1.7

Midway through the hungry summer, just past breakfast, Jewel’s mother went into labor.

Jewel had been struck still and silent for a moment.

Her mother had turned to Father and spoken in a strained whisper. “It’s time”.

The wisewoman, her apprentices and a few serving girls were called into her parent’s bedroom. Father and all the guards were promptly evicted to wait where they could not interfere.

Jewel was nearly sent out as well, but mother had screamed at the top of her lungs “That’s my daughter you decrepit crone of a wench!”

For that, the wisewoman had been quick to instead saddle Jewel with the important duty of guarding the room and only letting girls and women pass into the place of the birth.

There was a glint to her eye and a grin in her full set of pearly white teeth, glittering behind wizened lips and wrinkled skin.

It reminded Jewel a bit of the Countess. Which made her scales tremble in apprehension.

But the gentleness and care she treated mother with whenever Jewel spared a glance inside soothed that.

After the initial hurry and commotion, things settled into a rhythm.

Sometimes Jewel’s mother was told to sit squatted in the room with cushioning to support her and groaned or screamed in effort.

Other times she was told to move and shift, to even stand if she was able. Sometimes she would lay back against the cushions.

As the hours continued, Mother was kept down on the floor squatting, propped up with support from the maidens and the pillows, it seemed undignified but the wise woman had a confident strength in her. And the apprentices were untroubled in their bearing.

All of them offered support, they touched the laboring mother to check the position of the baby.

They made sure she had water and broths and teas to drink if she wished

They massaged her back and belly gently.

And it passed like that for what felt like ages.

Sometimes they spoke to Mother, but mostly they simply soothed her or murmured amongst themselves.

“Head’s in a good position.”

“Thank the gods the babe does not take more from the father. Any larger-”

Then admonishments from the elder silenced talk of that sort.

Mother screamed. She sometimes had a stick of wood between her teeth to help draw her attention from her trial.

Other times she howled mouth open.

Jewel had to interpose herself on the wise woman’s command on more than one occasion to block concerned guards.

Father showed up once to check and Jewel assured him that there was not yet anything that seemed to concern anyone in the bedroom.

Jewel was given a midday meal that she could just barely manage to eat. Her ears were constantly tilting back to listen.

Hearing flesh flex, hearing wood creak under teeth, the every minute echo of her mother’s anguished, feral voice booming off the confines of the room.

Calm but tense murmurs among the women attending her.

“No tears, healthy parting.”

Slick sounds of hands wet and touching something or running over skin.

It sounded almost like a battle.

Or a wrestling match.

Yet slow and gradual.

But Jewel’s furtive glances through the door showed it as anything but.

Yes, mother visibly struggled. Her body was bare in a way that the wyrm had never seen before, skin and muscles flexing and moving in ways that gave Jewel phantom pangs in her own middle.

Sweat soaked through the normally well cared for hair and a redness was all through her face with the exertion.

But there was also the presence of the apprentices, girls and young women all and the careful closeness of the wisewoman. Gripping mother’s hand in hers with a tension that spoke of the strength both women were bringing to bear.

The soothing murmuring soft songs.

Rising and falling. Breaths follow from all those in the room in a rhythm.

Jewel could feel a stirring coming in the fire of the world.

Faux flame.

A working.

Her mother howled again, groaned, roared.

Jewel let the door close. Feeling the need to seal things in, the feel of it in the world, in the unspoken silent words pouring off the women.

Not full sorcery as wizards did it. But it was still a working and it had a way to it.

The sense of it reminded her of the nest in the Eyrie. Of Honeydown brooding on her eggs.

Of the shell of the egg enclosing a growing life.

The sound of a once lone voice in effort, pain and exhaustion were joined in a rhythmic chant now.

They rose with hers, they fell with hers.

And they guided her.

Mother set the rhythm and yet the rhythm became a song and, as Jewel had heard many a year now, it became the magic of music.

The working of it swelled in waves, like roiling storm clouds folding over one another.

Casting in and out like ripples off the walls of the room, surging from and back upon her mother and her labor to bring a life into the world.

Jewel felt the push and pull of it in her own scales, in her own muscles. She hummed along to the voices of the wise woman when they rose to brace and strengthen mother’s own.

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Time seemed to slide away like water, her coils shifted and flexed with the hum and roar.

Suddenly it was supper and Jewel could barely bring herself to eat so enmeshed into the flow and sound of the room under her guard she was.

Father checked upon them again and Jewel did not even recall what the words were that she assured him with.

The pot of her supper was suddenly empty.

The voices rising and falling like her own heart beat. In her coils, in her body.

Listening and moving as she heard her mother move.

As she felt her mother and the room beyond flex and push.

Pushing life.

Pushing blood.

Pushing air.

Pushing Sound.

The stones were keen to join the words to offer their wisdom in how to hold strong under all but the sharpest burdens.

The air eager to fill every lung with freshness and fiery vitality.

The sun had left the sky but it parted over the horizon with support and hope to see the fruit of these labors in its next rise.

Jewel could not see them, and yet she felt the sharp intensity now of the stars as they emerged from the smothering light of the day.

Piercing sharp and distant and forever.

Their light rattled against the room’s borders like ice falling on metal.

And Jewel did not need to hear the sharp words from the wisewoman to know that no door or window could be allowed to open now.

The stars were out and they were eager to land upon a child born under them.

Jewel could feel this and knew it.

She again could not recall what words passed her lips but the wisewoman returned to the depths of the safe shell they had woven around Mother and the child to be.

The song continued, the labor dragged on, hours upon hours within the warm extension of her Mother’s own flesh that had become of the room.

Of the walls made more of voice and the deep fierceness of a beast guarding her child than any stone.

Jewel found herself glaring not at passing men folk.

They were inconsequential and easily halted.

No.

Her gaze turned upward to the unseen sky above.

The vault that was now unshielded by sunlight.

Her coils flexed, her muscles pulled.

Deep within Jewel felt her wyrmflame rising and falling alongside the voice and push of her mother.

And then at last.

At an unknown hour in the depths of a short summer’s night.

There was a wane cry and a new voice silenced all the others.

A new voice had joined the world and relief fell upon the room.

The stars shined intensely and were rebuked by the working the wise woman and her circle had erected.

Had shaped with their voices and the birthing roars of a mother.

And finally at last the sharp prickling of fortunes and who knew what other gods lost interest in the newly born.

Jewel felt herself coming back into clarity with herself.

The safeguards of the room had held.

Shuffling bodies were moving, muscles were lifting, voices exerting.

Work was being done within and Mother was moved.

But a content quiet had fallen.

The voice of one of the girls spoke with an exhausted and wrung out voice. And finally Jewel had the awareness to recognize it.

“The elder says the birth was good and the mother and child yet breathe healthy and well. Come the morning sun the door may be opened, until then none may breach.”

Jewel could only nod and whisper back.

“I will guard my mother’s room until dawn.”

There was something deep and personal in that oath. Something that felt stronger than any promise or binding of fealty Jewel had ever known.

It touched on something that even Wizards seemed to barely brush against.

There was only breathing behind the door, before the woman spoke again.

“The child is a daughter.”

Jewel smiled, starting to feel the pang of exhaustion.

Sympathy for her mother’s effort through most of the day and night.

Joy bubbling up for her newly born sister.

A sister, a truly younger sister!

Jewel shifted her coils to settle in and was brought up short by an odd impediment against one leg.

And a sudden sense of stickiness.

Had someone spilled something on her while she was in that fog?

Jewel turned to look and boggled.

Nestled in her coils against her thighs was an egg.

Oh.

So that’s why she had been growing so strangely the last few months.

Jewel took a few more moments to blink and stare before she strangled out a sound that was only barely words.

The volume of it was only constrained for fear of disturbing her Mother and new Sister.

“Tsulogothulan!”