Ceceil is pirated! I would steal a car, it seems.
Ceceil smiled her shy little-girl smile, so sweet now on a grown woman’s face. He was almost afraid to come in after so many hours hovering as ladies came and went purposefully and he minded a kettle with enough boiling water for twenty babies. What did they even do with all that water? Were they having tea while his wife screamed?Nobody would tell him and none of the lads knew. If it was the tea thing, he’d wring their necks.
She was holding a bundle and she looked… well, tired, but no worse than she did after a good long fight. It looked an awful small bundle in her big, strong arms. “Come on, Honey B, it’s safe now. My axe is all the way over there!”
Dreamlike, he crossed the seemingly endless expanse of floor. Halfway, then half of that, then half of half, just like that stupid turtle in the story. He thought he’d never get there, but he did. Even as he scooped up the squish-faced baby in its bright blue blanket, he felt fair to pinching himself. How’d his old blankie get here? Wynne must have brought it with her from Esgaroth. Perhaps his Ma hadn’t given it away to the Potter baby after all. Belatedly, he heard himself stammer an octave too high, “Are you… um… all right?”
Her smile came, sure as summer sunrise, warming his face with the love writ plain. “I’m here, aren’t I? Do you see me letting a little thing like childbed get the better of me?”
Even in his daydream, he felt a right arse. As he should. He was an arse, but she loved him. She didn’t think he was an arse, though the rest of the world stood against her on that subject. He didn’t dare spare a hand from the firmly bundled baby to stroke her hair quite yet, and instead looked down into the baby’s unfocused eyes the color of robin’s eggs and the sea, of bluebells and cornflowers and the far-off skies over a lake he’d never see again. There were flossy curls, halfway between his ember red and her tawny wheat. His and hers, and something new made up from bits and pieces of Eglain and Esgaroth folk.
“Beautiful,” He breathed, a mind-numbingly boring observation, but absolutely true.
“Glad you approve.” Her words mocked even as her hand pulled him down beside her so they could both cuddle around their creation. Proof, though he couldn’t say of what. She really loved him, he guessed. She was thrilled to have her children be half his. She was proud enough to go out showing her baby off, saying, “Looks just like the Da! Handsome and ruddy.” She was happy and normal and just like other folks, and him too. Happy as everyone else. Happier.
They remarked on how the nose looked a bit like Leofryn’s, and how she howled just like her aunt. Some small part of him wondered how his baby could possibly take after an adopted Ma, but he quashed that line of thought soon as it came. The endless noon sun twinkled idyllically and he was a man. Not a boy, not a home-tender, not an embarrassment, but a man. A man has a line, a son to follow after him and…
Or wait, was it a daughter? He should have figured that out by now. He tried to sneak a peek, but suddenly his ribs took a pummeling and…
Midnight. Fists connected with his ribs, and connected hard. She was eerily silent, of course. She never made a sound in these midnight … things. Memory, probably, the sort she’d never share with him. Maybe memories she couldn’t even share with herself. He didn’t try to hold her still, knowing from past blunders that it’d only make her struggle harder, panic worse. Instead, he got out of the way and said softly, “Cecibug? Shhh, easy now, easy. You’re safe. It’s just a dream, sunshine, that’s all. Here, I’ll get another candle-light and some of that tea you like. See? It’s just me.”
She couldn’t see him. It only worked sometimes, waking her in the middle of a dream-fight. She fought her mind-foes for a good while longer while he got a night-light with a lavender-steeped candle lit and tea made. When she was finally still, he woke her with his voice again, tea in hand. “Come on, love. Just a sip. For me?”
She never looked at him once, or spoke, or anything. But after a while, she sipped some tea. He could see her pulse pounding in her neck in the flickering candle light. How could she be so thin and so muscular, all at once? If only she’d eat more and not run off the little she did manage.
He didn’t dare touch her, though his hands ached to reassure … whom? Himself, that’s whom. Instead, he told her over and over how much he loved her. Cynewynne would have heard him better, he thought bitterly.
Stubbornly he told the little bit of his bride that he knew… no, hoped… imagined? Was still in there somewhere, scared and alone, “I love you. No matter what. Hear? No matter what.”
No matter what? What if this was his marriage forever? He gritted his teeth and squashed the lingering whisps of jealous dreams.
“No matter what.” He told them both. Maybe if he said it enough, it’d be true.
The Sweet and the Bitter 