Book 1: Brutality

Mom

26

"The only love that I really believe in is a mother's love for her children." — Karl Lagerfeld

~Trigger Warning~

During my last few months of pregnancy, the faeries of the forest make way for me, step back, eyeing both my belly and the knife and pouch I carry always.

I'm too big for belts these days, so I sew loops into the loose smocks Thistleweft tailors for me, and hang the knife and pouch from them. The knife gleams and the pouch is a deep, brooding black.

I embroidered a blood-red death's head butterfly on its flap: the universal faerie symbol for poisonous substances. My weapons are both easily accessible and in plain view, a visible warning.

Don't you try anything, faeries.

Naturally, none of this makes any impression on the baby. As I predicted, it grows strong and healthy inside me, swelling like a balloon.

It kicks inside me, so hard that sometimes it wakes me up in the night. Other times it goes still, and I wonder if it's fallen asleep. Or dead. Is it awful of me to sort of wish it would die?

Valindra too is unimpressed by my knife. "For hawthorn's sake, Albia, put that knife down! No one's going to attack you inside our Tree. Come help with dinner. We can use our new rock."

I put the knife and pouch aside, and waddle heavily over. One of my patients, a rock goblin with a sickly baby, recently paid me with a cook-stone: a large, smooth flat boulder that radiates heat.

You can adjust the levels as needed, whether you need to boil water, heat the room or turn it off completely. It works beautifully, and is a definite improvement over that smoky fire.

I'm still a little wary of this gift—surely any faerie gift so extravagant will come with strings attached—but Valindra's completely in love.

I kneel down to help. And as I do, a cramp unlike anything I've ever experienced runs through me, and water suddenly gushes from between my legs.

I fall aside, letting out a soundless cry. Valindra jerks her head up.

"Albia!" Lindor begins to wail, but she puts him aside to hurry over. "Is it starting?"

My whole body is seizing up. Another cramp races through me, and I give a silent shriek. I can feel the baby lowering, squeezing downward.

"Drink this." A cup of water appears at my lips and I drink it all down. "And hold on. This is going to be a long night."

And indeed it is.

I pace back and forth across the cottage, letting out silent yelps and curses as the pains grow ever stronger and more nearly spaced. I wish more than ever for my voice back. Somehow it's all even worse that I have to suffer this silently.

Valindra holds onto me, letting me lean against her, as she walks me back and forth. "Let me know when you need to rest, Albia. How's it going?"

I squeeze her hand, so hard that I feel her bones click together.

"Ah, good." She nods, wincing. "Keep going!"

I give a watery smile. I'm glad she's here. But I wish, desperately, for my own mother, my human mother. Ryenne.

This makes no sense, I think through the haze of pain and fear. She's been dead for a decade. I hardly remember what she looks like. But now I want her back. I need her.

Mom, help me!

Then a pain unlike any other hits me. I scream silently, and Valindra supports me as I sink to my knees, hands braced on a shelf.

Mom!

Valindra checks beneath my skirt. "Yes! It's crowned. You're almost there! Push!"

I bite my lip, straining, every part of me squeezing and straining.

"Good job! It's coming. Again!"

More squeezing, more straining, more effort than I've ever brought to bear on anything. Then a great wave runs through me, and there's a high, wailing cry.

"Yes!" Valindra scoops up the tiny, slimy, greenish bundle. "Here she is! It's a girl! And, oh my, look at that hair..."

A girl.

She shrieks again, this new little girl, as I slide down, collapsing to the floor with relief that it's over, and the afterbirth comes sliding out.

Valindra wipes away slime, wraps the baby in a blanket and hands her to me, placing her on my chest. She busies herself cleaning me up, wiping blood from my legs and taking away the afterbirth, but I hardly notice.

I look down, bracing myself. I never wanted this baby. I don't want her now. And now I'm going to be the worst kind of mother: the kind who hates her own child.

I look down, and I see the unicorn.

Not literally, of course. But the unicorn is the first thing I think of when I look down at the child's head.

Look at that hair, indeed. She has a silken bonnet on her head, an amazing quantity for a newborn. And it is the purest white imaginable, whiter than any whiteness of the earth. It gleams like melted pearl in the lamplight.

This is the unicorn's hair.

This is the unicorn's child.

The unicorn's daughter lifts her eyes, and I blink, startled by their pure, twilight-purple color, flecked with silver sparks. I lift aside a lock of silken unicorn-hair to inspect her ears.

They are gently pointed, as Keya's were. The child's rosiness is tinged with green. She is a child of Faerie. But she is also my child. Mine and the unicorn's.

I pull down my bodice and guide a nipple into her mouth. She clenches down immediately, jaws working. I wince as the milk starts flowing, simple as a miracle.

My daughter sucks greedily, and I smile in delight at her strength and hunger, at her beauty, at her utter perfection.

"Albia?" Valindra's voice breaks my reverie. She's holding Lindor, and my eyes fill with tears at the beauty of the scene: her with her child, I with mine. "Want me to bandage you?"

I nod, and she gets me bandaged up and into a clean nightgown and then into bed. I lie down, and never does the child stop feeding. I can't tear my eyes away. I can't stop smiling.

"I've never seen that expression on you before." Valindra chuckles dryly. "Still want to adopt her out, Albia?"

I shake my head, never removing my gaze from the child, feeling her weight in my arms. This is my child, and the unicorn's. I want her. I want her.

"I knew it!" Valindra rocks Lindor smugly. "I had a premonition," she says. "That you would want the baby once it was born. That was why I got us prepared." She gestures at the new baby things.

I shoot her a look, half amused, half annoyed, and she chuckles again. "Well, if you're not going to give her up," she says, ever practical, "you need to name her. What are you going to call your daughter, Albia?"

I look down at the unicorn-hair of my child. I haven't given a thought to a name. But now the perfect one floats up.

Elora. I spell it out with one hand, signing the letters in midair.

"Elora." Valindra tries out the syllables, and nods approvingly. "It's a good name."

It is the perfect name. And this is the perfect moment, holding my daughter safe and warm, while Valindra looks on in happiness and Lindor drifts off to sleep.

~Fun Fact~

Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different.

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