Thought You Might Find This Amusing...

The Midwife’s Tale

The last feather of ash crumpled onto the flame-hearted coals. The Thief of Night and Day stirred them with a charred stick, his bony face thoughtful. “Who’s next?” he asked. Brother Pearl, who still shivered in his soggy habit, his draggling hair covering the lump on his forehead, just sneezed and blew his nose on his sleeve. Sir Topaz stood forth proudly, straightened his stiff lace collar, and chanted:

More I shall tell you of my long questing:
Once, under oak tree I, coolly resting,
laid down my coat to the soft ground - billowing
folds of fine velvet, a scarlet pillow - and
clad in my shift – silk, of bright burnt orange -
yawning I-


The Thief sighed, and crimped his eyes shut.

The last feather of ash crumpled onto the flame-hearted coals. The Thief of Night and Day stirred them with a charred stick, his bony face thoughtful. “Who’s n-“

“I seen him!” cried the woman like a bundle of laundry. “Just now! He snitched a minute off’f us. Oi!” Her button eyes, the shiny black and the milky pearl, glared at the Thief, who looked innocent and bewildered and then said, “Prove it.”

I suggested quickly, “Perhaps you could grace us with a story, ma’am.”

She snorted, but looked slightly mollified. “I’m the midwife,” she said, “Mother Mallow’s me name, an’ I’m a one that sees much in me daily business. Well. Me friend the doctor, he said, ‘When one oft walks in the Valley of the Shadow carrying forth new buds of life into this world of tears and light, one develops excellent ocular facilities.’ I just says, ‘Good eyes,’ an’ that settles it. An’ good eyes I got indeed, for spotting that the babe’s birth cord is strangling it or the first hint of clamminess that shows the mother, bless her, is taking a wee downturn, and I got hands quick an’ strong for hauling them back up out o’ the Valley. An’ if, while in my patients’ house, my good eyes an’ quick hands might make off with the odd silver spoon or bottle o’ summat fiery, well my patients ain’t complaining A he ha hi ha hu,” she cackled.

“Well. One night, a rainy night, a night when you can almost see the mother of storms wailing overhead an’ weeping for her little lost kiddies, a body knocks on my door. A little brown man he is, very ordinary, in a brown coat and a brown cap and spectacles.

“ ‘There’s need of you, Mother Mallow,’ he says in his deep, dark voice. Then he lowers his specs an’ I see his eyes ain’t brown, no, they’re lighter, like a gold coin in mud, or tree-amber, or a beastie’s eyes. I ain’t complaining mind – a hire is a hire, an’ I got to live. So I says, ‘How far?’

“ He says back, quick as you please, ‘Three breaths,’ and while I’m wondering at this he takes my hand and pulls a little fan of three feathers out of his pocket. He breathes on the first one – brown and speckledy from a chicken – and we’re flying! Over the fields, over the Askin river with its mill, over the hills and far away…”

Brother Pearl coughed, and the midwife glared at him.

“… ‘til we land halfway up a mountain, teetering on a little rainy slippy ledge, so I let out a little scream (as you would do, gentles, no doubt). He says, all deep like, “Calm yourself, Mother Mallow,” and blows on the next feather, a little black one from a corbie. Then we’re off – me clinging and wailing, him very stern (in a little, brown, ordinary way) through the storm and lashing winds, over dark lakes and great forests, ‘til we land on the slenderest branch of the wavering tip of the tallest tree in the forest and I’m snivelling and crying and weeping but he pries me fingers off the wood, says ‘Calm yourself, Mother Mallow,’ blows on the last feather, and we’re off again. It was a red one, with a glow ‘round the edges like fire. Dunno where it came from.

So we land halfway up another mountain, this time on soft grass – well, sloshy grass – by a neat little house, and my little brown man is saying, all serious, ‘She who has need of you lies under this roof,’ but his voice is quavering something terrible. I think to meself, ‘Magic flying feathers or no magic flying feathers, that’s one nervous daddy-to-be.’ I says, ‘Calm yourself. And boil water.’ Then I pick up me skirts, la di da, and sashay on in.

Sure enough, inside on the bed is a little brown woman – at her time and looking scared. She’d reached the Valley of the Shadow y’see, an’ that’s hard. Together, we did what was needful. Tricky work it was, too. I almost lost ‘em both, which don’t happen often,” Mother Mallow said with pride, “but we hung on tight, we did, and finally I was holding a disgusting, bloody clot of baby up to his mum, about to say ‘Inne just the most beautiful?’ when bubbling up from I don’t know where came these words: ‘Son of the bright side and the right side, he must look for the light side.’ Whatever that meant.

“Well, his mum thanks me all proper like, and while I’m cleaning us all up, she gives me a jar of ointment and tells me to rub it on the little one, which I do (everybody’s got their rituals – sometimes it’s rub the kiddy’s feet with coins, sometimes it’s bury the afterbirth under a tree … you know.). But as it happens, an eyelash gets in me eye and I rub it with the gucky hand and my did it sting! My eye’s all tearing up and I can hardly tell when it’s stopped, ‘cause everything looks different. The kiddy’s glowing golden, and when I look at his mum, she ain’t no little brown woman anymore – she’s a lady as beautiful as, as, as a warm ginger biscuit, broken in half and shared with the baker. An’ that’s a very beautiful thing.

“So the little brown man comes back in with about the twelfth pot of hot water, but he looks the same, ‘cept his ears have gone pointy with fluffy tips, but I don’t let on I see them, either, ‘cause I don’t want to get in no trouble. And he’s all thank’ee, thank’ee, and hustling me out the door (but he fills me pockets full of gold, first) an’ taking me back home.

“An’ what do you know – it’s still raining. And howling. And wailing. And I look up, an’ guess what - I really do see the Mother of Storms sitting up there in the sky yowling like nobody’s had troubles like hers and lashing the houses with her hair. I give her what-for and she just stops with a surprised little gulp A he ha hi ha hu I go to bed, then, just as the sun comes up, with the pretty little birdies yodelling.

“But that ain’t the interesting bit.”

To be continued?