Birthmarked Read Online Free PDF

“A calendar?” He pursed his lips together. “Your mother kept lots of lists. There’s nothing to that.”
    “That’s what Sergeant Grey wanted to know.”
    Theo crossed his arms over his chest, his expression pulled. “Well, for that, they could pretty much arrest every person in town.”
    Gaia glanced behind him to her fathers sewing corner, with the boxes and baskets of material and needles and patterns. Her fathers yellow pincushion had rolled under one of the treads of the sewing machine.
    “You don ‘t think I need to be worried?” she said, fetching the pincushion.
    “I wouldn’t put it that way, darling. I’d say worrying won’t do you any good.”
    Gaia glanced up to see him smiling at her, his eyes tender.
    “Come over with me now,” he coaxed. “Amy will never let me hear the end of it if I leave you here, and Emily will about scratch my head off.”
    She took a deep breath and shook her head. “I want to be here.”
    “You’ll come to dinner, though, won’t you? Later tomorrow? We might hear something by then.”
    Gaia rolled the pincushion slowly in her fingers, nodding. She was deeply weary now, and with his common sense to re assure her, she expected she would be able to sleep. “Thanks for coming,” she said. “I feel much better now. It will work out all right, won’t it?”
    Theo stood and gave her another pat on the arm. “They’ll be back before you know it,” he said. “Just get busy doing what you’d normally do. Keep feeding the chickens.”
    She laughed. “I delivered my first baby tonight.”
    “Did you! Well! That’s what we’ll celebrate when you come to dinner. Imagine our little Gaia a full-fledged midwife! Amy will be beside herself. I’ll go around and get Emily and Kyle to come, too.”
    Gaia could see he was happy to have any excuse to get his family together. She smiled, holding the door for him. When he’d gone, she was finally able to slip into her parents 1 bed, pull up the blankets, breathe in the scent of them, and sleep.
    Under a bright noon sun, she carried the third May baby toward the gate of the Enclave, and this time Gaia felt no pride, no residual thrill from the birthing she had just
    Mid-wived. She felt only exhaustion, and the perpetual dread that gnawed at the back of her mind. Her shoes scuffed over the dry brown dust of the road, each step taking her steadily upward toward the wall. She unrolled the long sleeves of her brown dress, grateful the light-weight material wasn’t too hot. She twitched her hat forward to keep the sun from her face and noticed that pinpricks of light fell through the weave of the brim onto the baby in her arms.
    In the three weeks since her parents had been gone, Gaia had had no news about any of them-- Agnes, Old Meg, or her parents-- and she was beginning to fear she never would. Her initial terror had grown so enormous and her loneliness so acute that shed been afraid she would go mad with the simple, desperate need to have her parents back. She’d tried to remember what Theo Rupp continued to tell her, that everything would work out. Only her work had kept her going, and by day she’d learned to school her helpless panic into a needling, exhausting numbness. Her nights were riddled with nightmares.
    In the quadrangle, before the Tvaltar, several families had set up market stalls, and the people of Wharfton were engaged in lively trade. A few desultory shoppers from the Enclave had wandered down to inspect the wares, and for them, Gaia knew, the prices would go up. Gaia waved to Amy Rupp, who had a blanket spread with bowls Gaia had watched her throw on her potters wheel earlier that month. Old man Perry sat under a makeshift umbrella of shade with a barrel of water on wheels and a string of cups. A whiff of the vinegar he used to rinse the cups between customers was enough to make her wish for a drink, but she had to keep moving. Another man sold woven mats and hats. Still others sold eggs, ground cinnamon,