Senta-eh swung her legs over the edge of the bed and sat beside Alex.
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
Alex looked at her, a haunted expression in his eyes.
“No.”
She never asked him about it again.
Chapter Twenty-EightSanda-eh
Over the next few months, Alex did his best to put the inevitable out of his mind. It was not quite like living with someone with a terminal illness. That person was just heading toward the end of their life’s road. Senta-eh was doing the same, but she was carrying another life with her as she did.
The few disagreements Alex and Senta-eh had during this time were when he tried to take on too much for her.
Alex insisted on bringing every meal to her. As soon as she was done eating, Alex would snatch her plate away and take it to where it would be washed.
Finally, she would say, “I am with child. I am not an invalid. If you want to take care of someone, go up into the cave and take care of the magdas up there. They like it. I do not.”
Alex would agree and remember for a few hours or a few days, but he always slipped back into taking care of her.
Senta-eh spent the days of early fall in the field with the young girls, showing them how to be an archer.
“Men are sometimes stronger than us, but they are rarely smarter,” she would say to her young charges. “In battle, it is best to deal with them from a distance.”
Then she would line them up and have them shoot at targets from an ever-growing distance. She would never know, but that dozen young girls would eventually go on to be known as Senta-eh’s army. It was only one of the gifts to the tribe she would leave behind.
By the time winter solstice arrived, her stomach was distended, but she was so active that she didn’t gain weight anywhere else. Alex commented that she looked like a rope with a knot tied in it.
“As it should be,” she said.
The Winten-ah kept track of time by cycles of the moon and the distance between solstices. In a deep part of Alex’s brain, though, he still kept track of the days using the calendar he had been brought up with. Using that calendar and what Niten-eh told him about when Senta-eh was likely to deliver, he realized that her due date was right around Valentine’s Day.
As each day passed, Alex felt a greater sense of dread. He and Senta-eh took to sleeping less and less. It was winter and there was very little work to be done anyway, so they didn’t need the rest as much. Much more, though, Alex wanted to spend every minute talking, laughing, holding her close.
Making more of those thousand and more memories Senta-eh had spoken of.
Their favorite topic was the child she carried. There was no way to know for sure, but Lanta-eh had told him that she was carrying a daughter. That being the case, she had specific instructions for Alex as to how their daughter should be raised.
She forbade him to be as solicitous of the baby as he had been of her since their binding ceremony.
“You will make her soft. She will not be strong enough to survive our world. You must let her run and fall on her own. Let her fight her own battles; choose her own direction. I know you,” she said, holding a steady gaze. “You will look at her and see me, and you will want to honor my memory. The best way you can do that will be to do as I ask.”
Alex sighed, then promised he would.
“And, I know her name.”
That hit Alex like a thunderbolt. He hadn’t even bothered to consider that.
Better to know what she desires, though, than to guess on my own.
“Sanda-eh.”
Alex closed his eyes and felt a lump in his throat.
Sanda was the Winten-ah word for strong.
“That is perfect. With you as her mother, how could she be anything but strong?”
“That is the truth,” Senta-eh agreed, and there was no need to discuss it further.
A few weeks later, the time came. Until the very end, Alex cast about for a solution, a cure.
There was none to be found.
Alex, Lanta-eh, and Niten-eh were in the cabin with Senta-eh as she labored.
It tore at Alex that in what seemed to be the last hours of her life, Senta-eh would know nothing but pain. Niten-eh offered her herbs to chew that would lessen the pain, but she refused them.
“I want to feel what there is to feel,” she said simply.
Her labor started before dawn and went on well past sunset. Alex did not know where she found her limitless reserve of strength. He only knew he could not have endured what she did.
Finally, while the stars burned brightly outside, the baby came.
Senta-eh greedily reached her arms out to hold her, pressing her cheek with the baby’s in the traditional Winten-ah birth-greeting.
“Sanda-eh,” she said, touching the baby’s dark hair and smiling at the small, wrinkled face. “You are perfect.”
Alex sat on the bedside, breathless with fear. He did not know what to do with his hands. With his eyes, he devoured Senta-eh.
Senta-eh cradled Sanda-eh in her right arm and reached for Alex with her other. “Thank you, my husband. You made my life so much better.”
Her hand fell limp.
Her spirit left her body.
Chapter Twenty-NineThree Years Later
“Sanda-eh!” Alex yelled.
The three-year-old girl with the chubby cheeks and dancing brown eyes ran faster, waving her arms for balance, giggling loudly with each step.
Alex sprinted ahead, scooped her up in his right arm, and in one fluid motion, threw her into the air. She soared through the early-spring air, highlighted against the soft blue sky.
When gravity finally caught her and sent her plummeting into Alex’s arms, she didn’t even take time
