"Here." Grim-faced, Mistress Barran thrust her burden at her apprentice. "Wrap the body. She'll bleed out if I don't stop it now."
Nynaeve hardly registered the bread loaf sized parcel of limbs and head an torso that fit awkwardly in her two hands. "He's not breathing!" she shrilled.
The Wisdom spent a precious two seconds on a level look that passed over her shoulder and speared the girl where she stood. "Wrap the body. I must do what I can for his mother now."
Numbly, Nynaeve knelt, beginning the motions. It did not seem right, somehow, she railed inwardly as she laid the small form out on the viscous-stained scrap of flannel: swaddling cloth turned winding sheet.
His color was all wrong: under the mottled white of vernix, the flesh tones were surmounted by the soft blue-green of something frozen, something drowned. But he wasn't cold, yet, he hadn't had time to grow cold. Impulsively, she chafed the tiny limbs, wondering why she was fool enough to even half hope her clumsy ministrations would make a difference when the Wisdom had all ready given up. His color was wrong. There was no clear reason to it, she thought. He wasn't frozen; he just wasn't breathing. The notion hit her like a physical blow. No one, ever, should drown in thin air.
He was so tiny, with an irregular shock of dark hair, and fingers and toes like twigs. He'd come early, with the rising of the storm. Just how early was impossible to say—at least a month, though likely it was more. His mother was young, and it was her first. Often, when a babe came early they did not live, unready to face the world so soon; most often it was the lungs, underdeveloped, that gave out. But, Nynaeve thought with consternation, his were fine. He was perfect: only small. With her hand resting on his naked chest, she knew the lungs within were well-formed, and would grow strong given half a chance. He had simply not been given the chance!
Before she could think about what she was doing—stoutly refusing to think about it, lest that cause her to stop—Nynaeve bent low over the prone form of the newborn. Gathering the slight weight gently in the crook of one arm, she cradled his head so that it fell at a slope into her hand, tilting the pathways to his lungs open. Suctioning off mouth and nose, she peremptorily sucked his airways clear and spat. Mistress Barran would have of course performed this precaution all ready, but it was the first step, and no harm could come of being certain. Through his back and beneath her hand she could make out the intermittent flutter of a heartbeat. Good: that was good. Covering mouth and nose once more, she began to blow soft puffs of air from her own cheeks down into his lungs, counting the while to keep herself steady. Faster and shallower than she would breathe for herself, but it was an easy rhythm to fall into: it was what he needed. Careful of the pressure of her stronger air into his fragile lungs. Arms taut and stable as she kept him at the precise angle. Each aided breath a silent injunction: Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. She was consumed by a sense of urgency, panic, and yet was utterly calm, still. She floated in a sea of dark, aware only of the baby boy painted on the backs of her eyes by the contact of her arms and hands, mouth and chest; mapped by the air from her lungs that passed into his and resonated there. Nynaeve kept her eyes closed, feeling his responses and intuiting her own moves; seeing was unnecessary. She thought of his color rightening, growing warm. She thought of his heart picking up strength and speed: under her fingers, she was unaware that this was exactly what it did, ever so slightly. The entirety of Creation contracted to her endless pocket of dark, the steady counted rhythm. Fast and shallow, but exactly right. She did not care that her back was stiff from remaining crouched over; she did not care that beneath her, her legs had grown numb. She did not even know it. Her entire body ached to be trembling, yet could not. She must remain solid and unmoving. All that existed was she and his boy. If he was to be given a chance, she must be the strength and continuity of the Light itself.
"Breathe, burn you," she hissed, the acid burn of hot tears seeping between her lashes.
Beginning the cycle anew—for only the second or third time, she realized—she blew softly. And with that breath there came a jolt that lanced through all of her, beginning nowhere and everywhere at once. It seemed to ride out on that breath, flowing down into the child's lungs where it illuminated every infinitesimal filament, spread out to fill his blood, trace every branching artery and vein with searing light. In that breath, she knew him...was him.
Nynaeve reeled back as though struck, sucking in a breath of her own: of a sudden she found herself very lightheaded and glad to be sitting. Beneath the fingers resting lightly on the babe's ribcage, there was a galloping kick, as from within a womb. Too startled to be ecstatic, she found his breath pushing back at her, and hastily pulled away. A faltering inhale, a shuddering exhale. Once more, stronger this time, and a thin, piteous cry broke the too still air. Nynaeve thought it the most beautiful sound she'd ever heard, or ever would hear.
Tugging low the lacing of her blouse, she pressed his tiny body to her chest, pulling the wrapping more snugly around the back of him, knowing just how important the contact of skin on skin was for him just now, even more than the warmth. She struggled to keep her breathing even, willed her unruly heart to slow and steady itself. That was vitally important, she knew, as the baby lay against her and from listening and feeling reaffirmed just what a heartbeat was supposed to be. So even though she felt herself just a hair shy of frenzy, she forced herself—she was never quite sure how—to stillness. She rocked gently back and forth as the child continued to mewl and wail against her shoulder; she was satisfied to note how those cries seemed to gain body with each redoubled effort. She hummed softly, an old song without words, the notes drawn-out and low. They made a harmony of it, almost, though she did not know if the pitch of his cries gravitated towards her melody, or whether it was the other way around entirely.
An Age, an eternity passed that way; a few minutes, an hour, a lifetime or two. "Give over, Nynaeve." she dimly registered someone berating her. She had not realized anyone else was there, or that someone had been trying to get the infant from her until strong capable hands inserted themselves between them. "Let him nurse, now." Even then she was loath to let him go, but that would be all right, wouldn't it? She trusted the owner of the voice—whose face she hadn't yet mustered the strength to look up and see—to know what she was about, and relinquished the small bundle of warmth that had seemed to grow as much a part of her as her own hand.
Free to at last, she slumped against the wall, feeling utterly drained. She became aware of the other figures moving about, backlit by the fire, but she saw them as if from below the surface of a lake: their shapes blurred and words muted, and she an unfathomable way off, unreachable. She felt herself shaking uncontrollably, and yet knew she was still. Her mouth tasted as if she'd been running. For an interminable time, Nynaeve just sat listening to her own ragged breathing, curled in around herself, feeling hollow in ways she could not comprehend.
"Come on." Later—how much later she wouldn't even try to guess; time had been doing funny things to her today—someone grabbed her under the shoulders and hauled her upright. It took her a few seconds to remember how to get her feet to stay under her. "Best we be getting on, now."
Nynaeve allowed herself to be led out, craning over her shoulder for a last look at mother and child, both asleep now in the freshly made bed. She did not have the words to thank the Wisdom just then for leaving her there on the floor. She wasn't sure how the after-thought tasks of clearing up, stoking the fire, preparing a meal, had gotten done since it was her task, as apprentice, to affect them. But Mistress Barran was the sort of woman who knew too much without your having to say much of anything, and so Nynaeve simply leaned against the welcome support of the Wisdom's side as they trudged home through the new mud.
Squeezing her briefly in what approximated a one-armed huged, Mistress Barran told her softly, "You did good in there today, girl."
Nynaeve smiled blearily to herself. She had, hadn't she?