Child of Flame (Crown of Stars #4)

Everyone came running to see. He stared at them no less astounded, at their faces, their clothing, and their questions, which ran off him like water. Adults left their fields to come and watch. Children crowded around, so amazed that they even jostled Adica in their haste to peer upon the man. After their initial caution toward the huge dogs, they swarmed over them as well. Remarkably, the huge dogs merely settled down as patiently as oxen, with expressions of wounded dignity.

Into this chaos ran a naked girl, Getsi, one of the granddaughters of Orla.

“Hallowed One! Come quickly. Mother Orla calls you to the birthing house!”

Cold fear gripped Adica’s heart. Only one woman in the village was close to her birthing time: her age mate and friend, Weiwara. She found her cousin Urtan in the crowd. “This man is a friend to our tribe. Treat him with the hospitality due to a stranger.”

“Of course, Hallowed One.”

She left, running with Getsi. The cords of her string skirt flapped around her, bouncing, the bronze sleeves that capped the ends chiming like discordant voices calling out the alarm. As she ran, she prayed to the Fat One, words muttered on gasps of air:

“Let her not die, Fat One. Let it not be my doom which brings doom onto the village in this way.”

The birthing house lay outside of the village, upstream on high ground beside the river. A fence ringed it, to keep out foraging pigs, obdurate goats, and children. Men knew better than to pass beyond the fence. An offering of unsplit wood lay outside the gate. Looking back toward the village, Adica saw Weiwara’s husband coming, attended by his brothers.

She closed the gate behind her and stamped three times with each foot just outside the birthing house. Then she shook the rattle tied to the door and crossed the threshold, stepping right across the wood frame so as not to touch it with any part of her foot. Only the door and the smoke hole gave light inside. Weiwara sat in the birthing stool, deep in the birth trance, eyes half closed as she puffed and grunted, half on the edge of hysteria despite Mother Orla’s soothing chanting. Weiwara had birthed her first child three summers ago, and as every person knew, the first two birthings were the most dangerous: if you survived them, then it was likely that the gods had given their blessing upon you and your strength.

Adica knelt by the cleansing bowl set just inside the threshold and washed her hands and face in water scented with lavender oil. Standing, she traced a circular path to each of the corners of the birthing house in turn, saying a blessing at each corner and brushing it with a cleansing branch of juniper as Weiwara’s panting and blowing continued and Mother Orla chanted in her reedy voice. Orla’s eldest daughter, Agda, coated her hands in grease also scented with lavender, to keep away evil spirits. Agda beckoned to Adica with the proper respect, and Adica crept forward on her knees to kneel beside the other woman. Getsi began the entering rituals, so that she, too, could observe and become midwife when her age mates became women.

Agda spoke in a low voice. A light coating of blood and spume intermingled with grease on her hands. “I thank you for coming, Hallowed One.” She did not look directly at Adica, but she glanced toward Weiwara to make sure the laboring woman did not hear her. “When I examined her two days ago, I felt the head of the child down by her hip. But just now when I felt up her passageway, I touched feet coming down. She is early to her time. And the child’s limbs did not feel right to me.” She bent her head, considered her hands, and glanced up, daringly, at Adica’s face. The light streaming down through the smoke hole made a mask of her expression.

“I think the child is already dead.” Agda spat at once, so the words wouldn’t stay in her mouth. “I hope you can bind its spirit so Weiwara will not be dragged into the Other Side along with it.”

Weiwara labored in shadow, unbound hair like a cloak along her shoulders. She moaned a little. Orla’s chanting got louder.

“It’s time,” gasped Weiwara.

Agda settled back between Weiwara’s knees and gestured to her mother, who gripped Weiwara’s shoulders and changed the pattern of her chant so that the laboring woman could pant, and push, and pant again. Agda gently probed up the birth canal while Getsi watched from behind her, standing like a stork, on one foot, a birthing cloth draped over her right shoulder.

Adica rose and backed up to the threshold, careful not to turn her back on the laboring woman. A willow basket hung from the eaves, bound around with charms. Because the birthing house was itself a passageway between the other worlds and this world, it always had to be protected with charms and rituals. Now, lifting the basket down from its hook, Adica found the things she needed.