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“The oil will abort the fetus,” she says, setting it aside.

“And the berries? They don’t cause the baby to bleed out?”

“If taken early in pregnancy, and consumed in large doses, I suppose they might.” She tips the jar into her palm, gathering a small handful of the berries.

“I … I lost a baby to them once.” It’s not something I’d normally confess. In fact, the only one I’ve told is Six, but there’s a sense of urgency beating through me. I can’t let her feed these berries to Mara. “I bled everywhere.”

“You’d have to eat quite a lot of them to bleed significantly.” She gathers towels as she explains, placing them around Mara’s bottom and between her legs. “Were you exposed to anything else prior to that?”

My mind rewinds to that day and the night before. The only thing unusual that comes to mind are the injections Papa gave me to aid in my escape. Alpha pheromones.

“Now hold her down.” Heseya snaps me out of my thoughts. Banding my arm across Mara, I hold her still, as Haseya lifts her head. “Eat these, Mara. If you wish to save yourself and your child.”

Breaking into a sob, Mara shivers in my arms, and her jaw quivers as she opens it for the berries that Haseya deposits into her mouth. Mara’s face screws up, and as if I had bitten into the bitter fruit, I can feel the sour flavor burst on my tongue, and yet also recall the utter relief of having found food in the desert that day.

In the quiet that follows, my pulse rate slows, and I dip a nearby cloth into an awaiting bowl of cool water. Daubing Mara’s forehead, I watch as her eyes blink up at me, heavy with exhaustion.

“Wren? Will my baby be okay?” Her lips tremble with the question, and I steal the opportunity to look away, the tears in my eyes far too telling of the worry I feel for her.

Eyeing Hesaya at her feet, I note the sweat glistening on her skin and the concentrated, determined look that creases the many wrinkles of the older woman’s face.

Swinging my attention back to Mara, I force a smile and gently wipe her forehead. “You’re in good hands, Mara.”

No sooner do the words fall from my lips than her eyes pop wide with terror, and she arches again.

“Oh, no!” Hesaya mumbles words in her native tongue and places one hand at Mara’s belly, the other between the agonized woman’s thighs, where blood pours out of her. I’ve witnessed births before, but never once have I seen so much blood.

“Mara!” I feel her body convulse beneath me, and watch as her eyes roll back into her head, while blood trickles out of the corner of her mouth.

A whimper escapes Hesaya as she holds her arms outstretched, supporting a too-small infant, coated in blood, still attached to the umbilical cord. A boy. The midwife’s hands tremble, her eyes wide with shock as she stares down between Mara’s thighs.

“Is he dead?” Surely, she’s done this enough times to have seen complications and hemorrhage. I’ve never delivered a baby, but even I can see she may have suffered a ruptured placenta.

“Take him,” she whispers, and with a quick glance at Mara, whose unfocused eyes and paling skin tell me she’s in no condition to hold her newborn son, I do.

Hands trembling, I curl him against my chest, where he lies tiny and vulnerable.

Hesaya lifts what I presume is the placenta, torn to shreds. On the outside of it sit two small bulbous sacs that appear to contain two more fetuses, as if attached to the first. Both deformed, with abnormally bent limbs and elongated heads. “I’ve … never seen such a thing in my life!”

Watching the two fetuses squirm, I notice the absence of movement in my arms and focus on the newborn’s too-still chest. “Hesaya, the baby isn’t breathing. I don’t think he’s breathing!”

She takes him back, massaging his chest, and seems to perform mouth to mouth on him. Hands covered in blood, I turn my attention back to Mara, noticing she’s gone still, her face paler than before, eyes closed as though she’s sleeping.

“Mara?” Running my hand over her forehead leaves a streak of blood there, and when I shake her, she doesn’t move. “Mara?”

Swallowing back the hysterics itching to break free, I feel for a pulse.

Nothing.

“Mara!” Resting my head against her chest, I listen for a heartbeat.

Silence.

Like Hesaya with the infant, I perform the same chest compressions Papa taught me back when I lived with him, giving her air in between each.

Nothing.

For minutes, I scramble to bring my friend back to life, but my efforts prove futile, her fate written in the cold blue of her lips and vacant stare.