Youngest daughter

It was evening when the storm came. Hoxhogwaxtewae had been running late. He was just pulling onto Treetallow, when the rain began to fall, hard and fast, obscuring his vision to a few feet, and making his car crawl into the driveway. He was not displeased by the rain, but wished that it could have come a few moments later. He was largely waterproof, but his electronics were not.

The heron headed man stepped out of his car and popped the trunk. Inside were two bodies, laying in a bed of ice. They had been donated to science that morning - and as usual Hoxhogwaxtewae had coopted them for his dinner. He had chosen this hospital because it got so many donations, and cultivated his reputation as a surgeon so that no one would ask questions - which had put him in the ironic position of saving lives.

As a human devouring monster, renown among the natives for cracking skulls in one bite, this was indeed an odd position to be in. He had certainly not intended to spend his days in close proximity to humans he could not eat, talking with them as a fellow human, and telling them that their surgeries had gone well, and he had again saved their lives. He wondered sometimes what he would think of his position now if it had been shown to him 500 years before. Certainly he would have laughed.

But that was before that old shaman came and killed his master Man-eater - turning him into a swarm of mosquitos. That was before Gelogudzayae, and Qoaxqoaxualanuxsiwae had run, or flown away. Before Quomininga had died of her wounds. Before Kinqalalala had gone off hunting the shaman never to return. It was only he, Hoxhogwaxtewa, and sweet tempered wooly Nensalit who had remained loyal. They had stayed at the house, luring unsuspecting travelers until the house had been reclaimed by cedars, and buried in bones. Then they had each gone their own way. Hoxhogwaxtewae flying west, and Nensalit lumbering on his great bear paws to the east, never to be seen again.

That was before Hoxhogwaxtewae had stopped laughing. It had happened after that last sight of Nensalit through the trees.

Perhaps it was that moment that had made him so foolhardy. He had stopped at the first village, changed into a man, and walked right in. A shaman had killed his master, so it was a shaman he pretended to be, awing the simple villagers with what small magics he possessed. They had come to him with their sick, and he had often failed to cure them, going out to the isle of the dead at night and eating their brains out of sight. He had to cure some though, or lose his reputation. He found his unique knowledge of human anatomy useful in this.

He cured so many, that people began moving to his little village. It swelled in size, and soon he ate easily, more often than he had ever eaten in man-eater’s service. When the Spanish came, and their diseases swept across the land, the village was a city and one of the first to fall. Hoghoxwaxtewae stayed long after the devastation, feasting on nothing but the sweet heads of the fallen, fried in their own fevers, wandering from broken city to broken city, scavenging from the remains.

But it was not to last. He went as a woods doctor into the new colonies of white men, digging up graves after they had buried their dead in boxes. He learned the new herbs they brought with them, and their way of cutting people apart to make them better again - so like his own. He got sharp metal knives and became a surgeon.

He often wondered why he lived as he did now, hidden from the prying eyes of neighbors by the cedars that still sheltered him, saving lives and eating the dead like some scavenger and not the hunter he had been before.

But then, perhaps he had been nothing but a glorified nutcracker before, and this was the truly worthy role. It didn’t matter in the end. Inertia drove him on. Drove him home through the rain, walked him with his bag, sheltering his computer under him against the wet, and back out again to bring his dinner in. It was inertia that made him build a fire, and settle in for a restful night after work, safe from the storm.

---

The storm came the moment Janet went into labor. Water broke from the sky and between her legs. To Janet it was a blessed release. This was her seventh child, she hadn’t slept the night before, or really the night before that, contractions coming not quite close enough together, but still hard and painful, waking her whenever she would begin to drift. This pregnancy had been her hardest. She was getting too old.

She’d spent the day trying to rest. She’d tried a few small spells to ease the pain, but ironically the pain kept her from focussing. Emma, her eldest was her only daughter with any magic at all, but no tallent with willow. They had fairy blood from generations back, or so her grandmother had always told her. Enough to make a glamour or set a charm at need, but nothing large enough you could really call it magic and not idle imagination.

Janet was a seventh daughter though, as her grandmother had been before her, and the blood ran stronger in those. Grandma had wanted to keep the magic alive in their family, but had been foiled by one daughter and five boys, which had been quite enough for her to handle. When her daughter had seven daughters she’d been overjoyed, and taken Janet up as her prodigy. Janet had some talent in setting the sex of her children and promised her grandmother that she would have seven daughters if it killed her.

It looked like it might. Not only had this pregnancy been harder on her than any before - and the last had taken something out of her - but there was something wrong with her, and she didn’t know what. Her hands would shake and simple motions, unbuckling a clasp, or pouring tea, had become impossible for her. Breathing was hard sometimes, and she always felt tired. She’d lost all sense of appetite, but ate when her children did out of habit.

These days she sat on the couch, or on her bed and rested most of the time. Her daughters cooked and cleaned, and once a week she would get out and drive them to go get groceries. When their father visited - he was a military man - he would work nonstop to set the place right, but it was never enough. She wondered sometimes at her folley in having children at all. Her grandmother was long dead, and her ambition had no right here.

But what was done was done. Janet felt relief when the storm came, when her water broke. Finally something was moving. Labor came on her hard and insistent. Her daughters came at her shout, Emma ran to the phone to summon the midwife. Sophie moved to her back and began breathing with her as the midwife had taught her so long ago.

Janet heard her groans as if from a distance, the thunder seemed closer. I know her name, she though suddenly, I’m going to call her Storm.

---

The summer storm beat at the walls of the yurt. Thunder crashed overhead briefly illuminating everything in blue before dissipating into the cloudless night sky. Rain pattered down as if daring any observer to doubt that there was something unnatural about this storm. As always no wind blew in the valley, though the faintest trace might be felt from the north. As always, if anyone noticed no one commented.

Sylvan sat on the yurt floor, back propped up against a dresser, cat curled against him. He had his guitar in his lap and his fingers idly spun between them, fingernails sliding across the strings, playing to the storm. He had one hoof flat on the floor, the other bent beneath him, and his eyes would occasionally stray to Bri, stretched out on her bed asleep in her pajamas, where she had passed out part way through their conversation.

Soon he knew this moment, this step of a mortal into his nearer to immortal life, would end. She would travel on and he would stay here, clinging to the one life he knew he could survive, free from the tangle of fates that meant to kill him. She would forget him wouldn’t she? He would be a memory for the rest of her life, and then she would be a memory in his.

Soon he knew he would have to blow out the flickering candles and head back inside, but he was hoping the storm would lessen a little. He hadn’t yet noticed the stars peeking through the domed skylight that crowned the yurt, his eyes intent on his music and the woman he played for, hoping somehow that the notes would make their ways into her dreams.

Bri was not hearing the music, but she did hear the storm. She was standing in the wet with thunder rumbling overhead. A man with a great heron’s head was staring at her from across the ridge, his eyes glowing with untamed malice. A giant owl hooted at her from further still and a raven circled high overhead cawing warning, for what, she didn’t know.

Then everyone’s attention shifted at once, the owl looked down, the heron looked down, the raven looked down, and she looked down - eyes converging together on a young girl, struggling through the storm, crows watched her from the trees, and vultures circled low around her. Then before her they all saw as she did, a glowing feather lying on the ground, sparking against the rain. Bri watched intently as she paused, and with great import bent to pick it up. “Be warned!” cawed the crows. “Be warned!”

Bri jerked awake to the sound of someone insistently knocking on the door. Sylvan was already moving towards it. He opened the door and peeked out to see a girl, maybe thirteen years old, standing on the porch. She was drenched, her skirts sticking to her legs, her dark hair plastered to her neck. “Please,” she was babbling, almost too fast to make out, “You have to help us!”

“What’s going on?” Sylvan was asking. Bri was up and moving towards the door.
“My mother, her water broke, and the midwife - a tree fell on her car and hurt her and she can’t get here, and Mama had so much trouble with the last baby -  I don’t think she can make it!”

“We’ll drive her to the hospital,” Sylvan offered, grasping the situation a lot faster than she did, “come on!”
Bri just had time to grab her coat before the three of them rushed out. The downpour caught her struggling into it, and the rain reached cold hands down her back as she ran. They were all soaked by the time they reached Sylvan’s car, jumped in, slammed the door behind them.

“You’re Janet’s daughter right?”
“Yes - please hurry!”
The house was only a little ways down Old Landes, but they had to drive at a slow crawl to see through the downpour and the lightning flashes were more blinding than helpful. When they arrived Sylvan was shaking his head “-It’s an hour drive in good weather, we’re looking at more like three hours in this.”
“Please hurry!” Came the girl’s insistent refrain.

It was small, a house lit up by the steady white light of kerosene lanterns from within, and illuminated by nothing but jagged lightning from without, hemmed in on all sides by greedy firs. They struggled past plastic playsets and other toys abandoned in the weeds. Clothes left to rot by children who would rather not wear them. A porch covered in the kind of useable things that poor people collect but never use. The screen door had a huge hole in the front and was coming off one hinge.

Inside was blessedly warm, but just as small as the outside had promised. A big plywood table took up most of the front, and a couch dominated the living room, which cast off yellower light from the wood stove crackling there. A pregnant woman was on her knees in the entrance of the kitchen, red haired but for the white starting to creep up her temples. Bri had expected her to be screaming like they did in movies, but it was more like she was grunting. Loud, in pain, but not bloody murder. Four of her daughters were clustered around her, one of the older holding the youngest.

Janet looked up when they entered, eyes lucid but off. She gritted her teeth and spoke. “Sophie, there you are. Uff, Where’s Emma?”
“She went searching for help too Mama - these people are going to drive you to the hospital.”
Sylvan was shaking his head - “I don’t think we’re going to make it.”

Bri, was scrambling for ideas. “Sylvan are there any midwives or doctors on the lane?”
“I don’t know any.”
“I bet I know who would.” Bri gestured for his phone. Mariah’s number had been on the card, it was in his contacts and she was calling in a moment. Service was never good in the valley, but blessedly it went through on the second try. Mariah’s voice came up groggy.

“. . . Hello?”
“Mariah are there any doctors in the community?”
“Aum - there’s Hox-hog . . .wax-wae?”
“We need him right away.”
“I’ll text you his number.”  

It took an entire minute for it to ping up. Then she was calling. An annoyed gravelly voice answered. “It is three in the morning, this had better be good.”
“I have a woman giving birth and she can’t get to a hospital and I think she’s having complications - we’re on old Landes lane,” she added as an afterthought.
He seemed to consider a moment, then sighed. “What is the address?”
The daughter - Sophie - was able to supply, Bri passed it on.
“Very well. I won’t be long - or happy.” he added. Thunder rumbled overhead, louder through the phone which shut off abruptly.

They waited. Janet continued to groan, breath coming quick through her teeth. The eldest daughter, Emily, showed up soaking wet with another potential driver in tow, the tall man from the potluck, who looked even taller tonight, his beard,  white and well trimmed, glistened with rain, and he was also shaking his head at the prospects. He stood by as they waited, hunching his shoulders against the ceiling. Once roused he wanted to help in any way he could.

Bri couldn’t tell if it was thunder or the roar of his car, lightning or the flash of his headlights, but at last the doctor came. He looked like a doctor should, in face and manner - the pajamas, sleeves rolled up his forearms, pants bedraggled in the mud - only lessened the appearance a little. His eyes immediately fixed on Janet as he came in the door, and he moved towards her with slow deliberate steps. His mouth pursed; thunder rumbled. His accent was almost Germanic, short, clipped, with the soft slur of Native Salish behind it.

“What is the problem?”

Janet looked up a little indignant. “I don’t know, you’re the doctor. Ugh, She’s not going anywhere.”
His mouth pursed; thunder rumbled. “You should not have risked it in your condition, or tried to give birth at home.”
She didn’t protest, just closed her eyes. He turned and spoke to the others. ”I need her lying down. - You, big one, can you bring the table over? Girl, bring blankets and a pillow. Other girl, I need hot water and lots of it.  A separate bowl  close at hand for me to wash my hands.” Everyone leapt to obey, happy to be doing something. Soon the giant had lifted her easily onto the table.

Hoxhogwaxtewae turned to Bri “You - girl - there are numbers and letters on each tool in my case. Look at them and determine where everything is, then I will ask for a tool and you will hand it to me.” In a moment his attention had shifted again, sharp and piercing, addressing Janet while Bri crouched to begin sorting - some of the tools seemed very old. He handed her a pill and commanded her to swallow. “For the pain.” The effect seemed immediate.
“What was that? It feels like an epidermal . . . “ Janet said clearly, puzzled by the shift.
“I like to carry powerful painkillers,” Hoghoxwaxtewa lied, and pulled back a little of his painkilling magic. The woman looked at him with shrewd eyes.

Hoxhogwaxtewae washed his hands in the now hot water, and pulled on plastic gloves over that. “C12” he said with such suddenness Bri almost forgot what she was supposed to do. “It’s a small measuring device” She found it, handed it to him.

“Disinfectant wipes. Keep those close at hand, I’ll need them a lot.”

Everyone gathered around to watch, quiet but for the still heavy breathing of the mother. Close, but not too close. The eldest daughter held the youngest, who looked to be three or so, on her hip a little further back than the rest. The doctor measured, frowned, checked her pulse.

“Your Cervix has stopped dilating, and you having any chance of survival. Our only choice is to cut her out.”

Janet’s eyes grew wide. “That’s insane,” she said.
“It has been a long time since I have done a surgery at home,” he admitted, “You could labor till you die here.”
“No! You’ll kill her - and me!” Janet’s eyes blazed. She was sitting up on the table, hands warding him away.

His eyes blazed in answer, and he seemed to grow. “Woman, I need you to trust me.”
“You’ve already lied to me once,” she hissed, “I don’t know what you are.”
His mouth persed; thunder rumbled high overhead. He drew himself up and now he really did grow, his face elongated into a long cruel beak, and his eyes crackled with red malice. Janet looked on in horror, her daughters screamed, Sylvan shrank back, and the giant stepped forward.

Hoghoxwaxtewae leaned in towards her, and his voice rumbled like thunder. “I am a monster. There. Everyone can see me now. I eat human flesh. I am spoken of in distant legend.” He paused, and then shrank again, coming back into the nondescript doctor he had been before. “But I am not here to hurt you tonight. I want to help you.”

Janet seemed to take all this in, and then finally she said - “I don’t think I have much of a choice,” and lay back on the table. The giant’s posture changed. The girls looked on wide eyed, and Bri let out a breath, mind whirling through the implications of this. Not just that he wasn’t human, but that nobody in this room was.

When Hoxhogwaxtewae began cutting, several of the girls - and the well groomed giant - looked away - one girl dashed for the bathroom. Bri looked on in fascination as the doctor methodically pulled back layers of skin and muscle, pinning them back like butterfly wings to get at her womb. He took out her organs: Liver, gallbladder, spleen, and set them in bowls to the side. There was less blood than she expected, but still blood.

Janet lay entirely under the bird man’s spell, old magics meant to subdue a frightened victim, paralysing them and taking away their pain and panic to make them easy meals - now repurposed as a painkiller to make this procedure possible.

Bri noticed out of the corner of her eye as the eldest started to sick up - Sylvan stepping in to take the little one, and the child explaining something to him in the living room where he’d led her, but she was mostly present in the operation, trying to anticipate what the doctor would need next. There was a rhythm to the wipes - and she learned to recognize them - but the tools she still had to wait for and then search for E9 or B2 as fast as she could.

Janet grew whiter as she began to lose blood, and soon grew delirious. Bri noticed Sylvan covertly stayed out of sight as she murmured soft encouragement to the doctor, that devolved into gibberish.

“. . . I’ve had six babies but never any delivered by a stork before . . . “ Bri heard her say distinctly at one point. “. . . Her father should have been here. Will you be her father?” At another. He seemed to pay no mind, murmuring “Conserve your voice, and strength.” He certainly seemed to conserve his.

It was over faster than she could have imagined possible. His eyes grew wide as he reached into her and pulled out the baby. It was blue, but a different shade then you would expect of a dead child, almost as if her skin was pigmented that way, it waved its hands feebly like an old man, demonstrating its life. He gently took the scissors Bri handed him, and cut the cord, following it to her placenta and pulling it out - to place on the table.

“She is breathing, not crying. We will see if she survives.” His mouth pursed; thunder rumbled. Janet pulled the baby close to her. Looking at the doctor with fierceness that dared him to threaten the life of her child again.

Emily and Sophie - who, being the two eldest, had seen births before, looked concerned at one another, wondering at this frightening silence in the child. For a moment there was quiet. The pattering of the rain on the roof, breathing of the guests, shuffling of the daughters. Hoghoxwaxtewae rummaging for needles. The low croon of Janet with the baby pressed against her, almost singing deep in her throat.

Then the baby cried; thunder rumbled high, high, overhead.