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Today there's the drone of bees here. In the half-moon since we visited, flowers have opened on the creeper that shades the cloister. Their perfume is sweet, but not sickly: a childhood smell. The bees are cleaning them of their pollen.
The father snoozes in the dappled shade. He has a little dribble on the corner of his mouth.
"Father," I whisper, going down on one knee.
He startles and stares, and his hands clench in the shawl around his knees. I think he doesn't know who we are.
"Emily and Jon." I say.
"Yes?" he asks.
"We've decided, Father. You asked us to come back today."
He looks from Jon to me, and his face crinkles into understanding. "I'm sorry," he says. He nods once, as though he's agreeing with himself. "I promise there'll be no pain."
"Father," I say, "we've decided to keep the child."
The father lets out a breath, and for once I can't read his face. "Then I will do everything I can, child. All I can. Lie over there. Let your own child be in the light."
I lie down on the bench and pull up my tunic. I can't help studying my belly, as though, since this morning, it'll have grown curved, and I'll be showing.
The father is at his charm rack. He pulls down charms until he has a handful, and then threads them all onto a single thong. He lays the thong out on my belly in a ragged circle. One charm he lets dip into my navel. "Let us sing together," he says.
I stare up, seeing sunlight through closed eyes. We make a little weaving of verses, the father leading and Jon last, but Jon's verses sound out of rhythm. It's a poor prayer we make.
"I must first try to understand more of what's wrong inside you," the father says. He shows me the charms on my belly one by one. "These charms are all wards, though more subtle and individual than yours." He touches one, presses it into me, towards my baby, and then touches a second. His wishing finger walks from charm to charm, then back again. I watch the frowns and puzzlement pass across his face. In the end he shakes his head.
"Father?" I ask.
"That told me little," he answers. "Another way, I think." He takes up the charms, and then pauses to look down at me. "A boy, or a girl? Would you like to know?"
I look at Jon. My husband looks away and shrugs. It hurts me like a kick. "Yes," I say. "I would like to."
"A girl," the father says.
"A girl, Jon." I reach out for my husband's hand, but he doesn't let me take it. "What should we name her?"
"You decide," he says.
"Please don't, Jon." My husband scares me. If I could see behind my husband's glamour what would I see? Despair? "You agreed," I say.
Jon stares at the Inner Temple. "So did you. You…" He doesn't finish. Jon thinks he can do nothing to change fate, so now he does nothing at all. I won't believe in that.
The father has taken down more charms. "Enchantments," he says. "Mild, but you may feel some sensations within you. Not to worry, they will not hurt you, or her."
Her. Our child. That sounds so strange.
He rests the charms on my skin and lets them drink the sunlight. "Tell me if you feel anything," he says. "Anything. A resistance, a stretching, even wind." He smiles. "No glamour at all on your face, please. How you react, it's important for me to see." He touches the new charms, one at a time, watching my glamourless face and the charms on my belly.
"I feel nothing," I say.
"More charms," he answers.
When he adds new ones, there isn't enough room on my stomach. Old ones slip off onto the bench. He doesn't seem to care, though they must be very valuable. He touches the new charms, pauses, then touches them again, then again in a different pattern. Another frown appears on his face, and deepens. "This is most strange," he says to me.
"What is, father?"
"Would you wait here, please… Emily, Jon. I need to seek another voice."
"Yes father," I say. My husband stays silent.
I watch the father leave. Jon stands reed straight and distant, looking away and up, watching the bees.
"Please sit with me, Jon."
"There's nowhere," he says.
"On the bench. I can put my head on your lap."
He obeys silently. That's not like Jon.
The bees make the only sound. Their hum and the sunlight should make this a drowsy place, but sleep doesn't come.
When our daughter is born, perhaps Jon will see it's all worthwhile. I can hope for that. He'll know she'll be a comfort for his old age. She'll tend his statue when he passes. Otherwise who'll do that for him? Or for me?
Jon startles and stands. I see who's entered and spring up, scattering charms. I bow to the Holy Father, then rush after them.
"Lie back down," our father says. "I will collect them."
"But--"
"The Holy Father wishes to examine you," he says.
"Emily, I am told," the Holy Father says, smiling. "Jon?" The Holy Father is even older than I would have thought, but he stands very straight, taller than my husband. "Sit please, as you were."
Jon sits and I lie down, my head back in his lap. Jon's glamour is high.
From his belt, the Holy Father takes a link of three charms. He holds them out to the sun in the palm of a wrinkled hand. When he places them on my belly they feel hot, not like those our father used. He presses on them, waits, nods to the other father, and touches them a second time. He adds two more charms and presses.
"Yes," he says, and takes a seat at my feet. I'm embarrassed. I should have worn my best sandals, not these. "Emily," he says. "I'm sorry, but we cannot help you, not with charms. We can't enchant you."
"Holy Father?"
"Not there." The Holy Father points at my belly. "We have the natural remedies of course, and we will use those to help, as we may."
"Holy Father, I don't understand," I say.
"The child is destined."
"God!" I cover my mouth though the blasphemy's already escaped.
"Yes," the Holy Father says, without a frown. "God. God's will. There is no other destined in your family line?"
"No!"
He looks at Jon.
"No, Holy Father."
I glamour up, but the Holy Father's already seen it. "Why are you crying?" he asks.
" Holy Father, she'll be destined."
"Yes?"
"And you ask why I cry!" I've raised my voice to the Holy Father! "Forgive me!" I scramble upright.
"Forgiveness is easy enough," he says. "Would you like us to take the omens for her?"
"NO!" I go to one knee, and stare at his feet. "No," I say in a quiet voice. "I would not like that."
"No?" he asks.
"I don't want to know, Holy Father. Please. I've lived with my omen for so long. I don't want it to be like that for her. Like it is for me. Please."
"Omens are to help us, Emily," the Holy Father says.
"Please. She will live, and she'll be special to me, whatever else she becomes. That's enough for me."
My husband raises me up and enfolds me in his arms. "Don't cry," he says.
His new tenderness starts my tears. "She's destined!" I say. "Why not?"
"For great things," he says.
"Like my destined? My namesake? You'd wish her ending for my child?"
"But our child will live, Emily. She'll be born. She has that much, whatever the rest of her life holds. We can name her now, Emy. What name for her? You decide."
"Zoe."
"Zoe?" I can hear his smile. "Where did that come from? There's no Zoe in your family."
"There are no tales of a Zoe, either, are there?" I ask. "No destined Zoe? That's my omen."
"Zoe then," Jon says.
"Yes."
"Thank you Holy Father," my husband says. "This is such good news. The best news…" He tails off.
In Jon's silence I look around behind me. The fathers' faces are solemn.
"What's wrong, Holy Father?" Jon asks.
"Zoe cannot be charmed, Jon," the Holy Father says. "More than that, she decides your wife's fate."
My husband laughs. "Isn't that what all children do? Then all is well. Zoe can't be destined to hurt her own mother."
"Your daughter wishes to be born at any cost," the Holy Father says. "No. I have said that badly. Your daughter cannot yet understand the cost. She's a creature of feeling. She feels her way towards her destiny. Your wife cannot have children without great suffering, or giving up her life. Zoe will make sure one, or both, of those will happen. She will be born, even if her mother must… pass on ahead."
Jon's arms tighten around me. "How could that be?" he asks. "Why would our daughter's destiny be for her own mother to do that?"
"Paths are paths, Jon," the Holy Father says. "Only God walks all. Zoe will choose from what paths she can, and she will choose for Emily too."
They talk about me like I'm not here. And I feel like I'm not.
"Holy Father," I say. "Even before we made her inside me? Did she want to be born, even then?"
He looks away, at the Temple, and the sky. "Such things are beyond my knowledge," he says. "Of this nothing is written. But, I think," he looks down, straight at me, "I think yes. I am sorry."
I turn my back and retreat inside my husband's embrace.
I thought this was all of my doing. I thought I was the Emily who could change fate. Maybe I never was. Maybe my daughter worked through me, to make her own destiny, and my fate has always been the same.
"You mustn't… hate her, Jon," I say.
"Hate her?" he looks down at me. "How could I?"
"If… I pass, don't hate her. She's innocent in all this. She only wanted to be born, and that can't be a sin, can it? I'll love her anyway Jon, no matter the pain she brings me. You must do that too. Please promise."
He doesn't answer me for a long moment. "I promise you," he says. "But how could I hate her, Emily? It would be like hating part of you."
***
Taken, set down and sealed as being a true record of Emily's spirit.
In the 19th year of the Holy Father. The City of the Sun.
***