Snark shrugged. “We could make one here if we wanted. We could make one anywhere, if we would. Instead it’s apples and sweet grass, long gone, long past. Kane said we ate them all—”
Saluez shrieked abruptly, a senseless sound that accompanied a seemingly endless convulsion. Her teeth ground together. Her belly heaved and clenched.
“Why is she unconscious?” Lutha demanded. She hadn’t been unconscious when Leely was born. Women who chose to give birth usually chose to experience it.
“She’s Dinadhi,” Snark replied, as though this meant something. Then she shook her head in momentary confusion. “I think I remember what Mother told me. I hope I haven’t forgotten. I think we have to do this thing first….”
“Do what first?”
The question was answered, but not by Snark. Saluez shrieked mindlessly. Out from between her legs came a white thing, a bloody white thing, a small head with closed and bulging eyes, a wide mouth that showed the tips of sharp little teeth. The moment the head came into the light, the eyes opened and the teeth began snapping, snapping at them, the eyes glaring.
“Quick!” shouted Snark, grabbing at the thing with her mittened hands, wrenching it from Saluez’s body, and thrusting it through the narrow neck of her recently manufactured catch bucket. Despite the wrappings of cloth, the thing brought blood from her arm, leaving a nasty gash.
“Watch out,” she cried. “There may be more!”
There were two more. Snark got one, and Lutha got the other one, while one part of herself gibbered mindlessly and some other part demanded that she should not behave stupidly in front of Snark. The creatures were slimy and pale, they shrieked and gnashed, and the gaping slits along their backs quivered like gills as grim-faced Snark thrust them into her bucket and fastened the lid down tight.
When the contractions stopped and it was clear there were to be no more of them, Snark tied the catch bucket top with line and put it inside one of the larger supply cases, which she also lashed closed. The entire bundle rocked and shrieked at them as they returned their attentions to Saluez. She had expelled the afterbirth. With it was what remained of the infant she had carried.
Snark wrapped the bloody fragments in the clean cloths they had intended to receive a living child.
“Did you get bitten?” she asked matter-of-factly.
“A little,” said Lutha faintly. “What …?”
“It most always happens,” Snark said, her eyes wide and unfocused. “Mother said it’s a rare thing that a first baby lives. Sometimes it does, if there’s only one scourge inside, but usually there’s at least three or four of them.”
Lutha trembled, unable to get any words out. Now she knew where the next generation of Kachis were on Dinadh. Even now they were being incubated and born.
“They didn’t have wings,” she said stupidly.
“Those slits down the back,” Snark replied. “As soon as they dry, the wings pop out. They can fly almost right away.” She shook her head. “These looked sort of not ripe, though, didn’t they?”
Lutha had no idea what a ripe Kachis would look like. “How does this happen?”
Snark made a face, a spitting sound. “It’s the Dinadhi way. It’s part of the choice the songfathers made. First time a woman’s pregnant, a helper takes her to the House Without a Name. They take food and water so the scourges won’t be hungry or thirsty. And the helper ties her down on the table and then rings a gong, and maybe one or two scourges come and lay eggs in her. They’ve got these long pricky-looking ovipositors. But sometimes instead of one or two coming, lots of them come and eat on the woman’s face. Only the face, though. No other parts.”
She wiped at her cheeks with the back of one bloody hand. “And when comes time for the woman to have the baby, the scourges get born first. The midwives take ’em and feed ’em and turn ’em loose as soon as their wings’re dry. And then, if the scourges didn’t eat it, the baby is born.”
“But why do the Dinadhi do it?” Lutha screamed.
“I’m tellin’ you! The songfathers command it, so’s there’ll be beautiful people to hold all the people who die. Places for their souls to go. The women are supposed to have this duty so the people can live forever.”
Snark took a deep breath. “If the baby’s messed up but alive, they take it away somewhere.”
“By the Great and Glorious Org Gauphin,” Lutha said fervently. “Knowing all this, why does any Dinadhi woman get pregnant!”
Snark shared a bitter half smile. “They don’t know it. It’s taboo to talk about it. All the girls know is there’s a kind of a trial they have to go through to become a woman, but they don’t get told about it until after it’s happened.”
Saluez shifted and groaned.
“What shall we tell her?” Lutha demanded.
“How about telling her the truth. That she had scourges inside her. That we’ve got ’em in a box. That her baby died.”
“That her baby never developed. That’s true, too, and it’ll be easier for her.”
Snark shook her head, mimicking Lutha viciously, “Oh, yeah, by all means, make it easier.”
“Snark! Why not?”
“I was just thinking of my flippin’ life,” she growled. “That nobody was much concerned about making easier.”
“Your mother was! Whatever else happened, she saved you from this!” Lutha waved at the shrieking box, the supine form, the bloody rags. “You didn’t have to experience this!”
Snark flushed, then her eyes filled and she sobbed, once only. “Yeah,” she whispered. “Yeah.” She sounded so sad that Lutha reached for her, but Snark evaded the embrace, ducking her head and stepping away.
They bathed Saluez again and wrapped her warmly. She began to breathe more easily.
Snark said, “She’ll wake up anytime now. Once the scourges have time to get dry and fly away, then the mother can wake up.”
Saluez’s eyelids fluttered.
Lutha said, “You’re all right, Saluez.”
Saluez murmured something, about a baby.
“Rest,” said Lutha, helplessly.
Snark
