pang and power

by Saintcrowe, Val

  It didn’t care.

  Eithan was overjoyed with the pregnancy. He started singing songs and telling stories to her flat belly every night, something she thought was silly but endearing. He knew better than to try to tell her to relax or take it easy. He knew her very well. He was a perfect match for her in so many ways. But he tried to do things for her when she would let him.

  “Why don’t you let me go and get books from the library for you?” he would say. “Why don’t you stay there and I’ll go and fetch you a drink?”

  She appreciated it. She felt more in love with him than ever as she watched him anticipate being a father, and she knew he was going to be the most giving and devoted father in the world. Thinking things like that made her cry, but then everything made her cry during those days.

  Absalom was delighted by her pregnancy, telling her that he thought it was the best thing in the world, teasing her at every opportunity.

  The months slid into each other, and her stomach swelled.

  She grew bigger and the air grew warmer, and she began to think that she should have planned out being pregnant for a more opportune time of the year, because she was going to be so very hot.

  The bigger she got, the more impossible it was to do anything.

  When she walked, she waddled. Sitting was impossible without pillows. Lying down was impossible without pillows. Everything hurt.

  Whenever she did manage to lie down, the baby began moving around inside her, something that was exciting and lovely but also made it dreadfully difficult to sleep.

  Eithan rubbed her back and made her put her swollen ankles up. He kissed her belly and told her she was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen, and she pulled pillows out from underneath her hips to hit him with because she knew he was lying.

  They talked about names and wondered if it was a girl or a boy.

  The voice was louder than ever. It was disgusted with her. To the voice, she was nothing now, nothing but a cocoon, a flesh container for another human. To the voice, any value she’d had had been wasted. She was common now. She’d succumbed to the madness and weakness of her sex. Isn’t that just like a woman, the voice taunted her.

  She was beginning to hate the voice.

  One warm spring afternoon, she began to feel rhythmic twinges in her pelvis. Her labor had started.

  It continued for days.

  In the dark, in the light, at noon, it went on and on, and just when she couldn’t bear it any more, it got worse.

  She remembered something Rhodes had told her, about her own mother’s labor, how it had gone on and on. Her mother had died bringing her into the world.

  Nicce knew she wouldn’t die. She had her light. She could heal herself, after all.

  Well, she was dreadfully tired. Maybe her light had gone out.

  She was too exhausted to be frightened.

  What she felt instead was a deep, empathetic bond with this poor woman who had brought her into the world, who had labored day and night just to birth her, and she lay on the floor in the room where she had been pacing and sobbed out how sorry she was for not understanding what her mother had gone through. She sobbed and sobbed and writhed on the floor.

  She hadn’t slept for three nights.

  She was beginning to think that she was going mad.

  And the worst of it was that she knew, on the other side of this, the voice would be waiting, and once the baby was born, she’d have no more excuses.

  She didn’t think she’d have the energy to push the baby out, but somehow she did, and then…

  Then…

  The baby girl was perfect. She had perfect tiny fingers and a small, upturned nose, and a shock of dark hair on her head, and she fit into Nicce’s arms perfectly.

  Nicce gazed at her, and she wasn’t sure what she felt. She was tired. She was so very, very tired. The baby seemed all right. She had impossibly small fingers and toes like the little twins she’d held all those months ago, but Nicce didn’t know.

  What she was primarily feeling was panic. How was she supposed to do this? How was she supposed to take care of this very small, very fragile little being?

  And then Eithan was there. He was charging through the room and saying something about how he didn’t think that men should be kept out of birthing chambers, and that if they ever did this again, nothing would keep him from her.

  She just blinked at him and then she held out the baby. “Here.”

  He stopped, his lips parting. “Oh,” he said in a different voice. “Oh.”

  “Take her.” She was begging him.

  He did, and he gaped at the little girl in his arms. She could see his face was transforming. He felt it, the thing she was supposed to be feeling, but she wasn’t feeling it.

  She wanted to sleep. She was a thread that was stretched too far. She was about to break.

  “I knew there was a baby,” Eithan was murmuring. “I knew, but somehow, I’m surprised. I…” He smiled helplessly at Nicce. “She’s ours. We… we did this.”

  “You love her,” Nicce said.

  “I adore her,” he said. “It’s a girl?”

  Nicce shut her eyes.

  Eithan’s lips on her forehead. “You are amazing,” he breathed.

  She struggled to open her eyes again.

  “I suppose you want her back.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s okay. You can hold her.” She felt done now. Very done. She knew there was more expected of her, but she couldn’t… no, just couldn’t.

  So, she watched as Eithan rocked the little girl and sang to her, and Nicce thought more about sleeping.

  But then the midwife said that the baby needed to nurse, and Nicce had to do that. “You,” she said to Eithan. “Out.”

  “I’ve seen my wife’s breasts before,” said Eithan. “I’m staying.”

  “He stays,” said Nicce, nodding. She needed him. He loved the baby. He could feel things that weren’t exhaustion, and he had to stay. She reached out her hand for him.

  He grasped it, squeezing tight. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  She looked up at him gratefully.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  They named the baby Ama, and she was as perfect a baby as a baby could be, and Nicce waited and waited and waited to feel even a fraction of the things she’d felt when she’d held Septimus’s babies in her arms, and it never seemed to come.

  Maybe it was because she didn’t seem to ever quite recover from the birth. There was never any sleep, not really. Just a few hours here and there, and she was at such a deficit. Nursing the baby hurt her breasts, and Ama was always crying, and she felt like her world was nothing but pain and exhaustion and screams.

  Eithan tried to help, of course, but there was only so much he could do, and the days went on and on, and surely someday soon she was going to fall in love with her baby, the way Eithan was already in love. Eithan sang to Ama and talked in a soft little voice and told her she was the most beautiful little girl in the world and kissed her on the tip of her nose and the top of her head.

  He never took his eyes off of her.

  Nicce was relieved that someone loved Ama, because she wanted the baby to be loved. She wanted the best for little Ama. She knew babies needed love, and that was why it was so very distressing that she didn’t seem to have any. She was hollow inside.

  Sometimes, when no one was looking, she cried.

  Hadn’t she always known she would be a terrible mother? She should have realized it wouldn’t go well. It was one thing to hold Septimus’s babies and love them. It was another thing entirely to go through this hell of a mutated, swollen painful body and then the agony of birthing the baby, and then being forced to have the tiny thing latched her nipples at all hours of the day and night and then—

  She couldn’t do this.

  And then the voice began to speak up. Hadn’t she promised that she would go and do her important thing, whatever her stupid important thing was, after birthing the bab
y?

  Well, the baby was birthed, and it was quite obvious that she would never be able to be a proper mother, so she needed to go and do something else, do something she could actually be good at.

  But Ama needed fed and who else but her mother would feed her?

  She knew that queens and ladies sometimes had wet nurses, but she was no queen.

  Even still, she was empty inside.

  She wanted to love Ama, but she felt like a dark hole had opened up inside her at some point, maybe during the labor, or maybe before… she didn’t know. Anyway, the dark hole had sucked up her insides, and now she was only a shell of a woman. She was nothing.

  If she did try to leave, she couldn’t fight. She was too fat and out of shape to be a proper opponent.

  But she couldn’t be a mother. She was missing the internal workings that were required for such things.

  So, she decided that she would have to have a wet nurse. She didn’t tell Eithan that she wanted one because of her impending departure—Eithan wouldn’t like it, but he’d be better off without her too. He would want a real woman, capable of being what he needed, not… not whatever she was. So, she told him that she wanted the wet nurse because she wasn’t making enough milk.

  Eithan didn’t argue with her about it, but when the baby was with the wet nurse, he found her in the weapons room of the keep, testing the weight of a sword in her hands.

  He leaned against the doorway, and he knitted his brow together. “What are you doing with a sword?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I tried. But I need to fulfill my destiny, and I can’t stay here with you anymore.”

  He stood up straight, and he looked stricken. “Wait. What? You’re leaving?”

  She spread her hands. “I said I would. You said you would stay with the babies while I went on quests.”

  “It’s been weeks, Nicce. Your godstaken vagina still has stitches in it. You can’t seriously—”

  “Shut up.” She gripped the hilt of her sword. “Don’t talk about my… like that.”

  “Oh, pardon me.” He was sarcastic. “That’s the problem here, of course. My saying that word. Not that you’ve lost your mind.”

  “I have a thing to do, Eithan, an important—”

  “You have a daughter to take care of.”

  “You can do it.” Now, a sob was welling up within her. “I told you I’d be bad at this.”

  “Bad at…?” He dragged a hand over his face. “I have no idea where any of this is coming from. Please, put that down and talk to me.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about.” Because if she started talking, she would start crying.

  “Is this about… the wet nurse? Are you worried about not producing enough milk, because—”

  “No, I’m not worried about that.”

  “No,” he said, realization dawning. “You wanted the wet nurse so that you could leave. You’re serious about this.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ll understand, but it’s better this way. You’ll see.”

  He sighed. “Listen, we’ve both been deprived of sleep, and neither of us may be thinking clearly—”

  “Why are you deprived of sleep?” she snarled. “You don’t have to wake and feed her.”

  “You think I don’t wake up when she cries? Besides, sometimes, you don’t wake, and I’ll take her and walk with her until she quiets.”

  “I always wake up,” she snapped. Didn’t she?

  “It’s all right,” he said. “I can bear that easily. Perhaps, if it’s too much for you, you should allow me to walk with her more often.”

  “You can walk with her all you want after I’m gone.”

  “Stop talking about leaving. You can’t go anywhere.”

  “I can do anything I please. Sun and bones, Eithan.” She crossed to the doorway, trying to push past him.

  He caught her by the arm. “Look at me, love. Please. You are in no shape to leave. You think I would let you walk out of this keep when you haven’t recovered from bearing our child? You think I wouldn’t stop you?”

  “Try it.” She yanked her arm out of his grasp. She brought up the sword she was holding, pointing the tip at him.

  “For the sake of the gods.” He was in disbelief.

  She backed away, keeping the sword pointed at him.

  “Nicce, please,” he said.

  She knew she’d never best him in a fight, not like this. She was fat and tired and still in pain, and he’d beat her. It wouldn’t be a contest. So, she waited, and she hid, until it was dark.

  And then she left.

  * * *

  She went east, all the way through Yailand, and she found an abandoned temple that had once been built to Phir. There were drawings on the walls, pictures of cutting open a heart that bled out bright light. She didn’t know what they meant, but she wondered if that the was the key. Maybe it was her heart, her light, maybe she needed to sacrifice herself after all.

  This had all started with her as a sacrifice.

  She’d evaded that.

  But now, perhaps, it was time.

  When she left the temple, Absalom was there.

  “Eithan thought you’d go to temples,” said Absalom. “It was just luck that I came to this one first.”

  “What are you doing here?” she said.

  He was dressed like a Knight of Midian, with his armor and his shield and sword. His long hair was tangled around his face and he ran a hand through it as he looked her over. Outside the temple, the sun was shining brightly and the grass and weeds grew all and wild around the ruins.

  “Eithan wanted to come after you,” said Absalom. “But I stopped him. You know Eithan. Taking responsibility for everything. He impregnated you, so therefore all of this was his doing. It was clearly his fault that you’d lost your mind. I could just see him here, on his knees, begging for your forgiveness for ever wanting you, for ever kissing you, for ever taking you to bed. And that’s not what you need right now.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you, Absalom,” she said, and she walked past him, picking her way through the overgrown path towards where she’d left her horse. The horse was tied to a tree. She could see it from here. Absalom’s horse was tied up next to it.

  Absalom caught up with her and took her by the shoulder. He turned her to face him. “You told me that you didn’t want to be a mother—”

  “I thought I wanted it,” she said. She clenched her hands into fists. “I still want it. I want her. But…” Her eyes filled with tears. She turned away from him and started walking again, but slower, trudging along, and talking at the same time. “I told you about this feeling I always had. That I was meant for something.”

  “To kill the gods, yes. And I told you it was mad,” he said. “But then you did it.”

  “Sort of,” she said.

  “You also said you never felt as if it was enough, no matter what you did. So, it doesn’t sound like a feeling to me, Nicce, it sounds like a compulsion.”

  She felt off balance. “Maybe.”

  “And now it’s not the gods, it’s something else,” he said, falling into step with her.

  She looked up at him. “I think the gods were going to leave us alone anyway. I think it was for nothing. And it doesn’t matter what I did, because they’ve left behind so many immortal people, and we’ll all live forever, and we all know that people who live forever go mad.”

  “We don’t know that,” said Absalom.

  She turned on him, gesturing with her hands. “Look at what happened to the gods. They were people—like us—just with a little different pedigree, and they all turned into monsters.”

  Absalom hung his head. “We’ll be different. We were hurt, and so we won’t hurt others.”

  “I’m not sure that’s the way it works,” said Nicce. “Can you honestly tell me Ciaska was never hurt?”

  Absalom shifted on his feet. “I did feel sorry for her sometimes, but she…” He sighed. “Nicce, this is a thing best no
t delved into. Cease to think of this. No good comes from thinking of this.”

  “You said something like this to me before,” she said. “But I don’t agree with you. It’s a problem, and problems need solved, and I need…” She thrust both of her hands into her hair. “There’s a voice, Absalom,” and now she was whispering. “It told me I had to do this. It told me not to be a stupid breeding cow of a woman, and I didn’t listen, and now it won’t let me love her, not the way I wanted to… Sun and bones, never mind.” She was crying now. She started again for her horse.

  Absalom didn’t catch up to her until she was sobbing freely and trying to untangle the rope that tied up the horse.

  “You’re not stupid,” he said softly. “And you’re nothing like a cow.”

  “I have to fix this,” she said. “I have to fix the world.”

  Absalom laughed. “The world? You’re serious.”

  “Feteran. I made him king, and he’s never going to die.”

  “He could die. If Feteran is the problem, how about I solve that for you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll kill him myself.”

  “You can’t simply—”

  “Why not?”

  “Because that’s…. It’s already starting, don’t you see? You think you’re some kind of all-powerful being who can play around with people’s lives.”

  “I think I’m all-powerful?” Absalom gaped at her. “You’re the one who wants to cut short the lives of everyone I love. Eithan says you’d do it without even asking if we wanted it.”

  “Immortality will corrupt—”

  “Why is it your job?”

  Her shoulders sagged.

  “Nicce, I don’t think this is about immortality. You know it’s not.” Absalom took her hand and pulled it against his chest. “Come home with me. Come home to Eithan. Come home to your daughter.”

  “I can’t.” She dissolved into tears.

  “You can.”

  “No. You don’t understand. Something in me is broken, and I need to fix this first.”

  “You need to fix the world first?”

  She let out a loud sob.

  “Do you understand how that sounds?” He pulled her into his arms.