Malcolm wakes, and Iylaine is not there
Malcolm awoke, and Iylaine was not there. He even thought he had awoken because she was not there. Bright flames were still licking over the logs, but there was something like a chill in the room.
Iylaine’s pillow was quite cold, and there was no lingering warmth beneath the blankets on her side of the bed. This was not in itself a troubling thing: she often rose late in the night to eat the little snack that Mother Curran always left for her in the kitchen. But if the logs had not yet burned down to embers, they had not been sleeping long, and she should not have been hungry.
“What are you doing, Babe?” he called softly.
He knew that if she were anywhere in the house she would hear him. She would groan, “Eating my snack, Malcolm!” and then he would scoot over into her place to keep the sheets warm for her until she returned.
But tonight there was silence. There was only the pounding of his heart, and the throb of blood thundering behind his ears was a deafening sound.
He had to get up. He would find her, or he would die. A heart could not beat like this for long.
Iylaine was not in the hall.
It was not a very large house. There were few places in which even a slender girl could hide herself, and Iylaine was anything but slender these last months. There was only the turtle room.
“Baby!” he laughed in relief.
“Whisht!” she hissed.
“Baby! Why didn’t you answer me?”
“Whisht!”
“What?” he whispered.
“I don’t want anyone to hear,” she whispered in reply.
“Hear what? What are you doing in your nest in the middle of the night, stupid girl? In this house, Lady Baby, in the night, we sleep in beds.”
As her friends had learned of her nest-making habit, gifts of blankets and cushions and robes had come with nearly every visitor, until the edifice had attained such proportions that Mother Curran no longer tore it down in the evenings for fear that Iylaine would tire herself building it up the next day.
Nearly the entire turtle room was filled with the pile, leaving only a space for the door to swing open, and another for the little table on which the candle stood. There was, of course, no room for the furniture Malcolm had had made for the baby, but Iylaine would not hear of exchanging the one for the other.
Malcolm planned to impose at least a cradle on her after the baby came, but for now he let her have her way. He had been warned that pregnant ladies were unaccountable creatures, and one could only suppose that pregnant elves were more so.
“I am not tired,” she whispered. “You may sleep if you like.”
“What are you doing, Babe?” He had not failed to notice that she was sitting primly on a stack of cushions, rather than lounging as usual like a drowsy cat atop the pile.
“I am sitting here. Thinking.”
“About your turtle?”
“Aye.”
“Say, Babe,” he said, laughing at the absurdity of the thought. “You’re not thinking – ”
“Whisht!”
He continued softly, “You’re not thinking of giving me a turtle for Christmas, are you?”
Her only response was to roll her eyes at the absurdity of the thought – or at his own stupidity for thinking it absurd.
“You can’t do that!” he gasped.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s Christmas Eve!”
“Our Lord was born on Christmas Eve.”
“Aye, Baby, that’s all right for Christ children, but not for ordinary turtle babies.”
She sniffed. “Anyway, I am not saying I am.”
“Say you aren’t.”
“I am simply feeling wide awake tonight, and I wish to sit here a while. You may go to bed if you like.”
“Baby…” he whimpered. He wanted to believe her, but he could not. He knew her well enough to know she was not telling him everything.
He suddenly understood the monumental difference between “any day now” and “tonight.”
When a man lay down on Christmas Eve, he had every right to expect to wake up on Christmas morning no more a father than he had been the night before. It was absurd to think otherwise. Unless one’s name were Joseph. And his name was Malcolm. Therefore…
She took a slow breath and turned her face away, her eyes half-closed, as if she were concentrating intensely on something very far away. But when she rubbed her two hands over her belly, he understood that she was concentrating on something very close indeed.
“I shall get Mother Curran!” he gasped and turned for the door.
“No!” she cried aloud, breaking her own rule of silence.
“I think I should!”
“No!” she whispered. “I don’t want anyone to know.”
“Baby!” he whined. “They already know!”
“No!”
“But, Baby! You need women! Lots of women!”
“Why?”
“To do… the things!”
“My cat didn’t need any women to have her kittens.”
“You are not a cat!”
“I am an elf.”
“But, Baby! Just Mother Curran?” he pleaded.
“No!”
“But I can’t help you!”
“Then you may go to bed, Malcolm. Good night.”
“But you can’t have your baby by yourself!”
“Then you may help me.”
“But, Baby! I can’t help you! Don’t do this to me!” he whimpered.
“Then you may go to bed.”
“But I can’t leave you alone!”
She sighed wearily. “You can help me, stupid boy. You can help me stand up. I don’t want to sit any longer.”
Malcolm thought this was a very good sign. Mares and cats and just about every animal he knew liked to lie down to have their foals and kittens and everything else.
He would simply need to keep her standing until Mother Curran arrived to make breakfast. Perhaps six or eight hours hence. His own legs wobbled at the thought.
He tried a different tactic. “You stay put tonight,” he said to her belly, “and I shall buy you a pony first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Oh, Malcolm,” Iylaine giggled. “He doesn’t understand bribery yet.”
“What about threats?” he asked her. “The rules say,” he said grimly to her belly, “that any babies born on Christmas Eve must sleep in the manger. So you think about that before you make any plans.”
“You wouldn’t put a Christmas baby in that Devil’s manger, would you?”
“Well… I was only joking, little turtle. But your cradle is still in the shed, too, so think about that. It’s cold out there.”
“Stupid boy,” she sighed.
“And you were only joking, too, weren’t you, Babe? Right? Weren’t you?”
