I would recognize her as a fisherman's wife or the woman who sold sandals in the marketplace or the mother of an acquaintance.
Sometimes the laboring woman died, sometimes the baby, but if my mother was there, both usually lived and were well. Even one girl who came out with her skinny bottom first survived. I remember watching as my mother flicked the soles of the baby's narrow feet with her fingertip and vigorously rubbed the chest of the small, slippery thing until she wheezed and then wailed, turning pink in my mother's strong hands. The baby's mother laughed; my own mother and the other women laughed; even I laughed, although I did not know why.
That night, hours after the arrival of the Athenian ships, we walked home from a house that had not been so lucky, where both the mother and her two baby boys, each as small as a fish that I would eat for breakfast, had died. I couldn't put from my mind the sight of those tiny bodies laid out on the dirt floor or the sudden gush of blood that emptied the woman of her life even as she wept over her dead children. Her little son and daughter sat huddled in a corner—the hut was so small that there had been nowhere else for them—the boy stroking his small sister's hair in a vain attempt at comfort as she sucked her thumb. The farmer who was the woman's husband was too stunned to think to offer us the loan of his one donkey. My mother and I slipped out the door, away from the smell of goats and blood and birth, into a night scarcely darker than the windowless shack.
My mother was quiet as we walked, breathing the sweet-scented night air. I didn't try to talk; she was always curt after losing one she had tended, as though angry or disappointed. She knew that the matter was in Goddess's hands, not hers, but each time we saw a mother or a child die, I sensed that she felt she had fallen short of what was expected of her.
I trailed behind. The dust of the road was cool between my toes, and it felt good to straighten my cramped back and legs. My mother stopped and turned, waiting for me to catch up. She slid her hand through my arm and squeezed it, pressing me close to her side, and we continued, hip to hip, my stride nearly matching hers. I took comfort in her warmth.
"They were too small to live, you know." I was surprised to hear her mention the deaths and didn't answer. "Goddess must have changed Her mind about sending the babies into the world. But the mother..." She fell silent. It would not do to criticize Goddess, especially when we were walking under Her. I looked up at the cold white eye staring down at us.
"We don't know why She chose to take the woman," my mother said softly. "We can only do our best." She shook my arm gently. "And you are learning so well, my girl. When it comes my time, you will also do your best."
"Your ... time?"
My mother stopped and pulled her arm out from mine. One of her rare smiles spread across her face, lighting it like the moon coming out from behind a cloud.
"You don't know?" Her smile grew broader. "Look at me." She turned sideways, smoothing her gown. I felt my jaw drop, and her smile grew to a laugh as I stood goggling at her round belly. How had I not seen?
"Is it..." I whispered, and she stopped laughing and shook her head, looping my hair behind my ears.
"Have I taught you nothing? It's been almost a year since the Planting Festival, and the moon will be full three more times before this one comes into the world. No, this baby is not the god's. I was wrong about Ision." The regret in her voice was plain. I, too, missed Ision, the young blacksmith whom my mother had declared the incarnation of the sky god Velchanos at the last Planting Festival. Ision had appeared to enjoy the days that he spent as her consort. He hadn't cried or fought at the end, when his time came to fertilize the fields.
But if this child was conceived months after the Planting Festival, then Ision was not its father, and so he had not truly been the god. This meant that he had died for nothing. I