Laurell Hamilton - A Shiver of Light

Dr. Lee looked at him as if she didn’t find his joke funny at all. “Excuse me?”

He grinned at her. “Trying to lighten my partners’ moods; they are determined to think the worst.”

“Look at her,” Galen said, motioning at the tiny, tiny infant.

“Remember what my specialty is,” Rhys said. “She doesn’t shine as bright as the others, but neither does she have a shade around her. She is not dying. I would see it.”

Doyle’s hand tightened on mine, and he said, “Swear it, by the Darkness That Eats All Things.”

Rhys looked very serious then. “Let me swear it on the love I bear Merry, our children, and the men in this room, the men and women who are waiting for news at the home we have all built. Let me swear on the first true happiness I have known in lo these long, dark centuries, our little Rose will not die here like this; she will grow strong and crawl fast enough to frustrate her brother.”

“You see this in the future truly?” Frost asked.

“Yes,” Rhys said.

“I don’t understand anything you’re talking about, but did you threaten our lives if the baby doesn’t live?” Dr. Lee asked.

“No,” Rhys said. “I just wanted to remind my family here that modern medicine can do wonders that even magic could not do once, and to have faith. The bad old days are past; let us enjoy the new good days.”

Doyle and I both held our hands out to Rhys, and he came to take them both. He laid a kiss on mine, then did the same to Doyle. “My queen, my liege, my lover, my friend, let us rejoice and chase despair away from this day, as we chased it from each other this year past.”

Galen went around and hugged Rhys from the back, which turned Rhys laughing to hug him back. It made us all laugh a little, and then the nurses were putting the tiniest of babies in my arms. She was so light, birdlike, and dreamlike. It reminded me of holding one of the demi-fey, those of faerie that look like butterflies and moths, but who feel more like the hollow bones of birds when they land and walk upon you.

Bryluen had tubes coming out of her nose trailing to her oxygen, and an IV in her tiny leg, like the one in my arm. Even with Rhys’s reassurance, she looked injured. She was loosely wrapped in one of the thin blankets, and everywhere her skin touched mine she burned as if with fever.

Bryluen started to cry, a high-pitched, thin, and piteous sound that only the very youngest infants make. I knew something was wrong just by her cry. I couldn’t explain it, but something the doctors were doing wasn’t the right thing for this one.

“Doyle, help me unwrap this blanket. She doesn’t like it.”

He didn’t question it, just helped me unwrap Bryluen, and it was as we lifted her gently that my hand crossed her bare back and found something unexpected. I raised her against my shoulder, one hand firm to support her head, and the other her lower body, so that I could see what my hands had felt.

Scales graced almost the entire back of her body, trailing down into the tiny diaper. They weren’t the rainbow scales of a snake like Kitto had on his back, but more like the wide, delicate scales on a butterfly or moth wing, except these were impossibly large, bigger than any natural butterfly on the planet.

Doyle traced one big, dark finger down the brilliant pink-and-seashell shine of the scales that trailed like a cape from her thin shoulders to sweep down her miniature waist and be lost underneath the diaper.

“They’re wings,” he whispered.

Frost was on the other side of the bed, leaning over to draw his own large hand gently down Bryluen’s back. “Wings more real than Nicca’s. They are raised above her skin, not like a tattoo.”

Galen leaned in to touch the miracle of shining proto-wings. “They don’t look like any insect I’ve ever seen,” he whispered.

Mistral came close with Gwenwyfar held in his arms as if she’d always been there. Frost moved up beside them, touching a hand to Gwenwyfar’s white curls and gazing down at Bryluen. “I have not seen dragon wings on our demi-fey since I was not the Killing Frost, but only little Jackul Frosti.”

Sholto came closer and said, “They look almost like the wings of a baby nightflyer, but light and jewel-bright instead of dark and leathery.”

It was when I brushed her tight red curls near her forehead and found the buds of antennae that I understood. “Get the plastic out of her, now!” I held her out to the doctor.

“Without extra oxygen and feeding tubes she will not survive.”

“Do you see the wings and the antenna buds? She’s part demi-fey, part sluagh, a part of faerie that doesn’t do well around metal and man-made things. If you keep putting artificial things into her, she will die.”

“You mean she’s allergic to man-made plastics?”

“Yes,” I said, not wanting to waste time to explain the unexplainable.

Dr. Lee didn’t argue but took Bryluen, and she and the nurses began to strip out everything they’d put in. The baby cried piteously as soon as they took her from me, and it made my heart ache to hear it. The other two babies started to cry as if in sympathy.

Rhys picked Alastair up from the nurse and seemed to know just how to hold him so that the baby just watched everything with dark solemn eyes, as if he understood more than he could say yet. Gwenwyfar just tried to yell loudest no matter what Mistral did.

“You never mentioned a family allergy this severe,” Dr. Heelis said, and he looked angry.

“Give her to me, please; it’s important that she just touch natural things,” I said.

I think they were sending for different things to use on Bryluen and gave her back to me simply as a delay while they rushed around. They gave her back to me nude, because the diaper was man-made, too. I held my tiny naked daughter and could feel that the wings went almost all the way down the back of her body, and they were raised above her skin, part of her, not just a design.

I didn’t think I had any demi-fey in my genetics, but I knew that the demi-fey could die in the city, fade and just die from too much metal, too much plastic, too much garbage. I gave her the only thing I knew was absolutely natural. I turned her so that tiny rosebud of a mouth could nurse.

“She’s too small,” one of the nurses said, “she’ll never latch on enough to feed.”

Bryluen did look impossibly small against my swollen breast, but she latched on tight enough for me to almost say Ow , but it was a good sign. I felt her begin to feed and it was the most amazing sensation. I watched her delicate throat, almost bird thin, swallow convulsively over and over as if she couldn’t get enough. My other breast began to leak in sympathy.

Mistral handed Gwenwyfar to me, though it took him, Frost, and me to get our other girl into the twin football hold that I’d been practicing for months in preparation for twins. I realized as the two girls settled in to nurse that I needed an extra breast. I had triplets; there was no hold for triplets.

As if on cue, Alastair began to cry, wanting his share. I had no idea what to do about it, but as I felt Bryluen drink hungrily, strongly at my breast, I was too relieved to worry that much. Gwenwyfar and he could take turns until Bryluen caught up. A nurse handed Rhys a bottle, and just like he’d practiced in class, he fed our son. Alastair didn’t seem to mind that he was sucking on something plastic and man-made. All three babies sank into a happy, satisfied silence, and looking around at the men in my life I knew we might need at least two more fathers to round out my men. I’d had sex with one demi-fey and one snake goblin while I was already pregnant with the twins, so I thought I didn’t need protection. I was already pregnant, as safe as a girl could be, but as I felt the first tiny flexing of those wings on Bryluen’s back, I knew that I needed two more men to come see their daughter.