Page 21

With a chill creeping down her spine that shouldn’t exist in the early autumn air, Lindi gripping the blanket of the bedding with tight fists.

Heat radiated through her entire head as she clenched her eyes tight, and she tried her hardest not to bite through her bottom lip against the pain.

The bed she knelt down next to, while heaving her torso across it, was her anchor.

Her body flickered between physical and ghostly, her mind fighting to stay present while her body wanted an out. Hot strikes shot down her abdomen and blasted into her thighs during every contraction that assaulted her.

Then, once the invisible pressure at the top of her stomach stopped twitching and clamping, she was given a moment of reprieve.

As she often did, with tears dotting her eyelashes, she looked around the room. It looked emptier than when she’d been here six years ago, and yet nothing about it had changed.

Well, that wasn’t totally true, as the bedding was different, and the painting on the wall hadn’t belonged to her parents, but it was still set up the same.

Sure, it was dusty from disuse, but their bed with its oak frame remained the same.

The white sheets were still unfolded and twisted, as if the last occupants had disappeared before they were to remake them, their pillows dented as if they’d only just laid upon them.

Against the wall was her parents’ chest, yet it was filled with an abundance of clothes that didn’t belong to them.

Other than a box, which had acted as a table for a candleholder for her parents, there was little else that had changed other than some discarded bowls and rags.

It was obvious someone had once occupied her family home, perhaps even multiple someones, but it was now vacant. How long, she didn’t know, but the evidence of left-behind medicine and bowls hinted at a story of sickness.

The occupant must have died, and the village had yet to place anyone new in it.

It was her home, but she felt so far removed from it.

Her house had barely been touched, as if the village had maintained it in the hope that someone would live there. It had been newly built by her grandfather and her father when he’d been a teenager, so destroying it likely would have been deemed wasteful.

Tithes were due, and she was sure the lord who oversaw this land wanted his payment of crops.

It appeared as though the village had banded together and absorbed the farm. The fields had been worked, fresh crops were sprouting, and even the fences were in good repair.

The only thing beginning to deteriorate was this house.

Part of the thatched roofing was thin in some areas, allowing raindrops to slip through. The walls were a little warped, as parts of the timber needed replacing. The hard dirt ground inside was only uneven in places water had settled for too long.

These looked like fairly new problems, as if the last occupant had not been gone long.

At the same time, it revealed that none of the villagers cared to come close enough to maintain it.

Even grass grew around the edges outside the house, and she’d seen a few green blades breech inside where the planks of timber and ground met.

When she first came here, she’d been surprised to find her family home empty, and that it hadn’t been picked apart for building materials.

She would have loved to know why, but all she’d thought was that she’d been thankful she could return to it. Could hide in it. Could seek shelter when she needed it the most.

Lindi knew she couldn’t do what she was about to... in a town, and she refused the dare she’d placed upon herself to do it in the forest.

Instead, her skin appreciated the comfort of a bed, even if her room had been upturned into some kind of masculine writing space and storage area – most of which was just more clothing, bedding, and some materials she figured had been collected to repair the house.

Her mind appreciated the security and isolation, while her heart constantly bled at the memories that reared their ugly heads harder and louder than before she’d come here.

And her knees... they appreciated the scrape from rubbing against the cold, hard flooring, which was now cushioned with a blanket. Somewhere soft for her and the child.

Lindi clenched her teeth and quietened her yell as much as she could when she felt another downward push against her abdomen. Her eyes slitted with determination at the bare wooden wall as she bore down.

The fact that she was doing this here brought on a well of sadness that pooled in her gut, but she had nowhere else to go.

I don’t know what is going to come out of me. She wanted to pretend that her child would be normal, but nothing about her pregnancy had been normal. It’s only been seven weeks!

This was obviously not a human child, and she wasn’t going to go to a major town and give birth. It just posed too much of a risk, and she didn’t want to frighten the midwives or become a spectacle.

Or be deemed a witch, endangering both her and her child.

And doing it in the forest was even more idiotic.

She also didn’t want to do this in a tavern in case something bizarre like a fireball shot from her vagina, as if the gates of hell could open up between her thighs. Especially since it currently felt like her loins were on fire!

Lindi had been given no time to adjust to being pregnant. She told Weldir that she’d talk to him in nine months when it was supposed to be born, and instead her stomach just grew and grew.

The only way to halt it was to turn intangible, as they’d discovered when she’d stayed in his realm too long.

They’d both been waiting to see if her body would take his essence, or sperm, or whatever he wanted to call it.

Nothing had happened while she was in her Phantom form, and it was only when she’d turned physical that the process began – as if she needed a living form.

Her stomach, which had been unusually quiet the past year, came back with a vengeance.

She needed food, and she’d been forced to forage in the growing forest right next to the Veil just to appease the worst of her hunger.

That was after she’d vomited so much darkness, so much black liquid, that she thought she needed an exorcism.

And then her stomach swelled faster than her mind could comprehend.

Every time she turned intangible for a few days, there were no changes, and she knew she’d halted the process once more.

She hadn’t grown to full term, and instead she’d started experiencing contractions when her stomach was only half the size.

In the back of her mind, she knew now was the right time. It wasn’t coming too soon for it, just too quick for her human mind to wrap around. She’d come to her parent’s farm, her childhood home, because of this feeling of impending doom.

Despite summer just ending, the house was cold at night. But she didn’t want to light the fireplace and risk alerting anyone to her presence. No, Lindi wanted to come and go without ever being noticed.

Even though the property was far from the eyes of another house and the village itself, the smoke would eventually attract attention, and she couldn’t have that. When men arrived to sow the crops, Lindi hid in the shelter of her home and didn’t make a peep.

They’d ask questions as to why she hadn’t aged. They’d want to send a midwife to aid her, especially as she was alone. They’d be angered that she had no husband, but how was she to explain that she did, he just didn’t technically reside in this plane of existence?

She didn’t want to say he’d died and receive pity, or that she’d had sex out of wedlock, as that would be frowned upon.

She didn’t know what to do, but just thought it best she remained undiscovered if she could.

But I don’t want to be alone, she thought with a sniffle. Terrified for herself, for the child, she gripped her bedding tighter. At least both it and her should be immortal, considering Weldir had made her deathless and was their parent. I’m scared.

She was doing a frightful, traumatising thing all on her own, and the weight of that was crushing. More than anything in the world, she wanted to feel the presence of her mother’s warm hand wrapped around her own to help her through this. It was how she’d always imagined it.

Although she’d been resisting it, clutching the foreign bedding tighter and tighter until tension ached in her knuckles and made the skin across them taut, causing her fingertips to hurt, Lindi gave in.

“Weldir,” she pleaded so quietly, part of her hoping she wasn’t heard and wishing her eyes didn’t well up even more. She hated having to rely on him right now, but she literally had no one else in the world she could turn to.

When he didn’t answer her, a sob broke before it was ripped away from her when a contraction felt like it was trying to snap her spine in half.

“Weldir,” she cried a little louder. Pressing her sweaty temple against the hay-stuffed mattress, she whispered, “Please.”

“Yes, Lindiwe?” he finally answered in his deep tone, soft and echoing like usual on Earth.

Her body shuddered against the way his sensual voice uttered her name before she released an exhale of reassurance that settled her insides. The tension in her thighs released, and her backside lowered to press against her heels.

“I see. So, it has begun?”

That was all he had to say? While she was kneeling there, trying to bring whatever he made into the world? If he was physical, she may have thrown something at him.

She’d already learned that Weldir just seemed incapable of feeling. Or, perhaps, he just lacked empathy for a lesser being like a human. Who fucking knew?

“Please do something, anything,” she pleaded.

She’d take a pat on the back right now, especially if it made soothing motions against her spine in the process. Even just a wet rag to her forehead would be like a balm to her spirit.

“I can only witness.”