Mother

by Christine Morgan

         The baby kicked.
         Thalia wept.
         She placed both hands over her swollen belly and let the tears trickle down her cheeks. She did not
voice her sobs, not knowing what threats might linger in the dark woods, but her silent tears spoke of more
grief and anguish than any wailing outcry.
         A bird, curious, twittered at her. She ignored it, though ordinarily the sight of its bright plumeage
would have made her smile. So many things used to please her. A simple gift of wildflowers had pleased her
more than silks and jewels might have pleased some other woman. She took more joy in a sunset or a star-
splashed sky than most people got from a night at the theater. But there was no more joy in the world.
        Everything she had ever cared for was gone, except for the baby.
         It was a boy. She had known that, even before old Esmerelda had predicted it. Thalia had a
glimmer of the Sight herself, for all the good it had done her or any of them on the night of the massacre.
        That one fateful night, when their gifts could have saved their lives, they had all been as Blind as her dear
Taleris. All the palm-readings and fire-gazings in the world had not warned them of the Sheriff's attack.
Now her people were dead, gone, scattered to the four winds. For all she knew, she and her unborn son were
all that remained of Clan Falcon.
         It would have been so easy to give up. To let herself be captured during the first few wild hours
following the attack, when the Sheriff's men had roamed the countryside, hunting for any of the escaped. To
succumb to cold and weariness and hunger. To let wolves or goblins kill her.
         But she had been unable to accept that fate. Not for herself, for she had no will to live after seeing
Taleris fall. The song had gone out of the world when the Sheriff had grabbed him. She would never forget
the look on his face as he let himself be captured to give her a few scant seconds to flee. Didn't he know that
life without him was meaningless? She would have gladly died at his side. Now, she lived only for her son.
        Their son.
         When her tears had ceased, though the ache in her heart remained undimmed, she stood and
brushed dirt and clinging leaves from her skirts. Once bright as a new day, they were tattered by her flight
through the woods, torn and stained, their colors as faded as her hopes. She looked as if she had been
wandering alone for months, though it had only been a few days. It was bountiful autumn now, a time for
harvest and festivals, but in her soul, it felt like endless winter.
         Hunger made itself known. She had no appetite, but knew she had to eat for the sake of the baby.
He, poor little fellow, did not know what had happened. He did not know that he would be born into a
world of uncertainty and helplessness. It would be a wonder if either of them survived. Though she had
helped birth a dozen babies, she did not think she could deliver her own.
         She remembered how happy Taleris had been when she'd told him. His leaf-green eyes had lit up
like the dawn, and he had held her so close, so tenderly, pressing one hand against her stomach as if he
hoped to feel some sign although she was far from showing. He had brushed back her long dark hair and
kissed her so sweetly she had cried, but those tears had been tears of joy.
         Her hair was still long and dark, but its black length was tangled and snarled with burrs. She had
tied it back with a strip torn from the bottom of her skirt. It lay as hopeless as a fishing line into a poisoned
spring. She knew that the rest of her appearance was not much better. She could press her fingertips against
her face and feel the hollowed cheeks, the crusted scar from the Sheriff's fist, the puffy rims around her eyes
from her weeping. Gone was the merry lass that had won the heart of handsome Taleris with a whirl of
bangled skirts and a flash of dark eyes. That girl would never again clash cymbals on her fingers, or wear
gold hoops through her ears. Her earrings were gone, torn from her by one of the Sheriff's henchmen,
leaving stinging rips in her lobes.
         She scanned the woods dully, looking for food. A rabbit, soft and brown, with velvety-innocent
eyes and a pink nose, was nibbling on something at the base of a tree. She had no snares, no knife, and no
way to make a fire even if she could catch the animal. Instead, she turned her attention to some thick
bushes, with spiny deep-green leaves and clusters of dark-shelled nuts.
         Reaching to pick some, she hissed and drew back her hand. The spiny leaves left tiny but painful
scratches. The bushes defended their bounty. She found a stick instead, and used it to knock nuts to the
ground, using her skirt as a makeshift basket as she gathered them. When she had more than she thought she
could possibly eat, she backed away from the bush and sat under a tree.
         The shells were too hard to crack by hand. She put one in her mouth and bit, hurting her teeth. Just
when she thought her jaw would give way first, the tough shell fragmented so suddenly that sharp bits of it
pierced the inside of her mouth and she bit hard on her own tongue. She spat blood, the nut, and pieces of
shell into her hand.
         That was not going to work. She gingerly probed her teeth with her wounded tongue, making sure
none of them had broken. She had always been almost as proud of her even white teeth as she was of her
long dancer's legs and full bosom. Taleris, too, had fine teeth, and she hoped the child would inherit them
instead of the crooked or yellowish teeth that seemed so common among gypsies and townies alike.
         Her teeth seemed all right, but she had to find some other way to eat the nuts. Two rocks solved the
problem, and she smashed several, picking the whitish nutmeat from the broken shells. They were
surprisingly tasty, familiar.
         She remembered a place, a walled town in the shadow of a ruined castle with a spire that seemed in
constant danger of toppling. There had been a carnival, celebrating the birth of the lord's second son, and
the gypsies had set up camp at the edge of the fairgrounds. She had been much younger then, barely
thirteen, not old enough to dance but doing it anyway when her father wasn't around to say no.
         She had been old enough to be aware of her power over the ham-handed farmer boys, and more
than old enough to understand her people's distaste for the townies. They hated the gypsy folk, calling them
names, sometimes throwing something more solid than insults, and her childhood had been filled with
stories of more serious attacks and fires among the wagons. But, hate them though they did, the townies
always came around to see the dances, to buy a potion or a charm, to hear a fortune told. And some watched
with envy ill-hidden behind their round townie faces, envy that spoke of a secret longing to travel instead of
being bound to one patch of dirt. They hated the gypsies, called them thieves and wastrels, but that envy
was always there. The gypsies knew it, and Thalia had often seen a look in the eyes of her own clan as they
regarded the townies. A look of disdain and pity, for the townies would never know the freedom of the open
road, the excitement of new places. It was that difference in freedom, rather than the differences in skin
color, appearance, and dress, that was the root of the anger and hatred between the two types of people.
         At this town, just like so many others, the townies had their marketplace. Thalia, along with her
great-aunt Viaka and a few cousins, had gone to stroll among the wooden shops and look at the things the
townies liked. At one stall, Viaka had purchased several round, flat cakes. The townie woman, all wide hips
and bosom, had studied the coins as if she expected them to melt away like snowflakes, and had deliberately
picked out the smallest of the cakes, but Thalia and her cousins hadn't cared. The townie treat, softer than
the hard brown bread baked on stones and in clay ovens in the camp, was unlike anything they'd even had
before. The tops of the cakes had been sprinkled with crushed nuts, the exact same taste that now filled her
mouth.
         She remembered hearing that the nuts grew only in the stand of woods around that town. Someone
in the camp had tried to purchase a bag of them, hoping to sell them in some other town for a better price,
but the townies wouldn't sell to him. And later, one of her brothers had gotten into a fight with four townie
boys when they'd caught him picking some.
         Defiantly, she ate more of the nuts, though the shrunken sack of her stomach was already full and
complaining. Let the townies see her eating their precious nuts. The baby kicked again, as if sensing her
mood. Either that or the nuts were upsetting him, too.
         "It's all right, little one," she said soothingly, running her hands over the bulge. Hard to believe
how big she was. Taleris had teased her about it, but at the same time, he had regarded her with the special
awe that Dorian inspired in all men at the sight of their women grown great with child.
         Oh, if only the attack had come a few weeks later, so that he might have had the chance to see his
son! But, if that had happened, the baby would have been killed, trapped in a burning wagon or thrown to
the ground and kicked for sport by a poorly-shaven guardsman stinking of sour ale and blood. In her flight,
she had nearly tripped over Ambria's baby, a quiet, sweet-tempered little girl who hardly cried and had
never done anyone any harm but had ended her short life with her dear little head crushed by a man's heavy
boot. The thought of something like that happening to her own son, her first and only child, filled her with a
startling anger.
         Since fleeing the burning camp, she had been going on fear, panic, and grief. For the first time, she
felt anger blossom like a red and black flower in her mind. What right did they have? The Sheriff had
slaughtered dozens of innocent people, women and children and withered aged grandparents, all out of
hatred for Taleris, who had once cut off his arm during a battle. Clan Falcon was gone, nothing but ashes on
the wind and the blackened shells of wagons, and poor Thalia alone and frightened. The Sheriff had exacted
too great a price for his revenge. Taleris was dead. Wasn't that enough for him?
         The baby kicked again, harder. Esmerelda had predicted he would be strongly gifted, so it was
entirely possible that he was feeling her anger in his unborn consciousness.
         Thalia leaned back against the tree, closing her eyes and trying to think calming thoughts. Her
child gradually settled down. She stroked her belly, lovingly feeling the curve of his tiny rump and feet
pressing against the thin barrier of skin and muscle. Instead of thinking of the Sheriff, she thought more of
Taleris, in the darkened privacy of his wagon, him laying with his head against her, listening to the mingled
heartbeats of his wife and son. Her arms ached to hold him again, her eyes yearned for the sight of him, her
heart broke at the knowledge that he was gone.

* * *

         She raised her head, leaves pasted to her tear-damp cheeks, and realized that she had wept herself
to sleep. She was laying under the tree, a few stray nuts scattered on the ground. It was dawn, the rising sun
peeping between the changing leaves. The night's chill was still in the air and she shivered, rubbing her arms
and legs briskly.
         As she stood, a sudden cramp seized her and made her gasp. She sank to her knees, praying that it
was just an upset stomach. The cramp passed, drawing a sigh of relief from her. She stood again and
collected the rest of the nuts, not hungry but knowing she might need them later. She bundled them in her
scarf, the brightest thing in the woods, red and gold, fringed, the scarf of a gypsy dancer. So many times she
had spun barefoot in the grass, hair and skirt swirling, that scarf held in her hands, first before her face in
the Rakvian style, then over her head, then whipping like a bird's wing as the music spiraled to a finish.
Now it was just a piece of gaily-patterned cloth to carry things in.
         She headed north and west, not going anywhere in particular, just trying to get as far from the
devastated wreckage of the camp as she could. She thought of trying to find the town with the crumbling
tower, remembering that it lay at the middle of the wood alongside a narrow river, but doubted she would be
welcome there. It was the harvest time, and there had to be other gypsy bands traveling through the
farmlands. She would find one of them, and they would take her in.
         The cramp came again a few hours later, and this time she had no doubts. It was not her dinner. It
was her son. The baby was readying himself to be born, and if he was anything like his father, he would be
impatient about it. She had a matter of hours before the birth.
         Stumbling onward, clutching her belly and silently begging the baby to give her just a little more
time, she barely noticed when she left the woods and entered the fields. She only realized it when pushing
through the tall grass became too difficult, and she started walking along the road that cut through the
golden valley. She saw a smaller clump of woods in the distance, and near it a few buildings. A town, a tiny
one, but maybe there would be someone there who could help her.

* * *

         The man was so intent on his work that he didn't see her until she was only a few yards away.
         She tried to call out, to warn him and ask for help, but the cramps were coming so suddenly now
that it was all she could do to gasp for breath.
         "Dorian!" he exclaimed, catching sight of her. He was about twenty, blond and bronzed, with an
honest, open, townie face and big, hard-working hands.
         Thalia tried to say something, but at that moment, her water broke, soaking her skirt. She doubled
over, started to fall, and then the townie man was there, holding her up.
         "John! Andrew! David! Help me!" he yelled.
         "What's the matter?" another man called. He ran toward them, then stopped, gaping. "What under
the sun ...?"
         "She's having a baby!" the first townie said.
         Two others ran up. All were young and healthy, broad-shouldered plowmen that her father would
have warned her against. But she was in no condition to be choosy. The baby was coming, and no force on
earth could stop that fact of nature.
         "She's a gypsy," one of them said. He had brown hair that was already thinning, a spotted scalp that
had burned and peeled and burned again, and beady brown eyes that regarded Thalia as if she were lower
than a beetle.
         "I can see that, Andrew," the first townie said, and though she was in pain, she suddenly and
vividly sensed that the one called Andrew was strongly disliked not just by her helper but by the two other
men who stood around her.
         "I'll get the Dorus," one volunteered. He was the youngest, nineteen at the oldest, with a shock of
bright red hair and freckles spattered across his nose.
         "No good," the last one said. "Have you forgotten? He's in Briarglen."
         "We have to do something!" the one that was holding Thalia said urgently. She clung to his arm,
biting her lip as the pains grew deeper and stronger.
         "Calm down, Charles," the last one commanded. "We'll take her to the village."
         "We will not," Andrew said. "She's a disgusting gypsy!"
         "She's having a baby!" Charles yelled. "If we leave her here, they'll both die!"
         "Two less damned gypsies in the world!"
         "Stop it!" the last one demanded. He stepped to Thalia's other side and slung her arm over his
shoulders. "Gods, she's just skin and bones."
         "Where do you think she came from?" the redhead asked.
         "It doesn't matter," Andrew said, scowling. "Leave her be, and we'll all forget we ever saw her."
         "Calaan take your bones, Edgebrook, we can't leave her to die!" Charles swore.
         "Come on, miss," the last one said. "Lean on me. We'll get you someplace where you can lie
down."
         "You, too, Larksley?" Andrew snarled. "You'll never be hayward if I have anything to say about it!
Would you risk your farm over a dirty gypsy slut?"
         A sudden vision assaulted Thalia. She saw this man, the one called Larksley, standing in a small
house as the hot summer sun beat down, his face tight with grief as a kindly-looking man in the tunic of a
priest put a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry, David," the priest said in the echoes of Thalia's mind. "It was
too fast. She must have eaten four or five of them before realizing they were poisonous. At least we saved
the child. It's a girl, small, but healthy."
         "How can you even say that to him?" Charles said. "You know what happened to Anne. By the
gods, if I'd lost Margaret ... if you'd lost Katie ... how can you be such a toad?"
         "John," David said coldly, "if he says anything else, either punch him or hold her so I can."
         Andrew opened his mouth, then closed it again.
         The two men half-carried Thalia toward the village. It was tiny, a handful of buildings gathered
around a large bridge that looked strangely out of place. It was made of stone, a construction that looked as
if it was made to stand the test of time. Several people came out to see what the commotion was, as the one
called John ran ahead shouting for a midwife. Soon the entire town, or so it seemed to Thalia's pain-fogged
mind, had turned out to gawk at her.
         A new cramp crushed her, and she felt hot fluid gush down her legs. It was too thick to be water.
She was bleeding, her weakened body unable to handle the rigors of her labor. Her knees buckled and she
would have fallen, but Charles and David lifted her between them.
         "Over here," a woman's voice called.
         "It's Marion Hillsby," David said. "She's delivered half the Hillsby kids. She's one of the best
midwives in the village."
         "It'll be all right," Charles whispered reassuringly to Thalia. "You're going to be all right."
         She wanted to correct him, but hadn't the strength. She knew, needing no foresight to tell her, that
she was not going to make it. Only the thought of her son, fixed firmly in her mind, gave her the strength to
keep going.
         They carried her toward the woman. Thalia had a brief impression of a middle-aged woman with
soft brown hair and gentle eyes. She felt herself being lifted, turned, and then she no longer saw her
surroundings but felt instead as if she was on a raft, floating, turning, bobbing along a rough river. She
convulsed, but there was nothing for her stomach to throw up. She felt hands, settling her onto a hard
surface, holding her, and pain like a giant's fist closing around her, and a sweet little girl's voice like the
whisper of a songbird.
         "Mama, can I help?"
         "Stand back, Julia," the midwife said. "Here, hold this," and the scarf of nuts was taken from
Thalia.
         "Charles? What's going on?" a woman asked.
         "Margaret! You should be resting!"
         "I'm fine, and so is our little Jean. What happened?"
         "We found her in the fields. Andrew wanted to leave her to die, but David and I brought her back."
         "She's so thin! Where are the rest of her people?"
         Voices all around her.
         "A gypsy!"
         "-- like she's half-dead --"
         "-- could be a trick --"
         " -- poor thing --"
         " -- probably both die --"
         " -- won't make it --"
         "Hush, all of you! Margaret, hold her head."
         "Here, Charles." Soft coo of a baby.
         Eyes open. A woman standing by her, pretty, blond, a townie woman. As she touched Thalia,
Thalia knew that she just had a baby of her own, only a few days before. They shared that sudden, special
understanding that only new mothers can. But this woman, Margaret, already had three other children, and
she would live to see many grandchildren. Thalia would count herself fortunate if she lived to see her only
son.
         A child with long soft brown hair stood at the bedside, holding Thalia's bright scarf. Their eyes
met, gypsy dark to townie grey, and Thalia was jolted again. The child had power, not the Sight but other
gifts, sorcery, old knowledge, memory of another time. Penelope. The midwife called her Julia but she was
once known as Penelope, and her pale eyes showed that she remembered. There was light behind her, the
light like a full moon though the sun was bright, a disk of perfect silver. Sister. Moonsister. Penelope. She
who watches.
         Thalia reached for the girl, her hand shaking. She screamed as the giant crushed her again, but her
scream was without sound.
         "Is she all right?" Charles asked, tense, holding his own child tightly.
         "She's lost too much blood," the midwife said. "Too thin, too weak."
         "You mean she's dying," David Larksley said, his fists clenched.
         "Come on." A man who strongly resembled him took him by the arm and led him from the room.
         People ran all over, bringing pans of water, cloths, other things too numerous to see. Through all
of it, only the girl stayed calm, and her impassive pale eyes calmed Thalia. Looking at the child, she
suddenly saw with her inner eyes, her Sight, someone waiting behind her. A man, tall like Taleris, wrapped
all in shadow.
         She knew him. At once, her fear and pain vanished. Her trembling hand, which had been reaching
for the girl, reached instead for the black hand that beckoned her. But just as his fingers were about to close
over hers, she drew her hand back.
         "I'm not ready to go yet," she said, though she knew that only the little girl heard her. "I have to
have my baby."
         The dark figure nodded. Thalia grabbed the supportive hands of the woman called Margaret and
pushed, pushed until she felt her bones would split, and felt a surge of motion as the baby emerged. The
midwife picked him up, red and wrinkled and already squalling angrily. She wrapped him and handed him
to Margaret, then turned back to Thalia.
         "It's a boy," she said, but her face lacked the happiness that usually accompanied such an
announcement. She pressed folded pads of cloth against Thalia, trying to stop her bleeding. It was hopeless.
Thalia knew it.
         Fading, the room receding from her until it seemed as if she saw it very far away, she heard
someone ask her what she wanted to name him. She tried to speak, but even if she had been able to, she
wouldn't have known what to say. In all their planning, she and Taleris had not chosen a name for their
child. She did not want to die never knowing the name of her son.
         "Call him Richard," the little girl suggested, but there was power behind her voice.
         Thalia nodded. It was not a gypsy name, but it seemed somehow right. Then she reached once
more for the shadow. "I'm ready now," she whispered. "Take me to Taleris."
         The cloaked figure slowly, sadly shook his head, and as his hand closed over hers, she knew. Like
a flash of lightning on a clear day, she knew and her knowledge gave her the strength to cry out in joy. "He's
alive!"
         "He's a fine, healthy little boy," the midwife said.
         She had misunderstood, but Thalia could not correct her, for she was gone. They were all gone,
melting into a darkness so perfect that midnight was only an echo. The last ones to vanish were the little
girl, with her moon-pale eyes, and the black-haired infant in Margaret's arms.

* * *