Falling Skyward

Chapter Twenty-Three: Troublesome Births

The stars were raining, burning slashes of fire in the blackness that fell over the blue wheat. Lana gazed out the kitchen window, watching the heavens falling around her. The screaming had finally subsided in the other room—her aunt too exhausted to force the uncontrollable, searing pain into shrieks. Instead, she lay barely sentient on the bed, the color seeping from her skin as crimson blossomed across the sheets.

Lana scrubbed her hands, letting the new words settle into her understanding—pain, blood, sacrifice, birth, death. She saw the shadows of her cousins crouching beneath the fiery, blood-red sky. She had sent Vanessa to fetch the midwife and had Talen take Katalia and John outside to play near the barn.

How could they be expected to understand what was happening to their mother—Lana could hardly grasp the words herself. Complications? Breech? Hemorrhaging? All seemed too delicate, too neat to describe the panic and agony and fear and helplessness of what was happening in that other room.

Lana pushed aside the soap and grabbed the kettle full of hot water, running back into the far bedroom. She placed clean sheets beneath her aunt's torn body, which had paled and hardened into porcelain. Her skin was so fragile, veined with a softly delicate blue, like the pitcher inside the china hutch, only one that poured blood. But the flow was slowing, the tremors and convulsions receding, and the icy dew of sweat along her cheeks and forehead were drying.

Her aunt's listless, corpselike eyes lifted to the corner rocking chair, staring at the bundled mass of neglected blankets. Lana followed her gaze, picking up the squirming form and putting him in his mother's arms. The pain drained from her face in a smile. "Gailen," she whispered, lacking the strength to lift her little boy from her lap. Serenity touched the corners of her cracked lips, and a few tears mingled with the sweat on her cheeks. Though the world burned as the heavens melted and dropped in pieces of scorched ash outside her window, she could not look away. "The night is happy for you," she mouthed, the thinnest hint of breath animating her words. "The stars and heavens are falling to catch a glimpse of you. But I am luckier than they because I can hold you and gaze at you the whole night."

As Lana looked at her aunt and newest cousin, a new word singed the corners of her mind—love. She couldn't be sure of its meaning, but as she stood in that room feeling like an intruder, she felt she caught a glimpse of it flare up and burn in the dark night.

Then, a sharp sting woke her to reality as the midwife whacked the back of her head. "Come on, you stupid girl. There is still much to do. We are not safe yet." Lana scrambled to bundle the linens black with blood and replenish the buckets of tepid water.

In the kitchen, the midwife began bustling with purpose, chattering away to keep pace with her work. "In all my twenty-five years, I've hardly seen one so grim. I thought we was for sure to lose 'em both—that's the truth. It's a miracle she's still breathing, though I'm not sure how she'll recover. Probably have to live with it her whole life, poor woman, if she makes it past tonight. But, I suppose that's the Light Bringer's way of teaching sinners. Let's just hope he's as ignorant as the rest. But, let this be a lesun to you, little miss. The Light Bringer don't take such missteps lightly, and he sure as will punish sinners for their misdeeds. Any pain I'm sure we heaped it all on our own heads, by some count. Just know you can lie to men, but you cannot lie to God. He don't speak the language of liars, only the language of the heart."

The dream bent and twisted, reaching further back in Lana's mind. The blaze drizzled from the sky and into the warm hum of phoenix fire snuggled against her cheek.

"See," Lark told her brother, burying her face in the comforter. "You can still feel the warmth of their feathers, even though they aren't attached anymore."