“How many children were brought here?” I asked at last.
“Many,” he said, looking at me with a curious expression. He saw how his story upset me. I remembered everything Nonna Sophia had told me—people waking with their children gone, the village filled with terror. But even as I understood what the Icemen had done, I felt a small, niggling doubt: If these children had been integrated into the population, and grew up to mate with the Icemen, why didn’t the Icemen look more like me? Why was Ciba the single person with brown eyes?
“Your population hasn’t grown,” I said. “It has only declined since Leopold was here.”
He flinched, as if I had struck him. “Do not doubt us,” he said. “One day there will be many children. And they will be strong, like Leopold and Zyana’s children. Like the children of your people.”
Because I had grown to care about Aki and Ciba, and because I had come to see the Icemen not as a foreign tribe but as my own people, I wanted this to be true.
I went to Uma’s hut the next afternoon, took Ciba by the arm and led her along a flat path near the village, where blackberry bushes grew wild. Uma thought walking would help relieve Ciba’s discomfort. She had been in pain all morning, the pressure of the baby pressing into her organs so that she couldn’t sleep.
It was a beautiful summer day. The sky was blue and the bushes bursting with berries. The plan was to find a shady spot and sit together. Ciba hadn’t had fresh air for days.
The path was not far from the village. We could have filled our sack with berries and been back to the hut in a few minutes. But the blackberries were fat with juice, so ripe that they dropped with a brush of a finger, and we lingered. We ate as many as we collected. I held a leather sack open and Ciba shook a branch, sending a rain of berries down, until the sack was full. My fingernails were stained black. Sweet purple juice had tinted Ciba’s lips, creating a stark contrast to her pale skin. In the past week, she had swelled. Capillaries had burst under her eyes, giving her a mask of bruises. She smiled and looked ghoulish. I reached out and took her hand in mine, to help her along the path.
It felt good to be there with Ciba, to feel her weight against me as we walked. She had been inside the stone hut for days and days, lying on the bed, doing nothing but sleeping and eating. It struck me that this stolen moment of sun and friendship was the first moment of pleasure Ciba had experienced in weeks, and I hoped it would give her a respite before the baby arrived, for it was sure to come soon. Two days before, Uma had examined Ciba and said the birth could happen anytime. At night I woke every few hours to check on her. If waiting was excruciating for me, I could only imagine how Ciba felt.
Ciba stopped near a birch tree, took a labored breath, and walked on. Sweat soaked through her white tunic. Her hair clung to her forehead and neck. The baby both anchored and unmoored her. It was misery, I thought, carrying a child. The heaviness and discomfort of it should have driven any woman away. And yet, the inconveniences of pregnancy—the bloated breasts, the swollen ankles, the body distorting under the weight of a new life—didn’t detract from the magic of what was happening. Ciba would experience something I could not, and although I understood she would suffer, I felt a pang of jealously at this gift.
I was thinking this when the first wave of pain stopped Ciba cold. She bent over and groaned. As another contraction came, she clutched my arm so that her nails dug deep into my skin. I helped her stand, urging her to walk with me back to the village, but she couldn’t move. I could feel her shaking against me. Another contraction came, and she doubled over again, clutching at me as she groaned with pain. I steered her back to the path, and we were making our way down to the village, when fluid slid over her bare legs. The baby was coming, and I needed to get her back to Uma, but another contraction came, then another, each one stronger than