Free Shadows on the Moon by Zoe Marriott

thought that I would die of happiness. But the labor was so difficult, and I bled so much, that afterward the midwife told your father . . . she told him that to have another child might kill me. It was wicked of her. It was not her business to interfere.”
    She looked so fierce and unhappy that I made soothing noises and rubbed her forearm. After a moment, she relaxed and smiled.
    “Your father listened to the midwife and told me that we would not have any more children. At first I agreed with him. I was frightened, too, you see. After a while, as I grew stronger and you grew older, I began to realize what a terrible thing we had agreed to. It was not natural, the way we lived. I longed for babies. I longed to feel close to your father, as I once had. We argued about it again and again, and he began to hide from me in his papers. Sometimes I felt that I did not know him at all anymore. He would not see how unhappy I was. All he would say was that you were enough for him. He couldn’t understand that you —” She cut herself off, paused, and then finished. “That one child was not really a proper family.”
    I heard that unfinished sentence.
You were not enough for me.
    “I gave up. I cannot explain how awful it was, my love, to give up. It felt as if something inside me had died. But I have another chance with Shujin-sama. He waited for me. He never married. He never looked at another woman. And when I needed him, he was there. He has forgiven me for choosing his friend over him all those years ago, and now I am able to have the children I always wanted. I am so happy, Suzume.”
    I stared down at her, trying to sort through the tangled threads of my emotions. One thread stood out above all the others. “Mother, do you mean that you might die having this child? And Terayama-san doesn’t know?”
    “No,” she said, shaking my hand off. “I will not die having this child. I was only sixteen when I gave birth to you. A child myself. I had not even finished growing. I am a woman now, and I am in no more danger than any other woman. There is nothing for Shujin-sama to know. You will not speak of this to him. Will you?”
    “No, Mother.”
    “I have only told you all this so that you will know I understand a young woman’s craving for a home and family of her own. I want you to know this happiness that I have, and I am sure Shujin-sama does, too. You are too old now to live under a stepfather’s roof, too old to need a mother anymore. We will make sure you are happily settled.”
    “Thank you, Mother.” The words felt like the prickly leaves of the aloe in my mouth. She was so eager to be rid of me. So eager to forget her old life and make a new one that had no place in it for me. I was realistic enough to know that once I was married off, I would rarely, if ever, see Mother again. I dreaded this, but it seemed she looked forward to it.
    How could I be too old to need a mother anymore? It rather seemed as if I was too old for my mother to need me. In all her talk of children, she spoke only of babies, as if they were all that mattered. And it made sense, for she had been different once, when I was very young. She was softer and happier, and as I had grown, so had her sharpness and anger and restlessness. And Aimi’s arrival had made Mother worse. But I had never realized until now that some part of her blamed me for her inability to have more children. Maybe even blamed me for Father’s distance.
    And so she had turned to Terayama-san.
    “Now you may go and clean up,” she was saying. “Go up onto the deck so that you might have some fresh air. You’re looking rather pale.”
    I probably answered. I’m not sure what I said, but it got me out of the room.
    I walked along the wooden corridor, my steps gaining speed until the hem of my kimono snapped against my legs and my sandals slapped the floor. My thoughts and feelings were in turmoil.
    I had often wondered when it had begun, that strange game between