Invisible
Prologue Part 3: The Beginning
Word Count: 962
Warnings: sceen of childbirth, extreme thinking
3. The Changeling
A wretched scream of agony, exhaustion and anger once more tore through the cold silence of the birthing room, muffled just slightly by the thick draperies and carpets adorning the stone walls and floor. Outside, day had yielded to night a long time ago: the freezing, black night of midwinter.
The delivery process had gone on for a very, very long time, and the royal soon-to-be mother was by now physically, mentally, and emotionally tired by the ordeal. Her consort, the King of the Broddring Kingdom, had blatantly decreed that four royal princes were enough, and he would not welcome a new child unless he knew well that it was a daughter at last. Thus he was absent from this particular event while he had always been present for at least the latter half of the others, not until he was verbally and visually assured that the child was female that was, and the only occupants of the birthing room was therefore only the Queen, the quiet Royal Midwife, and a few of her ladies-in-waiting. But she wished for her husband, not these women cowering beneath her everyday regard and daunted by this particular event. And she wished the baby to be out right now, as she was feeling chilled from the midwinter night's air and weary to her bones from constantly trying to push the wretched thing out and fend the pains meanwhile. Worse for a mother, she also knew perfectly well that a child born on midwinter night was not up to any good, even if it was a daughter, as she herself believed in this notion. Evil things relished this time of the year and did their macabre revelries on innocent, unsuspecting folks, going so far as putting changelings in the cribs of honest babies. It was why she had thought to get rid of the fetus discreetly when the Royal Midwife had predicted that it was going to be born on midwinter; but somehow, inexplicably, she had baulked from the notion.
And now, she was suffering from her earlier weak-heartedness, with nothing to look forward to.
"I can already see the baby's head, my queen. Please keep pushing." The quiet, reverent urging of the Royal Midwife broke the silence a little while after the scream.
And the Queen did, while pulling the last of her energy together. She screamed again as her midriff contracted and raw, magical power pushed the wretched thing out of her womb at last.
The familiar wailing of a newborn greeted her ears.
And then it was the Royal Midwife who wailed: loudly, spontaneously, fearfully.
"Changeling! A changeling!"
The ladies-in-waiting panicked, murmured fretfully, edged away from the bed towards the door.
The Queen sneered at them all, with all the energy left after her last action, which was not much. "Help me up," she ordered, her voice weak but resolute.
The women could not disobey the direct command of the consort to a monarch, not if they still loved their heads attached to their shoulders. So they helped the Queen into a sitting position, propping numerous pillows and boulsters against her sweat-soaked back. But none of them dared even look at the squalling blood-bathed newborn laid on the sheets between the Queen's legs, let alone touch it, although they also dared not peep a word outside of this chamber about the Queen having a changeling as her last child.
The Queen realised that much, and it was all the comfort that she had when she at last looked upon the parasite that she had spent one day and one night contending with.
The baby was male. Her husband would never accept him, perhaps even order for a discreet disposal. Sometimes he was more ruthless than she could dream of, and it was what had attracted her to him in the first place; but now, some belated spark of maternity found its way into her heart and made the idea horrible.
That was, until she met the newborn's wide-open eyes.
They were bi-coloured – the foremost sign of a changeling!
A tiny part of her argued that it was still within reason, since her own eyes were icy-blue and small like the baby's right eye, and the King's were pitch-black and bigger than hers like the baby's own left eye. But the much-greater part of her argued fiercer that she had no hope of keeping the boy given the decree of the King, the political nightmare of raising a changeling prince, and the emotional nightmare of knowing that her own flesh-and-blood had been cruelly replaced by a demon, not to mention the horror of the notion that she would have to be in contact with the changeling if she claimed it as her son.
The greater part of her mind won as she spied lightly-tapered ears on either side of the changeling's blood-spattered head, and the twisted legs at the bottom of the not-too-small, writhing mass of blood-bathed, reddened skin. The tiny, maternal side of her weakly reasoned further that her line was long rumoured of having ever been consorting with an elf, hence her great magical prowess and her inability to be fat even after bearing five children; it even excused the twisted legs as the result of such a big baby growing inside her small womb; but all reasons were rejected out of her mind in the end, and she hardened her heart. The changeling would not be in her presence for a moment more, regardless of its current state, and she would not let herself or others touch it during the disposal process. It did not mean that the changeling needed to die, she conceded that much to appease her rebelling-weakling side, but that was all that she would do on its behalf.