King of flesh and bone

Ada

“The dead are restless.” I glanced out the rain-blurred window toward the cemetery, the air inside the house thick with sweat and the sweetness of amniotic fluid. “You better start pushing now or my husband will dig out of his grave.”

As would the other corpses with the ground this soaked and soft. But my John as one of them…? Trudging across the village square with his skull exposed where he’d hit the rock two summers back, waterlogged skin swollen against his leather breeches? No, I would make bloody certain he stayed in the ground.

After all, I’d put him there.

“No. Not yet!” Sarah squatted at the edge of her bed, tears ru

Brushing blonde wisps from my forehead, I kneeled on the pounded dirt floor for a better look. No trickles ru

“No more stalling.” I stroked Sarah’s back through her sweat-soaked chemise, gathering the fabric higher while my other hand prodded her legs wider. “This child is coming, whether you want it or not.”

Ransacked by trembles, Sarah’s voice faded into a whimper against the straw. “Ada, I can’t bear the thought of not knowing if it’s dead or truly alive. How many hours ’til morning?”

“Too many to escape this fate.” Everyone dreaded the full moon, but none more than women cursed to birth a child on such a night. “Instead of weighing down my husband’s grave as I’m supposed to, I came here when you asked for my help.”

“To keep it in… not to get it out!”

A fool’s idea, risking both mother and child. The scalp had already turned more purple beneath the white film crowning its head. Was it dying? Already dead?

I’d only ever delivered four babies during the full moon—all alive the next morning—but I’d heard from other midwives who hadn’t been so lucky. Dead babes scream inconsolably, they reported, wailing in the same way the other corpses groan in the groanpits.

The groanpits…

I shuddered at that word.

The corpses we’d collected over the last month already resonated Hemdale with their ragged wheezes. We’d found most of them around the village, though they also had a habit of falling into the river on full moons, catching on the fish cages.

I looked back at Sarah. “Get the child out now and it might live to see the morning. Leave it stuck with the head like this… and it will be cold in its cradle once the sun rises. With you bleeding out next to it. You want to join the undead so soon?”

“No,” she cried, her voice as thin as my fraying patience.

No, none of us wanted that.

But it was what we all had coming.

Husbands. Elders. Mothers.

Everyone.

Even this child.

The thought of the dead resting and rotting in the ground was nothing but humbug in my ears. An evil curse upon the lands—old wives’ tales had it—cast by an enraged god. Internally, I scoffed. Nothing but a story where we all knew who was to blame.

Or what.

The constant patter of rain against the window tensed my muscles. “Sarah, please. No widow should chase behind her dead husband, but certainly not during such a downpour. Push!”

Her groan filled the house, mingling with the hiss of flames from the hearth and the occasional pop of poorly seasoned wood. At last, Sarah held her breath and labored, gaining a precious inch. A stubby nose appeared—Oh, pink!

Pink was promising.

“Again!” When the child’s head slipped into my hand, I angled it so one shoulder might pass first. “Only a few more. The head’s already out.”

The next contraction came with a yelp.

That, and the squeak of rusty hinges as the door opened, letting in a whiff of heavy smoke from the street. A monotone cadence of mumbles resonated outside. The priests, probably, calling for villagers to take up arms beside Hemdale’s groanpit.

“What’s this?” William pushed the door shut, the brim of his black felt hat barely hiding the anger glinting in his eyes. “What’s she doing here?”

Since Sarah screamed through yet another contraction, I answered in her stead, “Getting this child out.”

“I don’t want you near my wife.” He hurried over to Sarah, kneeled, and took her shaky hands into his. “It’s bad enough you got my brother killed over that curse of yours.”

I flinched. “She sent the neighbor over to my house, asking for me to come.”

“And I’m asking for you to leave, unwoman.”

Unwoman.

Stabbing pain grew in my chest until the laces of my dress strapped my lungs tight. Barren, punished by Helfa himself, blighted with a twisted womb… Of all the things some people called me, unwoman was the worst—and the truest. What else would you call a woman incapable of giving her husband a son?

A child was a blessing from Helfa.

I’d never even managed a daughter.

Clearly, I was cursed.

I blinked the stinging burn from my eyes and rose, feigning as much pride as my rounded spine would allow. “You want me gone? Serves me just fine.”

My mule already stood harnessed in the stables in case I needed the old, stubborn thing to pull the cart onto John’s grave. But what good was this precaution if I wouldn’t get there before the rain made certain the wheels got stuck? None.

Sarah screamed as the baby’s shoulder dislodged. A gush of amniotic fluid soaked the dirt beneath my feet, splattering the hem of my dress, thickening the air with moisture.

I quickly bent over and caught the child, then whispered, “Please don’t scream.”

The boy arched his back, his limbs slippery, his skin coated in a white wax. Little eyes blinked up at me—blue like mine—taking in their surroundings ever so curiously. Warmth swelled in my core with how his mouth rooted toward my chest as if… as if he were mine.

I extinguished it with a deep inhale. Because he was not mine, and no child ever would be. “It’s a boy.”

Grave silence settled into the room.

Sarah dug her face into the mattress, shaking her head until the straw crunched beneath the motion. Her haunches sunk to the ground, letting the umbilical cord drag over the dirt.

William frowned at the child, relief and terror letting the corners of his mouth hike and fall. “Is he… alive?”

My mouth turned dry.

Was he?

The longer William stared at me and Sarah remained utterly still, both waiting for an answer, the more the air cooled around me. As a midwife, I’d watched my fair share of mothers cradle their still baby. Watching them rock their crying baby on a full moon, only to find it cold and still the next morning. What curse could be more evil?

Cradling the boy in one arm, I grabbed a knitted blanket from a stool beside the bed and draped it over him. He might not need the warmth, but I would damn well provide it until we could be certain. A first scream built at the back of his throat, like a wet gargle from the remaining fluids in his lungs, ru

It meant nothing.

All babies cried.

“Can’t say until the morning.” Neither did I want to. “Pray that he’ll want to nurse, but… prepare yourself for the fact that the dead have no hunger.”

William rose, lifting his arms as if to take his son, only for them to drop by his sides again. “But he… he’s trying to wail.”

Wail. Wander.

Corpses did it all during a full moon, ever so restless in their pursuit of reaching the Graying Tower in the south, only to cry when it denied them entry. It called to them like a cruel siren, the stony castle surrounded by piles of corpses, where the devil responsible for our plight lived. Evil in flesh, the priests called him, an unearthly creature from a wayward realm.

The King of Flesh and Bone.

I handed William the child, no matter his reluctance. “Cut the cord, wait for the afterbirth, keep him warm until the morning… and pray. I have to weigh John’s grave down.”

Letting my head retreat into the hood of my cloak, I stepped outside, raindrops pelting the felt in hurried thud-a-thud-thuds. The occasional grunt resonating from the groanpit mixed into it, filling my veins with a restless tingle. That thing had gotten overly full this month. Had corpses truly burned in the past?

Probably just another story…

I turned the corner of the courthouse and passed the brick archway into the cemetery. Rivulets of water trailed between the graves, glistening with the soft sheen of a full moon glowing behind clouds. Sacks of grain lined the wrought-iron pickets, though villagers had moved some onto the graves.

“All that grain would have fed me for a year,” I mumbled, heading toward the oak door which leaned against the fence.

I gripped the edge, dug my heels into the soggy earth, and… Devil be damned, this thing was heavy. The door dragged slowly, corners ripping bushels of sod from the ground. Sweat formed at the nape of my neck and muscles soon ached. Just a little more…

The door hit the ground with a slosh, burying my planted violets underneath the incessant drum of rain on wood. A sound loud enough it quenched what had now turned into a chorus of groans from the pit, but by Helfa, it did nothing to muffle Pa’s protest.

“Drenched to the bone, but she has to weigh the damn grave down.” He wrapped gout-gnarled fingers around a sack of grains, his graying hair pasted to his skull, cursing the weather as he dragged it onto the door. “You can’t hold him forever, Ada.”

“Twenty-three months and counting,” I said, my cheeks tingly from the cold dampness. “Twenty-four if you help me put the mule before the cart. Ground’s too soaked to keep him from digging out, so I best put the cart on the door.”

“If the wheels get stuck, we won’t get the cart back to the stable ’til spring.”

“If John gets out, I’ll have to chase him, bind him, and still get the cart to drag him back to his grave,” I said, my eyes going to Pa’s crooked digits as they fumbled with his red-smudged handkerchief. Had he coughed blood again? “The wheels will get stuck no matter what. Preferably atop my husband.”

He quickly pushed his handkerchief into his leather vest pocket when he caught my eyes on the stained fabric. “Your eyes are red, the tip of your nose shiny. You’ve been crying.”

Just almost. “Sarah had a son.”

“Dead or alive?” When I shrugged, he slowly shook his head. “William paid a coin for your help?”

“No, but I bet he would have paid a coin for me to leave. Too bad I was in a rush.”

“Wretched man,” he grumbled. “You’re too good, and that’s not a compliment. Always taking on the problems of others. Always weighing down the grave of a man long cold.”