Out of the Darkness

Saying that was one thing; doing it turned out to be something else again. Krasta felt as if she were trying to pass a boulder, not a turd. And then, to her disgust, she did pass a turd. Without any fuss, Merkela disposed of the sheet on which it lay. It must come of growing up on a farm, Krasta thought. She knows all about turds.

Then she stopped thinking altogether, stopped everything except struggling to force the baby out of her. She hardly heard Kudirka’s encouragement. The world, everything but her labor, seemed very far away. She took a deep breath, then let out an explosive noise somewhere between a grunt and a squeal.

“That’s it!” the midwife said. “Do that twice more, three times at the most, and you’ll have yourself a baby.”

Krasta didn’t know how many times she made that desperate effort. She was beyond caring by then. At last, though, just when she seemed certain to split in two, everything suddenly got easier. “The baby’s head is out,” Merkela said.

“A couple of more pushes and it’s done,” Kudirka added. “The head is the big part. Everything else will be easy.”

For a miracle, she was right. She guided out the baby’s shoulders and torso and legs. She and Merkela tied off the umbilical cord. Merkela cut it with a pair of shears. Krasta hardly noticed that. She was busy passing the afterbirth, a disgusting bit of business no one had told her about, and one that cost her the undersheet on her bed.

“You have a boy,” Merkela said. She held the squalling baby in the crook of her arm with practiced ease. Not so long before, her son by Skarnu had been so tiny.

Through a haze of exhaustion, Krasta said, “I’ll name him Valnu, for his father.”

Kudirka said nothing at all. Merkela laughed and laughed. The wolfish quality in the peasant woman’s mirth made Krasta shiver no matter how weary she was. Merkela held the baby under her nose, so close her eyes almost crossed. “You were an Algarvian’s whore. I don’t care who else you might have spread your legs for, but you were an Algarvian’s whore, and by what comes out of your own twat you prove what went into it.”

As newborns often are, Krasta’s baby son was born almost bald. But the fine fuzz on his head was of a strawberry tinge no purely Valmieran baby’s head would have had. It was, in fact, nearly identical in color to the hair of Bauska’s bastard half-breed daughter, Brindza.

Laughing still, Merkela said, “If you’re going to name it for its father, you stinking slut, you can call it Lurcanio.”

The weariness Krasta knew then had nothing to do with the ordeal she’d just been through. She’d spent so much time and effort trying to convince everyone, including herself, that the child she was carrying was indeed Valnu’s. She’d- mostly-made herself believe it. She’d made everyone else wonder. And now, to be betrayed by something as trivial as a few strands of hair on the baby’s oddly cone-shaped head (she presumed that would change, even if the brat’s wretched hair color never did) … It all seemed most unfair, as did anything that didn’t go just the way she wished it would have.

“I-” she began.

“Shut up.” Merkela’s voice was flat and hard and vicious, the voice of a wildcat seeing prey it had long stalked at last helpless before it. She gave the baby to Kudirka, then grabbed the scissors she’d used to cut the cord. “I’ve waited too cursed long for this, by the powers above, but now you get what’s coming to you.” She grabbed a shock of Krasta’s hair and hacked it off not a finger’s breadth from her scalp.

“Powers below eat you, you can’t-” Krasta said.

Merkela slapped her in the face. Only Lurcanio had ever dared do that to her before. “Shut up, I told you,” Merkela snapped. She closed the shears and aimed them at one of Krasta’s eyes. “What I’m doing is the least of what you deserve- the least, do you hear me? You can take it, or I’ll give you plenty more. I’d love to, do you hear me? You don’t know how much I’d love to.” The shears jerked closer.

Krasta closed her eyes and flinched. She couldn’t help herself. At any other time, she would have fought, regardless of whether she had a weapon of her own. Exhausted as she’d never been exhausted, sick in spirit as well, she kept her eyes closed and let Merkela do as she would. At last, though, the hateful snip-snip of the shears made her exclaim, “Futter you!”

“A Valmieran futters me,” Merkela retorted. Snip-snip. “I didn’t have a stinking redhead leave silver on the dresser every time he stuck it in.” Snip-snip.

It wasn’t like that. But Krasta didn’t say it. What point? Merkela wouldn’t have believed her, and wouldn’t have cared even if she had believed her. At last, it was over. Kudirka set the baby-the half-Algarvian bastard, just like Bauska’s- on Krasta’s breast. It rooted and began to suck. Krasta didn’t burst into tears. She was too worn for that. But, one after another, they trickled down her cheeks.