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Burning Bright
Maekar
The ridiculous wood and iron monstrosities rose higher and wider as the child in her womb grew. Never before had this blessed condition left her this exhausted, her breathing tortured, her feet hurting when she spent more than a few minutes standing. "That's because you were not quite recovered yet when you got with this child," midwives told her, giving her looks of concern and untold reproach – why hadn't she made sure that it wouldn't come to this if she had to accept her lord husband so soon after the last birth, instead of pleading weariness and feeling unwell? It wasn't as if he would have guessed the truth – what did men knew about giving birth? And she hadn't even needed to give him an heir. Three healthy boys in such a short term were more than enough.
"Do you not want to see a maester?" Daeron asked her in the privacy of their bedchamber. "You don't look good, Mariah."
But she didn't dare. The maesters were Aegon's men. Everyone in the Red Keep was. They'd tell him immediately and there was no telling how he'd spin it into his favour. His constant attempts to coerce Daeron into repudiating her only made her anxiety grow. She was quite sure he was behind the malicious rumour that she'd give birth to a deformed child, as monstrous as those dragons of his… If it became known what a hard time she was having, a few drops in her plate or goblet would be enough to produce a dead child – a proof that her marriage was cursed, so she only sought the care of trusted midwives, dealt with her everyday duties and stood until she felt that her legs would give out…
"The child will be unhappy," she said the night before the dragons left to wreak fire and blood on her homeland.
Daeron gave her a startled look. "What kind of nonsense is this? Mariah, how can you?"
"An unhappy child, unhappy!" she repeated, her eyes following the bright wildfire display that the dragons and their crew had put up for the King this last night. All the Red Keep had gone out to watch. Mariah and Daeron had refused. She could feel the truth of her words to the very marrow of her bones. Let this babe not take the bitterness of the days I'm living now, she begged the Seven. The time my goodfather is trying to seize my homeland…
He was born a month before expected, a terrible experience that left her bedridden for weeks, her face burning with shame and embarrassment when the midwives tried to help her use the chamber pot in her bed and she couldn't force herself to relax enough to do it. But he was healthy and vigorous and it was all worth it. He was all silver hair – all five tufts of it – and violet eyes and Mariah couldn't help but smile imagining her goodfather's face when he'd first see him. No bad omen. No dead child. No deformity.
But it seemed that someone else couldn't wait.
Maekar had been born in the hour of ghosts and Mariah had gone to sleep as soon as the maesters had decided that it was not dangerous for her. A heavy sleep that didn't let her feel the constant coming and going of maesters, midwives, servants, and Daeron. One that broke to pieces by a thunderous thud, a scream, and a babe's crying that made her jump up, her feebleness pushed away by a primal fear. The cradle had collapsed and Baelor had fallen over it. Squashing the babe. He screamed again when his mother seized him and tossed him on the bed. Mariah dropped to her knees, frantically reaching for the babe. He was crying. He was crying, so he was alive. She took him in her arms and then realized that there was no way she could rise.
"I only wanted to see him!" Baelor was saying. Clearly, he knew he was in a big trouble so he was trying to explain even before asked. "He grabbed me by the finger and squeezed!"
Mariah tried to tell him that he should summon the servants but the effort had made her so weak that her voice was a mere thread. She knew that she might swoon any moment and reached down to place Maekar on the floor, so she would not drop him. But the door was suddenly thrown open and as she went to blissful oblivion, she knew that someone had come.
The next day, she realized that Baelor's explanation had been truthful. Maekar had an amazingly strong grasp when given a finger. "I won't mind for His Grace to come to know about it," she murmured, still smarting with resentment over her goodfather's vile insinuations.
"He won't be impressed," Daeron said, taking the child from her arms and staring at him. He didn't seem impressed either and Mariah felt guilty. Daeron had wanted a daughter this time. What use would he have of a fourth son? "He has more pressing matters to worry about."
She looked at him, her eyes asking the question without words.
"His dragons got smashed in the Boneway," Daeron replied, his hand stroking Maekar' soft head to keep the babe quiet but his thoughts far away.
Perhaps it's an omen, Mariah thought. Perhaps this babe will live in a time of peace.
It was a constant war, right from the moment he had his third bath. As usual, the first time Mariah watched, comforting herself with the thought that if he cried, he lived. The second time, she waved it off as him not used to water yet. But the third time, the screams and crying that turned his face a violent shade of violet, darker than his eyes told her that her youngest really, really minded baths. As a result, she broke her habit of having everything about her new babes done in front of her for the first weeks and ordered to the wetnurse to take him away. A few rooms and a hallway away, this strong was his voice. Mariah hated listening to her children cry, even when it was for their own good and in her hard recovery, getting upset was the last thing she needed.
Then, the matter of swaddling. Maekar hated this as well and while he wasn't unusual in this attitude – which babe liked being wrapped like this? – he was the first of hers to shake and seize uncontrollably upon feeling the dreaded cocoon get tight around him. The sight was extremely distressing for both Mariah and Daeron and although the Grand Maester assured them that it was unlikely for the child to injure himself, Daeron unwrapped the swaddling the third day around and while the rumours of their indulgence and the terribly spoiled child that would no doubt result from this was sure to abound at court, Mariah felt much better not wondering if her son would do something to his limbs with all those protestations, let alone not hearing his loud complaints or the pitiful little heap he was when he got exhausted from wailing and squirming and fell asleep.
To her relief, he was growing well, as robust as only Baelor had been. Still, Mariah worried. He was too young to say for sure that he had escaped all the dangers of his prematurity. Why he still hated baths? His brothers all loved them. And around the time of his nameday, his hearing started to deteriorate. He chatted to Rhaegel, to his wooden toys, and the puppies Baelor had dragged to their chambers but Mariah and Maryse, the nursemaid he was so fond of needed to tell him a few times that he should come out from under the table. Maryse, young and without children of her own, was more prone to just reach down and take him out but Mariah knew that her son had to learn to follow commands, so they talked themselves hoarse until they finally made him heard them – usually by raising their voices so much that he would turn around and look at them confused before starting babbling in his own young language. "Why are you shouting?" Baelor translated readily but later the same day, the scene would repeat with something else. Was this one of the manifestations of the too early birth? Like the nails that Maekar had been born without, but unlike them, something that would not resolve with age? In fact, it seemed to grow worse.
It was Baelor who put his mother's fears to rest. As Mariah wondered what to make of her exchanges with a child who would ask, "Out to snow?", she'd say "Yes. No, you can't take the soldiers" and he'd try to sneak one of them out anyway," Baelor simply entered her chambers, waving two of the fruits that had arrived from Dorne just yesterday. "Do you want a blood orange?" he asked in a whisper – Mariah wasn't sure who he was hiding from – and Maekar immediately turned around and said, "Yes." Maryse gasped and laughed and Mariah just felt foolish. Her apprehensions had prevented her from seeing what was right in front of her: Maekar was afflicted with the same hearing ailment the older ones had. He only heard what he wanted to. Baelor was already seven and gave no indication of recovering soon. In fact, Mariah had the idea that this event might never take place, given the fact that at twenty three, Daeron was suffering the same malady, especially when engrossed in a book.
All in all, Maekar seemed like the perfect child. Not as peculiar as Rhaegel. Not slow to start walking and talking. And, as much as Mariah hated that it mattered, not Dornish looking. Only if he could take bathing less painfully! If he had his way, he'd go around dirtier than any beggar child in Flea Bottom! No amount of scolding and even yelling could convince him to be put in the tub peacefully. It was all a war after which the nursery looked like the Summer Sea! The most strange thing was, he loved to be clean. But Mariah's authority seemed to be the only thing to make him just scream and not actively try to escape, so in the evening of every day, she sat into the nursery listening to him vociferate while Rhaegel, pressed against the door from the outside, whimpered, "Please, Mother, please, do not do this to him!" It was a good thing that the court had no access to the nursery, else everyone would know that she was putting her children to torment!
Sometimes, she seriously contemplated the idea of letting Maryse deal on her own or with someone else's help. It was ridiculous how a child who was not quite two could command her presence so often for such a trivial task! Usually, these thoughts visited her when she was tired and tormented by one of the headaches that had started during this last pregnancy. Or when the children were louder than usual, like the day Maekar rushed into the nursery waving an ivory dragon that was clearly very important for Rhaegel and being chased by his brother. He ran straight for the tub that was still being filled and jumped in it head first. Mariah screamed. The water was steaming hot, with just one bucket of cold… She reached frantically inside, the hot burning her skin but Maekar evaded her hands and pressed himself in the farthest corner. There were no tears. No shouting. He looked… content. Mariah took her hands out and looked at the angry blisters already forming on them. "Was that it?" she wondered aloud. "The water was just too cold for you? You wanted it scalding hot?"
"Hot!" he agreed happily, for once showing that he had heard her. Not that she believed he understood.
"That's a great hiding place," Baelor said with admiration, having just entered in search of the ivory dragon that must have been his, not Rhaegel's after all. Maekar just held the toy under the hot water and when Baelor tried to reach inside, Mariah stopped him. "A place where no one can reach you."
Maekar grinned and Mariah wondered if he did understand, after all.
