Total pages in book: 204
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
Besides, even though their families will never acknowledge me, and they themselves will disdain me for being a scur, or the lowest of the lower class, my loneliness abates when I stare out of my hood at the children I’ve saved. As they go and live their lives, I know that they are alive because of me, and in this, they are the babies I will never have.
Though they shun me, I love them. And mourn them when I arrive too late.
“What of my son?” the farrier demands hoarsely.
I shake my head, and he begins to weep. He doesn’t bother to inquire after his wife, and that brings me back to attention.
As I shift up to her, I want all the demons to come find him. “Elly?”
Her full name is Ellyne, and hearing her nickname seems to bring her around. Her lids lift and tears spill out and run down her temples. She hasn’t the strength to speak, and as I take her hand, it’s hot as a brand. I do not meet her eyes. Me feeling her death is not going to help either of us—
She murmurs something I cannot catch for the grunting grief of her drunken, rutting murderer.
“You must hang on.” I gently stroke her stringy hair back. “I can get you medicine on the morrow.”
And I can do something else for her. If she’ll let me.
“Leave us,” I command her husband. When he just stands there, sniveling, I glare out from under my hood. “And take your children with you. They have already seen too much.”
The farrier wipes his nose on his dirty woolen sleeve. “So you can bring my son back?”
“No, but I will seek to ease your wife.”
My tone is such that the young girls quake in their clutch, and though the farrier is above me in sex and station, he’s too dumbfounded at my temerity to respond.
“Go,” I snap.
With a dismissing hand to his progeny, he shoos off the gifts he finds worthless for they haven’t a penis among them, and the lot scramble to their feet. The niece, who has red hair, puts a protective arm about the sisters, and as they squeeze past his girth, she looks back at me, her facial expression older than the sea.
What her eyes must be showing makes me feel ancient.
“Feed them something,” I order him after they’re gone. “And not that mead you buy with your coppers.”
There’s naught to sustain a fly in that filthy kitchen, and fates damn him, someone must charge him with his neglect.
The farrier skulks off, no doubt going for those bladders of fermented honey, and that he doesn’t pull the heavy drape back into place for privacy enrages me.
I jump up and yank the folds across the doorway.
Back with Elly, I take her hand once more. “You must pass your afterbirth.”
She’s too weak so my words are naught but air, and I know what’s coming next because I’ve seen it all before. Within a day, she’ll be claimed by the infection that’s already taken root in her womb, yet I’m going to forage for her anyway.
And that is as far as I will go. She has suffered enough in this life, and if I save her from the grave, it will be no kindness to her.
“I’ll ease your pain,” I choke out.
Going inside my cloak’s cold, damp folds, I withdraw my little knife from its leather slide at my waist. I’m tempted to do horrible things with it.
If that brute had no testicles, many problems would be taken care of.
Instead of going after the farrier, I tremble as I saw through the gray, rubbery umbilical cord. Then I grab whatever stained blanket I come in contact with and pull a cover over Elly’s privacy. She moans as the rough wool brushes her bloodied skin, and I murmur something soothing. Then I look once more at the bairn. Such perfect features, the little nose and wing of a mouth, cheeks that were full enough so that it should have survived. My vengeance is such that I’m glad the farrier’s been denied what he craves, as if sons are the sole things of worth. Yet his quest for the only kind of offspring he cares about will continue to cost my sisters in our village their lives.
There’s a tunic by the pallet, torn in half as if Elly ripped it in her laboring. I wrap the cooling bairn in the folds, and entertain a fantasy that I will bury the remains properly, in the Resting Place. But it’s been a long, long while since any of us dared to go that far outside of the wall.
I don’t know what will happen to this precious vessel, which has leached out its spark of life already. The same is true for Elly’s body, and the distress I feel is deep enough that the pair of them might as well be of my own blood. In all my isolation, I find that my sentiments adhere to the villagers easily, though none have ever claimed me.