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Calestine cleared her throat again, and I looked up.
“I need to examine your belly.”
She lifted her inscrutable gaze from my belly, stared at me, and something told me that a silent expectation lingered on the tip of her tongue, hoping I would guess her thoughts.
With a deep breath, she gestured toward my belly.
“Julie, your robe is in the way.”
The last few times, I had been so focused on getting through those uncomfortable ten minutes that I had immediately pushed my robe aside, but today I wasn’t quite myself. My mind kept drifting because my chaotic life threatened to overwhelm me.
I did as I was told, opening my robe and the blouse underneath, and let Calestine measure my circumference, trying to ignore her fingers on my skin and focusing instead on the sturdy fabric tape.
Finally, she turned away from me to jot down some notes.
“Your circumference is quite large for someone in the eleventh week of pregnancy.”
Erik was tall. What if his daughter turned out to be taller than me, too?
I swallowed, trying to control the tears welling up in my blurring vision and not to think about things that had no place down here.
I would feel better if a doctor could examine my belly, just to know that she was okay...
“An ultrasound scan…”
“The Quatura Parliament prohibits ultrasounds,” Calestine interrupted me sharply, and I remembered that she was just as traditional as Grace and pretty much everyone down here.
“On what grounds?”
Calestine sighed.
“Tradition, Julie.”
An answer often given in Moenia, but one that had never satisfied me, because it ended like a one-way street leading nowhere.
“But tradition isn’t…”
“Grace is right,” she interrupted me again, and I pressed my lips together. “Your rebellious nature is a danger to our society.”
With those words, she picked up the book with her notes and walked around the stone slab until she reached her chair, where she set the book down and jotted down more notes in another book.
“What else is she saying about me?”
I buttoned my blouse, not looking up at Calestine, but instead trying to focus on the buttons until there were no more and I closed the robe.
Grace was in contact with everyone down here, as befitted someone aspiring to the rank of Domini, but the fact that she was spreading personal opinions about me came as a surprise.
It shouldn’t have surprised me. And yet there was that pain of betrayal, gnawing its way through my chest in the form of coldness.
“The future Domini only wants what’s best for you.” Calestine looked up for the first time. “Just as this society wants what’s best for the entirety of its members.”
She set down her bronze-colored metal writing implement and secured it in a designated holder.
“You carry the child of the prophecy within you. You have been granted the honor of being the mother of the chosen one, and as far as I know, many tributes of honor await you once this child is born.” Now she sought my gaze. “Many Earth Quatra hope to one day marry their daughters to your son. The chosen one will bring hope to our people.”
The thought that my unborn baby was already a topic of discussion on the Quatura marriage market triggered an uneasy feeling within me.
The cold returned to my fingers, and I stared at my fingertips turning blue.
