I had to leave Leisl to get the midwife, though I hated to do so. I ran with all the strength in my legs and fell against the midwife's door, pounding my fist upon the boards with the last of my energy. When it opened, swinging inward, I stumbled and nearly landed in a pile at the woman's legs.
I didn't have to say anything. She took one look at my face and said, "Yes, I'm coming." She retreated inside the house only long enough to grab a bag, and then she was running, too, her feet flying down the street with an energy I no longer possessed.
I followed slower, sick with exhaustion and worry. When I reached my home, the front door was gaping open like the midwife had been in too great a rush to spare even the time it would have taken to close it, but the bedroom door was shut firmly between us, and the whole place smelled like a butcher's.
I could hear nothing from the room beyond, and it sent a chill of foreboding through me. Shouldn't there have been the groans and cries of labor, if the baby were coming?
I didn't know if it would have been better if she were screaming and crying, though. Not with the image of all that blood still burning bright in my mind. It had looked like a lake of it, flooding the bed. How could she have bled so much, and still had the strength to scream and cry and sit upright in bed? How could one person have bled so much, without even a wound upon their body?
I wished I could at least hear voices beyond the door, Leisl speaking to the midwife, perhaps, and the midwife offering reassurances. But I heard nothing at all but the pounding drum of my own heartbeat.
I didn't know how long it was -- it felt like a year, and somehow also seemed like a minute -- before a scream ripped through the silence. I was halfway to the bedroom before I realized that it wasn't Leisl. It was a baby's cry, high and wavering, and it knocked my knees right out from under me.
I made my way back to the table on trembling legs, sank down into the first chair that reached my hand, and sat there with my hands pressed to my mouth, shaking with hope and fear.
When the door opened, I was on my feet again, so anxious I couldn't bear it. The midwife came out with a wriggling bundle in her arms that was sending up a ferocious wail. She motioned me back to my chair. "I don't suppose you thought to heat some water for this little one?"
I shook my head dumbly.
"We'll use cold, then. Clean her off, then swaddle her back up." She held the child out for me and I took her dumbly, then stared down at the bundle in my arms. She was a tiny thing, all thin limbs and red, squalling face. She looked delicate, but she screamed like she'd tear the world down around her until she got what she wanted. I held her close against my chest and already knew I'd do whatever it took to make sure she got it. "You know how--"
"Yes." I remembered Bansi teasing me, claiming I knew everything there was to know about babies without having carried one myself. I had believed in being prepared. But now I looked down at the baby in my arms, at my daughter, and felt at sea. How was I supposed to do this without Bansi? Without anyone?
The midwife nodded once, brisk, and threw her shawl about her shoulders. "That will do for now, then. Clean her off, keep her warm. We'll cover the rest when I get back. I must fetch the doctor."
Dread twisted through my stomach, seizing up hard. "Leisl." I could scarcely force her name through the tightness in my throat. "Is she--"
The midwife's face clouded. "She's living. For the moment. I fear the gods will have more to say about whether she remains so than the physician, but nevertheless."
The child huffed and wriggled in my arms, then started crying as though the very idea was breaking her heart. I wanted to cry with her, but I only held her closer and patted her back, the only feeble reassurance I could offer her. "Is there anything I can do?"
"Care for her child," the midwife said. "Let her keep her strength for living."
I nodded and then she was gone, hurrying down the street, and I was only left with the inconsolable cries of the baby and the terrible silence coming from the next room.
Care for the child. I could do that. I sat a the table and unwrapped the blankets the midwife had swaddled her in, then dipped a corner in the bowl of water she'd left for me and carefully wiped her clean. Her face first, and then her little fuzzy head, and then I worked my way down, wiping off her arms and between her tiny fingers and down to her even tinier toes. And when she was as clean as I was going to get her without a proper bath, I wrapped her back up again, tucked her into my arms, and gathered my courage to crack the bedroom door open and peer inside.
It smelled like a butchery inside the bedroom. The candle burned on the bedside table. The wavering light it cast across Leisl's face made her look white as clean linen. It made her look dead.
"Leisl?" I stepped inside the room and ventured toward the bed, my heart thundering. "Leisl..."
Closer, I could see her chest move. It was hardly anything, the shallowest breath, and I didn't know how it did her any good at all. But she was breathing. Her hand lay limp on the bed, but her fingers twitched.
"Leisl." I dropped down onto my knees at the bedside and slipped my hand into hers. "Leisl. You can't die." I gripped her hand, strong and firm, and made my voice sound surer than I felt.
She stirred just a little. Her eyes cracked open, heavy-lidded like even that small effort was too much for her. She slid her gaze to me and made a wordless noise that sounded like inquiry to me.
"You can't die," I said again through parched lips. "As your employer, I expressly forbid it."
The corners of her mouth twitched. She tried to speak twice before she managed a faint, reedy whisper. "Maybe I quit."
I leaned my head on the edge of the mattress and gripped her head and wept with relief as I fought down a bubble of hysterical laughter. "Quit tomorrow," I told her. "I need you to do this one last thing for me."
The corners of her mouth remained curved as she sighed something that sounded like, "You're a cruel man, Renad." Her eyes drifted shut and her head lulled. "I'm tired. Let me sleep."
"Sleep," I agreed, and kept my grip on her hand, kept my face pressed into the bed where the sheets would absorb my tears. "But don't die. Don't die. Please don't die."
*
I couldn't know how long I stayed with her like that, silently praying to the gods to have pity, to the devils to relinquish their hold. Eventually, I roused myself to the sound of the front door opening, and footsteps across the floorboards. The midwife called my name, and I answered, "Here," softly, so as not to disturb Leisl. She wasn't awake, but I had my hand laid over her wrist and I could feel the weak, thready pulse of life still running through her.
The midwife came and stood in the doorway a moment, looking at me with what was probably disapproval, but I was too weary and too worried to care. She stepped aside without chastising me, though, and the physician came through behind her.
He looked for a moment at the vast poor of blood spread across the bed, his lips pressed thin and his gaze solemn.
"She's not dead," I protested, because he was looking at her like she already. I strugged to my feet, still holding the child in one arm. "She's not. She has a pulse."
He glanced at me, then nodded once. "If she's to remain that way, I'll need to take her to the sanatorium immediately."
"Of course. Please." I moved out of his way, and watched helplessly as he slid his arms beneath Leisl and lifted her. She hung limp, as though she was already dead, and I turned away quickly and clutched at her daughter until she began to whimper and fuss.
"Renad." The midwife came and touched my shoulder, drawing my attention around to her. She gestured to the baby. "She needs you. Leisl is in the gods' care now, and only they can decide whether they will take her home or not. You can't do anything else for her, but you can take care of her daughter, yes?"
I looked down at her tiny face, starting to crease and go red with fury as her cries built to a crescendo. I wiped a tear from her cheek. "I don't know how," I said numbly. "She's hungry. She needs her mother."
The midwife led me from the room and sat me at the table and showed me how to soak the corner of a rag in a pan of milk and let the baby suckle from it. It calmed her down somewhat, but it was a slow process, and every time I took the rag away to soak it again, she screamed as though she were dying. I didn't think I'd ever be able to get enough milk into her to make a proper meal, and it wasn't long before we were both of us soaked to the skin with milk that had splashed out of the pan or dripped from the rag.
When the midwife was assured that I wasn't going to starve her, she rose up and patted my shoulder, murmured, "I'll stop by tomorrow and see how you're both doing," and slipped out the door before I'd even managed to tear my gaze away from my little girl.
Eventually, long hours later, she seemed to have had her fill, and fell asleep with the rag still in her mouth. I set it aside and wiped up the milk that had dripped across her face, changed her into clean, dry swaddling, and then reluctantly left her in her crib while I ventured into the bedroom.
The candle had long since burned down, leaving the room cloaked in darkness, and that was just as well. It was bad enough that every breath filled my lungs with the acrid smell of blood. I didn't want to see any more of it than I already had. I already doubted I'd ever be able to wash the sight from my memory.
I dragged the mattress on the floor out of the bedroom and made my bed upon it. The baby roused at the noise of it, whimpering and twisting against the restraint of her swaddling. I scooped her up out of the crib and crawled onto the mattress with her in my arms. She settled down when I curled on my side and tucked her in close against my stomach.
I brushed my fingers over the thin fuzz of hair on the top of her head and fell asleep almost immediately, weary beyond imagining.
*
I spent those first months in a fog. Ilis and Corine and Yvas came over to visit a week in, and Corine had only to take a look at me as I answered the door and she burst into laughter.
"Oh, you dear. And not even a husband to rub your feet for you in the evening." She bustled in while I was still standing there blinking at them. Ilis came in behind her with Yvas, and Corine snatched the baby from my arms.
"Hello, there, you gorgeous thing," she cooed, offering a finger for the baby to play with. "I'm Corine."
She looked at me expectantly, but I didn't know what she wanted. I lowered myself into one of the kitchen chairs and wondered if it would be the height of rudeness to excuse myself to take a nap while they looked after my child.
"Renad," she said, laughing. "What's her name?"
"I don't know," I mumbled into the table top. I had been calling her darling and sweetheart and any number of ridiculously fond endearments, but I still couldn't decide on a name for her, and she hardly left me with the time or the energy to consider the options. It had always seemed that there was time yet to decide, before, and I had expected to have weeks yet before Leisl delivered and I must make a decision. I hadn't expected to be doing this on my own. I hadn't expected any of this to happen the way that it had. And it had not taken me but a day to realize that when the baby slept, I must as well, or I'd get none at all. And when she was not asleep, she kept me busy feeding her, or burping her, or changing her, or washing up after the messes she made. Corine was lucky I knew my own name. Deciding upon one for another was more responsibility than I could bear.
Corine shifted the baby up into her arms and said, "If Yvas had been a girl, I was going to name her Elodie," she said, as lightly as though she were commenting upon the weather.
I raised my head slowly and looked at her. Her eyes were on the baby as she smiled and cooed down at her, making like the comment, the suggestion, had meant nothing at all.
"Elodie," I repeated slowly.
"Mmhmm. It was nearly my name, but Mama here said Papa wouldn't have it, for some reason we could never get him to explain to us. So they named me Corine instead, but I always thought Elodie was a much prettier name than the one I ended up with. I was so disappointed when the midwife said I'd had a boy, and I knew I couldn't pass the name on." She looked up at me and smiled. "But maybe you can do it for me. If you like."
"It's a beautiful name." I rose, trying not to groan at the way that every muscle in my body seemed sore, and crossed over to stand with them, looking down at her. It was one of the rare moments where she was neither screaming nor sleeping nor nursing. She stared up at us with bright eyes that seemed as big as the moon, and twice as pretty. "What do you think?" I asked her, running a finger along the soft skin of her cheek. "Are you Elodie?"
She broke into a beaming, toothless smile that near melted my heart. Corine laughed and tucked her waving arms back under the blanket, then wrapped it tighter about her, to hold her secure. "There you are. I think she's made the decision for you. But how is her mother?"
"Alive," I said, which was honestly the best I could say for her. I had taken the baby with me to visit Leisl a few days before, to see for myself that it was true, that she had survived after all. Leisl had still been pale as her bed linens and too weak to sit fully upright, but she had been awake and aware, and had sighed tolerantly at me when I'd dropped down onto the foot of her bed and fought back tears of relief.
I was growing more attached to her daughter every day, even as she left me delirious with exhaustion, and I'd more than half expected that as soon as Leisl had had a proper sight of her, her feelings on motherhood would change and she would snatch her back from me and insist on keeping her for her own. But while Leisl had looked on her with interest when I'd shown the child to her, and had beamed with satisfaction and said, "I did a good job for you after all, didn't I?", she never said a word about taking her back for her own. And I was too relieved by that, as well, to question it.
Corine stayed and lavished adoration over the baby, and brewed me a cup of tea with the child tucked into her arm, until evening fell and Yvas grew restless at she had to hand my daughter back to me to hurry to help Ilis keep him from pulling himself upright on the side of Elodie's crib. "She's going to be a handful, Renad. Five days old, and she already knows her own mind. Congratulations." She said it like she meant it, like she thought it was as wonderful a thing as I did. "We'd better go, before mine here pulls her bed over onto his head."
They left, and the two of us settled down for a nap. I lay on my back on my mattress, and my daughter lay wrapped and swaddled on my chest, her cheek pressing a light weight against my collar, and I whispered, "Elodie," to her as she fell asleep, so she would know it for her own.
*
I tried a hundred times to write Bansi and tell him of Elodie. It seemed the only thing to do. She was Bansi's, and she was Leisl's, and Leisl had been on me for months to reach out to him and tell him about the child. At the time, I'd thought she was just afraid that I'd run away from the responsibility the same way that he had, and she'd be left to raise the infant she didn't want. I'd reassured her, and I'd put it off.
And now... Now Leisl was gone. We had visited her regularly during her convalescence, Elodie and I, and I had been pleased to see her gaining strength each time. Until one day, near to Elodie's two month birthday, I had brought her to the sanatorium with me and the staff there had quietly informed me that Leisl had been deemed strong enough to go home, and she had packed up her meager belongings and left almost as soon as she'd been told she could.
I wondered if she'd come visit Elodie and me, now that she was well enough to do so, and I waited, but we saw no sign of her. The sanatorium didn't know where she might have gone, only that they assumed that she had gone home, and that was no use to me. I didn't know where Leisl might call home, if it weren't mine. I wondered if she stayed away because she feared, now that she was well enough to be on her own, that I'd try to force her motherly duties upon her. I wished I could tell her needn't worry, that I didn't wish her to take Elodie for her own but instead feared that she would, that I'd never give her up willingly and that she'd have to fight me if she wanted to have her from me.
But I could tell her none of these things, I could only hope that she was doing well, that she was gaining strength, that she was happy. I prayed for her, that day that we'd returned from the sanatorium, but then I had had little time or energy to spare for her because Elodie consumed every bit of it that I possessed, and more.
I wished to be Elodie's father, but more often than not, I feared I was a poor substitute for one. I scarcely knew what to do with her. I had had nine months and more, and I'd thought I was prepared. Now I knew that I'd been deluding myself all the while. A father would have known how to take care of his child, wouldn't he? A father wouldn't have lain up at night, adding his tears to his daughter's because she was colicky and wouldn't sleep and scarcely ate and all he wanted in the world was a few minutes of quiet in which to sleep.
It was Corine who found me a wet nurse for her, a friend of hers who'd weaned her son and had milk to spare, and Corine who knew just how to hold her and rock her to help calm her when she seemed inconsolable.
Bansi needed to know about her. I hated the thought of giving her up to him even more than I did of giving her over to Leisl, hated it so much that the very thought of it made me ill. But she was his by rights, and he could offer her more than I ever could, if he wanted her. I'd have given Elodie the world if I could, but it wasn't in my grasp. She deserved better. She deserved what Bansi could give her, a life without hardship or want. That was more important than my own selfish wish to keep her for my own.
I tried to write him. I meant to write him. I set pen to paper a dozen times, but the words wouldn't come, or the ones that came seemed futile and ridiculous and wrong. Or I would start to write, and Elodie would wake from a nap or start to fuss, and it would be the better part of a day before I could get back to it, and by then I'd be too exhausted to think, and a hundred excuses to put off the task would come to mind.
I put it off so long that I still hadn't written him by the time the next season came, the caravans rolled in along the trade roads, and the city filled with the scent of spices and the cries of foreign voices, and then it seemed I could not put it off any longer.
I left Elodie in Corine's care for an afternoon, and told her what I meant to do so that I could not succumb to my cowardice and avoid the task altogether. And then I went to the Regent's Market, the one that catered to the wealthy and the nobility, with fine tastes and coin to spare. It was here that Bansi and his family sold most of their goods, to those who could afford the high prices that had provided them their wealth. They sold some of the more common spices in the lower market, in my market, but it was nearly an afterthought. Bansi would be here, keeping an eye on their most valuable goods and tallying their highest profits.
I found their stalls easily enough. They took up nearly a whole aisle with all the exotic goods they had for sale. But the spices were key. Spice was what had made their fortune, and what kept them in their fine clothes and elaborate homes. That was where the caravan's head would be.
I made my way there by memory. How many times had I walked this route and felt nothing but anticipation to see the man I loved? Now, I dreaded it. A sick feeling rolled in the pit of my stomach, and I had to keep my thoughts centered on Elodie to hold it at bay. This wasn't about me or my battered heart or the hurt Bansi had done me. This was about Elodie. It was for Elodie. And I could endure anything for her, even facing the man who had not loved me enough to be with me.
There was a crowd around their spice booth. There was always a crowd there. I lingered on the edges of it, waiting for a glimpse of Bansi or a flash of his smile before I slid forward. I caught faces moving at the other edge of the crowd, dark faces with Bansi's coloring and his features, scattered here and there. But not Ban.
I had nearly succumbed to my reticence, decided the whole endeavor was useless, and gone back to Corine's to collect Elodie when a bruising grip closed around my arm.
I shied away instinctively, crying out in protest. But as I turned to face whoever it was who had grabbed me, my protest died on my lips. I knew this face. It wasn't Bansi's, but I knew it almost as well. It was his brother, Nait, whom Bansi had pointed out to me once from afar, and who I had often caught glimpses of when coming to meet Bansi. We hadn't met, on account of the disapproval Bansi's family had had for our relationship. But I knew him, and he seemed to know me, if the scowl on his face was any measure.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded, shaking me by my arm.
I tore free of his grip and faced him squarely. "Well, I'm not here to see you, so it's none of your concern, is it?"
His expression didn't lighten, not even a fraction of a degree. "You're here for my brother, I'm sure." He spat it out like t was an accusation of some terrible sin. "You can just go back where you came from."
I knew his type. He thought he could intimidate me because he had wealth and I did not. He thought wealth was power, and maybe sometimes, in some places, he was right. But I was used to doing without, and his wealth meant little to me. I kept my spine straight, my expression one step on the wrong side of disdainful. "I go where I please, sir. And it pleases me to wait here until I am able to speak with Bansi."
He smiled, but there was noting pleasant at all in his expression. "Stay, then." He made a show of backing off, lifting his hands like I was a bird he had loosed. "Stay until you see him. You will rot where you stand."
Something about his words, his tone, sent a cold certainty through me. "He's not here," I said quietly. Statement, not query. The way his Nait smirked at me, I knew I didn't have to ask.
"He stayed back home. He's newly wed, you know, to a lovely carpenter's daughter. He's where he belongs." The emphasis was subtle, but unmistakable. I'd known his family hadn't approved of us, while we'd been together. I had always supposed that Bansi's reluctance to let me meet any of them had been borne of paranoia, though. I hadn't expected to be hated on sight.
I almost told him the truth of why I was there. It would have wiped the smirk from his face for a moment, I was certain, and I'd have been sore pleased to witness that. But I knew with that same, cold certainty that if I did, he would say something awful about Elodie and then I'd probably do something incredibly foolish like start a brawl in the middle of the Regent's Market.
Besides, Bansi needed to know, and if his brother told him anything at all, I didn't expect that it would be the truth, or not the whole of it.
I backed away, shaking my head. "Tell him I wish him luck with his new family," I said. My words sounded twisted and bitter to my own ears, but I didn't care enough to try to make it otherwise. Let his brother go and tell him. Maybe he would feel a moment's guilt. He deserved to know what an ass he had been, and I didn't suppose anyone else was going to tell him. Not when he was back home, surrounded only by his family. I would just have to write my letter after all.
I returned to Corine's straightaway, driven by my fury, and did not even wait until I'd taken Elodie back home. "Corine, do you have a piece of parchment and a quill I might make use of?" I asked her as she scooped Elodie up and brought her to me. "I need to write a letter."
Elodie beamed at me and laughed as though delighted by my appearance. I took her from Corine and smiled back at her, gave her a knuckle to chew on as she wriggled happily in my arms.
"Certainly," Corine said. "Would you like to do it here? I can keep Elodie entertained for you and out of your hair, so you can write it uninterrupted."
I could have kissed her. If I got it written now, right away while anger and determination still fueled me, then there was little left to drag my heels on. All I'd have to do was send it, and then it would be done. I'd have done right by Elodie, and by Bansi, little though he may have deserved it.
I sat at Corine's table to write, while she sat on the floor with Elodie and played a silly rhyming game that seemed like complete nonsense to me, but that made Elodie peal with laughter.
I'd half filled the sheet and was feeling victorious when the cooing laughter of Corine and Elodie playing together wormed its way back to the front of my attention. I lifted my gaze from the parchment and watched them play together, filling the room with laughter and happy noises. Corine was sing-songing a rhyme that I'd never heard before, an aimless tune that she must have been inventing anew with each verse, because some were about me, writing letters at the kitchen table, and some about the the rag doll that Corine had given her and the adventures they would have together, and in one Corine mocked her own inability to come up with any further rhymes.
And in the next, Corine made up a verse about Elodie's sea-green eyes, the color of the ocean after a storm, and swam Elodie's doll through the air in front of her as though she were a sea maiden. Elodie reached for the doll, and shrieked with laughter when Corine danced it just out of her reach.
I lowered my pen slowly and turned in the chair to watch them play. "Corine," I said. "Yvas was born with blue eyes, wasn't he?"
She glanced over at me and nodded, but continued moving the doll in and out of Elodie's reach, swimming her around Elodie's reaching arms as though they were kelp waving in the tide. "Yes. Most are, I take it."
Elodie's had been blue when she was born, too. I'd heard the same tales, that nearly all children were born with blue eyes, and developed their own color later, and so I'd thought nothing of it. They'd turned green, over her first few months, but I hadn't noticed them darkening lately. "When did they become brown?"
A crease formed between her brows as her gaze grew distant as she thought back. "Oh, a few months in, I suppose." She turned her attention back to Elodie and cooed down at her, "Papa's worried you're going to lose your pretty green eyes, isn't he?"
She had me all wrong, though. It was the sudden thought that her eyes wouldn't darken any further that had me upset. All this while, I had simply been assuming that Elodie's eyes would make the same progression from blue to green to hazel to brown that Yvas's had.
Leisl's eyes had been brown as fresh-turned earth. So had Bansi's. And I knew well enough from the evidence of my own eyes that the rest of Ban's family bore the same features that he did, with their black hair and dark eyes.
"Oh devils, I'm an idiot." I crumpled my half-written letter up into a ball and dropped my head down onto the table.
Leisl had sworn to me that she'd lain with no other but Bansi, and I'd believed her. Or, at the very least, I'd chosen not to voice my doubts, because I wanted a child, and she was having a child she didn't want to raise, and it seemed little matter if the child was Bansi's or someone else's. All I cared was that she was mine.
And then Leisl had left, and all my doubts had gone with her. It would have been pointless, to speculate about her honesty in her absence. It would have been unkind. And I hadn't had the opportunity to think much of it beyond that, because near my every waking moment had been occupied by Elodie and her care ever since.
But I was, truly, an idiot. Elodie did not look much like Bansi. She looked nothing like Leisl, either, so who, then, must she take after but her father?
Every memory I had of Leisl played through my head as though I were living it once again. Her bent over on my front stoop as she wiped her mouth clean, smiling even then at the news she brought me. The way satisfaction had turned to anger and fear when I'd told her Bansi had gone, and she'd lose her nice flat.
What am I supposed to do -- go home? she'd demanded of me, and I'd thought then it was mere greed. That she'd wanted the flat and the fine things promised her, and had been prepared to throw a tantrum until she'd received them. But I was starting to suspect I'd been wrong about that, too.
What might her family have said or done, if she'd returned to them unwed and heavy with child? For the first time, I wondered if she'd refused to go home not because she wouldn't, but because she couldn't.
She'd come to me in her condition because I'd been her last resort. Her only resort. What lie wouldn't she have told, to ensure that I accepted the child she was to bear?
Elodie wasn't Bansi's at all. He might have chosen to support his child, despite his reluctance to be a parent, because she was his own blood. But what man would support a stranger's?
Elodie's mother was gone, and her father a mystery I'd never solve. She wasn't Bansi's. She wasn't anybody's. She was only mine. I'd just have to provide for her as best I was able, and pray it would be enough. I was all she had, and she me.
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