Chapter 12: The Porch Steps

I crossed the frozen yard at a run with my bag over my shoulder.

Garrick walked behind me, slow as a man in a dream.

The birthing house stood under a hunter's moon.

The carved wolf over its door looked down on us, and the lantern on the porch swung in the wind.

A woman's cry came from inside.

He stopped at the bottom of the steps.

I turned and held out my hand.

He looked at it for a long breath.

Then he took it and climbed to the porch.

He sat down on the plank bench beside the door with his huge hands gripping his knees.

"I'll be right through that wall," I said.

"I know."

"You'll hear everything."

"I know."

I kissed the top of his head.

I went inside.

The labor was fast and clean.

The woman was a first-timer from Ridge Hold, young and furious, with her sister holding one hand and a hold midwife's apprentice the other.

I checked her, said the plain three things I always say, and she nodded and bore down.

An hour and ten minutes later a boy came into my hands.

He was blue for one second and then a lovely red, and he yelled loud enough to shake the lantern outside.

I laid him on his mother's chest.

She wept.

Her sister wept.

I washed my hands and wiped my eyes.

From the other side of the door I heard a man's low voice murmuring, "Thank you. Thank you."

When the afterbirth was out and the mother was warm and fed, I wrapped the baby and carried him to the porch.

Garrick sat where I had left him.

His face was gray, and his knuckles were white on his knees.

He had been crying and had not wiped it.

"A boy," I said. "Eight pounds."

He looked up.

I crouched in front of him and pulled back the blanket.

The baby slept, wrinkled and furious and perfect, with one fist up by his chin.

"Hold out your hand."

Garrick held out a hand the size of a shovel.

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