Chapter One Hundred and Forty-One

Rideten, Four and a Half Years Before

** Trigger warning – this chapter features pregnancy loss. **

In the quiet, Aislen could hear the small settling movement of the house, the draft where old joints met imperfectly, the creak of boards, and the groan of joists. There was the buzz of the refrigerator in the kitchen, and the drip of water into the sink, the tick of a small insect body hitting glass as a blowfly, trapped indoors, sought freedom.

She breathed in and released the breath slowly, trying to settle into the peaceful oblivion beyond the small sounds and movements. Daisy sat opposite to her, and Aislen imagined that she could feel the air warmed by body heat, and the shift in the air from Daisy’s breath.

She focused on the bubble around herself and around Daisy, holding both in place as she stretched her hands out to meet Daisy’s. The bubbles disappeared – they didn’t burst, but rather evaporated as if they had never been there in the first place – the moment their fingertips touched.

“Fuck,” she complained opening her eyes. “Every single goddamn time.”

Daisy smiled with indulgent patience. “I thought that was an improvement. You were an empty emotional space to me, right up until we touched.”

Daisy’s empathic ability had similarities to Aislen’s telepathy, but also many differences. When Aislen had tried to describe the bubbles to her, Daisy had no idea what Aislen meant, even when Aislen had drawn a picture to aid her to imagine them. However, they both benefited from meditation, and Daisy’s ability did assist Aislen in determining when she had improved.

“The touch still overrides the bubbles,” Aislen was not content. She shifted uncomfortably, putting a hand to her lower back. She had been sitting still too long, she thought, and must have slumped during the meditation as her lower back was achy.

“You are improving,” Daisy said encouragingly. “Shall we practice the projection?”

“Yes,” Aislen wriggled from side-to-side, stretching the muscles of her back to ease the achiness before settling back into position.

“Uncomfortable?” Daisy asked with sympathy.

“Sore back.”

“The weight distribution of your body is changing, blood is increasing, and your ligaments are stretching, along with other internal differences that you cannot detect from the outside,” Daisy told her. “Some discomfort is normal. We will keep this brief if sitting too long is uncomfortable, however. You may just need to stretch your legs.”

“Yeah, probably,” Aislen didn’t want to talk about her pregnancy. She wrote two words onto the notepad beside her. “You ready?”

“Yes,” Daisy closed her eyes.

Aislen tried to push outwards with her mind. (Full moon.)

“Full moon?” Daisy said uncertainly.

“Yes,” Aislen smiled, pleased with her success. “Let’s try another.” She wrote the words down, and then tried to push them at Daisy. (River house.) Fuck, she missed the Triquetra still. She had dreamed of them the night before, as she did most nights, except this dream was more like she was watching them, and they did not know she was there. They had been for a swim, and lay out on the river house balcony, on their towels, naked.

“Heath, Rhett, and Cameron?” Daisy asked.

Fuck, Aislen suppressed the grimace. She’d accidentally projected the wrong words, the wrong thoughts. She crossed the words “river house” off the notepad but smiled at Daisy. “Yes. People I used to know.”

She rose to her feet and stretched, the discomfort too much to try for a third round. It was the back pain that had distracted her, she told herself. She didn’t have much of a belly, barely an outward curve, and it was easily hidden beneath her clothing, but maybe Daisy was right, and it was enough to cause the cramping ache.

“Have you felt movement yet?” Daisy asked with a smile.

Aislen shook her head. The OBGYN had asked the same thing at their last appointment. “No. The doctor said it might just be too early, and being a first pregnancy, I might not notice it as soon, or mistake it for gas.”

They walked together towards the front door. Stella and another witch were in the front garden wearing wide-brimmed straw sunhats and gathering produce into a basket. They looked up with a smile as Daisy and Aislen stepped outside onto the porch.

“Any luck with finding the right family?” Daisy was gentle with the enquiry. “The people who came by earlier today seemed lovely.”

“Yeah, they were really nice,” Aislen agreed. And their thoughts had been nice too. They were so hopeful, so eager that it was almost painfully intense for them, their hunger for a family was so great, and their need to give love to a child… Their minds had imagined children playing in the garden, rooms messy with toys, sleepless nights cradling a fretful baby, holidays at their beach-house, and watching a child’s first experience of the ocean that they loved so much… By the time they had left, Aislen not only wanted to give them her baby, she wanted to be their child.

“I actually think they might be the ones, you know?” She added vulnerably. “Their thoughts were really good, and, although they’re not as rich as the other couple, they’re able to afford nice things, and they could give her a good life, I think…”

“There are advantages to our unusual gifts,” Daisy agreed. “I got a good feeling about them when I met them, their emotional aura was pure and so joyful, it warmed my heart.”

“Thanks for letting me know that,” Aislen nodded. “Yeah, I’m really thinking they are the ones. I’ll have them meet me here a couple more times to make sure, but they’re the best ones, by far.”

“I’m so happy for you, Aislen,” Daisy was pleased.

“Thanks. I’d better go,” she added. Standing hadn’t eased her back ache and she wanted to return to her room and lie down. “I’ll see you next week.”

“Blessed be.”

Aislen waved to Stella as she passed her on her way to her car. She winced as she sat down. If she didn’t know better, she thought as she drove towards the School of Art, she would think that she was on the cusp of a very bad period.

She was relieved to reach the cottage and to retreat to bed, but laid restless. The back pain was giving her an edge of nausea, and it felt as if her heartbeat was too hard in her chest, its pulse echoed in her back. The combination made her teary and headachy.

She sat up, swinging her legs out of the bed so she was sitting on the edge and called the OBGYN surgery on her phone.

“Hello?” She said, when the receptionist finished her cheerful introduction, and burst into tears. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” the receptionist assured her. “It happens all the time. Hormones. How can we help you?”

“I’m not well, something is… wrong,” Aislen put a name to the fear that had been gradually building within her. “I’ve not felt right all day, and then got a backache. It feels like a period cramp. I feel sick.”

“Okay, let’s start with your name and address, and I’ll look you up on the system, but it sounds like your best bet would be to go to the local hospital and have the maternity ward put a monitor on you, just to make sure everything is okay with the baby,” the receptionist said, with warm reassurance.

“Aislen Carter, the gardener’s cottage at Rideten School of Art,” Aislen managed. She felt a sudden rush of wetness and looked down in alarm as it splattered over the edge of the mattress, down her calves and darkened the floorboards. “Oh, god,” she whispered. “I think I just wet myself.”

“Aislen,” the receptionist said very calmly. “It’s very possible that your waters just broke. Our records show that you are just over five months along. I am going to put you on hold and call you an ambulance, okay?”

“Okay,” Aislen heard the soothing panpipe hold music start and began to cry. There was a sharp pain and she cried out, almost dropping the phone. “Oh, fuck!” she screamed. She heard footsteps on the stairs and Helena appeared, her expression alarmed.

“Aislen! What is… Oh god, you’re bleeding, like… really bleeding,” Helena exclaimed and disappeared, running along the hall.

Aislen shrieked and arched under a wave of pain. “Fuck!” She could vaguely hear the receptionist’s voice in the distance, but she had dropped the phone and clutched at her stomach, slipping off the edge of the bed and crouching on to the floor, which was now splattered dark with liquid and red with blood.

Helena returned. “I have towels… Oh… Oh…” She whimpered her hands pressed to her mouth. “Is that…?”

Aislen screamed.