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Chapter1
Ada
“The dead are restless.” I glanced out the rain-blurred window toward the cemetery, the air inside the house thick with sweat and the sweetness of amniotic fluid. “You better start pushing now or my husband will dig out of his grave.”
As would the other corpses with the ground this soaked and soft. But my John as one of them…? Trudging across the village square with his skull exposed where he’d hit the rock two summers back, waterlogged skin swollen against his leather breeches? No, I would make bloody certain he stayed in the ground.
After all, I’d put him there.
“No. Not yet!” Sarah squatted at the edge of her bed, tears running down her red-veined cheeks, and dug her fingers into the straw mattress. “I can hold it in ’til the morning.”
Brushing blonde wisps from my forehead, I kneeled on the pounded dirt floor for a better look. No trickles running down her thighs, skin puffy-red and swollen, a thatch of dark hair crowning between her legs with no progress… By Helfa, had she shoved at the head all evening just to keep the baby in?
“No more stalling.” I stroked Sarah’s back through her sweat-soaked chemise, gathering the fabric higher while my other hand prodded her legs wider. “This child is coming, whether you want it or not.”
Ransacked by trembles, Sarah’s voice faded into a whimper against the straw. “Ada, I can’t bear the thought of not knowing if it’s dead or truly alive. How many hours ’til morning?”
“Too many to escape this fate.” Everyone dreaded the full moon, but none more than women cursed to birth a child on such a night. “Instead of weighing down my husband’s grave as I’m supposed to, I came here when you asked for my help.”
“To keep it in… not to get it out!”
A fool’s idea, risking both mother and child. The scalp had already turned more purple beneath the white film crowning its head. Was it dying? Already dead?
I’d only ever delivered four babies during the full moon—all alive the next morning—but I’d heard from other midwives who hadn’t been so lucky.Dead babes scream inconsolably,they reported,wailing in the same way the other corpses groan in the groanpits.
The groanpits…
I shuddered at that word.
The corpses we’d collected over the last month already resonated Hemdale with their ragged wheezes. We’dfoundmost of them around the village, though they also had a habit of falling into the river on full moons, catching on the fish cages.
I looked back at Sarah. “Get the child out now and it might live to see the morning. Leave it stuck with the head like this… and itwillbe cold in its cradle once the sun rises. With you bleeding out next to it. You want to join the undead so soon?”
“No,” she cried, her voice as thin as my fraying patience.
No, none of us wanted that.
But it was what we all had coming.
Husbands. Elders. Mothers.
Everyone.
Even this child.
The thought of the dead resting and rotting in the ground was nothing but humbug in my ears. An evil curse upon the lands—old wives’ tales had it—cast by an enraged god. Internally, I scoffed. Nothing but a story where we all knew who was to blame.
Orwhat.
The constant patter of rain against the window tensed my muscles. “Sarah, please. No widow should chase behind her dead husband, but certainly not during such a downpour. Push!”
Her groan filled the house, mingling with the hiss of flames from the hearth and the occasional pop of poorly seasoned wood. At last, Sarah held her breath and labored, gaining a precious inch. A stubby nose appeared—Oh, pink!
Pink was promising.
“Again!” When the child’s head slipped into my hand, I angled it so one shoulder might pass first. “Only a few more. The head’s already out.”
The next contraction came with a yelp.
