NOAH SPEAKS

The final few weeks of my pregnancy were filled with girth, discomfort, swollen veins and exhaustion. Not even Eaving, apparently, was allowed to escape every woman’s burden during her final months and, indeed, I would not have wished it. This was a much-loved and anticipated child—I pushed to the back of my mind any uncertainty I felt—and this discomfort would be forgotten the instant of her birth.

I tried not to think of the imp. I tried to believe what my daughter had shown me, that she could manage both imps. But if I believed that, I had to accept that my daughter was not going to be quite what I wanted—an innocent, squirming child who existed only so I could love her.

On this night I lay restless and greatly uncomfortable. Marguerite and Kate lay together on the other side of the bed. I now slept so restively they preferred to keep their distance. Thus I was left, a great hulk breathing with only the most strenuous effort. I grew thirsty, and thought about finding myself some ale to drink—that would send me to sleep, surely—but moving was so difficult, the night so cold, and the kitchen so far, and down so many stairs…

I resolved to make the effort, no matter the difficulties, and threw back the bed covers, swinging my legs to the floor and slowly pivoting my body about. But just as I was about to rise, I felt the most extraordinary—and most extremely unwelcome—sensation in my lower body.

It was not so much the pangs of labour—I had experienced those as Cornelia, and I knew well enough what to expect—but something much more debilitating.

The sense that someone else had taken over my lower body and was controlling my actions. I felt a pang of fear, and tried to struggle to my feet, but my legs did not obey me.

Of their own accord—under the control of that someone else—they swung back onto the bed, then my body shifted so that I lay comfortably against the pillows.

My daughter moved in my womb, and I felt the opening to the birth canal softening for birth.

Gods, she was doing this!

I gasped—in shock, in disbelief, and in some measure of horror—and almost instantly Marguerite and Kate stirred on the other side of the bed.

“My lady,” Marguerite said as she sat up and looked at me, “is it time?”

I nodded, taking a very deep breath.

Marguerite placed one of her hands over mine where they were splayed across my belly. “Is all well?”

“I do not know, Marguerite. This is not labour as I have known it previously.”

“It is a special child,” said Marguerite, meaning to comfort me.

“She is taking control,” I said, “and I do not like it.” At that I winced, for a wave of discomfort—not pain, not agony, just a strange discomfort—rolled up over my distended belly and into my chest.

Marguerite stared at me, then leaned over and shook Kate awake. “Noah,” she said, “is giving birth.”

“My daughter is birthing herself,” I muttered between clenched teeth as another wave of discomfort—strange, irritating, and deeply uneasy—swept over me.

My legs drew up, and I groaned.

“Noah?” Marguerite said, now kneeling on the mattress at my side. “What should we do?”

Kate now moved about the bed so that she sat on my other side, on the edge of the mattress.

“None of us can do anything,” I said, and then felt my body take a huge breath. Ah! How I loathed this lack of control! I had been entirely taken over, and it terrified me for what it implied about my daughter.

My sweet, innocent daughter. That’s all I wanted…please gods, let it be what I received.

I took another breath, very slow and deep, and arched my back slightly.

“Is the pain—” Kate began.

“There is no pain,” I said, and then arched my back again as that strange hateful discomfort swept over me. I could feel the child moving through my birth canal, could feel her head crowning, and yet there was no pain.

Just that total lack of control.

I cried out in frustration, and Marguerite, who had now shifted very close to me, reached down her hands, and drew forth my child from my body.

“Look!” she said, holding the child up before me. “Look!”

The baby stared at me with deep blue eyes, perfectly aware. A calm, cool stare, tinged with what I thought might be triumph. This was no sweet child, no dependent being on whom I could lavish love and care. I tried to smile, but found it difficult. I rested one hand on my now flaccid belly. Where my daughter had rested I felt now only hollowness and loss rather than the ecstasy of a successful birth, and where my heart should have been I felt only sadness and despair rather than the unconditional love every mother should feel instinctively for her child.

My daughter, still held in Marguerite’s hands, stared at me, and her tiny brow seemed to wrinkle, as if in irritation. Maybe I was not the mother she had wanted; as I wondered that, maybe…no. I could not think that at all. Not wanting this child went against my every instinct, both as Eaving, and as Cornelia-Caela-Noah. She was my daughter. I ought to love her.

None of this Marguerite or Kate noticed. Marguerite was now holding the baby in her arms, the umbilical cord severed, one fingertip tracing out the lines of the baby’s face.

“She looks like a kitten!” Marguerite declared.

Once more I tried to smile, and this time somehow I managed it. “Then we shall call her Catling,” I said, “not merely for her looks, but for the game she plays.”

My heart felt like a great, still, cold rock in my chest.