Free Asunder (Incarnate) by Jodi Meadows Page B

against this new threat.”
    He thought of us as monsters. This baby who’d barely drawn breath, and me. Several people thundered agreement. With Merton as the conductor, the shouts and rage crescendoed.
    The baby wailed, and Lidea held him close, but she wept too. My friends yelled in my defense, and the birthing assistants ordered people to leave the room. No one obeyed. People kept shouting and pointing, pressing closer to me as the scowls and glares deepened. They practically burned.
    Their heat filled me, leaving no room for disbelief or shock. How could I be shocked when some of these people had treated me with nothing but hatred?
    But as the shouting grew and the baby screamed, my own anger replaced my fear. Like a geyser, pressure built inside of me, boiling with the heat of the cacophony all around—like the power of the Range caldera. I was ready to erupt.
    “Stop!” I wrested myself from Sam’s grip and climbed onto a chair. “Enough!”
    They all stared—birthing assistants, observers, and Soul Tellers—and I imagined geyser steam wafting through the room, stunning them into silence. Only the baby cried, and then Lidea put him on her breast.
    Silence.
    Oops. Everyone was looking at me.
    On the bed, Lidea cradled the baby to her. Sweat dripped down her temples, and her skin flushed bronze. The room smelled of salt and copper and other things I couldn’t identify.
    I focused on the geyser feeling, how furious I’d been about everyone scaring the baby, threatening to kill him as if he were some kind of monster.
    They would not hurt him. I wouldn’t let them.
    “I was led to believe that you were all rational people who knew how to behave around an infant.” My voice shook. So much for being strong like a geyser. “If you want to yell, do it outside. This isn’t the place.”
    No one moved; I wasn’t sure this was better than the yelling.
    “If not for the baby, please show a little consideration for Lidea. Or don’t you care about her anymore?”
    That shamed a few people into slinking out of the room. I stayed on my chair as they passed.
    “Anyone else?” I mimicked an angry expression Li had always used to force me to confess when I’d been listening to music. It seemed to work, though I felt more like a chipmunk addressing a room full of wolves. “We’re here to celebrate a birth. If you can’t do that simply because he’s a newsoul, you’re welcome to leave.”
    More people left. More than before. A few had the decencyto look ashamed. I didn’t bother hiding my disgust for any of them.
    Across the room, Merton stood there with his arms crossed, his face crimson and contorted with rage. He stalked toward me.
    Everyone watched, and Sam eased toward my chair, but when Merton reached me, he just glowered and walked around me—to the door.
    I tried not to let my relief show. If he’d attacked me, there’d have been little my friends could have done. Merton was huge. And strong.
    But he was gone for now. I focused on breathing, and trying not to crumple under the stares of birthing assistants, observers, and friends. Most of the hostile people had gone ahead of Merton, so why did my heart speed up now ? Surely I should have been able to say something coherent in front of people who didn’t completely hate me.
    “I believe the tradition is to welcome newborns.” Welcome them back, anyway. But this one hadn’t been here before. He was like me. Newsoul. “I’ll go first.” I ached for him, this unnamed child facing an existence like mine. At least he wouldn’t be the only one.
    Sam offered a hand to help me off the chair, and I accepted. The last thing I needed was to fall on my face.
    As I approached Lidea’s bed, I imagined what the scene must have been like when Li gave birth to me, and the SoulTellers announced I wasn’t anyone. There’d probably been fewer people in the room. And all of Ciana’s friends would have been there.
    Ciana, whom I’d replaced.
    I doubted anyone had