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“Oh, thank you,” I groaned. “Thank you for confirming the obvious.”
“I need you to push, Istil,” he said calmly.
I tried. I tried with everything I had. Ari made medicine for me to help with the pain and Visir gave me quiet encouragement, holding my hand as I struggled. The minutes grew longer until hours had passed, and it felt like I was trapped.
“Something isn’t right,” I said as Ari wiped the sweat from my forehead.
“With the baby?” he asked. “Talk to me.”
I shook my head. “This is going to sound insane, but it’s this nest. It’s not right.”
“What can we do to make it right?” he asked patiently.
“I don’t think she wants to be born here,” I said.
The pain was making me delirious. I knew how crazy I sounded, and I was afraid that Ari would tell me so. Instead, he took my hand and smiled encouragingly at me.
“Listen to her and trust what you feel,” he said. “I’ll do everything I can for you.”
Tears streamed down my cheeks as I closed my eyes and tried to push the pain to the back of my mind, calling on all of the training I had to create some peace in my thoughts so that I could hear what my baby needed.
“Breathe with me,” Ari said.
He and Visir squeezed my hands, and the three of us breathed in slow, steady synchronization. I saw the ocean—the lagoon. I could feel it around me like I was floating in those comforting waters.
“Dammit, I think you might’ve won our bet,” I said to Ari. “She favors the ocean after all. I need to be in the water. I need to be at the lagoon.”
Ari and Visir carried me outside. Makoa and Kai were sitting by the cart, tossing pebbles at the ground, and they leaped to their feet.
“What’s going on?” Kai asked. “The baby still isn’t…?”
“We need to go back to the ocean,” Ari said.
“Back to the ocean?” Kai repeated. “What?”
“No time for questions. You can stay behind if you want. Visir and I can handle this.”
“No way, brotha,” Makoa said. “Better to have us and not need us than the opposite.”
I was back on the cart, and the contractions had started again with a renewed intensity.
“Ari,” I moaned. “Please hurry.”
“Let’s go!” Ari shouted.
Visir shifted forms and we were back in the air.
“Go to the coast and head north,” Ari instructed.
“We’re not just going back to the beach?” Kai asked.
“No,” Ari said. “Somewhere else.”
“I’m sorry,” I murmured to him, squeezing his hand. “I’m exposing your second office.”
He laughed and dabbed my forehead with the cloth. “I think it’s long exceeded its usefulness as a secret hideaway.”
Ari guided Visir, and we soon descended into the shade of the mangrove forest. The cart’s wheels crunched into the soft sand, and they lifted me out of the cart.
