On the Isle of Sound and Wonder Read Online Free

gesture, soft palm and open fingers spreading even wider, and the duchess sucked in a deep breath, exhaling in a loud intonation of pain.
    “Good! Again!” The midwife gestured, the duchess breathed again, and the chambermaids cowered against the walls, praying helplessly under their breaths, unable to tear their eyes from the scene.
    “Go see to the duke,” ordered the midwife, annoyed by the maids’ mumbling. When they hesitated, she slammed the staff against the marble floor and sent cracklings of electricity and cold air throughout the room, snapping at their clothes and hair. They shrieked and scattered like mice, racing out of the chamber, the door slamming behind them.
    The duchess breathed and cried out in pain, and the midwife began to speak in soothing, foreign words that overlapped and swirled about the room like the tide coming in to the shore.
    * * *
    In the antechamber, the duke and the maids stared at the closed door. From time to time, lights of varying colors would flicker out from beneath the doorframe. The duchess would scream in pain, or the midwife would sing strange scraps of melodies in peculiar tones. The duke fidgeted, ill to his stomach to hear his wife in so much torment, but paralyzed, unable to do anything to help.
    Hours passed, and the duchess’ crying died down into quiet, shuddering moans and mewls of agony. All the while, the midwife sang and chanted and hummed and spoke, though never in a tongue any of them recognized. After a time, the storm passed, and the rain slowed, finally stopping.
    The duke had fallen asleep and the maids had disappeared into the palace when the door finally opened. It swung outward, seemingly of its own accord, but the groan of the hinges startled the sleeping duke, who scrambled to his feet and lunged into the room.
    The duchess lay on the bed, her eyes wide and staring at the ceiling, her hair fanned out about her on the pillows; there was a look of utter wonder and love on her face. The sweat was still damp on her brow, but she no longer breathed or blinked.
    He could not take his eyes off of her, his beautiful Sophia, perfectly suspended in a moment of joy, perfectly still.
    There was a peculiar silence in the room as he stared at his dead wife. The midwife crouched in the corner, rocking back and forth, humming tunelessly.
    Finally the duke looked to her and saw that she held something in her arms—the baby. Had the baby died, too?
    “What . . . happened,” he managed to say at last, his voice low and very dry.
    “Shhhhh,” breathed the midwife, and at first he was not sure she had heard his question. He took a step toward her. “Shhh,” said the midwife again, lifting her head, her eyes the same pale, sky-blue they had always been, startling against her dark, shadow-cool skin.
    The infant in her arms was as bright as a star, as pale as the moon that haunted the sky somewhere beyond the storm clouds. It was small, premature, but sturdy-looking in spite of that, with a swath of dark hair across its round head.
    The duke was numb, his breath shallow as he stared.
    “I have never lost a child yet,” said the midwife, after a long pause.
    “It’s alive?” he heard himself say. The little thing was so small, he couldn’t see it breathe.
    The midwife nodded, slowly rising to her feet, shifting the small, bright child in her arms as she wrapped it in one of the blankets from the bed. It was the first time the duke had ever seen the midwife without her staff. The gnarled stick leaned against the bed post, just barely within arm’s reach from where she knelt.
    “This is your daughter,” she murmured, looking at the duke with a strangely distant, peaceful expression.
    His heart pounded. “My daughter. But Sophia—”
    The dark woman shook her head. “Your daughter was too strong for her. It happens sometimes. Your wife’s spirit is in her now,” she added.
    The duke said nothing. He moved to the door and pulled the bell rope to call the maids