Tara Runeweaver's Arc

Chapter 21 of 29

The flute lessons gave Tara the songs, but not a midwife. Each dawn she passed the red flag tied with white strips outside the eldest midwife's door. Each dawn the old woman stepped out, saw her, and shut the flap. Tara stopped timing how long it took. She began to plan instead. She found a hollow in the rocks beyond the longhouse and worked it in secret. She cleared the floor, laid furs, and built a small stone ring for a fire. She carved soft runes into the walls — warming, easing, quieting. If no woman would stand by her bed, the ice would. She told no one but the wolf that watched from the trees. Bjorn's mother found her there on the third evening. She did not scold. She walked the carved walls with one hand out, then sat by the new fire and waited until Tara sat too. "You would labor alone," the old woman said. "That is not a thing I will allow." She took the bone flute from Tara's belt and turned it in the firelight. "Play tonight at the vigil hearth. Not at our tent. Theirs." Tara's hands went cold. The vigil hearth was where the midwives kept watch, and she had never been welcome at its stones. "They will leave," Tara said. The old woman shook her head. "Some will. The one who stays is yours." Tara went at dusk. She sat outside the ring of light and played the songs she had learned. Two women rose and walked away. The eldest midwife stayed. She listened to the end, then crossed the snow and sat beside Tara without speaking. After a long while she said, "Bring the child to my hands. I have heard the songs in you now." Tara bent her head. She had a midwife. The other women had seen who chose her, and who did not.