One Small Step, an anthology of discoveries by Marianne de Pierres Tehani Wessely Read Free Book Online Page A

bargain,” she says. She points to a tidy shelf across the room where she laid the gifts out carefully, hours earlier. Piles of feverfue, baaras, cures for water elf disease. Two miniature clay tokens shaped like curled babes. A puddle of colourful silk ribbons.
    At last, M’Amie hands over the satchel. Cora relinquishes the remaining bottles, and the two of them retreat to collect their due.
    For a moment, Brona loses herself in arranging, lining up, assessing the trove. This will have to do , she thinks. It must be enough. It must. Behind her, the room has gone quiet.  
    “ What now?” she asks, feeling the weight of two gazes. “You think I have nothing better to do than fuss about the roundness or flatness of your bellies? Wear the charms and the ribbons, steep the herbs in boiled water then drink it all down, every drop.” She recites an enchantment they must speak before and after the drinking, then gets them to repeat it. Brona thinks she gets it right — doesn’t care much if she hasn’t. No sooner does the spell leave her lips than it is gone from her mind. She does not watch them leave.
     
    ∞ ¥ ∞ Ω ∞ ¥ ∞  
     
    Come dawn, poisonous eels churn inside M’Amie’s gut. Stoats gnaw at her innards. Wasps sting her tender parts, burning and shredding. That’s some flushing Brona’s worked , she thinks, breath seething through clenched teeth. She balls up on her cot, hipbone scything into the thin mattress. A huge round softness prevents her from properly folding. Sweat-soaked, she unfurls, gritting through pain. She fumbles for candle and match. Eyes gummy and heavy-lidded, M’Amie squints against spark and flame. Squints and squints but cannot seem to focus, to clear away the big white blob that’s blocking all view of her thighs.  
    Bloody witch! M’Amie’s belly hasn’t gone down; it has bloated even further! She coughs and coughs, and coughs become sobs. Quiet, stifled whimpers. Inhuman snuffling. There are talons inside her. There are knives. Rocking back and forth, she wipes drips from her nose. Gapes, mouth pried but not moaning. Heaving silently at the sight. I look five months gone now, not two .  
    She feels the taut flesh, the stretched bulb of her middle, feels it chafing against her shift. Things move within her. Eels? Stoats? Wasps? No, no. Nightmares. An angry babe. Pangs lance through her, and now she moans. Loud and long. Like a poisoned cat, she’s filled with noxious gas, bile, putrescence. No matter how she farts, how she writhes, the sensation does not ease. And the stench! Mud and decay. Loam and wild garlic. Fungus. Things buried, unearthed.  
    M’Amie moves slowly, gingerly down the servants’ staircase and comes into the empty kitchen. Tonight, for the first time, she has avoided Matthew. Heavens forbid he see her — smell her! — like this. The hearth is cold, but the girl can’t make it to the fireplace, much less dig kindling from the bottom of the chip-box, or cast about for flint and steel. She stumbles, falls to her knees on Cora’s perfectly-swept tiles.
    Cursed witch . Sped the child along instead of slowing… Instead of stopping it altogether ! Between her thighs, there is wetness. Stickiness. It’s coming , she guesses, too afraid to check. No, please no . The liquid is warm and carries a tang of iron. Rats nibble on her intestines. A clot of maggots presses, pushes, roils to get out.  
    M’Amie can’t bear to look, can’t bear to see the baby’s crowning.
    She crawls away from the hearth, towards the comfort of the large pantry. A good place for a scullery maid to hide, she thinks. Dry and dark and safe. She makes a nest of apple sacks and bags of flour. Curls like a bitch on the hard floor to whelp her pup in secret.  
    She imagines the look on Matthew’s face when he realises what’s happened. What she’s done. Not the pregnancy. The trying to get rid of it.
    With her face buried, cheeks grating against rough hemp, M’Amie