With ears flattened to her skull in pain, Becca staggered against the side of a hut. She clutched her swollen belly as muscles rippled with contractions. She groaned as she braced against the wall of the hut, and waited for the spasm to pass. She cursed Bellas Ravenwing another hundred times since the pain started. It was too soon, she knew it and dreaded what could happen to her child.
As if summoned by her cry of pain, Becca saw a healer emerge from the hut, taken aback by Becca’s wild appearance and condition. She approached in trepidation, seeing Becca’s ear-tips flick back in pain.
“Ye needn’t fear me,” Becca hissed. “I’m done in as it is…”
“Come inside,” the healer woman said and offered gentle assistance. She took Becca’s hand and supported her with a shoulder under her arm. Soon Becca collapsed onto a cot, tears and sweat mingled upon her face, cringed as another contraction seized her body. She screamed in agony, her clawed hands dug into the cot.
Gentle hands wiped her brow and offered her a cup of tea, pressed gently to her lips, urging her to drink. Becca vaguely caught the scent of something soothing, a promise of relief. She drank, knowing the healers of Fallenir wouldn’t take the life of one with child.
The pain ebbed and she lay back, whispering, “Too soon, it’s too soon…” She heard healers murmuring among themselves, the tones in their hushed voices none too reassuring. Becca cursed Bellas again.
How something so pleasant could lead to such agony she would never know. He had been exquisitely gentle, the mere memory of the encounter sent delightful shivers up her spine even as another contraction threatened. Becca fought to relax. He’d left her after those nights he’d made her a woman, made her a mother. Master Trapseer would chew her ears off for letting it happen.
The contraction came anyway. Her legs jerked, her body no longer her own. The cot’s rails splintered under Becca’s hands, awesome strength brought about by the pain. The child would come whether it was time or not.
She couldn’t be certain if more than one healer stood around her. Voices called encouragement, instructed her to push. Somehow she did, summoned all her strength she focused upon the pain and pushed. Then something inside her snapped.
The shriek of pain she loosed must have alerted the whole of the fringes of the City of Lorthane. Becca lapsed into blessed unconsciousness.
~*~*~*~
Becca woke, vaguely aware of her surroundings. Pain throbbed in her hips, but not the crippling spasms brought on by labor. It felt as her child had been born. Ear tips swiveled forward, listened for the soft wail of a newborn that would never come. Becca saw the healer woman nearby. She held a blanket wrapped bundle, with a grief filled face. She looked up at her as she shifted in the cot, the healer saw Becca awake.
“My baby…” Becca whispered, despair threatened. The healer closed her eyes in anguish.
“Chosen by Niccodemus,” the healer intoned with reverence the name given to the stillborn. Becca gasped as grief and pain wracked her battered body. She lay back and covered her face with clawed hands, tears overflowing her large eyes.
Overwhelmed by grief and pain, Becca failed to hear the knock upon the door to the hut. She barely heard the conversation until her name was mentioned. Helpless, she looked to the door and saw the gold tunics and armor of the Lorthalian Guard. Becca knew they came for her.
“Becca Featherstep is wanted on several counts of burglary, vandalism and assault.”
“It couldn’t have been me,” she grated. She couldn’t move much, the pain in her hips too horrible. The guard looked down at her in disdain. Every word she’d uttered would be considered a lie as far as they were concerned, even if she told the truth. Becca then knew what happened. “Bellas, damn him… damn him for getting me with his child and abandoning me.” She ranted under her breath and lay back on the cot and seethed with frustration.
“She can’t be moved,” the healer told them, “her hip was broken in the delivery.”
“There’s a child?” one guard asked, compassion in his voice.
“Stillborn,” she answered.
“We are under orders,” the first guard said, “She is under arrest and to be taken to the Castle for judgment. We’ll take her on the cot if we must.” Becca gritted her teeth, let them do their worst; she no longer cared. Her hope died with her child.
Becca soon found herself on the way to the castle, carried by the guards who saw her incapable of walking on her own. Absently she looked up at the night sky, the constellation of the Mouse shining almost merrily, the moon hidden. She’d forgotten it was Mouse’s Night. No children were about, she mused dully. Her child would never know the joy of Mouse’s Night now, not from a thief’s perspective. Tears continued to spill over her cheeks as she thought of what she lost.
The journey ended shortly and Becca found herself in a cell in the castle’s prison. She couldn’t bring herself to care that her life was hanging by a mere thread.
“They tell me a woman was brought in who recently gave birth,” someone said to the guard at the door. Becca’s ear twitched irritably. Why bother her now? A healer entered her cell with a gentle careworn face. Silver was just starting to mark his black hair at the temples. Instantly, Becca liked him, for his eyes held a promise of some relief.
“A small reminder that more than one woman at a time can bear children,” he said softly, his smile grew sympathetic. “I can help with the pain, Fallenir willing.” Becca nodded her acceptance and allowed him to touch her still throbbing hips. His eyes closed in focus, gentle warmth spread through her hips and dulled the pain. Becca watched mesmerized as he murmured his prayers to the goddess of healing.
“Simmon!”
A younger man came barreling into the cell block, alarm on his face. Becca looked at the newcomer with distraction, and saw a patch covered his left eye. Simmon, who finished his prayer, stood exhausted by his effort. “What is it Bronnar?”
“It’s Dennoa, it’s time, her baby’s coming!” Bronnar shouted in his excitement, as not to mind who overheard. The healer bade Becca farewell and left her to the lonely quiet of her cell.
The pain no longer distracted her from her surroundings and she heard thieves around her as they catcalled and shouted at one another to hush and leave well enough alone. Becca flattened her ears to her skull again, irritated by their jocularity.
Her time in the wild left her with the tell tale traces of her feyish blood, her thick mane of honey blond hair, the sharp claws she had used so well on the healer’s cot back at the city’s fringes. She knew she would be feared for what she became when in the wild. No matter, it would take a few days, but she would grow tamer in her appearance. She always did when she lived in civilized places.
“Twice Claimed, thrice Named, Shadowed Mouse of House Lorthane…”
It was a whisper on the wind, but it caught at Becca like nothing she ever heard before.
“Twice Claimed, thrice Named, Shadowed Mouse of House Lorthane…”
Becca felt the thrill of something promised and something hopeful leapt into her broken heart, making her gasp. Where did this come from, what was the meaning?
“Twice Claimed, thrice Named, Shadowed Mouse of House Lorthane…”
Becca grew cold when she realized it was her own voice. What caused her to say such a thing? She was no prophet of the Mouse like Dellin Shadowpast. Thieves around her grew silent, as if stunned by the words. It dawned on Becca that all thieves present spoke those words.
The riddle made her worry as she sat up, her hips still stiff. Weak morning light started to come in the windows when the door to the cell block opened and the man called Bronnar entered again, looking grieved and terrible.
“Long live Lady Dennoa Shatterpoint, may the Lion see her safely home,” he said aloud. Becca felt a sudden pang of sympathy for the young Thane, only having ruled for a few years now. She saw Bronnar as he approached her cell, his face riddled with emotions too dark to decipher.
“I am told you have borne a child, where is it?” he demanded. Becca couldn’t tell whether the anger in his voice was directed at her or not.
“Gone, stillborn, taken by Niccodemus,” she replied in a mumble. The reminder alone was enough for her heart to break again. Becca looked away she fought back tears, determined not to be seen as weak. The sound of the lock to her cell door when it opened caught her attention, her ears swiveled forward as she looked back to Bronnar who held open her cell door.
“Can you walk?” His terse question made her try. Although the pain was gone, she felt stiffness in her hips. She could bear her own weight, if only just. Becca took a painful step, gritted her teeth and nodded.
He led her down passages, kind enough to let her proceed at her pace, but still altogether wary of her. Becca grew amused by his caution, but suppressed it in light of his dour mood. She pieced together what she knew of the castle folk, and remembered Bronnar One Eye as the promising young General. It would have been his sister who married the Thane. Instinct told her to keep respectful and quiet as she started to pass more castle folk, all who wore somber grey and mournful expressions.
“It’s enough to forget why she died,” Bronnar said, when he looked directly at Becca with some amount of sympathy, “Perhaps the gods knew what would happen and sent you to us.”
His statement puzzled Becca as he led her into a room where a man with red hair sat, holding a precious bundle. Becca saw his paternal joy tempered by the loss of his beloved wife. He looked up to Becca calmly as Bronnar announced her presence to him.
“The thief brought in last night? What are the charges, Bronnar?”
Becca felt ashamed as the list was read, multiple counts of burglary, a person assaulted in a failed purse cutting event, someone swore to have seen her leaving the scene of another burglary. Charges mounted and Becca was inexplicably in the center of all of them, but for one minor detail.
“How do you plead?” Geofferey asked her, the baby in his arms drew Becca’s eyes, all she could focus on.
“Pregnant,” She said frankly.
“But there are witnesses…” Bronnar argued.
“There is a spy who knew me. Bellas Ravenwing,” Becca pointed out, “He fathered my child.”
“And your child?” the Thane’s voice carried no emotion.
Becca forced herself to tear her gaze away from the baby, her grief compounded by seeing a healthy child not her own. She noticed Geofferey’s embrace of his infant heir grew more protective. She hung her head in grief, she couldn’t deny it anymore.
“I have no child, your Grace.” She whispered, the strength left her and she collapsed to her knees as fresh grief struck her. “I’ve nothing left, my skill is gone, my child dead. He who got me with his seed runs free and defiles my name. I don’t care what becomes of me.” She never looked up from where she knelt.
“Then I am ready with your sentence,” Geofferey stated.
Becca looked up dully to see Geofferey rise to approach her. He shifted his baby in his arms to hand his child to her. She caught her breath as she looked into a beautiful healthy pink face of an infant girl, sleepy and unruffled by neither fuss nor by the new pair of arms that held her.
“You have an important duty, Becca Featherstep. You are sentenced to be nursemaid to my daughter,” he said, his voice quiet, “My wife cannot be her mother and I do not deny she needs one. Do this for me, and I will absolve you of the charges laid against you.”
Becca scarcely noticed she was so absorbed by the girl. Feathery soft red hair crowned her head and she snuggled deeper into Becca’s embrace which delighted the fey woman. “She is so beautiful…” she breathed.
“I don’t approve of a thief raising Dennoa’s child, but under the circumstances…” Bronnar said, but Becca ignored him absorbed by bliss. She gently stroked the girl’s cheek with the side of one finger, pointed her claws away from tender skin with care. Sleepy eyes opened to regard her without concern and closed again.
“I think Mirranna likes you,” Geofferey told Becca, a smile colored his voice for the first time that morning.
~*~*~*~
By nightfall she found herself in a comfortable room. The cradle near her bed would be where infant Mirranna would sleep within reach. Becca found what she craved as she looked upon the infant girl, and she smiled to herself.
She would never know her own child. Simmon, the healer told her when he saw her again that she would never be able to bear children. The news saddened her, but she quickly grew past it and marriage no longer interested her. Bellas ruined it all for her, yet somehow she could live with that.
Mirranna gurgled in her arms as she fed, Becca could only smile down at her in joy, her ears relaxed. “It was meant to be, you know.” The Mouse whispered to her. Becca mused, she lost her only child, but what she gained was priceless, the opportunity to love another.
Copyright © 2011 Michelle Nielsen
