Ophelia Skyfeather's Arc

Chapter 5 of 11

The thaw came, and with it the pain. Ophelia woke before dawn with a cramp low in her belly, harder than any she had felt through the long months in the corner. She rolled to her knees in the down and gripped the rim of the nest. The next wave took her breath. She made a sound she did not mean to make. Gruk sat up from his pallet, watched her once, and went to the door. He spoke to someone outside in the goblin tongue. Then he came back and knelt beside the nest and put a hand on her back. "Push when it comes," he said. "Don't fight it." She did what he told her. There was no one else to tell her anything. It took most of the day. She lost track of the hours between the waves. She bit down on a strip of leather he pressed between her teeth. She soaked the down with sweat and worse. The first egg came near midday, pale and warm and larger than she had pictured. The second came an hour after. The third split her open in a way the others had not, and she screamed into the leather until it passed. Gruk lifted each egg as it came and set it in the hollow she had made months ago. When the last was down, he wiped her face with a wet cloth and let her drink from the iron cup. She slept without meaning to. When she woke, three eggs lay against her thigh, mottled and heavy, and Gruk was gone from the room. She counted them with her fingers and felt something loosen in her chest. She had done the thing she was kept for. The nest was full. She was still alive in it. Down the corridor, in the smoke of the kitchen, Gruk stood at the cook's shoulder and spoke low. He drew a shape in the flour on the board with one thick finger, an egg cracked into a pan, and named the bird beside it. The cook did not look up. He nodded once and wiped the flour away with his palm.