The Winds of Khalakovo - Bradley P. Beaulieu [85]
Some time later—she knows not how long—a whorl appears.
So lost is she in her task that she doesn’t recognize the source, but soon she comes to realize it is not so far from where she lies, nearly frozen, deep beneath the palotza.
She propels herself southwest of Volgorod, along the coast, beyond the eyrie and toward the shifting currents. She hovers outside a home sitting near the shoreline, hidden in a strip of forest. It is nearly black among the thin currents of the aether, and inside there is a woman, bright blue, nearly white. She kneels before a cradle, staring down at the babe lying within it. Though Atiana can hear no sounds, it is clear the tiny girl is crying—her mouth wide open, her eyes puffy, no doubt from the sheer intensity and duration of her fit. The babe’s imprint in the aether, like her mother’s, like all creatures of this plane, is blue, but there is a tinge of yellow, lending her a greenish tint.
Curious, Atiana floats closer, sensing a hunger from the child, a hatred. She has no idea how this could be, or why, but she does know one thing.
As surely as the wind blows, this child is dying.
CHAPTER 23
Though the child is dying, Atiana is powerless to prevent it.
The woman picks up the child and holds her against her bared breast, but the child will have nothing to do with it. The mother holds the babe tight and rocks her, shushes at her ear, but it helps not at all.
Mother, she calls. Mother, please hear me.
There is no response. She tries to reach Saphia, but she is asleep and will remain so for hours, perhaps even a day or more.
Currents swirl around the darkening babe. She is tainted blue still, and a tinge of green remains, but she is fading to midnight, the color of the stout brick walls or the thick pine beams running along the ceiling.
Pressure builds around Atiana. She feels tight, crowded. She is new to the currents of the dark. She knows this. But she knows that this should not be. The aether, though it stands between the worlds, is not bounded in such ways. Adhiya’s presence can be seen, but it cannot be felt. The same is true of Erahm. What then, could be pressing in on her so?
The pressure becomes worse. She feels constricted, choked, feels as though the breath is being pressed from her slowly but surely.
And then, as the light from the babe fades altogether, the feeling is gone.
She is unable to focus on these feelings, for she is too caught up with the emotions that are clear on the face of the mother.
Though she may not realize it yet, she holds a dead child. It is all Atiana can do not to call out. She might try to touch the woman, to give her some indication of what has happened, but before she can the woman realizes. She shakes the babe—not violently, but enough to wake a sleeping child. She begins to cry, and she shakes her daughter harder. She holds her up, listening for signs of life.
Then she leans her head back and unleashes her pain to the fates. She hugs the babe to her chest, tenderly yet fiercely, her whole body wracking from the realization.
Atiana feels ashamed that she cannot share in the woman’s grief. She watches for a long time, wishing she could have helped in some small way, but in the end she can no longer stomach the limitations of the aether, and she pulls away.
When Atiana woke, it was not like waking after a full night’s sleep, nor was it like stirring from a lazy daydream—it was more like those dreams she had had as a child where she was standing at the edge of the tall black cliffs near Vostroma’s palotza, staring down at the churning sea, her stomach bubbling with a mixture of excitement and fear. She was convinced in those dreams she could fly, though it would still take her long minutes to summon the courage to leap into the air like the wide-winged gulls flying far below her. Her stomach would lift as she plummeted, and she would wake with a gut-churning jolt to find herself sitting stock upright, breathing deeply in the cold air of the bedroom she shared with her sisters.
So it was now