Chapter 6: The Never-Ending Hunger
The quiet was the first thing I noticed. Not the absence of sound—the wind still hissed through the pines, the fire still crackled—but the silence within my own skin. The frantic, screaming hunger that had defined me for months was simply gone. It had receded like a fever tide, leaving behind a hollowed-out, strangely peaceful coastline.
I lay on my back on the wool blanket, my hands resting on the immense dome of my belly. I was in my third trimester now. The sharp, angular lines of my body—the climber’s body—had been subsumed by something ripe and heavy. My skin was stretched taut, a map of silvery lines and dark veins. When I moved, it was with a slow, oceanic roll.
The madness felt like a story someone else had told me. The golden milk, the desperate seduction of the hiker, Leo—it was all a lurid, shameful dream. The evidence, of course, was here, moving under my palms. A heel or an elbow slid against the inside of my womb, a firm, unmistakable pressure.This was real.
For weeks, a different instinct had been knitting itself together inside me. It wasn't the blinding, chemical drive of before. It was slower. Deeper. It was the urge to hum tuneless songs, to pat the swell when it rolled, to talk to it in a soft voice when I was alone.
"Okay," I whispered now to the quiet room and the creature within. "Okay.Listen."
My voice was rough from disuse.I cleared my throat.
"If I live through this," I began, the words solid in the air, a pact. "If we both come out the other side of whatever this is going to be, I will be your mother. A normal mother." I paused, my throat tight. "No stories about golden poison. No strange men in the woods. No... legacy of hunger. You'll be a child.My child. We'll have picnics by the creek. I'll teach you the names of trees. It will be normal."
The baby kicked, a solid thump right under my heart. A reply, or just gas? I chose to see it as a seal.
The peace held for three more days.
Then, on the fourth evening, a new sensation began. Not pain, not yet. A low, deep ache in my sacrum, a tightening across the belly that came in slow waves, like a great hand gently squeezing a water balloon and then letting go. Braxton Hicks, I told myself.Practice. My body was rehearsing.
I stoked the fire, made tea, tried to sketch by the lantern light. My lines were wobbly, unfocused. Another squeeze came, longer this time. I breathed through it, leaning on the stone mantlepiece. When it passed, I felt a warm trickle down my thigh.
My water hadn't broken. It was blood-tinged.A show. It was starting.
A jolt of pure, animal fear shot through me. I was alone.Miles from anything. No phone, no road, no one who knew. The old Amy, the one who trusted her instincts above all, scoffed at the fear. She had handled everything alone. She could handle this.
The new Amy, the mother, trembled.
The contractions organized themselves with a terrifying efficiency. Within an hour, they were regular, a vise that clamped down around my lower spine and abdomen every ten minutes, stealing my breath. I paced the small cabin, stopping to brace myself against the wall when one hit. I laid out clean blankets, a bowl of water, a sharp knife sterilized in the flame. My movements were methodical, a stark contrast to the primal storm gathering in my pelvis.
The sun dipped below the peaks, plunging the valley into blue shadow. I lit every candle I had. The cabin became a cave of flickering light. Time lost its shape, measured only by the space between pains.
Then, without warning, the character of the pain changed. It wasn't a wave anymore. It was a tectonic plate shifting. A tearing, overwhelming urge to bear down seized me, a command from my reptile brain that brooked no argument. I staggered to the bed, kneeling on the piled blankets.This was it. No turning back.
I pushed. The world narrowed to a tunnel of fire and pressure. I roared, a sound I didn’t know I could make, raw and guttural. I pushed again, my vision spotting with black. Something was crowning, stretching me to the point of splitting.
With a final, agonizing heave, a slithering rush, it was over.The pressure released. A small, wet body slid onto the blankets between my knees.
For a second, there was only silence and the dizzying hammer of my own heart.
I turned, my arms shaking violently. There she was. Covered in vernix and blood, umbilical cord pulsing, tiny fists clenched.A girl. She didn’t cry. Her chest hitched, then she let out a thin, reedy wail that was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard.
Tears blurred my vision. "Hi," I sobbed, a laugh hiccupping out of me. "Oh, hi."
With careful, trembling hands, I followed the instincts I’d read about a lifetime ago. I cleaned her mouth, rubbed her back with a soft cloth until her cries grew stronger, furious. I tied and cut the cord. I wiped the sticky coating from her skin, revealing pink, perfect flesh beneath. Ten fingers, ten toes. A shock of dark, wet hair. She was ordinary. Miraculously, perfectly ordinary.
I wrapped her in the cleanest blanket and brought her to my chest. Her crying softened into snuffles. Her mouth rooted, found my nipple, and latched with a surprising strength. The sensation was sharp, then deeply calming. No golden milk. Just clear, bluish colostrum.Normal.
I leaned back against the post of the bed, utterly spent, awash in a flood of chemicals I couldn't name. Relief.Wonder. A love so fierce it felt like terror.
I must have dozed. The fire had burned low. My daughter—my daughter—slept on my chest, a warm, breathing weight. The promise I’d made whispered in my mind. A normal life.