Wildfire (35 page)

 

  
In silence I offered up my own prayers to Dread and Fate, vowing sacrifices I couldn’t afford. I didn’t tell Mai what the bones had said, for fear she would lose all heart.

 

  
Mai sagged against the sacks, Tobe pillowed on her arm. He was too listless to fuss. She looked past him at me.
Help me,
she said without speaking. And then a throe overswept her and she brought her knees up toward her belly and her eyes squeezed shut. I wiped her face with a damp cloth to cleanse her of the stinging salt, and coaxed her to drink a tonic Midwife had made. Such small services I could do for her.

 
  

 

  
Tobe slept through fever and chills alike, while I took heat from him or gave it, until it seemed to flow between us at need. But every fever peak and trough of chills robbed him of strength. And now the shiver-and-shake became a tempest. He began to scream, just as Jillybell had done, from fear and pain. His head hurt. No one could comfort him, not even Mai. Midwife said I should take him outside, and I did, though Mai protested.

 

  
It might have been any time between noon and dusk. Snow whirled through a gray sky, softening and blurring everything. Mai’s varlets and the midwife’s guards had a blaze going. I was glad the men were with us, because people were roaming the camp—likely villagers out to steal from the army that had stolen so much from them.

 

  
The Dame and Na had pointed to many remedies, and I blessed their foresight. I made a wreath of rue for Tobe to wear around his head against his terrors, and bound leaves of shepherd’s purse to the soles of his feet against jaundice, for his skin and the whites of his eyes were yellowing. To soothe his headache, and prevent the fever fits I feared would come, I added butterbur root to the gruel of elder buds and barley, and sweetened it generously with honey, and gave it to Tobe on my thumb to suck. After a while he fell quiet, and his heart stopped shuddering like a rabbit’s.

 

  
Already his face had changed, as fever consumed his plumpness. I could see the shape of the man he might become, with deep eye sockets and a
strong jaw. His feathery hair was flattened to his head with sweat; his skull was a crucible of dreams.

 

  
Midwife jumped down from the cart. She peered at Tobe in my arms and stroked his soft, sunken cheek.

 

  
It comforted me to know she had accompanied many a woman through a dangerous travail, and was undaunted by this one. I wanted to thank her for staying when she could have departed with the army, for her courage and calm, but words wouldn’t come. I kissed her hand and she smiled at me. She took a pinch of her foul-smelling snuff and sneezed like thunder.

 
  

 

  
Sunup left to fill the water jar and empty the pisspot, and shortly she opened the door flap and let in cold twilight. “Your boy is here,” she said to me.

 

  
“Who?”

 

  
“Your boy Fleetfoot.”

 

  
I climbed down from the cart and there was Fleetfoot on a mule, his shanks dangling, and Frost on a lead beside him bearing my saddlebags. Fleetfoot’s ears were nearly the hue of Carnal’s magenta flag. He slid off the mule’s back. The lame manhound Piddle sniffed Mai’s piebald dog and the dog sniffed back.

 

  
Fleetfoot gave me a small scrap of linen. “A message,” he said, hoarse from panting. “And Sire Galan bade me ask if you would be so kind as to accompany me to camp.”

 

  
“He said that? In so many worries?”

 

  
“It is exact.” I saw a smirk; we shared a tiny triumph between us drudges.

 

  
By the fletch pattern of the embroidery, I knew the linen had been torn from one of Galan’s sleeves. He had painted three godsigns on the cloth. Why had he sent this to me? He knew I’d forgotten which syllable belonged to each godsign.

 

  
But suppose the signs referred to avatars rather than sounds? I recognized two, Rift Queen of the Dead and Hazard Chance. The third was a male avatar, in a circle with Rift Queen. Was it Prey Hunter? Of course it was, there were Prey’s three stars in a row. Prey was the king’s clan, the king was the Hunter, and he stood in a circle with the Queen of the Dead. Within her realm, it must mean. The last godsign was Chance—to stand for Galan himself—a meaning I alone would guess. The king was dead and it was a secret. The king was dead and I had foreseen it, so my prophecy was true. Therefore Galan no longer shunned me. I hoped he was satisfied by this bitter proof.

 

  
Fleetfoot said, “Can you come back with me? Or have you a message for Sire Galan?”

 

  
“Oh, I would, I would go so quick, but Ma still suffers her trials. Can’t you stay with us? Stay, please, and when it’s done we’ll return.”

 

  
His mouth made a stubborn line. He knew enough to be afraid, yet still he wanted to measure himself against something as large as this battle and as small as his fellows’ opinion of him. I didn’t know what use he’d be, a foot soldier with three good fingers, but I could see he was insulted by my suggestion.

 

  
I turned over the scrap of cloth and with a burnt twig inscribed on it the godsigns of Desire and Wildfire: Desire for the childbirth that kept me here, Desire for the longing to be with him; Wildfire in place of my name. “Give this to Sire Galan. Then take word to Sire…Trossers…Torosus, that Mai is all alight, alive. But Mice…Mouse is not yet born, and when he is we’ll follow.”

 

  
Fleetfoot rode away and left Frost with me. I stood behind the cart, where no one could see me cry. The king was dead and I couldn’t grieve for him. I had more pressing cares. I looked up and saw snowflakes falling toward me, and it was as if I were rushing into the gray sky. There were women I might have saved from the shiver-and-shake. I’d neglected them to stay with Mai and Tobe, and yet I feared my help would be in vain. I thought of Galan and how I’d abandoned him. I should be with him tonight, before the battle; it was my duty and my desire. I’d made a choice and chosen wrong.

 

  
No. I had chosen to do what was given me by the gods to do, and now I wished to go anywhere but into the small airless cart that stank of fear.

 

  
I should have had no room for joy at all amidst such sorrows; nonetheless I possessed a scrap of it, no larger than a strip of linen torn from a shirtsleeve.

 
  

 

  
In the middle of the night, Mai’s pains slowed and then stopped, and she began to weep, saying, “Mouse won’t come out. He won’t. What’s amiss? It’s never taken so long, never, not even with the last one who came stillborn.”

 

  
Midwife took Mai by the shoulders and said, “This child will be born, I promise you! My grandmother told me so, and she never lies. You should show more courage before your daughter.”

 

  
That put Mai in a temper. “Sunup ought to see, she ought to know. Take a good look, third-daughter! Soon you’ll be twelve, and thinking you’re a grown woman. I want you to remember this. This is what comes of letting a man poke you. See? Keep away from them. You’d best keep away!”

 

  
And Sunup, who was usually so mild, shouted, “Then so should you!”

 

  
Midwife sent Sunup outside to brew a tea of raspberry leaves, and she touched Mai’s belly with her clever hands and found that Mouse had wriggled around crosswise again, despite the magenta sash meant to hold him in place.

 

  
She knelt between Mai’s legs, and I helped her turn Mouse for the second time. With my hands beside the midwife’s, I felt him inside, awake. Stubborn, complacent, unwilling to be born. It was harder to turn him now. The very throes meant to push him out had snugged him in the cradle of Mai’s girdlebone.

 

  
When it was done, Midwife chided Mai, saying, “You’ve offended the unborn somehow. You must beg his forgiveness so he’ll stop dawdling.”

 

  
Mai stared, affronted. “Beg forgiveness of Mouse? He’s going to be the death of me, the misbegotten prick, the contrary bastard. He should beg my forgiveness, he should remember that if he kills me, he’ll die too. Is that what you want?” she said, shouting now at the unborn, striking her belly with the flat of her palm. “Are you trying to kill me?”

 

  
Her shouts awakened Tobe, in my lap, and he called for Mai and his head lolled as if despair made it too heavy for his thin neck to carry. I held him up and he rested his hot face against my neck.

 

  
“Hush,” Midwife said to Mai. “No wonder Mouse won’t come out. I wouldn’t come out either to such a welcome. Why have you taken against him?”

 

  
“Do you suppose Mite is jealous?” I asked. “Maybe that’s why he likes it where he is, where he is the lonely, the only.”

 

  
“Jealous of whom?” said Midwife.

 

  
“Of little Mote.”

 

  
“He’s jealous, he is!” Mai said, weeping again. “And it’s certain he’s made Tobe sick with it. I swear, if he kills Tobe he’ll have to bear my mother’s curse.”

 

  
That was not what I’d meant. I should never have spoken, or rather misspoken. A chill walked my spine. I felt as though Lynx Mischief had clambered into the cart with us. Surely little Mouse, coiled in the womb, did not have venom enough to harm Tobe. In my dream he’d been a pink thing no larger than the top joint of my finger, small and weak and helpless.

 

  
I leaned close and whispered in Mai’s ear, “The unbairn is not to blame.”

 

  
No, the gods were to blame: it is said they are jealous when a child is much beloved. Tobe was dying. I feared they meant to take Mai as well, and maybe Mouse. They were pitiless. Yet we were obliged to praise them as wise and merciful, and beg their protection from the very tribulations they bestowed on us—we must hide from them even in our thoughts.

 

  
Might as well blame a river for flooding as blame the gods for causing us suffering. But I was bitter. They’d sent me remedies that failed, and I counted them as enemies, and hardened my heart against them.

 

  
I could wish my heart harder still so I wouldn’t feel these sharp pangs of tenderness for Tobe and Mai and the unborn, for Sunup and Midwife—for all of us frail mortals. All so dear to me, even the shades who huddled here around the knot of the living, some of them called to us, like Midwife’s grandmother and the Dame and Na, some drawn by passion and suffering they could no longer feel. I almost envied them. Better to be unfeeling. I labored for breath. I thought my heart might be riven by it, this tenderness forcing its way out.

 
  

 

  
Cold drops fell on my face; snow had melted from our heat and seeped through the oxhide canopy. A thread of light gleamed through the slit in the door flap. Dawn at last. The day of the battle.

 

  
Mai’s pains had returned with great force. She couldn’t bear the confinement of her clothes, so she labored naked, squatting face-to-face with the midwife, gripping her arms. Sunup, so small and thin, tried to help bear her mother up as she rocked and swayed. When a throe overtook Mai, she squeezed her eyes shut. Rivulets of sweat and tears ran down her red cheeks. She forced sounds through her throat that were hurtful to hear, not whimpering or keening or grunting, but something that partook of these. Midwife coaxed her, “Come now, Mai, let him down, that’s good, let him down,” and her words were a chant that ebbed and flowed in time with Mai’s own harsh music.

 

  
Between pains Mai fell back and wept and said it was impossible, she couldn’t bear it, she hadn’t the strength. When she said she was going to die, Midwife scolded her. But when the next throe came, Mai crouched and bent to her labor. She wanted to push and Midwife wouldn’t let her, said it wasn’t time. So the throes moved through her. She was gripped by the birthing and she must go on until she was released, for the travail could not be shirked, and must be endured even beyond the last reaches of endurance.

 

  
I couldn’t help her. Tobe was in my lap and I knew his time was coming. His eyelids were half open and his eyes rolled, seeming to look in different directions at once, or nowhere at all. He let out a dribble of piss, and I told Mai I should bathe him to cool him down. She let him go. She trusted me.

 

  
Outside the cart he stiffened and his limbs began to jerk, and his neck crooked backward so his head almost touched his spine. His hearthfire had become wildfire, it burned through him like lightning, flashes followed by darkness. I drew it to me through my right hand, thinking surely I could contain this inward lightning better than Tobe. But what leapt between us stung
me as well. My muscles cramped, and I fell to my knees. I saw branching white bolts against a bright glare, then the dazzle of sunlight on the amber ripples of a stream. Tobe had splashed in this stream before, playing beside his mother in a dream, and now the waters were rising. I hunched over the boy in my lap. I thought as long as Tobe didn’t sink he would stay alive, and I held his head above the water as he flailed, and lightning surged between us skin to skin.

 

  
But the water was rising too fast, and though I strove to hold him above it, his brow was submerged, then his pearly lids. He bled from the nose, and his tears were tinged red. Bruises surfaced all over his thin skin, as if everywhere I had touched him, trying to soothe him, I’d caused him hurt. And indeed he flinched from me, yet he no longer knew the pains his body suffered. I thanked the gods for showing him that much mercy.

 

  
I waded with Tobe. He was all underwater now, the light on the surface flickering over him. The stream came to my chest, shoulders, neck. I saw the Queen of the Dead under a rippling veil of water, but I knew she stood on a dry shore. I was surprised to find her young and fair. Her bodice laced up the front like a mudwoman’s and she untied the laces. She took Tobe from me and gave him a breast to suck, and the bloom came back to his cheeks and the milk fat to his flesh. He suckled with his eyes half open, sleepy and content.

 

  
Tobe’s neck was damp against my forearm. He was such a light burden, yet heavy as a friend’s heart, heavy as all the world.