The Dying God [1]

When Analise was born, her mother told the midwife to kill her. She was simultaneously specific and vague. Infants were fragile after all, and a great number of things would be effective in getting the job done. She listed a few of them once the contractions ended and she found her breath.

“Drowning. A twist of the neck. A stab to the heart. Just make sure it is quick.”

The midwife stared at her, then down. In her arms, the baby’s face, ugly with folds from being in the womb, was broken in a wail.

“But. Milady…”

“Do you have any idea,” she snapped, her face livid, “What will happen to me if anyone in the court finds out about her?”

“Mi-“

“The men can fuck whoever they want and their bastard sons can fight over their graves. But the women? The women get no such luck. Nobody will care that my husband’s been impotent since he hit his sixty seventh year, nor that I was wedded to him at fifteen while his hair was already whitening. I will be labeled a whore and I will be killed. I will not risk that for one inconvenient brat.”

The midwife watched as spittle dripped down the mother’s chin. Anicka Lace was known for her propriety. At every event, the upright duchess had stood behind her aging, blind husband, holding his hand and directing him about dutifully. She was admired by noble parties and the common folk alike, for both her beauty and her benevolence.

Seeing her as she was, with her sweaty hair strewn about her pale face and her features pulled into a snarl, the midwife found herself quite disillusioned. She’d had parents kill their children before, during famine and plague when they could afford no more mouths or bodies. Never before, though, had she seen it done with such vehemence. Such anger.

“If you won’t I’ll do it myself, Pa’al.” Anicka held out her hands. “Give her to me.”

“I will do it.” Pa’al’s eyes roved back to the child in her arms. “I kill for the mistress, yes. Milady should see that she rests. It was a difficult birth. She must be tired.”

Duchess Lace sank back into the pillows, her eyes lidding. She made no more argument. Pa’al ducked out the door.

The manse had seen some hardship in the past years. Many of the tapestries had been bartered and sold for more practical goods, and the walls stood barren as a horse’s stall. Though there was still a clear wealth in the size of the place, it seemed tired. Pa’al imagined that the creaking at night was the breathing of a heavy sigh. The war had been good to none of them.

Outside was better. The guards had been good to the serfs of the Lace estate, as good as they had been to the land. The opposition never reached their fields and as such their fields had never been razed. Already the first green shoots of the crops were poking out of the rich soil.

Pa’al knew little about the war. She knew its effects, but not why it was being fought, nor even by whom. It was an ignorance born of apathy. As a slave bartered for from distant shores, she knew what pretty words her masters liked, but preferred to spend her free time conversing with her fellows in their native tongue. The chatter of her masters faded to white noise when they weren’t addressing her. The worries and troubles of those she served did not bother her directly, and she felt no need to learn more of them.

The baby was still wailing. She shushed it as she walked, drawing curious glances. None would take her for one of her own. The child was already showing her paleness, and there was a smear of blond hair atop her head. It was nothing like the richness of her own skin nor the darkness of her own hair. The lookers swiftly grew bored of watching, and went back to their work.

There was a creek that wrapped around the estate. It had trickled to little more than knee-deep in recent times. Someone had tried to dam it in an effort to weaken them, but the king’s soldiers had swiftly done away with the troublemakers. Still, they hadn’t managed to clear the dam entirely, so it continued to flow at a steady trickle.

Pa’al bent her knees. The reeds by the water tickled her bare feet. She caressed the weeping child’s face and she wrinkled her nose, blinking up at her with tiny blue eyes.

“You’re a pretty one,” murmured the midwife. “Such a pretty one. Such a pity, pity it is. But I can’t defy what Milady says. I’m sorry, little one.”

The baby cooed up at her. Pa’al felt a twinge of pain, and her eyes shifted left and right. She was alone by the shore. There was nobody to see.

“I couldn’t hide you,” she told the girl, reasoning with herself. “I couldn’t, not with your crying. So you’d have to be very quiet, you know?”

Face twisting up, the baby stifled another wail. It was as though she knew that with it, she begged for death.

“That’a babe,” Pa’al sang pleasantly. “I got a friend, you know. Not near as pretty as the duchess, but she’s got hair like you and eyes like you. She’s a good sort of person. I think she’d be put out, knowing I drowned a little thing like you. Might be she’d make a believable thing, as a mum.”

Pa’al began to empty her supplies from the wicker basket she kept her birthing tools in. “My people believe that life is sacred. Around here, they don’t seem to think so as much. They got their right, but I got mine, now. The Lady gave you to me. Now you’re my responsibility, and it don’t feel right. No, it don’t feel right to take your little life.”

Standing to her feet, the midwife began to trudge her way back to her quarters. Her knees ached and she cursed her aging. Soon her hair would be silvered and her face a furrowed field. Perhaps that was why she’d gone soft in the head.

“There’s a story, you know. About an old harpy who tricks a man into sleeping with her. When the baby’s born, the father fights his way into her layer and slays the harpy, so that he can save the child from being eaten.”

Pa’al chuckled to herself and winked down at the basket. “Mind you, not that I’m sayin’ Milady is anything like a harpy. I don’t know who your dada is, but maybe one day that might be you. And that’ll be the name I give. Analise, the half-child. Analise, the survivor. What do you think of that?”

The infant looked almost thoughtful. Then, hesitantly, Analise smiled.