Kit paused to catch her breath for a second before opening the gate to the midwife's front walk. Kit thought, as she always did when passing Minna's house, how the elaborate gingerbread cottage nestled between two giant vallenwood limbs resembled its owner—
prim and haughty.
Kit knocked on the door. The moment Minna opened it, Kit grabbed her arm and started tugging her outside. The short, plump midwife was wearing her trademark muslin apron that, if it were not always so clean and starched, Kit would suspect she wore even to bed. Her wispy auburn hair was elaborately coiffed and beribboned.
"Hurry up! We have to hurry! It's my mother, she's gone into labor. You must come right away," Kit said as she pulled.
Minna tugged right back, easily freeing her arm from the child's grasp. The midwife paused and collected her dignity around her. As Kit stood by the front door, shifting impatiently from foot to foot, Minna busied herself around her home, gathering potions, herbs, and vials, which she placed carefully in a large leather sack while nattering away at Kit.
"My dear, you look flushed. Catch your breath. I must find my aspen leaves. Aspen leaf juice really makes the best clotting drink, you know. It's quite rare in these parts. I have Asa—you know Asa, that funny, black-haired kender who appears in town every now and then?—I have Asa collect the leaves for me specially whenever he is near Qualinesti or Silvanesti. Of course, he's not all that reliable as a gatherer. Although I'm sure if he says they are aspen-wood leaves, then they probably are. . . ." Glancing in a mirror as she patted her hair in place, Minna caught a tense look from Kitiara, who was barely able to keep from shouting at the midwife to shut up and get out the door.
"Is anything wrong dear?" Minna asked, peering at Kit concernedly with her small, olive eyes.
"Yes, yes!" Kit declared, stamping her foot. "I told you! My mother has started having her baby. She needs you!"
"Well, there's no need to be rude, I'm sure. There's enough of that in Krynn these days," Minna said with an injured air. "People have been having babies since the beginning of time. I'm sure your mother is doing just fine," she added, checking her leather rucksack full of whatnot one more time before pulling it closed. "Ah, here are the aspen leaves. I shouldn't worry. I suppose your father is home with Rosamun?" The query seemed innocent enough, but Kit, always thin-skinned when it came to questions about fathers, mistrusted Minna's reasons for asking. The midwife made it her business to know all the gossip there was to know in Solace, and everything she discovered through her snooping she passed on to dozens of acquaintances at the morning market. Kit knew that Rosamun was one of her favorite topics.
Rosamun intermittently suffered strange trances and was chronically abed with fever and imagined ills. After Gregor had left her, things had only grown worse. Kitiara supposed Rosamun blamed herself for Gregor's going. Well, she should. She had practically driven him away with her homebody concerns.
It was difficult to understand what Gregor had seen in her mother in the first place. Maybe she had been pretty once, Kit admitted grudgingly. She was a good enough cook. Yet whatever Rosamun once was, more and more in recent months she had become the kind of sickly, indoors drudge that Kit planned never to be.
Rosamun didn't have very many friends or people sympathetic to her sick spells. That's where Minna came in. Kitiara had to admit that Minna tended to her mother as best she could. And she never pressured Gilon to pay her mounting bill.
Even so, Kitiara detested the bossy busybody.
"Gilon," Kit emphasized the name, since he was not her father, "is cutting wood in the forest. I don't know where, probably miles away. Otherwise I'd run and get him. My mother has been feeling well enough lately, and I didn't want to ask him to stay home even though we knew it was close to her time. Can't you hurry?" Kit looked out the window and wished she were anywhere but in this house, anywhere except perhaps her own cottage. She couldn't forget the anguished sounds that Rosamun had made, and the look of fear on her face.
"Well, who's in a hurry now, young lady? Do your best to keep up." With that, Minna swept past Kitiara and out the door. Kit would have liked to kick her in the behind. But the thought of Rosamun at home, in the throes of childbirth, made her repress the impulse.
Indeed, Kit practically had to run to keep up with Minna, who moved along the walkways with quick strides.
When they reached the cottage, Kit saw that her mother had climbed back onto the bed, where the blanket and sheets were already soiled and bloodstained. As they rushed to her, Rosamun uttered a low groan and her breathing quickened with the beginning of another contraction. This time, she seemed nearly too exhausted to scream. Her long, pale blond hair was plastered against her skull with perspiration. Her delicately boned face was drawn. When Rosamun's lips parted, only a strangled moan escaped as her body curled forward. After the contraction crested, she collapsed back against the sheets. Minna hurried up to feel her forehead. The contractions were speeding up. Rosamun's bed was almost soaked.
"Good, your water has broken," Minna declared. But the midwife frowned slightly when she noticed the greenish stain on the bedclothes.
Minna unceremoniously pulled up Rosamun's smock and checked on the labor's progress. "Put some water on to boil and get the clean cloths ready. The baby will be coming any time now. That green water means
