Jacob gave me a pained look, then sprinted inside where I could hear Rosalie whining, "Someone shut her UP!"
Edward wouldn't meet my eyes. He simply muttered, "Come and see. I know you can handle this."
"You'll help me?"
Leah, dressed now and lingering on the edge of the woods, snorted a laugh and called, "Yeah, he'll HELP. Not."
Edward growled, Leah stiffened, and Seth slunk in between them, swishing his tail. I couldn't make sense of their confrontation but I couldn't concentrate on it, either. I could only think about the blurred baby image in my memory. Also, the shrieking coming from inside was making my nerves unravel until I finally snapped, "Shall we?!"
Edward took my hand tightly in his and led the way into the house.
Inside, I saw a child – my child – on the floor, flailing arms and legs, drumming hands and feet against the polished floorboards, and every vampire in my new family circled around her, out of arms' reach, watching in seemingly exhausted and helpless dismay.
"I was out just two days?" I gasped, disbelieving. "She's so… big."
Renesmee rolled over and darted a hand out to snatch at the edge of a museum quality Oriental rug. One vicious tug punctuated by a shrill howl shifted the whole thing just far enough to displace a row of vases which fell and shattered one by one in a glissando of crystalline rain.
I gaped.
She suddenly stopped screaming and turned to focus her eyes on me. Chocolate brown eyes, aware and intelligent though damn near feral, narrowed at me under a tangled mess of long, bronze curls.
Oh, thank you GOD, she's not ugly, was all I could think, despite the fact that her lip was curling up in a snarl over her distractingly perfect little teeth. It was quite a beautiful snarl, but too terrifying to be dazzling.
"R-Renesmee?" I whimpered.
"I LIKE RuhNAYNAY!" she shrieked, and then applied her teeth to the rug. Shreds of centuries old wool flew.
Edward lifted a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose.
Emmett crossed his arms over his chest and said smugly, "I told you."
"Okay, okay!" I conceded in rising panic. I also glanced at Emmett and my gaze froze there. He was covered in more than six feet of yellow fluff and a bright orange beak stuck out over his forehead.
"Emmett, why are you wearing a duck suit?" My voice trembled helplessly. Do you hallucinate when you're having a panic attack? Maybe I'm having a complete breakdown.
"I'm Chicken Em," he corrected me proudly. "And it's because one, Ruhnaynay likes chickens, and two, ole Jake there kept tearing the costume."
"It's not long enough," protested Jacob weakly. He was hunkered down over the mess of broken crystal, sweeping it up into a dustpan with strange efficiency. I glanced around the room and realized it was very, very bare. In fact, the vases seemed to have been the last breakable within eyeshot.
Renesmee stopped tearing at the remnants of the rug and her whole expression changed. "Chicken Em!" she squealed, and clapped her chubby little hands. Emmett grinned and started flapping his elbows and bobbing his head, dancing a ridiculous circle around her and singing the Chicken Dance song.
Alice burst in from the garage just then, Jasper following just behind her, practically hidden behind an armful of shopping bags.
"Bella!" she cried happily. Then she saw the shredded, soiled blue silk of my dress and the ruined stilettos, and rolled her eyes. "God, Bella, what in the world…"
I tried to distract her from her lecture, and myself from the spectacle of Chicken Em and Renesmee dancing in the middle of the room by smiling uncertainly toward Jasper. "Did you buy something for the baby?"
Jasper snorted and I blinked in question.
"Pretty clothes?" I ventured.
"Oh, heavens, I wish," moaned Alice. "Diapers. Do you have any idea the kind of metabolism your daughter has that she grows so fast? But I got an assortment of brands so we have Clifford, and Elmo, and …oh, I think she needs a new one now." Alice's petite, perfect nose wrinkled.
"And it's your turn. Finally," said Rosalie firmly.
Oh, that's what that smell is. I thought it was Jacob. I felt dizzy suddenly and the room tilted, and then Edward was holding me.
"I wouldn't have thought a vampire could faint," mused Carlisle.
"Yeah, sorry about that," I muttered.