Make that two canes each, one for each hand, to prevent falls.”

  “I didn’t fall,” Sri said.

  “Of course you did.”

  “Only after my leg broke. It cracked while I was walking, then I fell.”

  “Your pregnancy clearly has diverted too much blood from your brain. You fell first.” I had never heard of someone breaking her leg while walking. I wondered if it was possible that the unchild had so leached Sri’s bones of mineral to strengthen its own twisted skeleton that she could no longer withstand her own weight.

  Leaving the sickroom, I heard Deepmand speaking to Mister Obenji. “...she does appreciate the work you’ve done. Only, she prefers everything just as envisioned, and understand the stress she’s under.”

  “I see.” Mister Obenji pivoted to face me. “Ah, Lustrous Elder Enchantress, you will doubtless wish to retire now in the east wing.”

  “I would rather not.” In the east wing waited the rooms of my never-family.

  “Was there another room you wished to see first?”

  “No.”

  “I would recommend the gardens, were it not night.”

  As if under a spell of compulsion, I followed Mister Obenji’s turban into the east wing. My bluish light pushed the darkness back, revealing a door set with a misty green stone, the room of Chrysoprase, my daughter, who would be my greatest happiness in life. I wondered if an opportunity would ever come for me to bring her into existence, or if she would remain worse than dead: an unborn.

  I had already picked names for my progeny, as well as planned them the happy childhoods and lives that I had never had. Now, walking past their empty rooms, I felt my hopes for them being ripped away.

  Using my cane to drag myself forward, I shuddered as I passed a door with a magenta gem, the room that would have to belong to my firstborn son, Beryl. Next, a stone the hue of fire glinted from the wooden portal to Carnelian’s room; her beauty would have brought her fame. Last came a stone of grey ripples, where Agate would have grown up, his depth of intelligence lofting him to rule.

  With each year spent attempting to cure my somnolence, I dwindled closer to barrenness. Insufficient time might remain for courtship and raising a family. Time was kidnapping my children, one by one.

  My legs lost their ability to move, while a coldness spread outward from my abdomen, numbing everything. I felt the urge to flee to my dream and carve gems in isolation for days.

  Past the four, jeweled rooms, the door to my chambers yawned open. The master bed inside was terrible in its broadness. Mister Obenji touched the silk sheets and spoke, yet I could not hear him, my mind grating and screeching from the opportunities of my life closing.

  In a corner of the room hung a contraption of rope and beams, as if ready to assist my suicide. I was familiar with this harness; it supported me in silk shackles while I slept partially reclined, sitting on an ottoman. I could not lie down in any bed in my gowns, and dressing and undressing would take an hour from my already short days.

  My eyes swung from the expanse of bed and its hoard of pillows to the hanging rack of the harness, and my mind yelled at me to flee. When I tried to retreat, my gowns trapped me. I whirled halfway around then capsized. Maid Janny lunged to support me, herself teetering in the blinding disorder of my dresses, until Deepmand seized and righted us both.

  “I cannot stay here,” I said. “Deepmand, the carriage. I need the carriage.”

  “Elder Enchantress?”

  “I must leave at once, to, to check on Alyla. Yes, she was sick, and she invited me to stay at the Chandur residence as their guest. I will accept. To do otherwise would be unadulterated baseness.”

  I gained the safety of the carriage before losing control. Tears flooded my face. Maid Janny appeared to wish to hug me, yet fortunately my gowns prevented her from coming close; she contented herself with holding my arm and patting my cheeks dry every few seconds.

  Finding myself in my laboratory, I realized I must have fallen asleep. Suddenly clear of mind, I saw that I could not stay at the Chandur address, as it would allow for too many unbecoming implications.

  I rapped the carriage. “What induced you to disturb the night with these trotting horses? Most negligent of you.”

  “My apologies, Elder Enchantress. I would be happy to return you to your manor.”

  “Do. And, Maid Janny, I will take my repose in the smallest of guest rooms.”

  I felt I needed sixteen hours of sleep to recover, yet tomorrow morning I would receive reports on the mass pregnancies in the God’s Eye Court. Then I would learn whether or not I was pitted against a god.

  Day Five, Third Trimester

  Five hundred bulging, bobbing abdomens poked their belly buttons out at me as I stood at the center of the court and of the city. The expecting women surrounded me, their fleshy protrusions blocking any attempt to escape.

  Tall women stooped over their bellies, while short women leaned back. Women of bountiful bodies carried their pregnancy proudly and naturally. Those women who had done less than their duty at the dining table stood awkwardly, their bellies swelling as if they had swallowed a teapot. Some boasted stretch marks, and all had amber skin with the luster of motherhood.

  The acolytes had arranged the mothers by age, and I felt a strong twinge of concern for the youngest, those wobble-legged girls between twelve and fifteen, who wiped their noses every minute and looked lost behind their bellies.

  The sight of the grandmothers made me feel wretched. They tottered about with the canes I had required of them, and many acolytes assisted by holding them by the shoulder. Their bellies hung below their bent walk, pregnancies weighing them down as if stones filled their wombs.

  After surveying the five hundred women, I sat on my ottoman. Then I leaned forward on my cane and descended into sleep. In my laboratory, I analyzed the girth of the bellies relative to the women’s age, height, and weight, determining the vast majority to be close to their third trimester. The consistency frightened me because I would expect it of the Ever Always, the god’s will manifested without pause or exception.

  I awoke to see that the acolytes had replaced the first women with a second sample of five hundred, taken from throughout the city. After observation, I returned to my laboratory, noting whispered conversations I overheard as I drifted to sleep.

  “Hope this doesn’t take much longer. These days I pass more water than a bridge.”

  “Having many nightmares?”

  “Yes, but I had them with Falipa, too.”

  “I keep reminding father it was the Ever Always seeded me. He still hits me.”

  “He has no right to that, and I’ll tell him so. Had to be a god what done this. Even my rhinoceros of a brother couldn’t have gotten between all these legs.”

  “Do y
ou think something might be wrong?”

  “Why would it? This babe is part of the divine plan.”

  “Yes, but I thought the enchantress frowned at me.”

  “She might’ve scowled, a bit.”

  “Must be on account of her being the Flawless. Gems can’t keep her as warm in bed as a man.”

  “See how her head bows as she thinks? She looks so wise.”

  “She’s speaking to the gods, she is.”

  The scene in the mirror changed, black lengths of hair draping of many different lengths. The feminine oils produced in pregnancy richened hair quality, and, as I knew that hair grew an average of a half-inch a month, I could estimate the women’s date of conception by analyzing their locks. I determined that most were between day eighty of their second trimester and day six of their third. I could not be certain whether they had all conceived in the same hour, in the same instant, or over the span of a few weeks.

  Although I would expect no more than a quarter of Morimound’s women to be fertile in any given week, even mothers in their prime, a full seventy-one percent of them appeared to have been seeded in a short span of time.

  In the following two months, the incidence of pregnancies rose to ninety-seven percent. I believed that every woman before me was pregnant now, although those of lesser width had been carrying their child for only a few months or less.

  The variation gave me some solace; I did not see why a god would delay his will. Anomalies suggested more of men and their magic, elements with which I could contest, and these inconsistencies might grant clues to the origin of the spellcraft and the thinking of its user.

  I awoke to say, “Present those mothers who have miscarried in the last year.”

  The acolytes checked their clay tablets, called out names, and ushered about ninety women onto the court’s marble. Their bellies extended to a lesser degree than average and not past their breasts.

  “These women must have miscarried five months or more ago, to be obviously pregnant again now,” I said. “Did any others lose their children in the last three months?”

  “Not that we found, Lustrous and Elder Enchantress. Some women in that time, regretfully, passed into the goddess’ eight arms.”

  His mention of the deceased singed me like a spark landing on my arm.

  I judged that those who had miscarried had done so in the same period when the rest had become pregnant, and they quickly got with child again. Whatever had caused this fertile epidemic had seen fit to terminate natural pregnancies and replace them with the supernatural. Or perhaps it was not intentional but a mere corollary of the power that had affected all the women simultaneously. Both possibilities seemed ominous.

  Physical beatings seemed to have had no effect on the pregnancies. I studied several women with inflamed cuts caused perhaps by belt buckles and others marked with blue, yellow, and purple bruises.

  I imagined myself having grown in a family way as a girl, being whipped bloody by my father and punched by my brothers in attempts to shake loose my shame and save my bride price. One woman had a belly entirely discolored, the skin puffy with black blood and green pus, as if she had slammed herself against a wall to kill the bony child inside her, who refused to die.

  Maybe the unchildren could not die. Maybe they were the progeny of a god.

  Sweat trickled down my arms, turning my gloves sodden. I felt too hot to keep air in my lungs and had to pant to avoid passing out.

  “Are there…have you found any women in this city who are not pregnant?”

  “None of the girls eleven or younger are, Lustrous and Elder Enchantress.”

  “The Fate Weaver has spared them, at least,” I said.

  The acolyte consulted his tablet. “One out of four women in Stilt Town are without child, and most of the muddies who live beyond that are as slim as rice reeds.”

  “Kindly dispense with the similes, young man.”

  “Er, I’m sorry, Lustrous and Elder Enchantress. We believe not all the women in the city have, I mean, some have not....”

  “This is no blushing matter,” I said. “Out with it.”

  “Yes, well, I’ve heard a few are not pregnant, but we didn’t find any when collecting this thousand.”

  An acolyte beside him said, “There’s always Yellow-Back’s daughter.”

  “The ‘Yellow-Back?’” I feared I had heard him wrong.

  “Oh, I meant Priest Salkant of the Fate Weaver. Everyone knows his daughter has kept her purity.”

  “You should refrain from speaking of your betters, except with their proper titles.”

  “Yes, Lustrous and Elder Enchantress.”

  Blood pounded in my head with excitement at the thought that Priest Salkant’s daughter had escaped the fate of so many. This meant something, and I hoped to discern what with a visit to his estate, today.

  “Acolytes, group the women by proximity of residence.”

  Amid the hubbub of reorganization, my gaze wandered up the overgrown terraces of the Garden Ziggurat. Priest Abwar had kept his promise to redden its steps with blood.

  The sacrificed oxen roasted in bonfires at the base of the ziggurat, and acolytes of the Ever Always served the meat to the assembled women, who ate with fingers slick with fat. The mothers stood before me now, this time arranged by residence.

  As soon as my slippers lifted above the diamond dais in my dream laboratory, I saw a pattern. Women belonging to wealthier families displayed less of a swell from crotch to ribs; those who lived higher up the hill of Morimound had become pregnant later than the rest, by an average of a month.

  The mass pregnancies appeared to act like a flood, reaching those lower in the city first and then rising upward. I remembered Priest Salkant’s warning of the Seventh Flood, as well as how Sri described a nightmare in which the flood came as something more dangerous than water.

  As frightening as childbirth was, I preferred its danger to that of a real flood, and the pattern did not fit in other ways. Many of the poorest, those who lived among the mud of Stilt Town, had not become pregnant, although a true flood would have drowned them first.

  Blinking my eyes in the sunlight, I said in a resigned tone, “Last, I must know if any of the women have quickened.”

  “Some believe...a few would like to think they’ve felt their child move.” The acolyte clutched his tablet as if it were a shield.

  A sigh shuddered out of me, and I rested my forehead on my gloved palm. Those who hesitantly said they felt their child move might have confused the sensation with gas traveling through the intestines, and I was beginning to accept that their wombs all bristled with bones.

  I needed to help them, somehow. First, however, I had promised to attend Sri the Once Flawless.

  The carriage had rolled its golden wheels to the edge of the court, where the women flocked to peer at the white horses, some petting their braided manes. Deepmand beckoned the women to clear a path for me.

  With a clomp of hooves, the carriage passed between parks of hanging vines and plots of jasmine, toward my estate, where I hoped to find a Bright Palm healing Sri. I realized that if he did not, I would have to fight for her one life with my magic, at a time I most needed to focus on saving the lives of many.

  I felt immoral appreciating the spectacle of my estate. Although I kept my gaze down, I could not help but hear the bees and glimpse the reds of my hibiscus gardens. Nor could I avoid the agony of the marble splendor of the stair in the entrance hall, or daylight streaming onto gilded hand railings from windows with diamond-shaped panes.

  “Mister Obenji,” I asked, “has the Bright Palm arrived?”

  “A boy has been sent to escort him here, Elder Enchantress Hiresha.”

  “Excellent. Now, if the Bright Palm asks, you must attest that Lady Sri is fifty-eight years old.”

  “Why, the Lady Sri is even younger than I thought.”

  “Do not persuade me of your senility, Mister Obenji. She is seventy-four. However, the Bright Palm c
annot know it, or he will not heal her.”

  “He would let such a lady die? Have they no mercy?”

  “Bright Palms lack all feeling and act in accordance with a set of tenets. They heal neither the elderly, nor the rich.”

  “I admit, Elder Enchantress Hiresha, I feel a measure of apprehension.”

  “I have planned what to say. You need only support me.”

  “And I will do so gladly,” he said. “Ah, I believe I see the Bright Palm on the path.”

  I squinted out the window into the gardens, yet even after rubbing my eyes, I failed to distinguish the Bright Palm from the gardeners.

  Mister Obenji adjusted his turban and strode out the doors. “Greetings, Lustrous Bright Palm, and welcome to Sunchase Hall.”

  A man wearing sackcloth halted his march before the steps leading up to the doors. His fingertips glowed. “I must go no farther,” he said. “Anyone living in such a prison of decadence could have no use of my blessing. I would not doom their soul to more years of luxury.”

  His slack gaze fell on me, and he spoke in his monotone.

  “Hope remains for even your most stifled of souls, Hiresha of Morimound. Liberate yourself of wealth. The Order of the Innocent will accept its burden for you. Then you may receive my blessing.”

  “It is not I who needs healing, Bright Palm. My destitute guest is dying.”

  Mister Obenji said, “You must help her. She would not even have the coin for a funeral.”

  “This woman, she is a relative?”

  “No,” I said, “and her family would not accept her. She is cast out and without support.”

  The Bright Palm took the stair’s first step then paused. “She has your support, and you are condemned.”

  “She may stay under this roof,” Mister Obenji said, “but she is fed only rice and beans.”

  “I promise to throw her out onto the streets,” I said, “at the first available opportunity.”