2. Milkflowers

The birth plays out differently this time.

She melts into the sodden bedding and arches her spine as another contraction sears through her body like a pair of groping hands on the inside of her skin, intensifying the frenzy around her, the frenzy within her, and just about halving her dwindling reserve of strength. She collapses back, wincing, feeling it all and not feeling a thing.

Then again, she reflects, she hasn't felt in quite a while.

Six and a half months, to be precise. She can trace her last lucid moments to the day that Frex mustered the courage to visit the chemist's shop. He returned with a hopeful glimmer in his eyes and a neat little package gripped between white knuckles and refused to reveal its contents until they were served up with her supper.

The preparation was simple.

No dilution, no sugar-coating; they were not concealed in a pastry or boiled with her tea. They were tossed into a bowl, stems and all, mashed a little and then presented as they were, bearing all the flavour of a novel left untouched for twenty years. She chewed them multiple times a day: once after each meal and once before retiring for the evening, twice if she vomited within the hour – a guarantee, even after the initial months of sickness. It was her body rebelling, she knows this now, thinking of the gagging, the cramping, how her mouth dried until her tongue rasped against her teeth like sand paper. But she managed to grind away at the milkflowers just the same. She bought the false promises, however briefly, and by the time she realized that they were rotting her from the inside out, she was too numb to care.

She feels the mattress creak underneath her as she tosses and scours the room for an ally, finding herself no more than dimly aware of the figures hovering by her feet. Too soon, it's too soon, she hears, struggling to concentrate. A man's voice. The doctor's? There's no midwife this time. And they've given her something – too much of it. She wants to cry out, she thinks it is requisite, but nothing comes when she opens her mouth. Frex paces. His face is pale beyond recognition, hidden in his hands.

"I've been looking into alternative cures," he said briskly, the night of the first meeting, as if there was already something wrong with the baby. The one not yet a month in the making, the one that lay beneath the hand that Melena held to her belly.

His veiled threats were routine by then. They lurked beneath every order – requests, he usually called them – from the day he requested that the separation end early and well into the interval between her return and the pregnancy, when he motioned his opponents towards the parlour for refreshments and requested her help in dispelling the tension. Melena was aware that things could get worse for her, but often sought joy in challenging his demands anyway: refusing to join him at meals, siding with his rivals, alluding to the devastating loss of their firstborn and the toll it took on their marriage. It was all done with subtlety and a smile, with the intention of turning Frex the deepest shade of purple that she could wring from him.

And then came the day that a maid discovered the napkins that she was stowing below her bed rather than using and bolted straight to his study. The girl – dismissed by Melena and reinstated by Frex not fifteen minutes later – relayed the news, handing them over as evidence, and all of Melena's carefully catalogued acts of insurrection were repaid tenfold.

She was two weeks late in bleeding when the consultations began. It was doctors first, but not for long, as each one made it clear that he was trained to ward off disease, not ridicule, and most of Frex's concerns were met with disdain. Soon after, he turned to his colleagues, then to the household staff, then to the townsfolk, seeking what advice he could with the limited information he was willing to divulge. Melena, meanwhile, was forced into the sessions that these searches turned up, most of which ended with her skirts bunched around her waist and some fraud poking around below that. "In the spirit of thoroughness," one said, with Frex agreeing heartily. The man's hands were cold against her skin. His examination came to nothing.

Eventually, Frex found himself laying an invitation on the doorstep of a chemist's shop in Wend Hardings. It was the livelihood of a man who had renounced his medical training in favour of natural remedies – the old ways, he later explained – and catered to the lowly and the superstitious, coming highly recommended by the population in the surrounding area. He was quick to respond in writing and courteous in person, attending to their concerns with drawn brows and a thoughtful expression. An examination would not be necessary, he assured them, forming a steeple with his fingertips and proposing his prescription. What they required was something to permeate the womb and – for lack of better phrasing – dye the baby a natural colour.

Melena remembers this moment vividly: the congealing silence and the uneasy glance that Frex sent her way, the feeling of complicity that roused her attention. It was bold of the man to suggest that her husband was gunning for more than a safe and successful delivery. As of yet, no one dared raise the issue of the baby's colour in her presence and she was far more inclined to respect his claims for this. It occurred to her that the idea of a child, a normal child, was not as odious as it once was. She had the scars, after all, and nothing to show for them; she had survived the sickness and the swelling, bested the pain before. She knew what to expect.

She was wrong.

Milkflowers and bed rest. Seven months of it. She's forgotten what it's like to have a body. In all this time, it's been Frex controlling what goes in and where it goes, the baby deciding everything else, and Melena wasting away inside herself. She rides out another contraction, a violent one, and the world shifts and shrinks and blurs.

"What is it? What's wrong?" Frex says.

As they wrench the baby out of her, and half her life leaks out with it, Melena wills herself to die. She deserves the release. He deserves the guilt. A wail pierces the air, and then her eyes close.

When they open, barely, Melena is too weak to call for assistance. She is divided into segments that throb at different rates, a symphony of pain, and she jolts in and out of consciousness, accumulating tiny fragments of information before sinking back into oblivion. Effects have become defects. The baby passes from the doctor to the wet nurse to various specialists while Melena teeters on the brink of death, not entirely sure she wants to fall backwards onto solid ground. Frex does not enter the room, but his voice carries through the door, wavering with desperation as he berates whoever is tending her. Snippets of her doom filter in: toxic in large quantities, weak pulse, blood loss, so much blood loss. At first she believes they are discussing the baby and she doesn't much care. Her eyes close.

It feels like years. She wanders the plains of her mind, thinking on her life thus far, until the moment crystallizes and she realizes where she is and why, stumbling headlong into a vitalizing anger. Whatever is left in her veins sloshes around and her eyes shoot open once more, resting on a cobweb that hangs at the junction of the wall and the ceiling. A drum starts in her head that does not stop. She has a perfect view of that cobweb; she's had it for months. She will not be subjected to it another day, even if death has failed to spare her the sight.

She tests her body, bit by bit, until the paralysis is narrowed to her brain. Her toes curl. Her arm folds at the elbow. Her tongue slides across the roof of her mouth.

Her eyes do not close.

She rises like a ghost and creeps into the room of the little tragedy, dipping her arm into the bassinet. A tiny fist curls around her forefinger and life goes on.