Jerusha opened her eyes, blinking in a kind of disbelief as she took in her new reality. Her last memory was of the pier, the harbor; the odd sense of peace that had fallen over everyone around her while she watched and waited. She remembered feeling something, as she sat—the slight fluttering movement of her unborn child. Remembered how, for that moment, the world outside her body had ceased to exist, as she became wholly aware of the miracle of life inside her. For that brief moment the peace around her had reached into her and touched her soul, and she had let herself be happy, certain that this time everything would be all right… .
And she had felt the baby move again, and then again, restlessly, and a strange restlessness had overtaken her too; she had lost that fragile, precious sense of peace, felt it fly away from her like birds. And there had been a sudden twinge, a pulling tension, that made her rise from where she sat, trying to stretch it out of existence like a muscle kink, trying to make it disappear, because she had felt that sensation before, and she knew what always followed—
Pain had taken her where she stood, as if everything inside her was being twisted and ripped loose, and as the darkness came over her in a terrible, rushing flood, she had been sure that this time, this time she would die… .
But she was alive. She was lying in a strange bed, in a strangely familiar room. She recognized its ceiling. She had seen this sight before; the inside of this hospital room, its odd mixture of old and new; modern fixtures and furnishings, abandoned intact by the Hegemony, but with their systems gutted, like hers. She knew the acnd, alien smell of the medicinal herbs that were used for most of the healing that was done here now. She could feel her hands, her arms, her shoulders, although she had no strength to move them. She could feel her toes. But at the center of her body there was nothing, no sensation at all. Numb. And no one had to tell her the reason why.
She moved her head—let it fall, pulled down by gravity as she looked toward the doorway. Someone stirred just beyond her sight, in response to her motion; she realized, from the sudden sensation in her hand, that someone had been holding it. She forced her eyes to focus, expecting to see her husband’s face.
Instead, she found the face of the Summer Queen. Moon Dawntreader’s pale hand tightened over her own in unspoken empathy, in grief for a loss so fresh she had not even begun to feel it yet. Just for a moment Jerusha remembered a time when their positions had been reversed; when she had sat at Moon’s bedside, Moon’s hand clutching hers in a deathgrip, in the throes of giving birth… . “You shouldn’t be here,” she whispered. Her throat was achingly dry; she felt as if her body were burning up, a desert. Barren. Sterile.
Moon’s expression changed, turning uncertain.
“You have duties. …”
Moon shook her head. “Time has stopped. It all stopped, until I knew you would be all right,” she said softly. “Besides, how can I function, without my right arm’” She smiled; the smile fell away. She looked down, with a knowledge in her eyes that only another woman’s eyes could hold—not a queen’s, but a mother’s; the reflection of the most terrible fear she could imagine.
Jerusha pressed her mouth together, looking away; her lips were parched and cracked. Moon offered her water, helped her drink it. “Where’s Miroe?” she asked, finally.
“He took care of you, when we brought you in. He was here before, for a long time …” Moon murmured. “He said he would be back soon.”
Jerusha nodded, wearily. She looked at the ceiling again, its ageless, flawless surface … wishing that her own body could be as perfect, as unaffected by time or fate, as impervious. She looked back at Moon. “I’m all right,” she said quietly, at last. “Go home to your family.”
Moon rose, her hand still holding Jerusha’s tightly, her eyes still holding doubt. She let go, reluctantly. “I’ll find Miroe, and send him to you.”
“Thank you,” Jerusha said.
Moon smiled again, nodded almost shyly as she left the room.
Jerusha lay back, listening to the distant sounds of life that reached her from the corridors beyond her closed door; listening to the gibberings of loss and futility seeping in to fill the perfect emptiness she tried to hold at the center of her thoughts. She imagined the responses of the men she had worked with in the Hegemonic Police, if they saw her now … imagined the response of the woman she herself had been to the woman she was now, lying in this bed. They would have been equally unsympathetic. She had spent years trying to force them to accept her as a human being instead of a woman, and all it had done was turn her into a man. In leaving the force, she had believed that she was reaffirming her humanity. She wasn’t a man … but now when she wanted to be a woman, she couldn’t be that either. She felt hot tears rise up in her eyes and overflow; hating them, hating herself for her weakness, physical and mental. She wanted Miroe, she needed him, to help her now. Why wasn’t he here? Damn him, he was the one she had needed to see, he shared this loss with her, more intimately than anyone. She needed to share his strength, and his grief—
Someone came into the room. She lifted her head, needing all her own strength, for long enough to see that Miroe had come, as if in answer to her thoughts.
“Jerusha.” He crossed to her bedside, his work-rough hands touching her flushed, fevered skin with the gentleness that always surprised her—touching her own hands, her face, her tears. He kissed her gently on the forehead, and on the lips; drew back.
“Hold me,” she murmured, wishing that she did not have to request that comfort. “Hold me. …”
He sat down on the edge of the bed; lifted her strengthless, unresponsive body and held her close, letting her tears soak his shirt, absorbing them, for a long time. She could not see whether he wept too. The muscles of his body were as rigid as steel, as if he were holding grief at bay. She had never wept before, when this had happened to her; although it had happened to her three times already. And he had never wept, either.
“Why does this keep happening to me …” she whispered, brokenly, at last. “It isn’t fair—”
“I’m sorry.” His own voice was like a clenched fist. “Gods, Jerusha—I’ve done everything I can."
“I’m not blaming you.” She pulled away from him, to look at his face. He would not meet her eyes.
“You should,” he muttered. “I can’t heal it, I can’t make it right. … If you weren’t here, if you were anywhere else, you’d have healthy children by now.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” she said. “I wouldn’t even have a husband. I wouldn’t be with you. It’s the Hegemony’s fault—” A surge of anger and resentment pushed the words out of her throat. But the Hegemony was far away, formless, faceless, unreachable, and she found herself suddenly angry at the man who held her, for making her ask for comfort, for making her comfort him when it was her loss…. Our loss. It’s our loss! she told herself fiercely. But she let herself slide out of his arms, as his arms loosened; falling back into the bed’s cool, impersonal embrace.
He looked at her, his eyes clouded and full of doubt, looked away again. He reached into a pocket of his coat and took something out: a small jar full of what looked like dried herbs. “Jerusha,” he said quietly, “I want you to start using this.”