No. 7 THE WAY YOU SHAKE AND SHIVER
Shaking Hands | Seizures | Silent Panic Attack
Hey! A lot of warnings for this one, due to the nature of Shmi's situation. There's the obvious warning for slavery and the horrors of it; implied and irreverent discussion of potential rape; references to past miscarriages; reference to the past loss of a child; consideration of and attempts at an abortion; consideration of suicide; and general violence against slaves. It's not light-hearted.
Bear in mind these warnings and be careful.
Her panic left her shaking on the floor, stifling her shouts and her panting in case her neighbours heard. In case they reported something. In case this was found out.
She'd seen these symptoms before. That was what frightened her. Gardulla would want her back in ten minutes. She did not have ten minutes.
She definitely didn't have nine standard months.
Shmi bent over double again, the sickness that told her what this was coursing through her. The whip strokes along her back from yesterday still hurt enough that it was difficult to think clearly beyond order-follow-satisfy-escape, but she couldn't deal with this. Something had to be done. Either Gardulla would find out—and soon—or one of her lackeys, or Shmi's own friends who were desperate and in need of a reward, and then…
She had had children before. She couldn't bear to watch them die or be sold again. Every time it happened, she thought of her own parents, the ones she'd been snatched away from on that one fateful, desperate trip to Nar Shaddaa. She cried to think that one day, her child wouldn't be able to remember her face, either.
The nausea in her torso roiled, pulsing; a feeling pulsed with it. It soared through her on her quickening pulse, weak but gaining strength.
It said, It will be alright.
She ignored it. She was old enough to know better.
The first order of business, after she crammed the last few dregs of calming herbs she'd bartered with Ohnaka for onto her tongue, was to go back to serving Gardulla. Bite her grimaces back. Ignore the leering attentions of the bounty hunters of the court. There was no doubt none of them would hesitate to act on their leers if they were desperate enough, dubious protection from her illustrious owner or not, but none of them did. A cook too pregnant to stand could not produce Gardulla's favoured frog snacks again and again and again throughout the day.
Once the sun went down on Nal Hutta, the court wrapped up, and Gardulla didn't expect constant food service. Shmi limped back to the slaves' quarters and didn't stop at her own. Her hands shook as she knocked on Ohnaka's door.
She opened it. An old, leathery Weequay woman, Ohnaka had raised her son in Gardulla's court for years before selling him to the highest bidder. She didn't have a shred of maternal affection, which both made her discrete and insensitive in moments like these.
"Sure, I've got the drugs you're looking for, Skywalker," she said. Shmi sat at her table, trying not to feel giddy from the thick scents in her kitchen. Ohnaka made a fortune off of slaves and indentured servants—of which she was the latter—that needed the slightest escape from reality. Or pain. Or… this sort of problem. "It'll cost you."
Selling her son should have settled the debt and let Ohnaka go free. It hadn't. Interest was tricky like that.
"How much?"
"More than you can afford."
Shmi swallowed. The muggy air of Nal Hutta pressed at her lungs. Something murmured at the back of her mind like a breeze in the thick humidity. "Please."
She almost felt Ohnaka's mind change, curiosity and greed overcoming cruelty. "Secrets are worth a lot," Ohnaka did offer, her voice a slight croon. "Who was it?"
"Why?" Shmi asked quietly. "Do you want to sell it?"
"Who's kriffing who is important information around here. And I know Gardulla ain't ordered anyone to kriff you, so it was their choice."
"No one."
Ohnaka tilted her head. "Price's double for liars."
It's a wonder you can afford your own concoctions, then. But Shmi was good at biting her tongue. "No one," she repeated. "No one in months."
"You obviously have."
"I haven't." She shook her head. "I can't explain… this."
Ohnaka's expression shuttered. "Then you've got a stomach bug." She snorted. "Even if you are pregnant, that's all you've got. A stomach bug. I ain't wasting this stuff on you."
She'd expected it, but— "Please. I need your help."
"Everybody does, Skywalker."
"If Gardulla finds out—"
It was a mistake to say. Ohnaka's eyes lit up. Shmi felt her glee resonate inside her, unusually strong. Resignation, the familiar feeling, welled up in her. The moment Gardulla knew, the choice would no longer be hers.
She didn't want to lose her baby. But she didn't want to carry them and then lose them, either. Better to spare herself the pain.
All was not lost yet. So, she repeated, "Please," and pulled on something deep inside her. She had bottomless experience in suffering, knew how to evoke sympathy in the offworlders who visited and hesitated over her, guilt bleeding through their pampered faces. Something tugged at her heartstrings. She watched her plea settle into Ohnaka's face.
"Alright," she said. "Here. This'll solve your problem." And she put a pouch of foul-smelling herbs in Shmi's hand.
Shmi, too nervous to refuse, took it.
Later, it was again that ghost feeling at the back of her skull, the tingling in her arms, that saved her. She stared at the pouch Ohnaka had given her—had cleared out all her savings for—and shivered. Something was off. It didn't smell right.
When she ran a few tests on the herbs, that protective feeling blaring the whole time, she turned out right. Ohnaka hadn't given her a mixture for an abortion. She'd given her a lethal mixture. Gardulla's slaves used these doses… sometimes.
She held that pouch in her hand and considered it. Thought about her own parents. Thought about the children—two boys, four girls, three unborn foetuses—she'd lost over the years before any of them reached four years old. Half of them she'd never been able to name, and there were names she half-remembered loving as a child, when she'd learned languages and the meanings they gave nonsensical syllables. Names about strength, courage, blessings, destiny.
"Anakin," she murmured to herself. Anakin was the one that had meant destiny. Now, with the lethal concoction in one hand, and her other hand on a belly that had not yet begun to swell, destiny was everything.
She squeezed her hands around the pouch. Tears dribbled out of her eyes. Her hands were shaking so badly, her knees were knocking together; she couldn't breathe, and she just wanted to collapse and scream, even as she swallowed her cries, even as she pinched her fingers around the soft herbs inside, even as she practised the motion that would have to come of her swallowing these.
Thumping feet just outside her door. Shmi started, dropping her pinch back into the pouch, shoving it into her pocket and looking up. A fist pounded on her door—once, twice, thrice. The gruff voice of Gardulla's guard demanded she come out.
She came out. He seized her by the neckline of her dress and yanked her down the path.
Gardulla was waiting for her, fury making the air thicker and hotter than it was usually. Shmi was struggling to breathe. The atmosphere was thick enough to bite, tougher than the biscuits slaves lived on. At least she could leave teeth marks in those.
A holoprojector in the throne room was frozen, the heads of podracers and models of their pods rotating. The Boonta Eve Classic. Numbers, obscene amounts of credits, ran up and down the side of the holo.
"My cook is pregnant?" Gardulla demanded, staring at Shmi. Shmi cut her gaze to Ohnaka, standing by Gardulla's feet at the bottom of the dais. She was counting credits. "Is this true?"
The suicide pouch was still in her pocket. She was being held, but not restrained. If they whipped her, she could be gone before the leather so much as touched her back again.
It would have been so easy. The end of all of this.
Ohnaka was still counting credits.
"No?" Shmi asked, forcing her melancholy features into a quizzical expression. "Where did you hear that, Your Excellency?"
The guard seized her hair and kicked her knees. She fell. "Do not lie."
"I'm not lying," she insisted. The feeling insisted with her: she felt it wrap around her tongue, wrap around the room. Even Ohnaka went from looking amused to furious, with a hint of uncertainty. "I know nothing of this."
Gardulla turned to Ohnaka. "Have you lied to me?"
"No, Your Excellency!" Ohnaka insisted. "Skywalker—"
A guard struck Ohnaka. The credits toppled out of her hand; binders clamped around her wrists. Shmi thought, for a moment: those credits could have bought Ohnaka's freedom.
But any one of those chips could have paid for one of Shmi's children's freedom, as well.
"She must have lied," Shmi said, letting her voice stay querulous. Uncertain. "Ohnaka is…"
"I am aware what Ohnaka is like. Take her away." Gardulla didn't apologise. She just waved at the guards to let go of Shmi. "You may go back to your quarters." She started playing the holoshow again.
Amidst the noise of the commentators bickering, Shmi nodded, bowed her head, then rose to her feet. She glanced at the holo once—only once—and something made her freeze in her tracks.
"There's a Dug newcomer this year, all the way from Malastare, do you know anything about podracing on Malastare?"
"Do I know anything about it? I started out there!"
"So did I! Anyway, they're fierce and fast there, but this newcomer Sebulba isn't getting good odds at the table, so you've gotta wonder how he even got into this race—"
She saw flashes. A desert planet. A boy, turning to look at her. A boy in a podracer.
Bet against Sebulba, she thought, casting her gaze up to an enthralled Gardulla. More images—more promises. The feeling spiralled out from the lifeform in her womb, flooding through her veins. A winged master. An old lady predicting storms. A Jedi. A Jedi. A Jedi.
Bet heavily against Sebulba, Shmi willed, and Gardulla started as if she'd just have a thought. Lose me. Lose us.
Send us to Tatooine.
