The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth Read Online Free PDF Page A

If the wretched baby could do it, why couldn’t she?
    Turning her back and wiping her eyes with her fingers, she scanned the page. ‘Um. With the worsted, tie off the cord – is that the right bit?’
    From behind her came a murmur of approval, almost inaudible beneath the baby’s cries.
    ‘. . . t-tie off the cord about two inches from the navel ,’ Madeleine read. ‘ Then tie it off two inches below that and cut, using the scissors. ’ She frowned. ‘ The infant is thus separated from the mother, and lives its own life. ’
    Through the shrill rhythmic cries she heard the rustle of the nightgown and the soft flump of her mother subsiding onto the pillows. ‘You can turn round now,’ she said.
    Madeleine didn’t want to turn round. She wished the baby would go away. Or at least be quiet. ‘ Wrap the infant in warm flannel ,’ she read aloud.
    An exhausted sigh from the bed. ‘Sorry, Maddy. I think you’ll have to do the rest.’
    Madeleine stole a fearful glance at the bloodied nightgown, which was twitching horribly. She would rather jump out of the window than tackle whatever lay under there.
    ‘Go on,’ her mother urged. ‘Fetch one of those napkins that you left to warm over the fender.’
    With a sickening sense of doom, Madeleine put Dr Philpott on the floor and did as she was told. Then she approached the bed.
    What she saw when she lifted the nightgown made her recoil in horror. It wasn’t a baby; it was a devil. A slimy, spindly, crumpled, blotchy purple, angry little devil, smeared with blood and disgusting cheesy-looking stuff, and howling so furiously that she couldn’t even see its eyes. And beside it lay a terrible reddish-purple mound of jelly stuff, like a second devil that had followed it out.
    Black dots floated before her eyes. Her stomach heaved.
    ‘Go on,’ urged her mother, ‘don’t let her catch cold.’
    ‘Which one?’ said Madeleine between her teeth.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Which one do I wrap up?’
    Her mother laughed. She actually laughed. ‘The one who’s crying, of course.’
    Madeleine felt a flash of pity. Perhaps her mother hadn’t seen it yet. She still thought it was a normal baby.
    Grimacing and holding the napkin before her as if she were mopping up a stain, she spread it over where she guessed the ‘baby’ lay.
    ‘It’s all right,’ her mother said calmly. ‘When you were born you looked just the same.’
    ‘But it’s horrible. It’s got blood all over, and a worm coming out of its belly-button. I’m sure I never—’
    ‘Yes, you did. The blood is perfectly normal, Maddy. So is the worm. I promise. All babies look like that.’
    Madeleine thought about Baby Jesus in His crib, with the Three Wise Men crowding round. She wondered if Miss McAllister had any idea what He had really been like.
    ‘Now give her to me,’ her mother said. ‘Put one hand under her neck to support the head – carefully. That’s it.’ She was still smiling. She seemed unable to stop.
    The baby smelt awful and was surprisingly heavy. It was an enormous relief to deposit it in her mother’s arms.
    But the work wasn’t over yet. Dr Philpott said that the purplish jelly thing – he called it ‘the afterbirth’ – must be caught in a bowl, and burnt as soon as possible . He made it sound as easy and pleasant as netting a butterfly.
    And her mother was no help at all, as she couldn’t take her eyes from the baby, which had finally stopped crying. So it was Madeleine who thought of using the warming-pan to carry the ‘afterbirth’ away, and her idea to throw it out of the bathroom window. The blast of snow on her face felt wonderful, but she was nearly sick as she tipped the monster into the night.
    ‘What was that thing?’ she mumbled, when she’d wrestled the window shut again and returned to the bedroom.
    ‘I don’t know,’ said her mother dreamily. ‘But the same thing happened with you, and the doctor said it was perfectly normal.’
    Madeleine watched her