Chapter 38
W hen I awake, it’s to an intense surge of pain in my abdomen and my lower back. I let out a guttural grunt, the breath knocked out of me.
I’m lying on a cold floor, a pillow propping my head up, a blanket stretched out underneath me. Other than that, the room is completely bare.
When my eyes adjust, I realize it’s not a room at all, but a cave.
“Nolan,” I croak out.
But then I remember that Nolan’s not here. It was Malia on the beach with me. Malia, who— Panic seizes me, just as another surge of pain hits my body.
It feels like a growing wave, apexing in yet another spike of pain that knocks the breath out of me. “Mal—” Her name gets severed in my throat until eventually the feeling subsides.
I writhe on the makeshift pallet, a vain attempt to get comfortable. My legs are molten, weak from whatever substance Malia used to knock me out. I try to push myself up on my hands, but the exertion is effortful.
And yet again, another wave of pain paralyzes my limbs.
“You’ll need to breathe through them,” says a voice from the darkness. “It will make it easier. I can help move you if you wish.”
Malia steps out from the shadows. A cold sweat breaks out across my forehead.
“Please, just tell me what’s wrong,” I say. “Get me back to Nolan. Something is wrong.”
“Not wrong,” says Malia, echoing her sentiment from the beach. “It’s simply time.”
“Time for what?” I ask, just as another surge hits me. Just as the realization hits me.
“No. No, no,” I gasp. “It’s too soon.”
Panic washes over me. If the baby comes now, there’s no chance of survival.
“No. You have to make it stop,” I say. “Surely you have something that can make it stop.”
Malia watches me carefully. “Don’t fret. The child is ready.”
“He can’t be ready,” I insist, gritting my teeth to bear through the pain, though it doesn’t seem to help all that much.
“The way your body carries is quite unique,” she says. “I’ve only seen it a handful of times.”
I don’t even have the energy to ask her what she means, the pain climaxing again as I dig my fingers into the sheet—the only thing between me and the ground—crumpling it up in my fist.
“You’re hardly showing,” she says. “Your child—he’s sitting so high up between your ribs. I suppose he doesn’t want to make himself known. Though from what you told Kendra, I can understand why he might wish to hide.”
It takes me longer than it should to process her words, to determine her meaning. I grapple to make sense of them, but I am doing well to cling to consciousness.
The only thing I can think is, it’s too early, it’s too early, it’s too early .
“Please, you have to help me,” I say. “Surely there’s some way you can slow it down. I can’t have this baby yet. He’s too small. He won’t live.”
“Listen to me,” Malia says, her voice going soft this time. “The child is ready. He’s grown. He’s ready for this world.”
“No, he’s not. You said yourself, only a few weeks ago, that I could at most be at four months long.”
Malia says nothing. She just watches me.
“You said—” But I trail off. “You lied,” I say, the realization washing over me. “Why would you lie?”
“You said it yourself: you’ve made a bargain.
That you are compelled to give the child up,” she says.
“I know that there’s a part of you who wants to believe that as a mother, you’ll be able to resist. That you won’t sabotage our plans.
But trust me, everyone under a bargain makes decisions they never thought themselves capable of.
It was better for you not to know how far along you were.
Otherwise, you might have found a way to sabotage us.
To weasel your way out of the plan you and your husband had made. ”
I close my eyes, unable to argue with this logic, after what I went through under Peter’s bargain, under the Nomad’s bargain.
Even so.
“I can’t be that far along,” I say. “That’s the part I can’t wrap my mind around. I’m not even showing.”
“There are a few of you out there like that,” she says, patiently repeating herself from earlier. “A few who even go into labor without ever having realized they have fallen pregnant.”
“That doesn’t seem possible.”
“It doesn’t seem possible to them either. Not until well after it’s happened,” she says.
“And you’re sure?” I ask, plead. “You’re sure he’s ready?”
Malia nods her head, but says, “I can feel again, if you’d like.”
Tears stream down my face as I writhe on the makeshift cot. But I know it all the same.
The Seer places her hand on my belly and closes her eyes. “He’s turned. He’s head down. He wasn’t only a few weeks ago, but he’s flipped for you.”
“How could I not have felt that?” I ask. “How can I not feel him?”
“Your afterbirth is in the way. It’s in the front instead of the back,” she says casually, as if that’s supposed to make any sense to me.
“Is Nolan coming?” I say, my husband’s name coming out like a whimper.
“That’s not part of the plan,” she says.
“Not part of the plan?” My vision blurs at the edges.
I’m about to give birth to my son without my husband.
No .
As the next surge ramps up, as my body prepares for the agonizing pain, something snaps within me.
“ No! ” I scream, thrashing at Malia. My fingernails collide with her cheek as I launch myself toward her.
Malia takes this opportunity to grab my wrists, irritation flaring in her gray eyes as droplets of blood from where I scratched her trail down her cheek.
“Let me go! I want my husband. I won’t do this without my husband!
” My foot finds her abdomen, and though she huffs in pain, she doesn’t let go of me.
Before I can crawl my way over her and toward the tunnel opening, the contraction peaks again, this time so painful, I find myself paralyzed in shock.
“This is what we agreed to,” she says, squeezing my wrists as I collapse backward underneath the pain in my abdomen. “This is what you agreed to.”
I frown, remembering the agreement that we came to.
After their conversation, Nolan had informed me that Kendra had been worried that if Nolan stayed with me and the child, he might back out on their agreement.
He had argued with her vehemently, but she had said that she’d seen too many cases of such situations like this, too many people refusing to pay once they glimpsed their child’s face.
It hits me now that I’m not going to see my husband again. Possibly never. There had been a hope blooming inside me that perhaps once our son is grown, once he could take care of himself and be off in the world, Nolan might return to me.
Would he do that? Doing so would mean cutting off a relationship with the son he loved, the son he had raised. I’m not sure I even want him to choose me—not if it will crush our boy.
Just then, the contraction begins to subside, and I have the ability to breathe again.
“I didn’t get to tell him goodbye,” I whisper.
For the first time, emotion ripples across Malia’s face, her brow crinkling. “Yes. I’m sorry for that.”
“Does he know?”
She shakes her head. “No. Not yet. Though Kendra will tell him soon.”
I bite my lip, causing it to bleed as another surge of pain overcomes me. “You didn’t have to drug me, you know.”
Malia looks at me.
“I think you know that I did. But,” she adds, “if you would like help, I’ve accompanied several births. There are things we can do to ease the pain.”
“You have more sedatives?” I ask.
Malia shakes her head. “Nothing that’s safe at the moment.
But I can feel.” She puts one hand on my back, the other on my belly.
“I can monitor him as he moves downward. There are positions I can get you into. And if you’d like, I can put pressure on your hips, on your back.
It doesn’t always help, but sometimes?—”
I let out a cry as another surge of pain rips through me.
“Yes. Whatever will help,” I say, barely conscious that I’m speaking the words at this point.
“Your labor has progressed quickly,” she says. “If you have the strength and can get onto your hands and knees?—”
I interrupt her. “That would have been easier had you not drugged me.”
If Malia is offended by my snapping at her, she doesn’t show it on her face. Instead, she grabs my hips and helps me rotate onto my hands and knees.
Together, we crawl over to a nearby boulder, where she has me drape my upper body across it for support.
“The next time a surge hits, you need to surrender to it,” she says.
But the surge is already building, every muscle in my body tensing and tightening in anticipation. I scream, the pain unbearable as blood vessels burst inside of my head.
“It’s temporary,” she says. “We can count through it if you would like?—”
But I can’t hear her anymore after that, not over the sound of my own screams.
Finally, the pain peaks, then begins to subside. Slowly, my muscles relax.
“Next time, you have to surrender,” she says.
But I don’t want to surrender to the pain. I’ve surrendered so often in my life. I’ve put up so little of a fight. I can’t bear the idea of letting this hurt me.
“It’s not like normal pain,” she whispers to me. “Pain indicates that something is wrong. But there is nothing wrong here. This is right. And your body knows what to do, even if you don’t.”
It’s terrifying. But I nod my head, waiting for the next surge.
The idea of surrendering to the pain, of letting it overtake me completely, is terrifying. But I figure it can’t hurt any worse than what I’ve just experienced.
“Breathe,” says Malia. “Let the breath fill your belly, your back.”
I nod, and in the distance, I sense the pain approaching me like a wave on the horizon, out at sea. I watch it. And as it swells, I imagine myself floating in the water on top of it.
I breathe and, in my mind, let myself float.
This time, the pain is intense, all-encompassing—but bearable.
“Just remember, it will peak. Then it will dissipate,” says Malia.
I nod. And just as before, the pain spikes. This time, I’m ready for it, feeling my body float upward, then crest the wave before falling back down and sloshing into the sand.
As the pain dissipates, I imagine water soaking into the sand, withdrawing back into the ocean.
“How was that?” asks Malia.
“Better,” I say.
“Now,” she says. “We just have to do that again.”
“How many times?” I grunt.
Malia doesn’t answer.