Oswald brings forth her firstborn son

Oswald had been careful to lower his knife every time he heard a creaking tread on the stairs, not wishing to add a severed finger to the tally of the night’s indignities. But with the passing hours, the woman had come down to the kitchen and gone back up to the bedroom so many times that he had finally made up his mind to stop looking.

And that, of course, was when she finally came in.

“Well, that’s over,” she grumbled.

Oswald took care with his knife as he scrambled to his feet, but the towel he had draped neatly across his lap flapped and fell, scattering shavings and chips of wood across his sister’s rug.

“Here he is,” the woman added dully. “He looks all right…”

She plodded past the fire, glancing neither at Oswald nor at the shavings she crunched underfoot. Oswald turned helplessly to follow her, knife still dangling from his hand.

“It’s a boy?” he whispered.

“That much is for sure. He’s got all what he should down there. But I don’t know about the ears,” she said ominously, hinting at a scandal surpassing even rape by an elf. “They look real ordinary to me.”

“I think – I think baby elves have round ears when they’re born,” Oswald stammered.

“Well, elf baby or man baby, here you go.”

“What?”

She lifted the bundle of blankets to his breast, giving him only time enough to toss his knife down onto a cushion and clutch at the baby with both hands before she let go. Immediately she scuttled back out of arm’s reach. A wobbly little head fell against Oswald’s shoulder, cushioned by a squishy cheek.

“What am I supposed to do with him?” Oswald whimpered.

“Well, unless you can feed him yourself,” she drawled, smirking at her own sense of humor, “I guess you gotter take him up to his ma.”

Oswald blanched. “I can’t do that!” 

In a flash he imagined a girl sprawling naked and half-​​conscious on a bloody bed, still moaning in an afterglow of pain, racked limbs still twisted in the sheets…

“Course you can,” the woman muttered. “I cleaned her up. I ain’t gonner stick around!” she threatened, suddenly livid. “That wasn’t part of the deal! I got babies of my own to home!”

“But you can’t leave me alone with Matilda!” Oswald pleaded. “The two of us alone in this house!”

The woman waved her fat hand at him as she hunted for her cloak amid the pile of Oswald’s saddlebags and blankets by the door. Oswald awkwardly bounced the little head on his shoulder.

“She knows what to do with a baby,” the woman said. “She’s the oldest kid at her house.”

“But – that’s not what I mean! I mean… I mean I mean – I’m not married and neither is she!” Dismayed at the boyish squeaking of his voice, he added a gruff, “That’s why!”

“Oh is that all?” she huffed.

She left the baggage for a moment to come wag her finger in his face.

“Just now that girl’s as raw and bloody as a slab of steak. She wouldn’t stand for it, and you wouldn’t want to, young sir. No gossip who ever birthed a baby is gonner come up with that idea, though I can’t speak for the priest.”

The priest!

“Now how ’bout that bracelet?”

The bracelet! Oswald’s panic was quenched by a tide of disgust.

“Oh good Lord!” he snapped. “It’s Christmas! And nothing bad happened to you or her or him! Couldn’t you simply do it out of Christian charity? Out of the kindness of your heart? It was supposed to be a gift for my sister!”

The woman scowled, unimpressed. “We had a deal.”

Oswald fumbled at the pouch on his belt, leaning precariously backwards as he clasped the baby against his breast with one hand. He slipped his fingers past the warm amber of the beads and fished around for a silver coin he might have overlooked back in the woman’s dim kitchen. Once again, he found nothing of value besides the bracelet, and he whipped it out and held it out to her at the length of his arm.

The woman plucked the bracelet from his fingers and held it up to the candlelight, not admiringly but critically. The beads glowed like honey in sunlight, casting gold-​​brown halos on her chapped hands, but Oswald doubted she even noticed. And Mouse would have loved them so.

The woman grunted and tucked the bracelet away, lacking even a girlish desire to try it on. “Well!” she said conclusively as she turned towards the door.

“Wait! You didn’t tell me – what am I supposed to do?” Oswald shuffled helplessly after her as she stepped into the entry. “Is she – is she going to need something? Am I supposed to do anything? Is she expecting me? Has she… Has the baby nursed yet?”

“She hain’t even seen him yet,” the woman grumbled, glaring at Oswald out of one eye as she tied the belt of her cloak. “I sure wasn’t gonner hand her rape baby to her and watch her start bawling. That wasn’t part of the deal.”

Oswald stopped. His remaining questions evaporated in the heat of his shock, and he only breathed their fog in and out through his parted lips.

The woman pulled her belt tight and growled, “And don’t you tell anyone it was me what delivered that baby. We had a deal. You bet the first thing that kid done when it come out was give me the evil eye.”

Gently as a last leaf, Oswald let go of his clinging need for the woman’s presence and floated free. He whispered, “Just leave.”

“Well!”

“Just go. That was the deal.”

The woman huffed a last time, and Oswald let her fumble her own way out through the grand wooden door with its heavy bolt. He squared his feet and stood unmoving until she had gone, wearing what he fancied to be a forbidding face. All the while he breathed deeply and slowly, unconsciously rocking the little baby upon his chest. A few flakes of fresh-​​cut wood fluttered down from his pants onto his sister’s rug, and Oswald did not even mind.

His indignation got him started up the stairs, but with every step it seemed another lop of courage fell clattering back down. Her rape baby, the woman had said. Watch her start bawling.

On the landing Oswald stopped before the window and stared out at the snow-​​covered world, numb with a dread that was colder than cold. 

He thought there must have been a full moon in the west, behind the house, for its icy blue light gleamed in the snow-​​laden pines and atop the drifts at the far edge of the yard. But dawn was breaking in the east, and the shadows cast by the moon glowed with its lavender light. Oswald realized that he was looking out onto a land that was, for a few minutes, without shadow. He remembered that it was Christmas morn.

“She brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes…” he whispered.

At last he understood that he was holding not merely an awkward bundle, but a little person, alive and breathing on his neck. The only sounds in the great house were the floorboards creaking beneath Oswald’s shifting seventeen-​​year-​​old weight, and the baby’s tiny grunts and snorts and sighs as it wriggled and rooted, seeking to make something of the world in which it had inexplicably found itself. Oswald thought it a cozy, companionable sound, like the little cracks and pops of a toasty fire.

None of his shorn courage had grown back, but a sort of peace had settled over him like the snow.

“Let’s go see your Mama, little baby,” he whispered.

The squeaking floor announced his arrival all the way down the hall, but he knocked at the door nevertheless.

Oswald dreaded a scream or a sob, but Matilda only called softly, “Come in?”

He realized he ought to warn her. “It’s Os! The – uh, the lady went home.”

“Come in!” she called again.

“I have the baby too!”

“Come in!”

He thought he heard a faint laugh. He supposed she was laughing at him, but at that moment he did not particularly mind. He opened the door and peeked inside.

Matilda was smiling indeed, and more importantly she was dressed and clean and tucked neatly into a freshly-​​made bed. There was a basin full of clean water and several pitchers scattered around the room, but no particular disorder. Even the air smelled only like an ordinary stuffy room with a small fire. Oswald grinned in relief.

“Merry Christmas,” she said.

“Oh! Merry Christmas! I keep forgetting, since I didn’t sleep.”

“Oh, you didn’t? I’m sorry…”

She looked stricken. He feared she was ashamed of the screams and howls she had made – if not simply because she had made them then because he had overheard.

“It’s no matter,” he blurted, hurrying into the room. “Would you like to see the baby?”

He realized too late that he did not know what he would do if she said no, so he carried on quite as if she had said yes. He did not even have the presence of mind to watch her face for her reaction.

“I haven’t even seen him myself!” he gabbled. “I’ve just been standing around with him staring over my shoulder like a looby.”

He carefully tipped the swaddled body away from his breast until the wobbly head flopped back into his palm.

“I mean, I’m the looby, not he. Well, he might be a little, too,” he confided. 

When he glanced up at Matilda she was smiling still.

“We shall have to see,” he concluded.

He began to lower the baby towards the bed, but he stopped when the little face dipped into the halo of the candle. The baby stopped twitching and looked into Oswald’s dark eyes with his own, miraculously already aware that eyes were meant for looking out of and into.

“He’s looking at me!” Oswald whispered. “He’s looking right at me! Look at him, his whole entire head fits into my one hand! Just exactly.”

He glanced down at Matilda. She was smiling with her mouth, but her eyes appeared panicked and frightened. Her curls were damp around her face and smoothed back from her temples, making her look like a disoriented little newborn creature herself, licked clean by a motherly tongue.

Oswald bit his lip to stop his giggling and looked back at the baby with a gravity more in keeping with the baby’s own. He searched the tiny features for something he could call out as Matilda’s, but for all he knew the entire face was overlaid with an ugliness that he could not see, not knowing the face of the elf who had raped her. And Matilda would have to look into it every day of her life.

Oswald shifted the baby’s head in his palm, freeing his thumb for stroking. He was about to observe that the baby’s skin had a velvety texture, like the powdery petals of certain flowers, but he forgot his pretty metaphor and burst into soft laughter when his thumb reached the chubby cheek and sank right in, smooshing the pursed pink lips into a veritable sour-​​faced pucker.

“You should see how fat his cheeks are!” he gushed. “His poor head is made of mostly cheeks! He hardly has room for his little mouth in there. He’s just about the cutest thing!”

Matilda giggled and lifted her head.

“He looks like a silly little squirrel with his cheeks all full of nuts,” Oswald said. “Except his cheeks are full of custard.”

Matilda laughed aloud. Oswald flashed her a quick grin and began prodding experimentally at the fat cheeks, squishing the baby’s little mouth into the most absurd grumpy-​​old-​​mannish expressions.

“He must look rather silly,” Matilda ventured, “if he’s making faces that are anything like yours.”

“Was I making faces?” Oswald gasped, flushing in embarrassment. “Here!”

He hastily bent and settled the swaddled baby in the crook of Matilda’s elbow.

“What a looby! Telling you what he looks like instead of simply showing you! There, now you look at those cheeks I told you about, and I – shall go look for a chair.”

Oswald stood and spun on his heel, terrified she would begin “bawling” after all. He was too frightened even to watch her expression as she had her first glimpse of her baby’s face.

Unfortunately, the first thing he saw was a chair. Awkward as he was, there was only so much banging and scuffing and dusting of seats that he could do before plunking the chair down at the bedside and plunking himself down in it. And as soon as he sat, he wondered whether settling in beside her was the right thing to do at all.

“He looks… a bit like my Da,” Matilda faltered. She looked desperate for words, like a shy girl being asked to compliment something she privately despises. “In the mouth.”

Without thinking, Oswald leaned over and pinched the little cheeks together, squishing the baby’s mouth into a pout. “And now?”

Matilda giggled. “A trout?”

Oswald sat back and laughed.

“Poor little baby,” she said shakily. “He does have fat cheeks, doesn’t he?” 

She poked gingerly at one of them with the tip of her finger, and then she relaxed and stroked her hand over the crown of the baby’s head. Oswald slumped in relief.

“I think he’s the cutest new baby I ever saw,” he said, “though I must ask you not to tell my sisters I said so.”

“I won’t.”

“And look.”

Oswald reached into one of the deep pockets of his coat and pulled out a handful of the freshly-​​carved little wooden figures that had been clattering around inside. 

“A dog family,” he explained as he set them up on their feet. He arranged them in a tidy row upon the table to avoid meeting Matilda’s eyes. “Papa Dog, Mama Dog, and as many pups as I could carve.”

Matilda scooted down onto her pillow, bringing her eyes onto a level with the little dogs.

“I didn’t know whether he would be a boy or a girl,” Oswald explained sheepishly, “so I thought dogs would be safer than soldiers or something. If it had been a girl, she could always have used them as pets for her dolls.”

“Did you make those?” Matilda asked softly.

“I had to do something last night,” Oswald shrugged. “There’s still one downstairs I almost finished. I can paint them later. I know he’s too young for toys yet, but… I don’t know.” He laughed shyly and drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “It’s Christmas.”

Matilda stroked her baby’s fat cheek and looked intently into his face as though she were only then seeing him for the first time. Finally she whispered, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Oswald clapped his hands down on his knees and sat forward. “Say, are you hungry? It’s about breakfast time, and my cake is probably thawed by now. My buns are, in any event. Not that I have been sitting on my cake.”

His mouth kept grinning, but on the inside he grimaced. Why, oh why could he not string three phrases together without sounding like a looby? Or mentioning his buns?

But Matilda giggled openly. “Cake for breakfast?”

Was the mere mention of cake enough to make him sound like a looby?

“Ah… is that a yes or no question, or are you simply surprised?”

“Surprised,” she smiled.

Her eyes closed up into thin crescents when she smiled with mouth and eyes together, Oswald observed, hinting at a history of fat little cheeks that age and cares had long since thinned.

“Do you often eat cake for breakfast,” she asked, “or is it ’cause of Christmas?”

“Ah…” Oswald grinned sheepishly. “Rather often, I’m afraid. I have my dinner and supper brought up to me, or out to the fields, but I’m on my own for breakfast.”

“And I suppose you can’t boil an egg.”

“Not without setting myself on fire. I wasn’t exactly joking about that. It’s either cake or cold beans and meat, and without my little mother to make me eat my beans and meat, I often skip directly to dessert. But at least I don’t eat in my socks,” he assured her.

“In your socks?” Matilda laughed. She unconsciously stroked her hand down her baby’s padded body, and patted it in the vicinity of its belly – which Oswald immediately decided was bound to be hilariously fat.

“That’s what Mousie used to threaten me with if she ever got married,” he smiled. “Such did she believe were the depths of depravity to which men will sink if left alone: eating cold beans and meat pies in their stocking feet.”

“And so you eat your cold beans and cake in your shoes.”

“Ah… sometimes I do eat in my bare feet,” he admitted.

Matilda laughed deeply for a moment, and Oswald laughed with her: somehow sounding like a looby was not so unbearable after all.

And then she winced, and her wool-​​clad body arced in a spasm of pain. She fell back and settled, but the merriment had quite drained out of her face, leaving her cheeks looking paler and thinner than Oswald had ever seen them. 

“Are you all right?” he asked softly. He did not dare touch her hand, so he patted the twist of swaddling cloth that covered the baby’s feet.

“I’m not very hungry yet,” she said. “But perhaps he is, by now. I have to… nurse him.”

Oswald pushed back his chair and gasped, “Oh, right! What a looby! He hasn’t eaten since… ever, and I just want my breakfast.”

And she wanted to be alone… and it probably hurt if he made her laugh… and he was just a blundering boy who had no business being here at all… 

“Can I bring you anything?” he asked.

“Just… a towel, please? For him.”

“One towel. Anything else?”

“I think we’ll just try to sleep for a while after.”

“That’s a good idea. I should probably try that too. I’ll be right across the hall. Just shout if you need something. Don’t be shy.”

She made a kitten-​​like noncommittal sound. Her eyes were squinted again, but they were not smiling, and he thought he saw a glimmer of tears.

Her rape baby. Watch her start bawling.

Oswald stood and turned away again, carrying the chair back to the spot where he had found it.

I have to… nurse him. She could scarcely bring herself to say it. All through the night she had screamed and panted, forcing the little baby out through the same narrow space by which its father had forced it in. Now she had to open her robe and press the baby’s mouth against the same breast that its father might have groped with his hands, or even licked or bit or sucked himself, if Oswald knew anything of the ways of lustful men.

And Oswald would have done anything to spare her that, and yet he – a man – could do nothing. The only idea that lit in his seventeen-​​year-​​old male mind was the resolution to find the filthy elf who had hurt her and hack him into pieces with his shovel, as he did with the snakes he surprised in the grass.

And even that would alter nothing.