1
Tidings of peace, little traveler. May your journey be sweet and filled with remembrance of the One.
—a blessing whispered into the ears of a newborn child
The woman cries out, the kind of cry that once set every muscle in Shay's body on edge. The kind she's long grown accustomed to. The guttural intonation reverberates off the smooth tadelakt walls, keeping tempo with the flicker of candle shadows. Heavy swathed curtains fail to dull its urgent tenor.
The contraction recedes. Shay dips a cloth into the wooden bowl beside her and brushes rose water across the laboring woman's sweat-slick brow. The mother-to-be sinks back into the nest of pillows stacked behind her, gathering strength.
Shay kneels by her shoulders while Ghita occupies the more intimate position, tucked between the woman's quivering thighs. The apprentice doesn't need to share the midwife's vantage point to know the infant's arrival isimminent; she feels it stirring in the air like the chant of angels, as if the gates of paradise have slipped open. Though, in fairness, the look on the woman's face would be better described as someone staring down the leagues of hell.
The next contraction hits—after no more than two beakers’ rest—and she squeezes Shay's hand like a tourniquet, reopening one of her newer scabs. Shay winces. She earned the cut on her last foraging trip, the results of which are now tucked inside a small satchel at her waist. She meets eyes with Ghita, who understands the unspoken question and nods. With her free hand, Shay fishes out the potent leaves.
“Here,” she murmurs, and pushes a pinch past the woman's lips, depositing it in the gap between her gums and cheek. “It's sepaweed.”
The woman stops moaning long enough to begrudge Shay a smile and loosens her grip. Shay sucks the spot of blood from her forefinger, a spark of iron on her tongue.
The herb wasn't easily obtained. It grows farther beyond the umbrageous boundary of Al-Ghaba Mayita than most dare to venture, and it is encased with the most vicious of thorns.Thorn, chawkain the Old Tongue, is a variation ofShuika. Shay's given name literally meanslittle thorn. Having resolved to never be the burden the word implies, she goes instead by the shorter sobriquet.
Aided by the sepaweed, the guest of honor soon appears. Shay is always amazed by how little newborns are, and how perfect—their alien purple-gray skin and heads shaped like bunya nuts notwithstanding. The baby's eyes are open and bright, drinking in their surroundings with quiet wonder.
Too quiet, Shay thinks, as Ghita bends to their ear with a whispered blessing. The congeries of women—sisters, khalat, friends, and neighbors—who hovered all night in patient stasis now spring to life, gathering warm towels and distributing glasses of celebratory tea.
They haven't noticed something isn't right. And why would they when Ghita's undisputed skill and intuition warrant their deepest trust?
But the mother is still and silent, her worried gaze fixed on the small being wrapped in Ghita's arms. She appears to be waiting—like Shay—for theinfant to pick up the wailing chorus where she left off. To cry, to squawk, to mewl. To … something, anything.
Shay imagines the mother refusing to take a breath until her child does. She has a mind to confer with Ghita, but she restrains herself. No need to cause the mother undue distress. A delayed cry isn't always a sign of trouble. As the moment drags from hopeful pause to concern to alarm, Shay feels the adrenaline of being trapped in a nightmare, the kind where she can't stop falling.
She sees the moment Ghita decides to act, reads the tautening of skin around the midwife's eyes. Shay's relief is so strong, it leaves a taste like tonic in her throat.
“Everything will be fine,” she whispers to the mother, though she's not sure the words penetrate the woman's shock.
Ghita places the baby on a dry sheepskin rug. She rubs garlic oil onto their chest, their tiny hands and feet. The child's limbs are loose and limp. The massage should stimulate the sluggish baby, but they show no sign of being roused. Instead, their eyes slide intractably closed.
“What is the next step?” The midwife's demanding stare traps Shay like a pinned butterfly.
Shay knows to be prepared for Ghita's quizzes. Tests like this are expected as part of her training. But this is an emergency.
Time drips like water. Every thought, every fact the apprentice has studied evaporates, her mind as dried up as her throat suddenly feels. An invisible bell tolls,Answer, answer, answer.
“I …” Shay's tongue stalls. She peers into Ghita's eyes while their steady calm is overshadowed by a disappointment that makes Shay want to disappear.
The midwife pushes past the apprentice. A choked sound rasps from the mother, harsh and dry and more haunting than any other she's made. Shay's mind clears. Ghita reaches into her bulging medical bag, and when she hands Shay a stack of clover bean leaves and shoves her toward the baby, the apprentice snaps into motion.
Turn the child's head. Clean the mucus from their nose and mouth.The commands, while issued inside her own head, are delivered in the midwife's voice. Shay uses the leaves to clear the baby's airways, then looks to Ghita.
“Push on the baby's chest.” Ghita grasps Shay's hands and positions them, aligning her thumbs. “Like this.”
Shay carefully follows the midwife's instructions to apply chest compressions, then blows two gentle breaths into the infant's mouth. Only when the baby releases a hearty cry does she feel the terror she's held back. She shakes, crying and smiling at once. Ghita brings the now-wailing baby to the mother's chest and declares her sex to be female.
The new mother and daughter become the rightful center of the room's attention. As women stop, offering thanks to Ghita, Shay steps into the background—mostly.
She feels the brush of eyes on her and turns to see a lone male servant across the room of female bodies, his dark gaze as welcoming as the shade of a palm tree in the Mourian Desert. He nods at Shay in admiration.
She looks down. It's not likeshedid anything. A blush, more itchy than warm, crawls between her collarbones. By the time it climbs her neck to her cheeks and she looks back up, the boy is speaking quietly with Ghita. His posture suggests he is relaying a message. When he leaves, Shay blames the inexplicable twinge in her chest on indigestion.
She busies herself attending to the afterbirth, tidying the room, and encouraging the lingering entourage to depart so the new mother and baby can rest. She looks away as the baby suckles. She pays no mind to the sounds of sweet contentment, the adoration in the new mother's eyes, pretending it doesn't tug at something in her chest, a space reserved for all the things she missed, the cycles of memories she doesn't have.
