The Ancestor

by Danielle Trussoni

  “But Ciba can’t name her,” I said. “Ciba is gone. You have to do it.”

  Aki looked so forlorn, so lost with grief, that I said nothing more. I understood that his silence was not indifference, but his way of expressing the pain he felt over losing Ciba. His rejection of his daughter was an act of mourning, one that took the opposite form of my own grief: I wanted to spend every minute with the baby. Ciba had given her life for this child, and I would care for her as if she were my own.

  I named her Isabelle. If the tribe called her something different, I never knew it. Aki could not bear to have her near, and so Isabelle slept in Uma’s hut, in a wooden box lined with fur. In her first days of life, I spent every minute with her, anxious that she would fall sick. I wrapped her tight in a blanket, so that she felt warm and secure, and held her close to me when she cried. I watched for signs of illness. She was strong at birth, and remained healthy for the first days, but soon began to grow weak. She needed nutrition, and there was no milk. Uma soaked a towel with warm goat’s milk and put it to Isabelle’s lips, but she wouldn’t take it. She began to grow thin.

  “There is no other way,” Uma said, gesturing to my breast. “You are her mother now. You must feed her or she will die.”

  Uma lifted my tunic and positioned Isabelle at my breast, guiding the tiny mouth to my nipple. “You love this child,” she said. “You will keep her alive.” Of course, it wasn’t possible to feed Isabelle. When I said as much, Uma replied, “It is possible. I have seen it before. Hold her. Sing to her. Keep her at your breast. Milk will come.”

  At Uma’s urging, I slept on a cot near Isabelle, waking every few hours to bring her to my breast. It was Isabelle’s instinct to nurse, and so she latched on and began to suck at my flesh, desperate for milk that did not arrive. She cried with frustration and hunger. It struck me as a futile endeavor. The very idea seemed absurd. Surely, there were hormones and chemicals swirling through a mother’s body that I simply did not have. Uma made teas from mountain herbs, and I drank them religiously, but they did nothing. Isabelle would cry, and—more out of desperation than belief—I would try again, praying that Uma was right, and that my body would comply with Isabelle’s needs. Some nights, I would hold her for hours at a time, rocking her, as she cried herself to sleep; I would whisper her name when she woke, calming her in my arms, bringing her to my breast. Days passed like this, and Isabelle grew weaker and weaker, her voice becoming no more than a whimper.

  I saw her small body diminish, the tiny ribs becoming visible through her pale skin, her arms and legs like twigs, her tongue dry and white. The horror of watching Isabelle wither cast an ominous shadow over my thoughts. I slept very little, and when I did, I was haunted by dreams of Ciba. Always, in every dream, I lifted Isabelle from Ciba’s arms, carrying her away from her mother as if just for a moment, no more than a quick walk around the village. There was no blood. No scalpel. Just a simple exchange—I took Isabelle; Ciba kissed us both and then ran into the blackberry bushes alone. I interpreted this dream as Ciba’s blessing to love and protect Isabelle.

  One night, I was asleep on the cot, when I heard Isabelle crying. I woke, pulled myself out of bed, and went to her. I was used to waking up every few hours. The thin towels we used for diapers soaked through easily, leaving Isabelle wet and uncomfortable, needing to be changed many times a night. But when I went to the box, Isabelle was not there. I walked through the hut, looking for her, but there was only Anna, asleep at the far side of the room. A slap of fear stopped me cold. I imagined an animal sneaking into the hut, perhaps a wolf, sliding past my cot, taking my child in her teeth, and dragging her away. I understood with a terrible clarity the anguish Greta must have felt upon discovering Joseph missing. I felt a deep, instinctual longing for Isabelle, a physical need to have her against me, to feel the compact warmth of her, to see her hard, glimmering eyes, to hear her pink lips sucking at my body. This longing—this unbreakable connection between me and my child—was stronger than anything I had known before—stronger than hunger, stronger than pain. Even stronger than the loss of my own child. I was not Isabelle’s biological mother, but nature had made me her mother anyway.

  Isabelle cried again, and I followed the sound outside, just beyond the hut, where she lay cradled in Uma’s arms.

  “She woke up,” Uma said. “You are tired, Kryschia. You didn’t hear her.”

  I was so relieved that Isabelle was safe, so exhausted and emotionally unsettled from the weeks of watching her die, that tears came to my eyes. “Give her to me,” I said, taking Isabelle in my arms.

  But something had caught Uma’s eye. She stared at me, her brow furrowed, as if she were not quite sure she could believe what she saw. I looked down and found my tunic wet. My breasts had swollen with milk and leaked. I gasped, overwhelmed by joy and confusion as Uma lifted my tunic and placed Isabelle at my breast. The milk came slowly, but Isabelle was soon full.

  For many years after I left the village, I believed that the milk that saved Isabelle was a miracle. How else to explain such an impossible gift? But recently, after doing research online, I found that lactation without pregnancy is not impossible, and that in certain parts of the world where maternal mortality is high, it is still common for an adoptive mother to breastfeed. Certain natural protocols—all of which Uma had known—could produce milk and save a motherless baby.

  With regular feeding, Isabelle grew stronger and stronger. But even as Isabelle thrived, Anna drifted further away from the world of the living. I sat by Anna’s bedside, Isabelle at my breast, and tried to coax the girl back to health. I told her stories of dragons and princes and castles tucked into the mountains. I sang songs and asked her questions about her parents. But she rarely gave a sign that she heard me. She never smiled and she never spoke. If I brought her food—roasted vegetables and milk from the goats—she refused it. She took a bite or two of meat, if I brought it from the grotto, but it didn’t help. She grew thin and pale as she wasted away. If I said her name, she turned away. Her only expression was a solemn, shocked stare, numb and terrified. She grew listless and dull-eyed. I wasn’t sure if it was the broken arm or her terror of Uma, but her suffering had slowly begun to undo her.

  Uma made medicines from herbs, distillations of mountain flowers and grasses that she gave Anna to drink. They had no effect. By the end of the first month of Isabelle’s life, Anna eyes were glassy and unfocused, her skin pale and clammy. When I brought the other children to see her, a flicker of interest played over her face, but when Uma stepped near the bed with water, terror flitted through her eyes and she faded away again. Uma tried her best to heal Anna, but her best wasn’t good enough. I knew Anna would not live long unless I got her real medical attention.

  Thirty-Five

  I woke in a panic, Isabelle’s cries ringing in my ears. I looked around the hut, ready to comfort her, but I had only imagined the crying. She slept soundly in her wooden box, a finger in her mouth. I pulled a blanket over her to shield her from the cool night air, when I saw that Uma’s and Anna’s beds were empty.

  Possible explanations flooded my mind—Anna had been nauseated and Uma had brought her outside for fresh air; Anna had to go to the bathroom and left the hut. But I knew that these scenarios were unlikely. Anna had been too sick to leave her bed. She couldn’t lift an arm, let alone walk. And besides, it was the middle of the night, the sky black and moonless—not the moment for Uma to take Anna outside. A sensation of dread filled my mind. Something terrible had happened.

  Carefully, so as not to wake her, I wrapped Isabelle in a blanket and walked outside, wandering through the darkness in search of Uma. But a strange silence met me as I walked through the village. The stone huts were dark and quiet and, as I peered into them, one by one, I saw that they were all empty. In fact, the entire village was empty. Not a voice to be heard. Not a fire burning in the fire pits. Not a person asleep in her bed. I held Isabelle close, feeling her warmth, smelling the sweet odor of her skin, wonder
ing what to do next.

  I was on my way back to the hut when I smelled something odd in the air. An acrid scent, like burning pine. Then a noise from above, a low rhythmic humming, half song, half moan. I strained to hear it, half believing it to be the distant bellow of an injured animal. But the more I listened, the more I knew that this strange sound was not an animal. It was not the wind. It was the low, rumbling vibration of human voices. The Icemen had gathered together and they were singing.

  Holding the baby close to my body, I climbed the long, steep path to the hot spring, then beyond, to the grotto, its wall of crystals shimmering black in the darkness. The tribe was not there but somewhere above, where the evergreen trees thinned to rock and sky. I had never climbed beyond the grotto, and it took some time to find my way through the tangled branches of trees, but I followed the sound of voices, and soon the air thickened with skeins of gray smoke. Finally, holding Isabelle tight, I hoisted myself over the ledge of a rocky promontory and emerged onto the flat of a stone plateau.

  I found the tribe gathered around a bonfire. I had been right. Anna was dead, her body laid out on a pallet near the fire. Dressed in animal skins, with wildflowers woven into her hair, she looked more peaceful in death than she had in the weeks I had known her. I felt overwhelmed by regret and sadness. I had promised to take her away from there, and to reunite her with her family, and now it was too late.

  I moved closer to the bonfire, transfixed by the spectacle. Half naked and chanting, dancing and drunk and frantic, the Icemen had worked themselves into a kind of fervor. Even the children—Oryni, Laya, Saba, and Xyra, whose hair I brushed and whose clothes I mended, who had taught me their language and treated me like a sister—were wild with a frightful energy. Perhaps demons inhabited me as well, because I couldn’t turn away.

  “Drink this,” Uma said, coming to my side. She gave me a bowl. I took a long sip of a bitter and herbal liquid. A chemical rush moved through me as I finished and gave the bowl back to Uma.

  “What are they doing?” I asked, gesturing to the dancing.

  “We are calling our ancestors,” she said. “We will ask them to take the child.”

  “You’ll bury her up here?”

  “After our ancestors accept her,” she said, glancing at the bonfire, “she will burn.”

  My gaze returned to Anna, her long, fine hair gleaming in the light. Tears filled my eyes, tears of sadness, but also of anger. Her death was a terrible crime. I thought of what her parents must feel, never knowing what happened to her. I thought of what Greta felt after losing Joseph. Aki and Jabi had killed this child, and I had allowed it to happen.

  “You must never take another child from below,” I told Uma. “Speak to the others. Tell them I won’t allow it. Tell them it is wrong. If you promise to stop, I will help you survive. I’ll bring you medicine and supplies. Everything you need. I promise. But you can never bring another child here.”

  Uma looked at me, her eyes wide with surprise and, I thought, relief. “I will tell them,” she said.

  Just then, Aki saw us from across the fire and approached. He had been dancing, and sweat glistened on his skin in the flickering light. “Give her to me,” he said, gesturing to the baby. A shot of fear spiked through me, an instinctual need to keep her away from the fire.

  Isabelle gazed at Aki with her enormous blue eyes, assessing her father.

  “He won’t harm her,” Uma said, touching my arm. “It is our custom to welcome a child this way.”

  “Be careful,” I said, as Aki scooped her from me. He turned to the others and lifted her into the air, as if making an offering. As they cheered and called out Isabelle’s name, Uma took Isabelle from Aki, twirled her around, then handed her to Oryni, who kissed her and gave her to another pair of hands that passed her to another, then another. In this fashion, Isabelle made her way around the fire, moving from person to person, shared between the tribe like one of the bowls of meat in the grotto.

  I watched her rise and fall with their movements, alarmed by her proximity to the fire, ready to pull her away if she was in danger, but also moved by the tenderness with which each member of the tribe held her. They cherished her, this new member of their community, treated her as something precious and rare. I tried to imagine what her life would be like there, among the Icemen, playing in the hot spring with the other children, or feasting in the grotto, but I couldn’t. Isabelle was not my flesh and blood, and Aki and his tribe had more right to raise her than I, and yet I felt a deep, maternal need to save her from them. With Anna lying dead at my feet, and the number of their children who survived into adulthood being so few, the very idea of giving Isabelle over to them seemed, suddenly, a terrible risk.

  What happened next seems incredible, and even now, after so much time has passed, I struggle to find the words to explain it. There are evenings, when Isabelle is asleep in her room and I am alone by the fire, that I try to reconstruct the madness of the tribal dance and the chanting, the clapping and stomping, the serenity of Anna’s frozen features bearing down on me, but the memories turn through me like a cyclone, whirling and whirling, so that, try as I might, I cannot see it clearly. I could blame it on the drink Uma had given me, and it is possible that some hallucinogenic herb altered my senses, twisting my vision so that I saw and felt what I did. But if I am honest with myself, I know that what I saw that night was real.

  It began as a wisp of smoke from the fire, the slightest tendril of movement. I thought it was the heat distorting the air, or perhaps the wind in my eyes. But then, the smoke coalesced, and a figure stepped from the flames, a man dressed in clothes of another era—a brown suit and a white silk cravat. It was Leopold, his face as saturnine as the picture in the portrait gallery. I stared, awed by this vision, when his parents, Alberta and Amadeo, appeared by his side, and then their parents. The twins, Guillaume and Giovanni, and my great-great-grandparents Eleanor and Ambrose, and then the first Montebiancos, Frederick and Isabelle. My parents appeared from the smoke, and then my grandmother Marta, but when I stepped to them, they slipped through my hands. There were others I didn’t recognize, the ancestors of Aki and Uma and Jabi and Isabelle, the ancient human beings who had lived and died in those mountains, the Ice Giants who banished the Icemen from their palaces. They stood together, joining the circle around Anna. They had come, I understood, to bless us.

  And while our reunion was brief, and they faded into the fire as quickly as they had emerged, I knew, as they vanished in the half-light, that they were not gone. I carried them in my body. My ancestors lived in my bones and in my blood, in the connections of my nervous system, and in the unreachable recesses of my consciousness. They would always be with me, even when I was far away from that mountain. From the moment I was born, they had accompanied me through life. And when I died, I would join them again.

  With the voices of my ancestors in my ears, and their blessing in my heart, I took Isabelle in my arms and—leaving the others to their delirious dance—held my daughter close and slipped away, gone before anyone knew we had left the village of the Icemen.

  Thirty-Six

  Vita had been so ill when I left that I half expected to find the northeast tower empty upon my return. But when I arrived, a fire smoldered in the fireplace, and Greta stood by Vita’s bedside, pouring one of Bernadette’s herbal remedies into a spoon.

  “Madame!” Greta said, looking from me to Isabelle wrapped in a blanket in my arms.

  “Is that Alberta?” Vita said. Her voice was weak, and she didn’t have the strength to lift herself up in bed, but it wasn’t too late: she was alive. “Alberta? Is that you?”

  “There’s someone I would like you to meet,” I said. Walking close to the bed, I held Isabelle before Vita. “This is Isabelle. Aki’s daughter. She is a descendant of Leopold.”

  “What a beauty,” Vita said, her eyes alight with pride.

  Greta looked at the baby, startled, and turned to go, but I stopped her. “Wait a minute, Greta,” I sa
id, feeling all the sadness of what I was about to tell her. “There is something you need to know.”

  “What is it, madame?”

  I pulled out the green Kindertheaterfestival T-shirt I had found in the village and gave it to her. She gasped with recognition. “He wore this the day he went missing,” she said. “Where did you find it, madame?”

  “In the mountains,” I said softly.

  “The mountains,” Greta echoed, scrunching the T-shirt into a ball in her hands. “Where in the mountains?”

  “Far from here,” I said, tears coming to my eyes as I watched her take in the meaning of this, her expression changing from hope to despair.

  “Joseph is not coming back,” she said, “is he?”

  Isabelle shifted in my arms, opened her eyes long enough to see that I was there, and fell back to sleep. “No, he’s not,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

  Greta sat on the bench near the fire and sobbed, and I found myself crying, too, crying for Joseph and Anna, crying for my own sweet Isabelle, who would never know her mother and father, crying for Luca, who would never meet my child. Greta was overcome by sorrow, but she wasn’t alone in her sadness. It was all of ours to bear.

  “I’m going to be leaving the castle with Isabelle,” I said at last. “I’ll need help. Can you come with me?”

  Greta looked to Vita. “But what about my work here?”

  “Your work here is done,” Vita said. “Bernadette will tend to me.”

  “Then I will go,” Greta said, her voice unsteady and her eyes red from crying. “Gladly.”

  “I plan to leave as soon as possible,” I said, giving Vita a challenging look, daring her to stop me. “If you could pack our things, I will ask Sal to drive us down the mountain today.”

  “Yes, madame,” Greta said, turning to the door.

  As she passed the fireplace, Vita said, “Bring me that box on the mantel before you leave.” Greta lifted a wooden box with copper trim and carried it to Vita. “Thank you, Greta,” she said, raising her eyes. “For everything.”