Ander - Part 2: Subchapter 26
26
"Keeping my pregnancy a secret was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do," Sarah said. She wasn't staring off at nothing anymore, but she still wouldn't look at Ander for longer than a few seconds at a stretch. And the way she kept squeezing her knees... Was she ashamed?
"The morning sickness came and went. Sometimes, when it got really bad, I would sneak out in the middle of the night to purge myself in the woods, and I would skip breakfast the next morning to keep my stomach empty. It didn't always work, though. I think my mother must have suspected something was going on, but my father never had even the faintest inkling. I kept on doing my chores, same as always. Digging the fields, fetching the water, sowing, cooking, cleaning, all the while praying I wouldn't suddenly empty myself all over the floor. Lucky for me, it only lasted two months, thank the gods."
"You can't have kept it a secret for very long," Ander said. "Sooner or later, you would have started to show."
"I managed to keep it secret far longer than I would have anticipated. Over five months. I was quite good with a needle and thread. Still am, as a mater of fact. It was easy for me to let out my dresses once they started getting too tight around the middle. I was subtle. But, as time went on, I found myself sitting by my window, toiling away by moonlight with a needle in my hand almost every night. I knew something had to be done. I would have to tell my parents or..."
There, her voice trailed off and she turned her head away completely, her face contorted as if she had just bitten into an overripe lemon.
"Kai?"
"I have been honest with you up until now, Ander," she said, "and I don't want to break that now. All the while I've been telling this story I have wondered in the back of my mind if I should just skip over this part, but I can't. That moment has been eating away at my heart for so long..."
"It's all right, Kai," Ander said, gently placing his hand on her shoulder. He could feel her shaking. "Whatever it is, I'll understand. I promise."
She reached up and placed her hand over his. She still couldn't look at him, but at least her shaking had stopped.
"It happened deep in the fifth month of my pregnancy. I was -
*
- standing at the top of the stairs, looking down, each step bowed in the middle by generations of Fox feet running up and down for years and years.
There were twenty steps, she knew that. Ironic, actually. One for every year of her life.
She gripped the railing, letting her hand slide along the smooth, oak surface. She's climbed up and down these stairs every day of her life without giving them a second thought. Twenty steps. In the past, that's all they were. But now they seemed to go on and on forever, an infinite distance. Down and down...
She gripped the railing so hard it felt like her knuckles were about to pop right out of her skin, just to keep herself from shaking.
It didn't work.
Her entire body trembled with the thought of what she intended to do, it was difficult to breathe, and her heart was beating so hard she feared it might stop at any second.
She didn't want to die. She didn't even want to risk it, but what choice did she have? This thing growing inside of her... she had to put a stop to it. She had to.
She traced the curvature of her belly for what felt like the thousandth time, unaware of the tears already forming in her eyes.
"I'm so sorry, baby," she whispered. "Something has to be done."
Twenty steps. At the bottom lay the solution to all her problems. All she had to do was take the first step, and let the gods take care of the rest.
Something has to be done.
"I'm so, so sorry..."
Sarah closed her eyes... she let go of the railing... and with her head raised high and her arms splayed out to either side in total submission, she slowly eased her foot out over empty air...
That's when it happened, hard and sudden. Something she's never felt before.
Sarah's eyes flew open and what she saw were twenty steps rushing up to meet her. She had made her decision and now she would have to pay the price.
Too terrified to even scream, she made a mad grab for the railing, her fingers locking around the wooden shaft even tighter than the panic gripping her heart.
For a second, everything was in doubt. She could feel the weight of her body still shifting forward, could feel herself tipping over...
And then she stopped.
Those stairs... so much like the blunt fangs of a monster too old to chase after its prey, staring up at her as she leaned over its maw with nothing but a desperate one-handed grip to keep her from falling to her doom. She could feel her feet slide along the smooth surface of the landing, making the angle even more severe, pulling on her shoulder until it felt like it was about to pop right out of its socket.
Horrified, she pushed herself off the railing as if it had turned into a venomous snake and backpedalled into the wall. Clutching at her frantic heart, she slid down to the floor, gasping for breath.
That feeling... No, it couldn't be. It must have been her imagination.
Sarah looked down at her belly, rapidly rising and falling with each desperate intake of breath. Sitting down like this, it looked even bigger than before.
She made to cup it in her hands again, but hesitated, suddenly afraid. What if she really did feel what she thought she felt? What if it wasn't just her imagination, what then?
And an even scarier question than that: What if she didn't want it to be just her imagination?
Perhaps the question you should be asking yourself is, would that make a difference?
Sarah didn't know. She was scared and tired and her throat was sore and she felt awful and sick and she was scared and she didn't know!
Feeling more frightened than the moment she decided to step off the stairs, she placed her hand over her belly, closed her eyes, and leaned her head back against the wall.
She waited. She waited for a minute, then two, then three.
Nothing happened.
Maybe it really was just her imagination after a-
There! It happened again! It was soft, but it was there and it was real...
She could feel her baby moving...
Her baby...
She never even thought of it as a living thing until today, the day she decided to end it. It's always been 'the mistake' in her mind, but now... she could feel it moving inside her... softly pushing against her skin... a tiny life...
Sarah bit down on her lower lip and she cried. She cried out of guilt for nearly killing her own child before he even had a chance to live. She cried out of happiness for having a tiny, impossible miracle growing inside of her, a miracle that perhaps saved both their lives this day.
She didn't know whether it was the gods themselves that intervened, or just an unbelievable coincidence.
Perhaps it didn't matter.
The child she carried in her womb chose the darkest moment of her life to say hello, almost as if he had known. He was like a candle in the night.
"Hello, baby..." Sarah whispered, struggling against her sniffles. "It's me, your mommy..."
She heard the door downstairs open, and then the voice of her mother calling up to her. "Sarah dear, are you up yet? Your father's in one of his moods again and I don't think -"
"Where is that girl?" Father's voice came floating up to her ears, grating and angry. "She was supposed to be out in the fields almost ten minutes ago! Sarah! You got weeding to do, girl!"
Sarah made no move to get up, or even answer their calls. She's been running away from herself for so long. Now, in acceptance, she can finally rest. Feeling completely calm for the first time since she so fearfully examined herself in her room all those months ago, she listened as her parents came rushing up the stairs she would have used to end the life of her unborn child, calling her name.
"Sarah! What on earth happened? Are you hurt?"
She looked up and saw her mother kneeling before her, her face wracked with worry. Father stood right behind her, and even he looked concerned.
"Mother? Father?" Sarah said. "There's something I have to tell you..."
In the olden days, when girls wanted to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy, they would sometimes go horse riding, but throwing yourself off a flight of stairs would get the job done, too, and is much more dramatic, in my opinion.
Edit: I added a short paragraph right after Sarah grabbed the railing just to make it perfectly clear that she managed to stop herself from falling at the last second (there were some people on other sites who thought she really did fall). Guess I sacrificed too much detail the first time in order to make the pace as fast as possible. Hopefully that's fixed now.
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