Ariah (43 page)

CHAPTER 28

Sorcha delivered Nisa’s baby about a week after I bailed him out of the 23rd. She went into labor in the prototype workshop, and her fellow engineers bargained with the Qin shop manager for permission to escort her home. Sorcha was there. He delivered the baby while Dirva and I worked, and he did it with a broken hand and a busted knee and completely by himself. The experience bonded them together in a way I could not and likely never will be able to understand. What I mean to say is that the morning I left, Nisa and Sorcha were friends, but when I came home that night, they were family. Neither ever used the word to describe their relationship, but it was obvious. They sniped at each other and laughed together; they were free with physical affection. They knew each other well, and there was an indefinable trust between them.

Dirva came home to a blindingly new life. He knew what he was coming home to—Nisa convinced one of the other engineers to leave him a message at the Office of Foreign Relations—but knowing it and living it are two different things. Sorcha tells me he wept when he came through the door and saw her with the baby. He said it was silent and dignified, but that Dirva wept. No one had thought to leave me a message, though, and I came home to a complete surprise. Sorcha was in the kitchen drinking tea. I put my papers on the shelf next to the door, turned to ask him how his hand was, and heard the baby’s cry. Sorcha smiled. I just stared at him, transfixed, my mind a perfect blank. “It’s a boy,” Sorcha said. “He’s a beauty, he’s perfect and healthy. Nisa delivered like she’d already had a dozen. She’s tired, but she’s fine. Didn’t even tear.”

“
Dirva?”

“
Just got in.”

I laughed. Sorcha laughed with me. He stared into his cup and said very quietly that maybe he’d give up the violin and take up midwifery for good. “Since we’re sticking around, you know.”

I stared at him. It was another shock. “You want to stay?”

He smiled softly, very softly. “Yeah. If you’ll have me, if they’ll have me. A man doesn’t just bring a child into the world and then skip off, not if there’s space for him.”

Some hours later, well into the night, Dirva leaned through the bedroom door and beckoned us over. Sorcha and I had stayed awake playing djah and drinking tea; the kitchen table was littered with bent cards and half-empty teacups. Dirva was happier than I’d ever seen him. He carried in him a deep well of emotion, a sense of rightness. Nisa sat propped up with pillows. She looked exhausted, but she stared into the face of her child with a singular enveloping attention. The baby was a wrinkled, tiny thing, all balled fists and squinched features, but he was a treasure. He slept curled against her breast, his face tucked into the hollow of her shoulder.

“
It’s time to name him,” Dirva said. Nisa nodded and handed him the baby. The child fit neatly into the crook of his arm. The baby stirred, and Dirva cooed it back to sleep. Sorcha stood against the wall just behind Dirva, peeking over his shoulder at the baby. All three of them had the same dark-gray skin. When the baby blinked, just before he settled back to sleep, I could see all three of them had the same green eyes. Everyone in the room had green eyes but Nisa. “His name is Nuri,” Dirva said. Sorcha’s eyes widened; his attention shifted from the infant in Dirva’s arms to Dirva himself. Dirva did not notice. “Nuri Nisa’Dirva.”

“
It’s a good name,” Nisa said.

“
It is,” Dirva said. He stroked the baby’s face. He looked over at me and asked me to come closer. “Meet the little one,” he said.

I took the child in my arms. My heart scrabbled against my ribs; my arms felt awkward and ungainly. I was terrified I’d drop him. “Hello,” I whispered.

“
A falo’s life is twined with the child,” Dirva said. He spoke City Lothic, his mother tongue.

“
So it is,” I said.

“
A falo treats a child as his own blood: raises him, protects him, comforts and teaches him.”

“
So he does.”

“
Through the child, the falo is bound to the family. You and I and Nisa share a beating heart.”

“
So we do. I will be his falo,” I said.

Dirva ran a hand over the back of my head. He leaned his forehead against mine. “So you shall,” he said.

* * *

I was Nuri’s falo. It made no sense to Nisa, but she accepted that in my mind and in Dirva’s mind I was part of their family. I did my best to live up to the role, but I’d never been around a newborn before. Mostly I helped keep the house neat and orderly. I did all the laundry, all the dishes. I’d never cooked much, but I cooked most of the meals. With Nuri I was at a loss. I was fascinated by him, but I didn’t understand him, so mostly I tried to keep myself out of the way. I was part of the family, and technically I was a parent, but the truth of it was I did more caring for Dirva and Nisa than I did the baby.

Sorcha had no clear role. There was no word for what he was in either language. He stayed home with Nisa and Nuri. The 23rd scared him off from the streets for a while, and Nuri was there, and Nisa needed help while she regained her bearings after the birth. She was torn between a deep peace when she was with Nuri and he wasn’t crying, and a whirlwind of anxiety when he slept or fretted. When would she work again? Where would she work again? What did he need? How would she know? Sorcha knew some of the answers to some of her questions and was patient enough to steer her back to Nuri when the questions he couldn’t answer loomed too large. They were together, the three of them, all day. Sorcha changed diapers, sang to him, cuddled him when Nisa needed a moment to herself. Sometimes the fatigue got the better of them both and they all slept together in the middle of the afternoon on Dirva’s bed, Sorcha on one side, Nisa on the other, and the baby between them. Sorcha didn’t have a name or a role, but he was part of the family, too, and as much a parent to that child as I was.

It surprised no one but me when Sorcha began to lactate, but it surprised all of us when Nisa let him nurse the baby. I knew in a clinical and removed way that this happened—that when a father is with the child as often as the mother, among elves at least, that father’s milk begins to flow. I knew it in the way that I knew the mechanics of birth, but had never seen it and had no feel for it. Sorcha spent hours with that tiny child nestled inside his shirt, keeping Nuri warm with his own flesh. Sorcha was so deeply connected to that child that in the night when Nuri cried it was first Nisa who woke, then Sorcha, then Dirva. Often Sorcha was already down the stairs when Dirva woke.

I was the first to notice when his breasts began to swell. He was so tired, so distracted by the baby that he hadn’t noticed until I pointed it out. We were curled up in bed, lying together like nested spoons, him on the inside and me on the outside. I had my arm around him. He reached up to scratch his ear, and in the process my hand brushed over his chest. What had been hard, smooth, and flat in all the years I’d know him was now slightly rounded, the skin taut, his nipple larger than before. The glands had swollen and were beginning to fill with milk. I cupped his right breast, which fit perfectly in the palm of my hand. “Sorcha, are you…is this…Sorcha, I think you have breasts.”

“
What?” He had only half-heard me. He was drowsy and irritable from lack of sleep.

I sat up and turned on a light. His shirts were loose, but naked they were unmistakable. “Sorcha, I think you’re lactating.”

“
Oh, no, I’m not. Turn out the damn light.”

“
I think you are.”

He patted his chest. His hand froze there, and his eyes popped open. He sat up and stared down at his chest and laughed. “Holy hell.” He squeezed one, gently teased at the nipple. “Well, it’s not come in yet. Would you look at that.” He cupped both and inspected them for some time. He grinned at me. “Not bad, actually. I’d’ve been quite the girl. Guess I’m sort of a girl now, half a girl.”

It fascinated me, how unperturbed he was by this. When I lactated myself much later, it was a profoundly disorienting experience. I was never able to let my children nurse; the strangeness was too much. The shift in my body unnerved me, made me feel off-kilter and unbalanced. But Sorcha was unfazed by it.

It seems inevitable now that he would nurse Nuri, but the day I came home and found the child at his breast felt like a broken taboo. Which taboo was broken, how he had fractured it, I couldn’t name. It is rare, given the demands of work assignments, for a Semadran father to nurse, but it is not unheard of. It is common in the boroughs for new mothers hiding from their work assignments to band together for comfort and convenience; when one woman’s milk fails, another steps in to help. Father’s milk is accepted, wetnursing is encouraged, but a male wetnurse gave me pause.

I found Sorcha reclined on the couch, naked to the waist. He had Nuri propped on a cushion, and the child had nestled into the crook of his arm. Nuri nursed at his left breast, his tiny hands gently kneading Sorcha’s flesh. Sorcha’s right breast was bare. He stroked Nuri’s cheek and hummed him a lullaby. Sorcha smiled at me when I came through the door and held a finger to his lips. He mimed that Nuri was nearly asleep with his free hand.

“
You’re nursing him?” I whispered. Sorcha nodded. “Does Nisa know?”

He frowned at me. “Hell, Ariah, of course she knows.”

Dirva came home just then. He opened the door and called for Nisa. I shushed him. He looked at me and saw Sorcha and his son just behind me. He opened his mouth to say something, narrowed his eyes, and closed it again. “Hmm,” he said. He blinked. Sorcha watched him like a hawk, waiting for judgment or scorn or something else entirely. “Hmm,” Dirva said again. He placed his citizenship papers on the shelf by the door and went into his bedroom where his wife lay sleeping.

“
Do you think he’ll ask me to stop?” Sorcha asked quietly.

I came close and sat on the floor next to the couch. I watched Nuri’s sleepy, pinched face, watched his tiny fingers curl and uncurl against Sorcha’s breast. “I don’t know. If Nisa was fine with it, I can’t see why he’d want to stop it.”

“
He’s not very good yet, not very able, this little one,” Sorcha said. “He bites. It hurts when he bites. Nisa’s tits are battered from him.” My eyebrows shot up. Sorcha laughed. “She had me look at them since I know a bit about nursing.”

“
I believe you.” I ran a finger along the sole of Nuri’s foot. “What does it feel like?”

“
It feels...well, like I said, the little bugger bites. Hard. So, it’s not pleasant. Not yet. Once he gets the hang of it, and me and Nisa get the hang of it, it might yet be pleasant. But right now it’s not. But it feels...it feels good. Feels warm and soft and relaxed like I’ve had a fine bottle of wine all to myself.” He smiled, first at Nuri, then at me. “I like it.”

CHAPTER 29

As Nuri nursed, Sorcha’s breasts grew. The smell of Sorcha changed: no longer herb and resin, now milk and musk. As the weeks stretched on and turned to months, Sorcha’s features softened. The hard line of his jaw grew rounder. His hair thickened, grew shiny, just like Nisa’s. His lips became fuller. He was still himself, his voice was still that same sing-song baritone it had always been, but he nursed long enough that his body hovered in some murky area between man and woman.

He was frank with the changes. The metamorphosis of his body did not drive him to modesty. Nisa nursed in the bedroom, alone or sometimes with Sorcha there for company or commiseration, and even in her privacy she nursed covered to the chin with a shawl. Sorcha nursed anywhere and always uncovered. His nipples grew chapped and tender some days, and he had no qualms about wandering around the house shirtless. Dirva seemed to hardly notice. He had probably seen a male wetnurse. He’d probably seen his own father nurse Sorcha. But I noticed. At first I thought Sorcha drew my attention because of his utter lack of decorum. That is what I told myself, anyway. But that wasn’t it. I woke in the morning with my hand around his breast, drawn to it in my sleep. I woke hard, which sometimes Sorcha joked about and sometimes Sorcha ignored. Weeks passed, and I lingered closer to Sorcha than before, touched him more. In idle moments I studied his mouth, his eyes, his hands, and the urgent want I had not felt since Shayat taunted me. I told myself it was coincidence, that I had grown used to having a partner and was readjusting to life without one.

There was a strange dance between Sorcha and myself in those months when I half-knew my own desires. He’d catch me looking, and he’d grin that same grin he’d worn the day I’d met him. At night he drew close, and sometimes he took my hand and placed it on his breast himself, an act of permission, a door nudged slightly ajar. He left the house infrequently, only ever with me or with Nisa to go to the market, and sometimes when we did the shopping together, he’d make jokes about how long he’d “gone without.”