Post by Forestbreak on Jul 7, 2014 0:39:19 GMT -6
This is a chapter of a novel I'm working on. Right now, I have four chapters done, but for now, I'll only post the first. Criticisms/suggestions are very welcome.
She looked rather like a wet, rolled-up leaf with a slug tucked inside, but to her mother, she was perfect.
“Jan,” Indigo whispered, tears gathering at the corners of her dark eyes as she slowly peeled her daughter’s wings away from her squirming, pinkish body. “She’s beautiful.”
The new mother stared down at her newborn child, at the pinched face screwed into a look somewhere in between pain and frustration, at the sparse, damp mop of dark hair plastered to her scalp, at her tiny, clenched fingers and her pumping arms. She leaned down and kissed her forehead, letting her lips linger for a few moments before drawing back away and letting out a shaky, awestruck laugh. The baby’s father, Jan, still rendered wordless by the abrupt existence of something so wonderful and small and real, placed the tip of his index finger softly on the baby’s palm. She let out an angry squeal, and her wings, the span of which looked at least five times her length, trembled for a moment. Indigo swallowed a joyful sob and wrapped the wings back around her daughter, covering everything except for her tiny, lovely head.
“She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” Jan finally murmured, rubbing his eyes and indiscreetly sniffing. At this, the baby opened her eyes, a murky steel-gray that would change to brown in a few months’ time, and squealed again, flailing her arms at Indigo’s head bent above her. Indigo’s face broke into a beaming smile, and she reached down to gather her child into her arms and bring her to her breast. The child paused her crying for a moment to suckle.
“Madia was right,” Indigo breathed.
“It’s not like she ever isn’t,” Jan pointed out, still gently stroking his baby’s palm with one finger. “The last day of July, she said, in the evening. And look at that- the sun’s right in the middle of its setting.” He turned his head from the infant for a heartbeat to glance out the window, observing the burning glow of the sun peering through the glass. “We should tell Cardinal immediately, and Daryn. They can send out the word. And then we’ll need our rest- the Naming Ceremony will be tomorrow, at dawn.”
“That’s right,” whispered Indigo. “I almost forgot.” She paused. “Hm- Cardinal? Why not tell Madia?”
“Madia’s in the next village over. A young girl fell deathly sick, and the local doctor couldn’t figure out what ailed her. Poor thing,” said Jan, shaking his head.
“Shame. And Cardinal’s so young, too- only fifteen, and she’ll have to take Madia’s place as shaman any day now. Madia’s getting very old, you know. Very weak.”
“Of course I know,” muttered Jan. “She was already very old when I was this one’s age.” He grinned and tapped his child’s back. “Oh, Indigo, I can’t tell you- she’s only been in this world minutes, and already I love her with enough force to tear the world in two.”
“As do I,” Indigo said softly, love folded into her voice like sugar and fruit into pastry dough. “Our first child, Jan. I believed it would never happen; we’d been trying for so long.” She shook her head, a shaky smile on her lips, and a tear rolled down her cheek. Jan placed a hand on his wife’s shoulder. They sat in silence for what felt like a beautiful eternity, no noise except their breath moving in and out and the quiet sounds of the baby suckling.
And then, the smile dropped from Indigo’s face, and a look of panic crossed it instead, brief and intense. Her olive skin suddenly looked a few shades paler. She slowly and tenderly pulled the child away from her chest, set it back down on the pallet, and as if her hands were repelled by some stubborn force, she unwrapped its wings.
“Jan,” was all she said, voice strangled.
“What? What’s wrong?” he whispered, hushed, detecting the fear in her tone. “Does she have a fever?”
“Look at her right wing.” Indigo’s trembling finger gestured to one of the massive, bat-like wings. Jan’s eyes followed, unsure, and then he sucked in a quick, sharp breath as he saw what Indigo saw.
Their child’s wing was torn.
In the eyes of a fairy, a child born with a torn wing was not taken lightly. According to legend, if the baby was not put to death before they received a name during the Naming Ceremony, it would be terribly cursed. The wing of a fairy- leathery, thick, and brown, webbed with veiny, snakelike lines, was considered to represent its essence, its soul, its very being, and if they came into the world with a broken wing, then they were coming into the world with a broken soul. Wings were resilient, and so such a case only came around rarely. According to Madia, the last time she’d seen one was over twenty years ago. The child had been brought to the Parliament and executed before the Naming Ceremony had even begun, she’d said. It was over quickly and painlessly for the young one, and though the parents grieved, they bore six more children in their lifetimes, each of which they loved dearly and fiercely. Madia said that watching a baby die was always a heartwrenching experience, even for her- she’d been a shaman since she was twelve, and a shaman’s apprentice before then, and she’d seen many a child leave this world while they were still fresh out of the womb- but in many cases, it was for the best. Perhaps it was born small and sickly, and would have grown up frail, or perhaps it was stillborn to a girl too young and childish to raise a baby. In this case, legend said it to be cursed, damned, whatever one wanted to call it.
Jan and Indigo looked at each other, their eyes filled with a pain that was incomprehensible. How could a life so perfect, so tiny, so pure and innocent, be cursed? It was an outrage. It was a foolish old wives’ tale. It was simply and inarguably untrue. It had to be. There was no way their baby’s soul was even the tiniest bit fractured.
“We can sew it,” Jan choked, running his hand over the rough surface of the tear. “We can sew it. It’ll be okay.”
“Don’t be stupid, Jan!” Indigo burst out in a sudden, furious shout. “They’ll see the stitches, clear as day! And think about how much it’ll hurt her!”
“Then there has to be some other way!” he yelled back, face turning a bright ruby-red. “We can’t- she can’t die, Indigo! We can say she tore it on a hook! We can-“
“Do you see an open wound?” she screamed, jabbing her finger in the air above the wing. “No! It’s healed, not even scarred! As if Felir would believe that tearing her wing on a hook would heal that quickly! Do you remember Catta’s little one, who tore his wing when he was playing with knives? It didn’t stop bleeding for days, Jan!”
“Then you figure something out!” Tears wet his face.
Indigo fell deathly silent at this. Her dark eyes became harder than marbles as she curled her lip in thought, her throat continually moving like she was swallowing. After at least half a minute, she turned to her husband and said, “She cannot die.”
“I know.”
“I have an idea. But before I tell you anything, you have to do one thing for me.” She looked up at him, desperate.
“What is your idea?” he said, tone hoarse but the slightest bit hopeful. The baby squirmed on the ground, silently demanding the warmth of her mother’s arms and milk again. Jan stared ruefully down at her before it became unbearable, and so he simply turned to stare at the wall.
“I need you to do one thing for me, first,” she insisted, hands clenched into tight fists.
“Don’t play these games, Indigo, love. Just tell me. I need to know how we plan to keep our daughter alive,” he said firmly.
“Jan, please.”
He drew in a long, drawn-out breath. Then he sat quietly for a few moments before at last sighing, “Very well. What do you need me to do before you tell me your idea?”
“I need you to fetch Daryn and bring him back here. Tell him it’s urgent. Tell him that refusing is not an option, and there’s no time to lose.” Her eyes were practically wild.
Jan almost looked like he was going to argue, but then he looked down at his child again and nodded firmly. “I will.” He stood up, stretched out his wings, and with a second sharp nod, dipped sideways through the door. Indigo could hear his wingbeats growing fainter and fainter as he began to soar away. She sighed shakily, beginning to weep freely as she wrapped her daughter’s wings back around her tiny body and pulled her close to her own body. Her nose grazed the surface of the bundle, and she choked back a barrage of sobs. The baby wailed softly in response, as if asking why her mother was crying when it was quite obviously her own job to cry. Her eyes, the gray quietly inquisitive and lovely in a melancholy sort of way, were fixated on the droplets clinging to her mother’s skin and rolling down steadily, occasionally dropping down onto her wings and spilling through the shallow, rough crevices of their surface.
“We will make sure you live, my darling,” whispered Indigo, cradling the small body close. “We will not let you die, like cowards afraid of an aged, likely false tale. You mean more, little one, than words on a page.”
