Mayaween child

By: Oceana Posted on: October 31, 2012

I.

The month after the Mayaween feast, I woke with the feeling that a heavy weight had just lifted from me. Shivering, I opened my eyes. The sun had not yet risen, but a glow lay on the horizon. It was too dark to see more than a few shadowy outlines. I must have felt too warm during the night, as the blankets lay in a heap at the foot of the bed. A cold shiver ran through me again and although I felt unrested, I sat up and dropped my feet to the floor. I stepped into a puddle of water, and it dawned upon me that I had been hearing drops falling from the sheets. My hands slid carefully over them and felt that they were soaked. Slowly adjusting to the low light, my eyes stared at the ceiling for a brief moment, then searched around the room. There were no other signs of water. As my eyes passed the mirror on the door, I blinked; my naked body was reflected sitting on the bed. “Naked?” I asked myself, a frosty plume escaping my lips. I didn't remember taking my nightgown off.

I shook my head slowly, questions tumbling through my mind, got up and pulled the sheets off the mattress. A dull clunk reached my ears as a metallic object fell to the floor. I balled up the sheets, dropped them in a basket, then turned. Dawn had broken by now, and I saw a ring on the floorboards beneath the bed. I knelt to retrieve it and examined it carefully. It was a gold ring, and it seemed ancient, weathered. Raising it to my eyes, I discovered a recent engraving. "Last month's date...," I whispered to myself, the words dissipating as a chilly fog. I turned the ring a few times between my fingers, looking out at the Cnidian Gates beyond my garden. When I turned away from the window, the ring was on my finger. Another shiver of cold ran through me, and finding nothing to blame but the Mayaween's ale, I went to wash and clothe me. I wasn't even surprised anymore when I found some kelp sticking to the inside of my thighs.

II.

"Carmina?" I asked hesitantly when I sat down to work next to her, "Did I leave the feast with anyone?" I did not remember anything about Mayaween. Carmina shook her head and looked at me with concern in her eyes, as I brought my hand to my mouth, suppressing another flow of nausea. Surely a few pints of ale could not have done this to a sailor's daughter. I shivered again. The nausea faded during the day, but the cold stuck with me. No matter how many blankets I wrapped around me, no matter how close I sat to the hearth, I felt cold throughout. I could not stop myself from shivering, and when I ruined yet another fish I was cleaning, Lexil sent me to repair the netting instead. I took the nets from the shed and sat at the beach, hoping the air and the weak autumn sun would do me good. Erdan passed from time to time, and told me stories of the sea while he gazed at the horizon and I worked on the nets.

III.

As the months passed, I felt my belly swelling. I tried to hide it at first, holding the nets higher on my lap as I worked, carrying them tightly against me as I walked through the harbour. Come spring however, my belly was as round as a gigantic pearl, and my movements became slow. I continued to wear my winter clothes, my body as cold as it was the night after Mayaween. Not even the summer was able to warm me. At one point I believed the cold came from the gold ring I had found under my bed. I tried to stop wearing it. I couldn't. If I removed it and put it away, I woke up with the ring on my finger again. I had even thrown it into the sea once. It didn't matter. The ring was always on my finger at dawn. Carmina had asked me bluntly about the ring, and about the man I had been with. I could not answer her questions. She got angry with me, thinking I didn't trust her enough to tell her. Somehow, that no longer mattered to me.

IV.

At the end of summer, I went to see Carmina. "Something is wrong," I told her. Surely, it was so. I felt no life inside me. No movement, no kicks, yet my belly continued to grow. Carmina was still upset with me, but she travelled to Quartz Peak to fetch Turga, the midwife. I returned to my hut and sat on my bed, waiting for them to return, staring at my image in the mirror.

Turga shrieked when she touched my belly, refused to talk and fled yelling hysterically about something I could not quite make out. Carmina stared at me in disbelief. "What did she say?" I asked of her. Her Ursu was better than mine. She dropped a dreamcatcher on my bed, stared at me for a long moment and then left without a word. I knew she would not come back.

I picked up her dreamcatcher and threw it at the door. It bounced back and rolled underneath the bed, where I could not reach anymore. I had not told her about my dreams. Had she guessed? Had she noticed how tired I was, more so than could be expected? It is true I had dreams, or rather a dream. The same one, every night. A narrow abyss, its dark walls weighing heavy on my soul. A silvery shape was beckoning me closer, and I felt drawn towards it, its soft glow reassuring me, although I knew we were descending ever deeper. I always woke up shivering, crying, and frantically turning the ring on my finger.

V.

Nine months past Mayaween and my belly was still growing. Lexil had stopped giving me nets to repair. She muttered something about mutant fish being caught with the nets I had touched, her back turned to me so I could not see her eyes. Only Erdan still talked to me. I think he was too far gone in his memories to understand the rumours about me. Ten months came, and then eleven, and still my belly grew heavier. I stayed in my hut for most of the day, only going out to sit on the beach with Erdan. We both looked out at the sea, him talking about pearls, me thinking about the shape in the abyss. I never came close enough to see any features, but I was sure it was a man. There was something familiar about him. Did I know him, or was it simply because I kept dreaming about him?

VI.

One day, Erdan was talking about getting oysters for the Mayaween feast. I wasn't really listening to him, but the word Mayaween caught my attention. I asked him when the feast was, as I had lost all sense of time after the ninth month. It seemed time had stood still as I waited and dreamt of the abyss. Erdan chuckled and held up two wrinkled fingers. "In two days?" I asked. He nodded, added a "You must come too!", then returned his gaze to the sea.

Just before dusk, Erdan left, now singing about ale, mostly to himself. I stayed at the beach, not wanting to see any of the villagers. I would not have been welcomed at the feast anyway. I stared at the sea, waiting, unwilling to move.

When the night installed itself around me, a silvery shape rose up from the waves. As it beckoned to me, a cold pain seared through my body. I doubled over and rolled on the sand, grasping at my belly. The silvery shape beckoned to me again. Could I see through him? It didn't matter to me; I only saw the old ring on his silvery hand, an exact match to the one I had been wearing since Mayaween last year. I crawled closer to the sea, panting heavily between the sharp pangs of pain. I froze when I heard the shape call out to me. I heard his voice for the first time and drunk in his words: "Wife, bring me my child!"

I was desperate to get to him, to follow him. I redoubled my efforts and as soon as I entered the sea, the waves took hold of my cloak and dragged me to him. I did not feel the cold of the water, but I gasped out when I finally saw beyond the ring. I kept screaming as the water entered my lungs, the pain and the terror locking my jaws open. I sunk beneath the waves and the shape floated above me, watching me as I drowned. His tail curled around my legs and pulled me closer to him, and his silvery glow enveloped me as I died. My final images were those of his claws, digging into my belly to take his child.

VII.

Erdan found my corpse on the beach the following month. Large cuts left my belly emptied, washed clean by the sea. The gold ring was gone, replaced by a dark bruise around my finger. My child was never found.