210 - The all-consuming task that is birth-labour

When I opened my eyes, cold scalded them, and I saw only grey; I didn’t know up from down until my back hit mud, the lake-bottom. I got my feet under me and clawed back up towards light, hoping I’d either find the hole in the ice I’d made, or could find the strength, though I had no air, to make another one. My head and arms burst through the floating ice-shards—the water was about chest-deep—and when I could I drew a gasping breath. Some people were running towards me along the dock, others scrambling down through the snow on the shore, ready to wade in to pull me out.

I signed them off—the water was too kyashin cold to stay in long enough to be helped, or for them to get into in the first place—and used the swimmers’ ladder on the dock to escape it, breaking my way through the ice with hammer-blows to get there. Suku would circle back to see how I was; if he didn’t see me walking, he wouldn’t be willing to try again. Too soon, I was too soon on both the run and the jump, I thought, that’s all. From nerves—no, just from not knowing. Now I do. The experience that teaches best is the hard-won. As the asakraiyaseyel threw several cloaks around me and started pulling me toward the maesa, he soared back around, low enough for me to hail him, though yelling hurt my back while I was doing it. “Again, after I get changed!” He yelled back, “Foa-een, I get height! Flash or wave when you’re ready!” He turned into the smoke and was wrenched skyward.

“You’re trying it again?” several people said. “You’re lucky that thing didn’t break your neck.” As if to remind me why I was, a birthing pain hit right then, a hard one. She’ll be pushing soon… I hoped it didn’t work both ways, making her feel what I did; cloaks or not, my hair was frozen solid by the time I got to the door, and the pain on the spot on my back, on the sword side and below the shoulder-blade, was worsening. I didn’t let Tyaicha examine me, suspecting he’d tell me I was too badly hurt to try again.

When I was in dry clothes and had taken a few whacks of whack-weed, I had them build up the fire again, went to the south end of the dock, shook out my arms and legs, warmed myself by pacing, and, when I saw Suku was high enough, gave him the wave. I didn’t know it at the time, but from the shore across from the island where Krero was waiting for me with the rest of my guard of four, he was screaming, “No! Nooooo!! Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e, I forbid it, I’ll kyashin run you in before Assembly if you live!!” Luckily, I couldn’t hear him.

Though the asakraiyaseyel were more nervous this time, I was less so, somehow, perhaps because I knew I could now judge how soon Suku would be here by where he was. The human-built bird of prey came down, enlarging unearthly fast again, wind whistling through its wires. I set off easily this time, though every footfall was a stab of pain through my back, hit full-speed a little before half-way, and this time had the kriffiyah lined up in my mind all the way, with the harmony of timing between me and it that should be there.

It caught me at the perfect apex of my jump. The only thing I did wrong was not pull my sword-side leg up fast enough, so the calf got hit by the same spar, another blinding pain, then trapped between them as it closed. But I was whipped forward and swooping skyward, wrapped fast by the netting and grabbing the spars nonetheless. I went swinging up behind Suku, then a little down again, and he looked over his shoulder from where he was gracefully curled most of the way through the bar, to balance my weight, and laughed. “Ha! Got you this time!” The cheers and birth-blessings faded fast in the rush of wind. He turned us towards the smoke-column, and I closed my eyes and held my breath until heat turned back to cold as he steered us out. Three more dips into it and we were high enough to make the crossing.

They hadn’t yet conceived a way to bring a kriffiyah’ed person down lightly without catchers, so as we came over the shore and he began to float us down towards Krero’s four, he yelled to them, “Catch him, I catch me on my feet, catch him!” They did, Krero at my head, as gently as a mother takes a baby. Once I’d been sprung I gave Suku a fast hug, told him to flash Daku to flash Niku that I was a tenth-bead away, and took off running, though it hurt my leg even to stand and the back-pain was a dull scream. It was only pain; I could use it to drive myself, especially the pain that was intermittent, and getting more and more frequent.

“Curse you, Ch’eng’, where are you going?” Krero barked. “It’s my job to check to see if you’re all right!” I yelled back over my shoulder, “No, it’s your job to keep up with me!” They did their best. Kunarda got ahead of me at the start, no surprise, but I left him behind about three quarters of the way up the shortcut.

At least I had a good excuse to streak right through the herd of writers at the door. They tried anyway. “Chevenga, what do you think your chances are?” “Chevenga, you haven’t campaigned at all, but your detractors have been all over!” “Chevenga, if you lose, what will you do?” “Chevenga, we heard you foiled four assassins unarmed and sick and without bloodshed, is that true?” I answered with but one sentence; asa kraiya or not, I still had my battlefield voice. “My wife is about to give birth!”

As we’d planned, they had the water-room set up for it, with all of the midwife’s things ranged on a cupboard, spare tables, a wide bed set up for afterwards and so on. The kids frolicked in the cool pool. Niku paced, leaning on Baska’s arm; Skorsas bustled; all of my parents and siblings and other spouses sat ready to fetch and carry when needed; Natandra Kyaina, the Vae Arahi midwife, and Kaninjer stood by.

The whole room was decorated with ribbons and evergreen branches; that was not a Niah custom, else she’d have had the room in the Marble Palace where she’d given birth to Roshten and his brother done up similarly. Just someone’s idea? Everything was much more joyful then I’d ever seen before for a birth, the children giddy with excitement, the grown-ups full of smiles. I realized why. We will not stream-test them. That changed everything. This is how it must always be, I thought, in families that don’t do it.

“Niku, I’m here!” I cried. “How are you, love?”

“Omores, thank Ama Kalandris…” she breathed. “Aba Tyriah, I’ve missed you. I’m fine.” Of course my spawn got to me first, not being so encumbered as she, and were all over me, having not seen me for a month; I gave them all hugs and pushed through them to her and we kissed just in time for the next pain. We held each other through it, her fingers leaving marks on my arms, then she said, “How are you?” with a little concern in her voice. I was limping, and flinching on some of the hugs, and had come in gasping for breath.

“I am wonderful,” I said. “Though maybe I could use a little whack-weed.” My remedy-pouch was drying out in the maesa asa kraiya, of course, but Kaninjer had some. “We’ve got a little time before the next one, love, can you spare me for a bit?” She said yes, and I threw off my clothes and let myself fall into the hot-tub and float on my back, in delicious heat—the water was not the usual blistering hot, but gently so, as we’d planned for her sake—and blissful stillness. “You didn’t have to risk life and limb to get here!” she said, as she saw the bruises. “How else was I going to get here?” I answered. “I’m in one piece.”

About then, Krero came growling in, chest heaving. “Curse you, curse you, Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e! You know kyashin well I’ll forgive you for this time, like all the rest!” I shot him a look that meant “Don’t tell her what happened!” Bless him, he didn’t, and bless her, she was too distracted to ask.

We settled, then, into the all-consuming task that is birth-labour, the mother’s part to do and suffer it, everyone else’s to make it easier and safer for her, a time apart from the rest of life for all. Her waters had broken this morning, about two aer after dawn, and it was going faster than last time; to me it looked like the twins might even be born before dark.

She came into the hot-tub, sat on my lap and said, “That’s it, I’m staying here,” so I wrapped my arms around her. Niah women often do what they call “dolphin births,” in the sea; this was the next best thing. She wanted to bear down, and so Natandra stripped and got in with us, and after feeling her inside, told her to go ahead. The children were wonderful, the perfect midwife’s assistants, bringing Niku water and fruit, wiping her brow with cool cloths, giving her kisses and strength-blessings and jokes.

As the sun fell behind Haranin, the first one came, shooting out into Natandra’s hands like a little fish, to the joyful shriek of all the children. The cord had been wrapped around her neck but the midwife freed it easily enough. A girl, her tiny squinched face tender brown and her eyebrows mine if I’d ever seen them; she had a good strong voice and a ready smile.

“Tawaen,” the midwife called, as if he should have known to be there already, and handed him the cord-cutting knife. I had no idea that this was how it was done in families that don’t stream-test, that the oldest child cuts the cord when the blood ceases running through it; I’d seen my siblings’ births all from a distance. He did it smoothly enough, and Kima tied it off; first and second-born blood-siblings, that’s the custom.

Niku said the traditional Niah words, vriah sala mi totoh, ash ni ash reeshen: “Freedom of the sun to you, little child. Fly far, fly high.”

I said, “Strength, my little one, against—” and cut myself off. Against the cold that tries you, is how it goes.

I’d never say it again.

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