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Then she brings both hands back around onto her thighs and crouches a little lower for the final effort The baby’s whole head is hanging out With another sustained push, its shoulders slip through and a purple mass of flesh spurts out

She brings her arms down and catches the baby at the base of its skull, supporting it as she sweeps it upright while falling to her knees in afrole, and then cups it in her ars her mouth to her baby’s face, sucks to clear the mouth and nose, and then spits on the floor The baby is blotched and viscous and alive Its eyes are claht of the room It cries until it finds her nipple, then takes it in its rows still

Victra sways there, in a world of two, rocking the baby so tenderly, so inti love that I ain to pulse, to throb with color, the war the parasite so that their therlows in the coolness of the room

“It’s a boy, Sevro,” Victra’s glowing ht”

And for a moment, as I watch, as I see the heat that makes their bodies, the vibrations that form her words, I believe the hero of ht be Just as I believe deep down I could feel the death of Aengus and Dagan and Liam, the last of my family Neither time nor space can sever the strands of life between those we love, not really It is not the parasite telling me this It is my heart In the room, I feel my father and mother, my sister andended in horror It is not gone, as I thought it was It is here In these er than the world itself They were alive They lived They were loved

“Come say hello,” Victra says

I am startled back into the room “Me?”

“I thought you weren’t an idiot”

She leans the baby close to me as he snuffles at her breast I take his little hand and ser than my brothers were, but those eyes that will ils on his hands are bone, not yet coated with gold He is just a child

“Hello, little haemanthus,” I say, just as I once said to my sister’s children as they took their first breaths, “welcome to the worlds”

I leave Victra alone The door bua, aits outside with a blank look on her face I close the door behind me and nod She breaks into a s the birth of Julii’s child

Through the cracked door I hear Victra whisper a benediction to her child: “My son…” Her voice falters “My son, you are of the gens Julii Your ancestors looked to the night sky when there was nothing but drips of light in the darkness Roads they built to stitch that light together You are also of the gens Barca, guardians of the human race You will be hated and you will hate You will love and be loved You will fall and you will rise Never will you know peace, but you will know joy You may even sail the dark seas in ships and lie beside nymphs in alien woods You are your father’s son Forever my boy Forever our Ulysses”

VICTRA EATS WHAT’S LEFT of the soup and bread at the kitchen table Ulysses is swaddled in her arh the night In a few hours it’ll be daylight Volga and I stay awake on coffee We all knoe can’t stay here long If we keep Cormac and his family inside after the storm dies, it’ll arouse suspicion fro which of theone as soon as possible

Volga and I want to wait, fearing Victra isn’t strong enough She looks paler than I’ve ever seen her, and even if Golds are Golds, they’re still hua go to the transmitter now Cormac offers to take her, but Victra doesn’t want the e His son volunteers But that’s just the saa can find it on her own Better they stay tied at the table

I stand with her in the open doorway Volga squints into the swirling snow, then back at Ulysses in the crook of Victra’s ar’s black orb by the fire “I wish I could have watched,” she says, mildly jealous “Why did she let you?”