by Am Hudson
It felt so natural and so right to hold her in my arms, like she’d always been there—like she always would be.
“Please breathe,” I said, lowering my head to hers. I waited, holding my own breath, but her lungs were still and I couldn’t feel a pulse—couldn’t hear her heart.
I touched the cord stemming from her belly; it was cold and clammy, and I realised as I followed it to the mess on the floor, that it wasn’t attached to anything. The placenta was in pieces—evacuated from my body. I looked around for something to tie it off with, feeling at the back of my gown for a cotton string, but it was a button-up gown.
Cradling the baby close to my chest, I moved my knees through the sludge, afraid to stand in case I slipped, and made it on my shaky legs to the gurney. With one hand, I pulled the sheet down, using my teeth to tear off a shred, looping it around the cord then and pulling with my teeth again to make it tight.
Then, I waited.
My hips hurt and I could feel that the tear between my legs wasn’t healing. I didn’t care, though. On my knees by the gurney, blood-covered, in a hospital gown, I watched this tiny baby, with her small head and downturned lips, her tightly closed eyes and her open little hands—watched her chest for any sign of life—and as the seconds turned to minutes, my bated breath reduced to soft whimpers.
I folded around her and let myself cry. Let myself acknowledge that this was real—that this little life that had danced within me just hours ago was now gone—in my arms but never to look at me. In my arms but never to take a breath. In my arms, but never to know me as her mommy.
The injustice and cruelty of the world caved my chest then and I screamed out at the universe, at God, at Walter and at David. I screamed at the past and the future I would be forced to have without her. And I screamed at myself. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t go on without her. How would I live? How would I breathe tomorrow when the sun came up? How would I look into David’s loving green eyes and tell him I lost our baby?
“Ara?” a familiar voice said timidly. “You in here?”
I didn’t look up. I didn’t turn toward the thin beam of light creeping across the floor. I didn’t want anyone to see me here in my grief—didn’t want them to come and take her away from me—try to fix me. Try to make me better.
“Ara?” Falcon rushed into the room, his shoes squeaking as he slipped in the blood. And I saw his feet where he stopped by the gurney; I heard him gasp as he took in the bloody scene; looked away as he backed very slowly out of the room.
On my own again, I leaned back a little and looked down at my baby girl—at her tiny nose and the little sad mouth. Her thin eyelids were still closed as if she was sleeping peacefully.
I picked up her pebble sized hand and kissed it. “I love you, little princess. I—”
“Ara!” David’s voice shattered into a million pieces as he stood in the doorway. “Oh God!” He turned away. “Oh God, no.”
Falcon’s arms came down around my shoulders and a cloth draped them. The lights came on and splashed the truth down on every surface. My baby was dead. My body had been torn apart and it left me with nothing.
Someone ripped her from my arms then and wrapped her up in a white cloth—moving away across the room.
I reached for her, but Falcon picked me up, turning me away so I couldn’t see. It seemed as though a flood of people fell in through that door then, one after the other, all of them losing a piece of their own soul as they realised what had been done—what had been lost.
I turned my head and looked at David by the counter of herbs and mixing bowls, his child in one hand, his shoulders hunched around her, shaking. I wanted to be there too—to tell him I tried, to tell him I was sorry, to tell him I needed to go with her—but my head was turned away against my will and blood poured into my mouth. I spat it back out and pushed at the hands as they pinned me down.
“Let me die!” I wailed. “Just let me die!”
“Amara.” Drake cupped both my cheeks firmly and made me look at him. Falcon, Emily and Quaid all pinned my limbs to the floor, holding so tight I couldn’t break loose. “I will not let you die. You have to fight. If not for the people that love you, then for revenge.”
I shook my head, my face folding in on itself.
“Walter got away,” Falcon said. “We won the battle, but Walter’s still out there.”
“Fight, okay,” Quaid said, squatting near me. “Fight to kill him.”
I shook my head, reliving the moment my baby came into the world. No amount of revenge could ever take this pain away. Only death could. Only my death.
“Falcon,” David cried in an urgent voice. “Falcon!”
He disappeared and someone else took his place beside me, pinning my arm. Drake poised his bloody wrist above my lips and squeezed my cheeks with his other hand, forcing my mouth to open.
“Stop!” Falcon said, his legs and feet appearing near my head. He squatted down and held a white sheet over my chest. “Ara, look—she’s not dead,” he said softly, angling it so I could see the pink, moving thing inside. “Your baby’s not dead. She was just in shock.”
A coat of tears so thick blinded me so I couldn’t see her. My limbs were released and I fell back for a moment before sitting up a little and moving my hand up to gently touch the baby’s chest. It rose and fell under my fingertip, and my whole chest filled up with blood, sending tight little bumps all the way down my arms.
“She’s alive.”
Everyone laughed then—the breathy kind, aired with disbelief.
I tried to prepare my heart and soul for how she would feel in my arms, but nothing could have readied me for the feeling of warm, soft flesh against my hands, or for how floppy and heavy she felt against my chest. I peeled the sheet away and held her naked against my gown, feeling the feebleness of her little body, the jagged movements of her skinny arms, and the wonder of each light breath that left her lips.
Her hair was matted with blood and white stuff, but I could see that under all that it was thick and blonde, like peach fuzz.
I laughed, cradling her head in the cup of my palm. “She has hair.”
David walked over like a wooden puppet and dropped stiffly to his knees beside me, cupping the back of my head before pressing his lips to my hair in a long, deep kiss. “I’m so, eternally sorry, my love.”
“It’s okay now.” I reached up with one hand and patted his elbow. “Everything’s okay. She’s alive.”
“But she needs a soul,” Drake said.
My wide eyes whipped up to David. “I never made it to the forest to see Lilith. I—”
“Then we will have to use Jason’s soul,” Drake said.
“Oh no,” Emily gasped.
“Shit,” Falcon said. He looked at David then, and as an exchange happened between them, David lowered his head, exhaling.
“What?” I asked, looking between them both. “What’s wrong?”
“It has to be me,” David said.
Drake looked up from the baby, his blue eyes wide. “Why?”
“Walter took Jason,” David started, and Drake rose to his feet, jerking away like he’d been hit.
“David,” Drake said in a grave, warning tone, “Amara cannot live without you. It will kill her.”
“And she will die if I don’t!” he yelled, presenting me sitting here on the floor. “There’s no time to waste. The sun will be up in an hour, and if that child doesn’t have a soul soon, she will be dead, and I’ll lose Ara anyway.”
“No.” I shook my head absently, my lips against my baby’s brow. “Not after this. Not after all we’ve fought for. It can’t end like this.”
“There is no other way,” Drake reminded me.
“I don’t believe that.” I looked up, teary-eyed, at David. “Get me to Lilith. Now!”
“Ara, my love.” He slid his hand along the side of my neck, brushing my bloodied cheek with his thumb. “Let’s get you cleaned up and healed first.”
“No, j
ust—”
“Ara.” Falcon squatted down beside me again, his elbow on his knee. “You’ve been through hell. You look like hell, and you can’t take a premature baby out in the cold—”
“I’m not stupid, Falcon. She’ll stay here—you can check her over while I’m gone,” I said absently, tracing a finger over her little round cheek.
“That’s fine then. But you need blood and a shower first.” He held his finger up to my face. “No arguments.”
***
A blood-orange horizon whispered tales of death to the coming dawn. I looked away from the crimson patches across the field as I passed the border to the Enchanted Forest, closing my heart to the truth that so many lives had clearly ended last night. We may have won this battle, but what had we lost in return?
Soft flakes of cold fell lightly at my bare feet, dotting the dirt path with flecks of white. I angled my hand out to the sky and watched them gather there in the warm cup of my palm, melting the instant they touched. The loose white nightdress I wore beneath my cloak held back none of the cold, but my body was running hot after my shower, and despite David’s protest, I couldn’t bear to dress in anything more.
I blew against my hand and sent the droplet of water back into the air, watching it turn into ice by will of my breath—just a simple little thought that manifested right there in physical form. Something had died in me last night—a part of me had disconnected from this earth; a part that I believe grounded me—but as blood renewed my body, a light inside my soul came on, awakening something else. It felt as if what grounded me before had also held me back, but this new feeling inside me was built on trust, on instinct, on power.
My red velvet cloak swept over the leaves and grass behind me, while tiny living things followed my footsteps to Lilith’s Realm—the Realm of Mother Nature. I could feel the presence of a great living thing here—feel the warmth and the magic radiating from it before I even reached the clearing.
My skin sung a song of Life the closer I came, repairing what pain inside me the blood hadn’t healed, and when I spotted the Stone up ahead in the clearing, surrounded by a mix of evergreens and bare-branched trees, I could almost see a singular light shining down on it.
Above me, the trees stretched their branches, waking to the coming day, looking on with interest as I walked to the Stone and knelt down, laying both hands against it. I could feel the power of Life beneath the hard, rough surface—feel it pulsing and flowing through the ground, entering my body and leaving through my hands, back into the Stone.
But I felt sad and empty with my hands against it, as if I could feel its loneliness rushing throughout my core.
The gentle breeze, brushing the bare branches and moving dead leaves along the ground, seemed to hum a message, whooshing and whispering until it took on the sound of a hundred voices speaking in hushed tones. I listened carefully, turning my ear, and something along the lines of ‘Set it free’ stood out among the many languages.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered, my lips against the rough, warm stone. “But I’ll do anything you ask of me if you just show me how to save my baby.”
The whispering voices grew louder then and I closed my eyes for a second, opening them again to a great valley, wide and golden with the setting sun. I could feel the bark of a tree at my back, my heart leaping when a cold hand touched my belly, and the bright, innocent face of Eve appeared beside me.
“The apple is the key,” she said, her ghostly voice echoing like a memory. “Wake up.”
As my eyes flicked open again to the darkness of predawn, my hands against the gristly rock, I drew a long breath, shaking off the memory. “The apple is the key.”
“Soul bound by blood? Or blood to bind a soul?” Lilith said softly, appearing in her pink, ethereal form at the cross section of the clearing, one hand wrapped comfortably across her chest, supporting the elbow of the other. In her hand, she held a pale yellow apple, looking it over with thought as she said, “The apple is the key, you say. Intriguing.”
“What does it mean?” I asked, dusting my knees off as I stood up. “I don’t understand.”
“My dear, I come not to answer your question. I have come here, on this dark new day, to welcome you.”
“Welcome me?”
“You have faced your final trial—brought life into this world, and as you became a mother, one of God’s most holy creatures, you awakened to your birthright. Your name is now forged among the stars.”
My nose crinkled. “What does that mean?”
“It means, simply, that you are ready now to take your position among those who protect this Realm and the Next.”
A memory of a previous conversation hit me as the word ‘awakened’ sunk in. “As the Mother of Eternal Life?”
“The Freer of the Damned, The Light, The Seeker of the Lost, The Guardian of Immortal Souls. You will have many names, all of which mean one thing.”
“I walk the Fog of Purgatory—retrieving the lost immortal souls, and bring them back to the River of Life to be reborn.”
“Then you remember?”
“I do,” I said with a nod. “But… I can’t. I mean, my baby—” I motioned over my shoulder—back in the direction of the manor. “I need to—”
Lilith smiled softly at me, a slight sympathetic quirk to the corner of her lip. “I understand perfectly what is at stake right now. After all, this child is my great-great granddaughter.”
I was about to correct her, and say that both me and my baby were far more removed than that. But we weren’t. Lilith was, in fact, Drake’s grandmother—my great grandmother. We were a lot closer than I realised. “How come you never told me he was my father—after all the time we spent talking?”
“It would have put you in danger to know and, at that time, you were not ready to hear it.”
The tension in my shoulders trickled out with a hard breath. She was right. If they’d told me back then, I might have tried to murder Drake, and I certainly would have yelled it from the rooftops—told everyone just how awful it was that he was my real father. And then, as news spread, Safia would have learned, and I would have been in danger. So, too, would my baby. And my father.
“One day, you will come to realise that everything I do, everything I have done, is for the greater good of my bloodline—both those of the past, and those that will inherit the earth,” she explained. “I know there have been times when you did not trust me, perhaps even hated me, and there are times I’ve given you cause to hate me—” she looked at my ring finger, where I still bore the Mark, “—but you must know that I only ever mean well.”
“For the bloodline,” I stated crassly. “Even if that means killing me—or the child Anandene.”
“Even then. And I am sorry. Had the child been the evil witch instead of a soulless vessel, I would have taken her life—”
I turned away.
“And I do not hold it against my son for trying to do the same. She is still a threat, even with her new soul. However,” she added when I huffed, “his betrayal—his role in seeing you harmed and seeing your innocent child meet this world before her time—is unforgivable. And—” Her deep, echoing voice trembled, “—for the first time in his entire life, I am ashamed of him.”
I moved over and took her hand to comfort her, feeling the solidity in a different way to what I was used to. It felt warmer, somehow more real, like seeing the landscape scenery a picture was based on for the first time. “David will want to kill Lord Eden when he finds out.”
“And I would not blame him if he did.” Her fingers warmed slightly then and curled around mine. “Now—” She patted the back of my hand. “I have something for you.”
“What is it?”
She held up the pale yellow apple again, moving it toward me. “A promise I must keep.”
“The apple.” I looked from its matte surface, glowing slightly pink within her light, to her deep-set eyes. “Is that what my dreams meant—the apple is the key?”
“Not this apple, my dear Seeker.” She turned my hand over and laid the warm fruit against my palm. “This apple is Knowledge.”
I considered it sceptically. “And this will show me how to save my daughter?”
“It will show you a great many things, Seeker. If you ask the right question.”
Before she could say another word to convince me, I swept the apple to my lips and bit down. The juice popped from the flesh and spilled over my lip, wet and syrupy against my dry tongue.
As I swallowed it down, my head grew and shrunk back in quickly, the world spinning fast around me.
“What’s happening?”
“Sleep, Seeker.” Lilith’s voice echoed. “And when you wake, it will be with the knowledge of the gods.”
My eyes flung open then, wide and fixed on the dawn sky. I pushed up from the ground I was suddenly lying on and moved my gaze to Lilith. “I know what to do.”
She walked toward me, one foot laid gently in front of the other, and offered her long, elvish hand. “Then you must begin. Time grows short.”
I took hold of it, noting in the second we touched how cool her skin was now. “I know. But…” I hesitated. “It showed me something else—something I was… born to do.”
“And you must do this now?”
“I need to.” My eyes absently moved toward the Stone of Truth. “The apple—the Fruit of Life—it will restore power to a dying Crux.”
“A dying Crux,” she said, smiling, her voice carrying all the knowledge she’d clearly just pieced together from that one sentence. “The apple holds the key.”
“Yes.” I grinned.
Lilith’s eyes moved slowly to the Stone as well. “Do you remember what lies beneath that stone prison?”
I nodded. “I do.”
She turned her whole body to face it, as if seeing a godly creature for the first time. “The fruit of that tree is the purest, most unadulterated element of Nature. One bite and a man should live a thousand years. One sip of its juice and a dying man can return from the brink of his end.”
