He shrugged, knowing she was right, knowing that as leader she had no peace. The weight of the Eagle Seat was as heavy a burden as pregnancy. “Nevertheless, I must wait there, in case—”
White Feather snorted. “In case the Bright One reappears? Perhaps your daughter speaks the truth, Uncle. You have a young man’s mind in an old man’s body.”
“That never changes!” he retorted, but he was not offended by her statement. The others laughed. “I am eldest. I will do as I wish in this. I will see what I will see. If the tides overwhelm me, so be it.”
A contraction gripped Feather Cloak’s womb. As if in echo, the earth trembled and shook on and on until she found herself breathing hard, hands clutching the eagle’s wings.
White Feather knelt beside her. “You are close.” She beckoned to Green Skirt, who nodded and hurried to the door to give a stream of directions to one of the warriors waiting there, a young woman wearing a fox mask tipped back onto her hair. The girl ran out to fetch water while White Feather emptied coals out of a hollow stick and coaxed a fire into flame. Skull Earrings fetched the birthing stool.
All this industry, and the intense grip of further contractions, distracted Feather Cloak. She had the merest impression of Eldest Uncle’s brief farewell and the pair of young warriors who followed him. When she next looked around the chamber, all three were gone.
As the contractions came hard and with increasing frequency, she began no longer to be able to distinguish the forces shaking her body and those shaking the land. So many burdens; so much exhaustion; so great a trial to be faced. She had to let it go. It was beyond her control. All she could do was endure it. All she could do, between stabs of red-hot pain, was pray to Sharatanga, She-Who-Will-Not-Have-A-Husband.
“Guide us through this birth and this death. Give us your blessing.”
Was that her voice or White Feather’s? Was it Green Skirt speaking, as the green beads and little white skull masks clicked together each time the old woman moved? Did she herself mumble words, or only grunt and groan and curse as the pains of opening came and went?
She was vaguely sensible beyond her skin of the greater skin of the cosmos, that which wrapped Earth, opening as a flower opens to receive that which now returned to it: the exiled land. Vast forces moved within the deeps. The sea waters raged on the surface and winds howled, while in the caverns far beneath, rivers of fire shifted to create a new maze of pathways.
Earth is welcoming us home.
“Hush,” said White Feather. “Hold your breath so you can push.”
“Listen to what Feather Cloak says!” objected Green Skirt. “She can see where we cannot.”
The pain of opening transformed her awareness as the child within pressed forward, ready to be born. It was not pain but inevitability that dragged her. Now the exiled land was drawn back to the place it had come from, where it had always belonged. Now the child would be born, because children must be born once they have begun that journey.
Four attended her: White Feather, Skull Earrings, Green Skirt, and the fox-masked young warrior, a serious girl who glared at everyone as she ran to and fro on whatever errands they gave her.
She knew this not because she paid attention to them, but because she knew all things. The vital soul that resides in the cosmos and imbues it and all things with life, even those that may seem dead, became visible to her. She saw the vibration of all things down to their smallest particle. She saw the reach of the heavens as they expanded in an infinite curve whose unknowable horizon confounded her. The exiled land was almost drained of this soul. Ruptured from its nurturing womb, it had waned as the tide of the sacred presence had ebbed. Now the vibrant net that entangled Earth swallowed them, and as the child in her belly was thrust out from its shelter, they were dragged in to the ancient nest in whose architecture still resided a memory of their place within it.
The slippery mass of a child dropped into White Feather’s waiting hands.
She groaned, or perhaps it was the earth grinding at a register almost too low to be perceived.
“Another one!” cried Green Skirt in shock.
“Twice blessed! Twice cursed!” sang out White Feather, shoving the first infant into the waiting hands of Skull Earrings so she could catch the impatient second, now crowning.
Feather Cloak pushed as the world was born again, as the White Road flared into existence, a ribbon so bright that it shone, as Earth exploded beyond the borders of the Ashioi land. Firestorms raged and gales seared the land. Yet all this transpired at such a remote distance from the heart of the maelstrom that her awareness of the cosmos, too, faded, and she was after all weary. So weary.