"Denver is a young place, Magda, full of exuberance and energy... and no wisdom whatsoever. I have begun to write observations, commentaries if you will. And the perspicacious editors of the august Rocky Mountain News have this very day shown the good taste to buy three of them." He was elated as a child and attempting to appear calm.
"You are magnificent! And the men at the Rocky Mountain newspaper are brilliant to recognize such genius." The relief of it made Magda feel light-headed—she looked at Fancy and saw her grinning. The Gypsy had watched Jarvis chew on the knowledge of his infirmity, brooding, all through the endless months of recovery. Nearly two years had gone by while she and the dwarf struggled to support the entourage.
Gitalis had finally settled for the vaudeville job that paid the bills, while Magda established a reputation among the wealthy matrons of Denver. Table rappings and seances had become popular as parlor games among the rich, and Magda's presence had added flavor to enough gatherings so that she too had been able to swell the coffers. Only Wes had not found employment.
Magda could see her own relief mirrored in the dwarf's eyes. "We will celebrate," she said, rising. "Fancy, we must prepare a feast worthy of such a triumph." Fancy put aside her work and rose from the rocking chair with the clumsiness of late pregnancy.
Magda glanced at Gitalis and saw the smile of satisfaction curve his lips. "And they say miracles are past," he murmured, preceding her and Fancy into the kitchen. " 'The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well.' "
Magda turned toward the dwarf and spoke quietly. "You have been a good friend to him, Gitalis. And to me, in time of trouble. I am grateful and will not forget."
Gitalis looked startled by the compliment, but said nothing.
"I'm of a mind to cook your favorite meal tonight," Magda told him.
" 'O day and night,'" he replied, " 'but this is wondrous strange!'"
Magda, her face turned away from him, smiled. The energy generated by their animosity had been useful through the years. What energy might be produced by friendship?
Chapter 41
Fancy's time drew near and Magda worried about the isolation of the cabin. This would be a winter baby and snow could make movement nearly impossible in an emergency. Their cabin was five miles outside the city and dirt cheap because of that, but five miles in a Colorado winter could be infinity.
The child was ill placed and the pregnancy had drained Fancy's strength. No one who saw her at this moment—dark circles beneath her eyes, swollen ankles, waiflike thinness, except for the huge belly that proclaimed a life of its own—would guess at her former beauty. Even her hair had lost its luster and her eyes were full of sorrow and longing.
Fancy seldom spoke of Chance, but Magda knew he possessed the girl's thoughts night and day. Like a spar in a hostile sea, she clung to the memory of the brief happiness they'd shared. Chance was, Magda suspected, not so much a man as an embodiment of the girl's own longings. What man of flesh and blood and bone could measure up to such a need? Even if he loved and married her, how could any mortal not be doomed to failure by the standards Fancy's fantasy had set?
There was a wealthy woman in Denver for whom Magda did readings; she was due for another—the woman's money could pay for a medical doctor's opinion, in the city. Magda set little store by doctors; she knew as much as they did of medicaments. Nonetheless, Fancy should have every possible opportunity for this birth to go well—if a doctor with a diploma on the wall could ease the girl's mind even a trifle, the trip would be worth the effort. Besides, Fancy had barely left the cabin since winter had set in; a sleigh ride down the mountainside, snugly bundled against the chill air, might put roses back in the girl's wan cheeks. The Colorado countryside was never more beautiful than when it glistened in its snowy garments.
Wes heartily concurred, as did Gitalis, who had been brooding for weeks over Fancy's malaise. Neither his antics nor his massages had roused her from her deepening depression, and he knew that self-pity was itself a disease that could cause a person to waste away.
"We'll accompany you to town, my Magda," Jarvis told the Gypsy when she broached the plan. "I have three new columns to present to the august editors of Denver, and Gitalis has his tickets to cast before swine. We'll make a day of it."
Fancy watched the preparations for the trip with a heavy heart; the snow brought with it such bittersweet memories. Little more than a year ago she'd laughed and sung and danced away Christmas Eve in the company of those she loved... where were they now? Did Chance ever stop for a moment to remember her, as she did him? Did he sometimes hear a sound, or catch a glimpse of some elusive shape just out of focus, and think that he had seen her, as she looked for him in every passing shadow? And what if they were to meet? What could she tell him of this child who grew beneath her heart?
She fantasized sometimes that one day, she and Aurora would be walking down the street and Chance would see them. In that one moment, all that he'd lost would crash in on him and she would have her revenge for what she'd suffered alone. Sometimes in the fantasy, Aurora was a child, sometimes she was a woman, but always the recognition was instantaneous and the vengeance was the same.
"Then why not tell him now, cara mia?" Gitalis had asked when she'd described to him the imagined scenario. "Why not let him come to you and help you with your burdens?"
"No! That isn't what I want, Gitalis. When that day comes, I must be rich and famous and Aurora must be accomplished and beautiful."
"But why, Fancy? So this Chance of yours can eat his own heart out at what he has lost?" he'd asked, disturbed at the passionate love and hatred beneath the words.
But she'd never answered the question, and had turned again inside herself to the place where her sorrow dwelled.
Fancy and Magda stood on the street corner outside the doctor's office and waited for Jarvis. The examination had been brief; the man had told them nothing more than that he concurred with Magda's assessment of the child's breech position. Fancy must be in the lying-in hospital, he said. By no means should she give birth at home, for surgery might be called for if the baby remained ill placed. Magda thought the most therapeutic part of the entire visit had been Fancy's outburst of temper at the man. "Magda will deliver my baby," she told him emphatically. "And without surgery."
Frost clouds, puffed about their reddened faces as the two women breathed the frigid air of Denver. There was snow in the slate-colored sky by the time Wes collected them outside the doctor's office.
"Gitalis has tickets to the burlesque for us all," he told the women, in high spirits at having sold two of his three articles. "Would it not cheer you to stay in Denver tonight and celebrate, my Magda? Gitalis and I could sleep at the theatre overnight, and we could surely find a boardinghouse that would provide you ladies snug harbor." Both Magda and Fancy could see his excitement at the prospect of being inside a theatre again.
"You stay, Wes," Fancy volunteered, looking to Magda for confirmation. "I'm afraid the doctor made me feel quite unwell and I think I need to be home in my own bed tonight."
"Stop here overnight with your little friend, Jarvis," Magda pronounced good-naturedly, "but not longer than tomorrow—I fear the weather gathers itself for a blizzard. If you and Gitalis can get home on horseback, then stay and play together. Fancy and I will take the sleigh."
Fancy saw a look of old understanding pass between them; even burlesque would bring with it the heady smell of greasepaint and scenery, of dust-laden theatre curtains and dirty plush seats, the roar of applause—ambrosia to an actor that can never be explained to one who hasn't tasted its seduction.
Magda mounted the sleigh, tucked the robes around Fancy, and took the double reins in her strong hands. What arcane power was it the Gypsy had over animals that they did her bidding, as if she were Mother Nature in disguise?
Fancy nestled back beneath the covers and closed her eyes. She'd wanted to see Denver and had felt invigorated by the trip to town, but now the elation was gone. In f
act, she felt a strange new back pain, low and girdling, and a griping in her belly. She was glad Magda was heading the team out of town.
The first few flakes of snow were wet and insignificant, but within minutes they turned to driving sleet. Fancy hid her face from the stinging needles and tried to wish her increasing pain away.
Magda gritted her teeth against the weather that obscured her vision and fought for control of the sleigh. It was skittish as ice skates and she was unfamiliar with its idiosyncrasies; Jarvis had borrowed it from a local farmer, and he or Gitalis had always driven the sleigh on their infrequent outings.
A mournful howling brought Fancy's head out from under the covers. "Why do the wolves howl so?" she called to Magda, who sat hunched forward on the driver's seat. There were always wolf packs in the hills, sometimes in large numbers, but they kept to themselves and foraged on animals too winter-frail to elude the pack, or on rodents nosed from their snowy burrows. So familiar were their cries to Fancy's ears that it had taken her a while to realize there was something more urgent in the sounds she heard rising on the wind. The howlings seemed as if the beasts were communicating back and forth to each other in an escalating frenzy.
Magda muttered under her breath, "They speak of hunger—the winter has been hard and they have less to feed on than they need. They suffer gravely."
Fancy didn't ask how Magda knew. It wouldn't have surprised her to learn that Magda spoke the wolves' tongue; she was already certain Magda knew the language of the great cats, for she had often seen the woman when she was alone with Samarkand cease to command him as animal trainers do, and simply converse with him in low and purring tones, which he always answered.
"Would the wolves come after us?" Fancy asked, alarmed by the concern in Magda's voice.
"They would not wish to harm us, Fancy, but hunger is every creature's goad. They would kill us to save their own children."
They sped on over the snow, the only sounds the jingling bells and the creak of the old sleigh as it strained against the upward climb. The sleet changed to snow and a blanket of white soon obscured the trail. Fancy burrowed farther down into her nest of blankets and tried to quiet her fear.
A violent impact hurtled her forward and upward like a ragdoll. The sleigh teetered sideways, then crashed with a thunderous cracking sound. Fancy screamed as her body hurtled through the air, then crumpled into the drifted snow. The helpless horses shrieked as they were thrown to the ground. Magda, nearly buried by the upended cutter, cursed the gods in every language she knew. Ignoring her own injuries, the Gypsy struggled toward Fancy and, with great effort, pulled the injured girl to her feet.
They surveyed the damage; a great jagged rock that had lain across the snow-obscured trail had been their undoing. One runner of the Portland cutter was splintered, its iron reinforcement bent grotesquely.
The driving snow pelted the women's faces and numbed their hands as they strove to free the struggling horses and pull them to their feet. Pain gripped Fancy's belly and forced her to stand upright for a moment—the spasm was dizzying and she nearly fell. She fought hard for control, for she knew that all Magda's efforts must be bent on righting the sleigh and saving the pain-crazed animals.
In vain, the Gypsy tried to push the cutter to an upright position, while Fancy fought to still the terrified beasts, shivering in the whipping wind, her feet near frozen by the soaking ice beneath. Magda didn't try to shout against the storm but saved her strength for the struggle. The sky had darkened, although it was barely dusk, and the sound of the wolves drew nearer. A chorus of howls brought both women's gaze up sharply to the horizon. On foot, they were easy prey.
On the far mountain behind them, a huge wolf pack stood rigid in the wind. A giant gray shape lifted its head toward heaven and loosed one long, eerie cry.
"The leader," Magda said, straightening to listen attentively. "He knows we are in distress." She ceased to grapple with the broken sleigh.
"Can you ride, child?" she asked urgently. Fancy, not in the least sure she could, nodded yes. Magda pulled a knife from her belt sheath, stripped the half-mad horses from their double harness, and clinging to their bridles with all her strength, she split the reins, so each could be ridden separately. The animals had no saddles, so she led the better horse to the side of the wreck, to enable Fancy to mount; it took every ounce of concentration to force the horse to her will. A groan escaped the girl despite her determination to be brave for Magda's sake; a line of sweat broke out on her forehead and she thought she might faint from the agony in her loins. Steeling herself against the shocking pain that ripped her when she tried to get her leg over the horse's back, Fancy forced herself to do it.
"The baby comes?" Magda asked. Fancy nodded and tried to keep from fainting. Magda took a deep breath, as if assessing the best way to help her.
"The wolves come, too," she said without pity. "Do you understand?" The wet wind whipped Magda's black hair out behind her.
Fancy gulped back pain and fear, and nodded resolutely.
Magda mounted the second horse like a Magyar chieftain, looped the remaining thong of leather through the throatlatch of Fancy's horse so she could lead both beasts if the girl fainted or dropped the reins.
"Our lives depend upon our horsemanship. Connect your spirit to your mount's, or you die!" She slapped Fancy's animal with her reins, then kicked her own into motion and started up the trail.
Fancy looked back over her shoulder and saw the wolf pack lope into motion behind them.
"How many are there?" she gasped to Magda.
"Enough!"
Magda leaned close to her horse's ear, talking to it intently, pushing it forward by force of will—the answering whinny sounded wild and dangerously high-strung. Fancy clung to the mane with intense concentration. She had ridden bareback since childhood—if only her leg muscles were in better shape, if her balance were normal, if her belly didn't spasm, twist, and burn, she could have sat the horse despite the storm—now she clung on doggedly and prayed for courage.
Fancy felt something burst free between her legs and hot wet liquid dribbled down her thighs to the horse's laboring flanks. "My God! Magda," she cried. "My water..."
But Magda was leaning low over the horse's neck whispering urgently into his ears, and Fancy couldn't tell if she'd heard the words above the deafening storm.
The gray-black wolf shadows were gaining ground, but the cabin was less than half a mile away. Fancy clamped her legs around the horse's flank and prayed with all her heart for deliverance.
Fancy lay exhausted and sweat-soaked on the bed inside the house. The fire Magda had started in the hearth was blazing, but the girl felt no warmth from it; the ride through the storm had sapped whatever reserves she'd had to draw on and she was cold as ice.
Magda placed her hands on either side of Fancy's belly and held firm until the contraction subsided. The child lay sideways in the womb, the worst of all possible positions. She must not communicate her fear to Fancy, so Magda forced herself to smile.
"First babies are notoriously thoughtless," she said briskly to cover her own anxiety, for Fancy's labor was becoming rapidly more intense. Too intense for the safe delivery of a breech....
The wolf leader cried somewhere outside the cabin and a chorus of answering howls raised the hairs on Magda's arms. She liked wolves—the wolf deva had once been her ally—but tonight they were nothing but hungry predators. If they were starving, the pack would be gathering courage for an assault. Magda glanced uneasily at the size of the small windows to gauge the danger of intrusion. In Romania it was not unheard of for the brutes to crash through doors or windows to molest a family; how she wished Jarvis and Gitalis were with them, if only for moral support.
Fancy moaned softly as the next contraction tensed her belly and arched her back. The girl was so narrow in the hips, so tiny overall, not built for breeding. Damn the fool who had gotten her into this fix! Magda set about preparing the small room as best she could for what wo
uld come and sent a silent entreaty to Wes and Gitalis to beware the wolves. It would not be the first time that a message from her had reached Jarvis telepathically.
She set out what herbs she had and a pile of clean cloths; she hung a cauldron of water on to boil and placed the blankets Fancy had knitted in the small cradle Gitalis had built. It was an act of affirmation that before morning a living child would occupy its own bed. Magda undressed Fancy with gentle hands and covered her with the ancient patchwork quilt she herself had made as a child. She folded the cover tenderly around the suffering girl and thought how long a road she herself had traveled since plying those childish stitches and dreaming of greatness.
Sweat soaked Fancy's hair into flattened ringlets and pain tinted circles beneath her eyes, so that when she dozed, exhausted between pains, she looked corpselike. Magda made the sign against evil at the thought, and breathed deeply to force herself to calm. The baby would have to be turned before morning, that was certain.
She tied an apron around herself with a resolute sigh, wound her braided hair atop her head and covered it with a clean kerchief, rolled up the sleeves of her dress, and began to scrub her hands in the bowl of soapy water she had placed on the counter. Those fools of doctors delivered babies with hands filthy from surgery or autopsy; no wonder so many died of puerperal fever. No midwife worth her hire would make the same mistake. She looked at her own hands in the firelight; they were large and strong, too large for the task at hand. If only the dwarf were here....
Magda stared at the boiling kettle for a moment, considering which of the herbs she'd brought would have most efficacy. Had the birth been progressing normally, she could easily have hurried the labor, but that wouldn't do until she'd turned the child from its unnatural position. She selected an herb that would dull the pain without stopping the contractions, and another to impart strength. That she would take herself.