the fuck do I do now?

In the moments that follow, I learn every little detail of the world’s most precious creation, her skin is warm, hinting at her father’s dark gold, the sparse curls are coal-black, and she’s perfect in every way. She suckles and I notice that her eyes are light blue, like my mother’s, perhaps the only trace of me in a child so capricious as to be born the exact copy of her father.

The afterbirth comes out and I tell my daughter that she’s to be named after her grandmother, those crystal blue eyes have to be some sort of sign.

I love her already, and even though her eyes can’t see yet, I’m sure Katherine knows me for her mother, and that she loves me just as much as I love her.

I don’t even realize the cold at first. Georgios comes in and I let him know that I’ve named the baby already and he can do nothing about it, and he just cries and kisses my hands, telling me that I’m the most amazing female in the world.

I want to tease him and tell him that many females have, in fact, had babies before me, though, to be fair, none as perfect as Katherine, but I’m so tired, and it’s getting really cold, so I ask him to fetch me another blanket.

The midwife comes in not long after, and he says I’m resting. I’m cold, despite the blankets and the fire, and I hear her shooing Georgios out of the room and yelling for one of the other females.

It’s too cold, and I realize that I’m probably dying.

***

It’s all a blur, I can hear Katherine crying sometimes, but I’m too weak to feed her, too weak to even hold her. She’s not in the room with me and I dread what could have happened. What if I was too weak to feed her and she…

But sometimes I hear her crying, and it eases my mind, even if my breasts ache so much that I end up crying myself. It could be the wail of any baby, but it’s not, it’s Katherine, I know it, my body knows it.

Georgios is always at my bedside, he never lets go of my hand, and I know that his warm touch and Katherine’s demanding crying are the only things anchoring me to this world.

***

I’m finally well enough to hold her for a few moments at a time. Titian brings her in, and I notice he hasn’t learned her name yet. It’s Katherine, not Katarina.

I tell him so, and he apologises.

Georgios shoos his father out of the room and holds her for me to nurse, and the pain has me biting my lip so strongly that I can taste the blood. It’s no matter, he assures me, we live in a dairy farm, there’s no shortage of milk, I don’t have to push myself. I cry as he carries my daughter out and then he climbs on the bed to hold me. The midwife would have a few choice words about it, I’m sure, but right now I don’t care, Georgios’ arms are my only comfort.

***

It doesn’t get better. The milk has dried out, the midwife says, it can happen when a female gets too weak, and I almost bled out.

I can only hold Katherine for a few moments every couple of hours, and, at first, I want her crib to be placed in our bedroom, but every time she cries I cry along, I hate myself for not being able to feed her, and then Georgios has to get up to heat up some goat milk and spoon-feed her, all while he tries to reassure me that everything will be fine, babies only suckle for one or two years anyway, and there’s the rest of our lives for me to care for her in all the other ways.

Titian offers to help, he had been the one caring for Katherine while Georgios was at my bedside, and I accept only because I can’t stand that any longer and everything feels pointless. Georgios says I’m not eating enough, I have no appetite and can barely leave the bed to use the sanitary.

Georgios bathes me with a towel, feeds me, talks to me, and I wish I could reach out to him again, but it’s like an invisible wall separates us.

I hold on to his hand, because it’s all I can do, and that’s the only part of me that still feels somewhat alive.

***

Titian keeps calling Katherine by the wrong name when he thinks I can’t hear him, but I don’t fight him about it anymore.

She’s more his daughter than mine now.

Her skin, now decidedly golden, glows like a pearl when she sees him after spending some time in my arms, and I can’t take it anymore, so I stop asking them to bring her to me, and to her it makes no difference. Even the light blue eyes have darkened to the soft amber of Day, and there’s not anything left in that child that is mine in any way.

If I had fed her, she would have been mine. The guilt breaks my heart, and I hear Georgios telling his father to keep the baby away from me and keep her quiet. I don’t want to eat, but he pleads with me, he even cries, and I concede.

If I had died, I would have been a saint, the mother remembered in prayers and thoughts, and she would have loved me, but I lived, and so, I’m useless.

***

She’s learned to dance at the same time as she learned to walk. I watch as Titian sings, clapping his hands, and she wobbles happily, glowing, and smiling her father’s dimpled smile.

Georgios notices the look on my face and tells his father to take her for a stroll or something. He does that everyday, and, since the sun returned at the end of winter, her skin has become as dark as theirs, and when she looks at me with her big amber eyes full of curiosity there’s nothing there that I recognize as mine. Katherine could have been the daughter of any other female.

He doesn’t speak about her to me, when she’s out of sight, it’s as if she’s not a part of our lives, and I wonder if he’s afraid that any mention of her will push me down the path of that sombre melancholy again.

We don’t talk about that either. It’s as if none of that had ever happened, as if that baby had just showed up on our doorstep one day and Titian decided to keep her.

Wouldn’t it have been easier if that had been the case?

***

She has an accent, of course she does, she spends the entire day wobbling after Titian. He dotes on her, and she loves him for it, and I hate both of them for it, and myself for hating them, but every time she does something and calls Papa, look! I wish I didn’t have to be there to see it.

She tried to say mother the other day, but it came out as bother, and I yelled at her that she was the bother, which made her cry. Titian picked her up and didn’t say anything, but I could see the reprimand in his eyes.

I hate myself more than I ever thought I could hate someone. When I look out through the window and see her dancing and laughing I want to tear my heart out of my chest, because none of her is mine, still I love her so much more than anyone would love a stranger, and I hate her with my guts for not loving me back, and I know I am a terrible mother for it, but anyone would know better than to expect more. What good mother can’t even feed her child?

***

It was decided that Katherine should be out of her baby clothes, and, as everything concerning Katherine, it was decided without me, but this time Titian has overstepped.

I don’t know how long I yell at him for when I see my daughter attired in Day Court fashion. Georgios doesn’t even wear those curtains, and I certainly don’t, the only person in the house who counts blankets as clothes is Titian.

Katherine comes to her favourite person’s defence, of course she does, claiming that lilac was her paternal grandmother’s favourite colour and failing to see that the colour is the least of my worries and I’m more concerned that the townsfolk will think that I had simply draped the tablecloths over my child.

I ask her if she wouldn’t rather have a proper dress, like mine, that I could make her a beautiful dress in any colour she wants and she’d look as fine as any lady, to which the ungrateful brat replies that my dresses look like pastries.

Georgios tells Titian to get Katherine out of my sight before I start crying. He holds me and says she’s just a child and will like anything Titian tells her to like, and that when she goes to school and sees the other girls’ dresses she’ll know better, but I vow that I’ll never sew a dress for that child.

She comes back from Titian’s house after tea, and, looking very contrite, apologises for saying my dresses look like pastries. She’s manipulative, even at her young age, and I know I should keep her away from all that Day influence before it ruins her.

I tell her to go wash before dinner.

***

I fear it’s too late now. Maybe it has always been, and I’ve been fighting a lost battle all along, but seeing Katherine at the table, eating her dinner, her hair braided and twisted in that provocative Day style, I wonder how I have let it come this far.

I should start looking for a match for her, now that she’s had her blood it’s only a matter of time before she ruins her life forever, but I can’t bring myself to it. Part of me is terrified of what she’ll do, how she’ll behave if we pressure her into a marriage she doesn’t want. Katherine has no scruples and no sense of decency, she’ll disgrace the family beyond redemption and never lose a wink of sleep.

Another part of me still hopes that she’ll change. Now that she’s had her blood and her heart is ready to seek love, perhaps she’ll set her eyes on a good male, a decent son of an honest family, and she’ll mend her ways.

I’ll make an offering at the temple tomorrow, the best piece of cheese we have, that love will save my daughter. I look at her and dare to dream of her wearing a beautiful dress, having tea with her friends, having friends and a good husband. In my dream she says Thank you so much, mum, for not giving up.

In real life she asks if there’s something in my eye.

***

The Mother above looks out for all mothers down here, today I am sure of that.

Katherine has sat down at the table, buttered a slice of toast, and asked me if there was anything she needed to do to start the process of looking for a suitable match.

I can’t help holding her face and kissing her forehead, and I even sing as I bask in the triumph that I always knew, deep down, was sure to come. I waltz around the kitchen making food for a small feast as I bask in visions of a future that I know now is certain and unstoppable.

Surely now she’ll see that I’ve always loved her, that I’ve always had her best interest in mind. I need to make up for the lost time, teach her all she’ll need to know to hold herself confidently in any decent house. I want to forbid her those provocative Day dances, dresses, and whatever habit, Cauldron forbid, she picked up from Titian and that Hybernian male wife of his, but not yet, I don’t want to scare her away now that she’s finally trying to mend her ways.

They haven’t corrupted my daughter, despite all odds, I win, perhaps because there was something of mine in Katherine all along, something that has resisted all the depravation of her Day blood and that now has finally come to the surface, and everything will finally be set to rights.

***

Katherine never writes.

A part of me is surprised when I see her get out of the cart, dressed like a respectable female, well mannered, with her child clinging to her neck, and I’m somewhat ashamed of myself for having suspected she would have gone back to her old ways.

My precious son-by-grace, Kiril Elliot, is flawless in every way. When Georgios lights up the symbolic pyre for Titian and that aberration that lived with him, he holds Katherine close, so that she can hide her tears, and I can’t help but offering to hold the precious Alanis. She’s a shy child, eager to please, and I have to concede, privately in my mind, that Katherine has done a better job than I did, the girl has a good inclination and listens to my every word as I tell her how to hold herself and praise her good manners.

I can’t help feeling light in my heart, even in a moment so charged with pain. Katherine weeps as she stands before the pyre of the male that symbolized her ties to Day Court, but she stands like a good honest female of Spring nonetheless, a wife and mother beyond reproach.

Whatever she might think of me, I didn’t fail her completely. She’s happy now, well adjusted, respected.