Lilah's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Lilah pressed both hands to her belly and counted the days she had left. Not many. The baby kicked hard, close now, and Lilah knew almost nothing about bringing a child into the world alone. She sat on the smooth palm log outside her shelter and stared at the wreck down the shore. The ship had taken her partner and left her this: a beach, a growing belly, and no one to help her. The shelter behind her stood crooked but solid, palm logs bound with twine, leaves piled on top. She had built it with raw hands. But no shelter could teach her what her body would soon demand. Fear sat in her chest like a stone. If something went wrong during the birth, no one would come. She and the baby could die on this sand. Lilah refused to just wait for that. She got up and walked to the wrecked ship. She had searched it once for food. Now she searched for knowledge. She climbed through a broken window and dug through swollen drawers and split cabinets. Her fingers found a soaked leather book. She peeled the pages apart. A ship's medical log, water-stained but readable. Diagrams. Steps. How to check a baby's position. How to breathe. How to cut and tie the cord. What to do if the child came the wrong way. A parrot landed on the railing above her, bright and loud. It watched her turn each page. "Push," it squawked, mimicking some long-gone sailor. Lilah almost laughed. "Not yet," she told it. She carried the book back and read by her fire until the light died. She practiced every step out loud. She boiled strips of cloth in a shell over the flames and set them to dry clean. She sharpened a flat blade against a stone and cleaned it in the fire's heat. Beside her nest of woven logs and leaves, she laid the cloth, the blade, a length of twine. She read the hardest pages twice, the ones about bleeding that would not stop. By the time the fire was embers, Lilah knew what to do. She could not promise it would be enough. But she was no longer helpless. She had a plan, a clean blade, and words she could follow when her mind went white with pain. She rested one hand on the small bassinet. "I'm ready for you now," she said. The parrot repeated it softly from the roof. Then a warm rush spread down her legs and soaked the sand. A cramp seized her low and hard, sharper than any before. Lilah gripped the log and breathed the way the book had shown her. The reading was over. Her daughter was coming tonight, ready or not.