“Mine is Alea.” She returned the pressure.
“We won’t have need to call you, please the goddess—but if we do, be sure we shall.”
They did.
12
The call came in the middle of the night; the messenger was a twelve-year-old girl who was pale with fright. “Please, mum, an’ it please you, would you come to Agneli? She’s most horrible took with the baby, mum!”
Gar started up from his pallet by the fire. “I can…”
“No you can’t,” Alea said firmly. “In a village like this, birthing is for women only—unless something is drastically wrong.”
“But I am a physician…,” the old man’s voice croaked.
“Then heal yourself,” Alea snapped. “If we need a cesarean, I’ll send for you.”
“Are you sure…”
“Don’t worry, I gleaned a great deal from Herkimer’s memory,” Alea assured him. “Midwifery was the first topic I searched.”
“It was?” Gar stared.
“Of course,” Alea said. “I had to make sure your man-made computer hadn’t ignored women, didn’t I? Go back to sleep, my friend.”
Gar smiled, obviously warmed by the term “friend.” Alea gave him another smile, then turned and went. Agneli screamed as Alea came in; her impulse was to turn and go, but she knew the young woman hadn’t even seen her. Instead, she marched straight up to the bedside and asked, “How long has she been in labor?”
“Since dusk.” Her mother looked up, face drawn and haggard. She sat beside Agneli, mopping her brow with a cool cloth.
“That is not so long.” Alea sat beside Agneli.
“No, but the babe is nearly to the birth canal, yet keeps pulling back.”
“I don’t blame her,” Alea said with a wry smile. “If I had so warm and safe a place to live, I doubt I would choose to leave it.” She put her hands on Agneli’s belly and gazed off into space.
The mother started to say something, but one of the other women touched her hand. “Shh! She reads the child.”
The mother stared in awe, then closed her mouth. Alea listened to the baby’s mind. There were no words, of course, only raw emotions—fear and, as Agneli screamed with the strength of the contraction, the feeling of something pinching, of fainting…
The spasm passed and Agneli went limp, gasping. Alea’s gaze focused on the mother. “The child is coming feet first with the umbilical cord between its legs. Worst, it is pinched between the babe’s hip and the mother’s bone. Whenever she moves toward the canal, it pinches closed, and the child cannot breathe.”
“The child will suffocate!” the mother exclaimed. “The child will not come out either, if we cannot free that cord,” Alea said.
“But how?” the mother whispered, eyes huge.
“I need a wooden wand,” Alea said, “two feet long, with a notch on the end.”
One of the women went out. While she was gone, Alea held Agneli’s hand and helped soothe her through the contractions. Between them, she thought, Gar.
Aye?
He couldn’t have been asleep—he must have been waiting. You have heard?
Would I eavesdrop?
Stop being silly! The umbilical cord is caught between the baby’s legs and the inner rim of the pelvis. Can you loosen it with telekinesis?
I think so, Gar answered; then his thoughts blurred. The neighbor came back in with a peeled willow wand half an inch thick with a small fork on the end, carefully smoothed. “I carved with haste. Will it do?”
“Admirably,” Alea said. “Boil it for three minutes.” The woman turned away to the kettle. “How shall I know three minutes?”
“One hundred eighty beats of your pulse.”
A few minutes later, Alea was pretending to probe with the wand while she listened to the baby’s mind, one hand on the mother’s belly. She felt the baby move farther back inside, and its thoughts cleared as oxygen flooded its blood. Then it descended again.
Success, Gar’s voice said inside her head.
Alea withdrew the wand. “Pray to the goddess.” Agneli stiffened, crying out.
“I see the feet!” a woman cried.
“And the child still breathes,” Alea said triumphantly.
“Praise the Goddess!” the mother said fervently. Alea surprised herself by muttering a quick prayer of thanks to Freya. Then she thought, Thank you, Gar. There were no words in return, only a quiet feeling of satisfaction and pride. Well, at least he had used his powers to a good purpose.
Time blurred then, seeming both far too long and all too short—but at last Alea held a fully formed, beautiful female child in her hands. Its mouth opened, gaped, then let out a thin wail of protest.
Alea smiled. “May your complaint be in vain, little one—and may your life be wonderful.”
One of the other women cut and tied the cord, then took the child from her to wash. Alea said, “Who shall tell the father?”
An embarrassed silence fell and no one would meet her eyes.
“What?” Alea frowned. “Does he not acknowledge his responsibility?”
“They have not bonded,” the mother said, “and Agneli has not told us his name.”
The tension in the room was sudden and great. The same thought burned in everyone’s mind—that she had been seduced by someone else’s husbandman.
Then the neighbor laid the baby on Agneli’s breast and said gently, “The child is come, Agneli, and needs her father’s protection. Will you not now tell us his name?”
“It … it was Shuba,” Agneli caressed the baby at her breast with a faint but growing smile.
The tension released, to be replaced by a new and grim one. “He must provide for the child,” said the neighbor.
But Shuba refused. There in the dawn light, Agneli’s mother held out the child to him, but he turned away. “Agneli refused to bond with me and told me she had fallen in love with someone else. Let him feed her and her child!”
A soft murmur ran though the villagers—not surprise, but recognition. Alea wondered if the young woman had been too obvious in showing her attraction to the other boy.
Now Agneli’s father stepped forward. “They never lay together. The child is yours.”
“I will not bond with a woman who loves me not!”
“No one says that you should,” the father said quietly, “and all the village will support the child if we must. But you should give the greatest part of that support.”
“If she were in love with me, I would.” Shuba glanced at the baby, and for a moment longing filled his face.
Then he turned away. “I will not pay for a child raised by another man!”
Shuba’s father stepped up beside him. “It is not justice that he do so.”
Agneli’s father’s face hardened; his hands balled into fists. “It is not justice that Shuba fail to provide for the child he has begotten.”
The village was silent and tense. Then another man stepped up beside Shuba’s father. “He offered and was refused. It is not just.”
A fourth man stepped up beside Agneli’s father. “It is just and proper to support your own child.” One by one, the men of the village lined up on one side or the other. The women began to protest and their pleas grew to demands, louder and louder. The men held silence, their faces hard.
Gar stood leaning on his staff, tense as a bowstring. Alea spared an angry glare for him. Did he think they were going to invent a government on the spur of the moment?
There was a sudden commotion at the back of the crowd. The women parted and the sage strolled in, turning from side to side as he passed between the two lines of men, smiling at each. He came in silence, but the tension of the people lessened visibly.