Chapter Forty-Four. Sunshine at Night.
Forty-Four
Sunshine at Night.
As I watch Ronl and Lena marvel at what they created together, and what she brought into the world with his help, I fall back and catch my breath.
When I go to wipe a strand of hair out of my face, I catch sight of the blood on my hands and glance down.
The afterbirth has been passed—but the bleeding is like a faucet running out of her.
We are not finished, and we still have no time.
After I quickly cut the cord with the knife by the basin, I scramble off the bed, and plunge my hands back into the basin. When the husband looks up with grateful tears, I hold my palm out to stop the emotion so clearly welling within him.
“You must trust me to get the herbs she needs.”
As I nod sharply between her legs, he looks down at the red sheets and shudders with fear.
“Go,” he croaks. “Anything, take anything.”
I’m nodding as I hit the floor running. Breaking out of the bedroom, I’m only vaguely aware of Merc standing in their little kitchen, as out of place as any mountain would be indoors. As his eyes pass over me, he mutters something under his breath, and I can guess my clothes are covered with blood.
“I don’t have time to explain.” I rush past him, and push my way out into the shop. “I need, I need…”
My eyes bounce around at all the jars, and instead of seeing what’s in them, the signs in the foreign language are the only things that register. Panic tightens a grip on my throat as I blink and remember all the blood on that bed. This is not a success if the bairn lives, and the mother dies—
“What can I do?”
I wheel around to Merc. “I…”
Our stares meet, and then he asks, “What do you need.”
I can’t answer him. I just stand where I am, frozen like Ronl was, my breath getting short, my—
“You can do this,” I hear him say as if from a great distance. “Sorrel, you’ve made it this far. What do you need to do.”
“Stop … the bleeding … I need to stop…”
“And what here will do that for you?” he says calmly.
It’s just the way I spoke to Ronl, and as I got through to the husband, Merc gets through to me: All at once my brain kicks back into gear and I glance to the shop entry.
“Lock the door. We don’t need anyone else in here.”
“I already did.”
Wheeling around, I locate the three bags the shopkeeper was going to use for me as well as his scoop and the jar he almost dropped.
My eyes then circle every container in the place, assessing their contents, sifting through what I know with surety, what I guess with some certainty, and what I do not recognize at all.
Once the cataloguing is complete, I go into action.
“I need you to bring that down … and that down. Please get me those, and … that. Bring it all into the kitchen—”
The husband frantically appears in the doorway. “I can’t rouse her. I don’t know what to do. This is her shop, these are her medicines—”
“Help him bring me the jars I asked for.” Grabbing the scoop, I squeeze his arm in reassurance as I rush past him. “Hurry.”
Back in the kitchen, at the herbist station, I find a mortar and pestle of good size, as well as a bowl and some string. The men deliver exactly what I’ve asked for, and I scoop out the various dried leaves into the bowl, trying not to spill them.
“Crush one of those roots,” I order, not caring which of them does it.
“How much?” Merc asks.
“The biggest one in that jar there.” I turn to the husband. “Go back and be with her and your daughter. Talk to Lena, try to get her to wake up with your voice and keep her with you.”
“How much longer—”
“Go,” I cut him off.
Merc and I work side by side, and the pungent smell that rises from what he is crushing calms me down. The scent is right. And when I mix up the leaves with some water, I feel further in control. The aroma takes me back to—
My head stings with a sudden pain.
Hide.
I drop whatever memory tickles underneath my consciousness and the pain at my temples fades like a yell descending into silence. I stay resolutely in the present as I finish the preparation by adding in the root that Merc has, no surprise, crushed into a pulp.
“Cut me six lengths of the string. They need to be as long as your forearm.”
He does so readily as I finish the preparation.
Then I bring the bowl and the string with me into the bedroom.
The wife looks very bad. She’s cradled in her husband’s lap, her mouth slack, her eyes closed, her lips drifting into the gray color her bairn was right before it roused.
On her chest, the baby is nuzzling for her breast, and she does not respond.
Moving fast, I order Merc to wash his hands and then rip me up some bedsheets. He hesitates at the door for only a moment before jumping over to the basin and then grabbing a folded pile of sheeting I didn’t see.
“Not strips,” I tell him. “I need squares—this big.”
As I air the dimensions with my hands, the sound of the tearing mixes with the bairn’s cries, the newborn’s struggles for its mother an instinct as ancient as time itself. After I wash my hands once again, Merc is by my side, holding out what he’s done as he averts his eyes to the ceiling.
“More?” he says as if he wants a job.
“Yes,” I return, even though there’s a sufficiency. But it’s the kindest thing I can do for him.
Taking the squares, I pack them with damp wads of the herbs and rooting, close the corners, and tie them up while leaving long strings. When I have six prepared, I move back into place between the woman’s legs.
“I’ll be as gentle as I can,” I tell her, though her eyes are closed, and she does indeed seem to have lost consciousness.
The fact that she hasn’t responded to those cries tells me she’s well gone. Yet she is breathing.
With careful hands, I push the knots of damp cloth into the birthing canal one by one. I imagine them going deeper and deeper, until they reach the internal womb entrance; I picture the blood source constricting, the flow slowing, the flesh healing.
None of my visualizations will have any effect. But as with the stack of squares Merc is furiously making over at the bureau, it helps me feel a little better.
I glance up into the lovely dark face of the new mother. Her lids are still down. Her ashen color is … very bad.
What else, what else, what—
“I’ll be right back,” I blurt as I scramble off the bed.
Leaving the bedroom on a bolt, I careen back out into the shop, moving through the spaces as if they are my own. “Where are you, where are you … where—”
The leaves I’m looking for are up on the third shelf, the highest one. Using the ledge of the cabinetry below, I swing myself up and stand straight. As I stretch onto my tiptoes, I fumble the jar and I think of the husband as I grab it out of its free fall and clasp the container to my chest.
Jumping back down, I flash to the kitchen and knock over some mugs as I get one off a little rack. At the sink, the water comes readily, and I put too many of the leaves in. I force some out, and then mix with a spoon as I go back to the bedroom.
“Hold her up so she can drink,” I say as I come in with the mug.
The husband shifts his wife higher, and wastes not a moment angling her lax head into better alignment.
“Take the bairn.” Except if he lets his wife go, there’s no way I’ll be able to get any liquid down her throat. “No, wait—stay with her.”
Like a trained dog, he snaps back into position, and I twist around to Merc. “I need you to hold the baby. If this works, there will be agitation.”
The stillness in him seems to seep out through the room. For all his command, for all his strength, I have, with the simple request, utterly disarmed him.
“Merc, I need you to hold the bairn. Now.”
I nod sharply at the newborn who’s at her mother’s side, and that seems to bring him back to attention—but he moves half as fast as I’d like, and not at all as he usually does, his body clunky and unsure.
When his hands reach out, they tremble as he gathers the small, crying bundle up from the bedding.
With that settled, I lean down with the mug, and in my peripheral vision, I see him stepping back with the baby like he’s cradling a broadsword pointed at his chest.
Refocusing on Lena, I put the tincture to her lips.
“Drink.” I put some more volume in my voice. “Lena, you need to drink.”
The husband breaks in, speaking in their language, and thank the crescent moon, that gets Lena’s attention. She responds on a mumble, her lips parting.
I take advantage of this, tilting the mug. Most is spilled, but I can tell by the way her throat moves that she swallows a little of it. More, she needs more. I try again.
“Tell her to drink, in your language.”
The husband offers another trill of syllables, and I wait for the response. As the wife opens her mouth, I take her chin, force it down, and pour most of what’s left in the earthen mug into her. She sputters and coughs, speckling my face with the cold tea—
But then she swallows in a gulp.
I sit back and look at the damp brown leaves that are left in the bottom. As I put the mug down on the floor, I tell myself I can make more, but if she takes too much, she’ll go into seizure and die from—
The wife’s eyes flare open and she gasps.
Then her face flushes with color, and she heaves a deep breath.
And another. The animation that follows is restless and uncoordinated, her hands and feet twitching, the muscles in her legs spasming.
But she’s breathing, deep and often, dragging in the air she needs as her heart no doubt races from the concoction.
We all watch her. Her husband, right by her head. Me, at her side.
Merc standing over the bloody bed with the couple’s daughter in his massive arms.
“Get me a belt,” I order Ronl as the trembling rises even further.
Ronl reaches down for his waist, and paddles through his clothes. But then twists around. “I don’t have—”
There’s a snap!
“Use one of mine.”
Merc holds out a black strap that’s part of one of his holsters. As I take it, and put the length between Lena’s teeth, she immediately clamps down on the strip of hide. The guard is just in time: She goes rigid, the shaking coalescing into a straining as all her muscles lock up.
I glance down at the mug once again. Fates, if I’ve given her the wrong dose …
It feels like hours, yet the seizure lasts probably no longer than a minute, and the first sign the stimulation is backing off is the easing of her feet. The next is her legs and arms, the straining stiffness relenting. And then she inhales more slowly.
The storm passes as fast as it came, but in its wake, the revival lasts. Her eyes flutter open and she looks to her husband first—and then to the mercenary dressed in black who is holding her precious daughter.
And that’s when I glance back at Merc.
He’s staring down at the bairn, his black hair falling forward, the twin braids with their beads swinging freely.
The baby is quiet, but not because anything is wrong.
He’s taken his pinkie and offered it as a pacifier—and it’s been accepted.
He’s also rocking back and forth on his boots, his weight shifting just enough to find a rhythm.
The incongruence of him with the tiny infant is like the night being interrupted by a bolt of sunshine, and my gaze locks on the hilt of that broadsword, rising up over his shoulder as if the weapon, too, is looking down on the bairn.
Merc’s expression is utterly remote.
And I wonder how many children of his own he’s lost.