Free The Binding by Kate Sparkes Page A

of the air during a lightning storm, frightening and exhilarating. I called my husband into the room and passed her to him.
    He frowned, held her closer to his face, closed his eyes. “She looks, feels, and smells like a baby. Nothing unusual about her. Are you feeling well, Lucilla? You look tired.”
    I smiled and took her back. “No. It’s just silly nerves, I suppose. My imagination’s running wild.”
    He placed an arm around my shoulders and leaned in to kiss the baby’s head, then my cheek. “It’s probably to be expected after what happened to the Sterns family last week. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen here. She’s fine. She’s safe. She’s normal.”
    I wanted to believe him, but still the sensation persisted. When I mentioned it to the midwife on her next visit, her lips compressed into a tight line.
    "The magic may be acting on her," she said.
    My heart froze. No one talked about it after they lost children. Was this how it began?
    "Speak to the doctor," the midwife advised me. "He might have some idea how to protect her."
    Fool that I was, I listened.
    I took the baby to the doctor’s office the next day, and the nurse ushered us straight into a small room in the back. The doctor instructed me to undress the baby and set her on the table for the examination. He wore thick cotton gloves, and touched her only when absolutely necessary. No smile for his bright-eyed patient, and not a word.
    “You feel it?” he asked, and pushed his tiny, round glasses up his nose.
    “I do. My husband didn’t. What does it mean?”
    He pursed his fat lips and stepped away from the examination table. “It’s like that. People who have been affected by it tend to feel magic. Mothers become sensitive to it when it’s in their babies, as do those of us who encounter it frequently.” He rested a hand on my arm. “You did nothing wrong. It may have been affecting her even before birth. Some just aren’t strong enough to fight it. I’m sorry.”
    My breath caught in my throat. “So there’s nothing you can do?”
    “She’ll fight it off, or she won’t. I’ll have the nurse come by to check up on things.” He didn’t say there was no hope, but the implication was there in his hurry to leave and the finality with which he closed the door, leaving me alone with my afflicted child.
    She gazed up at me as I dressed her and wrapped her in her blanket. She arched her back, objecting to being bundled up, and one arm popped free. A startled look crossed her face as she caught sight of the flailing limb.
    She's perfect, I thought as I re-wrapped her and held her close, as though my arms could protect her from the world. They're wrong .
    I prayed for my child, and wept over her as she lay in her cradle at home. Her eyelashes were already long enough to rest on her round cheeks when she slept, and in the days that followed I spent every spare moment watching them flutter as she dreamed. She seemed so contented, so perfectly healthy and vibrant. But still that energy came off of her, wild and terrifying, and unnoticed by everyone but me and my son.
    A nurse I had never met before came a week later, sent by our doctor. "You look tired," she said as I opened the door. It was late evening then, and she was correct. After a day with the children, I was beyond exhausted and ready to collapse.
    My husband looked up from the book he was reading. The light from the tall oil lamp on the desk turned his thinning hair into a halo. "Go to bed, Lucilla," he said. "I'll show the nurse out when she comes back down.” The children were in bed, and the baby had just drifted off. I needed to rest while I could. I thanked them both, and left the nurse to her job.
    I was dozing when she knocked at the bedroom door.
    "Ma'am?"
    I opened my eyes. "Is the baby all right? Did you examine her?”
    There was genuine sorrow in the nurse's eyes. Whatever I came to believe after, I still hold onto that.
    "I did,” she said. “And I’m