Chapter 10

(Late Fall of Year Two through Spring of Year Three)

When I got a grip on myself I ran into the house. After a few minutes of being in a panic, I managed to notice that no one other than me seemed excited, and that there wasn't much to do. Ashes and the girls spent the next couple of hours walking around camp, doing small things, and generally keeping me out of the way. Meanwhile, once I got my head pulled out of my ass, I cleared off a clean space on the floor of the house and laid out the medical supplies.

I've mentioned at the beginning of my story that I had brought along a super-insulated medical storage cabinet / fridge. The medical fridge could be powered from two sources, both propane — its normal mode of operation, or with the external compressor it could be electrically powered. The standard medical fridge was already highly efficient, but with the Aerogel inserts I had specified when I was ordering supplies it used well under fifteen watts of power to maintain an acceptably cold temperature once it was converted to white gas. So far, it had run without a single hitch, and the cold supplies were still cold. Hell, it hadn't even dented my gas supply that much.

Birth in the movies, even on TV is a relatively clean affair. What they don't show you is all the 'water' that the woman drains out over the course of several hours as the baby drops. They don't show her getting an enema before the birth when she's doing home delivery to avoid fouling the birthing area. There's a lot they don't show or go into. Frankly, I can mostly agree with the sentiment. Here's how it went with Ashes ... She went into an early and mild labor about an hour after her water broke. They all sat around and talked and did useful things. After I set out the medical stuff, I mostly just flapped around uselessly feeling like I should be doing something.

Julie was awesome. It turned out that her mom was a nurse in Hawaii, and that she'd gotten a midwife's license, and that Julie spent a lot of time around laboring women. She pretty damned well knew what to do. Initially this seemed to mostly consist of getting me out of there and off doing things. I spent some time down at the sawmill making up a simple little wooden rocker. I lined it with boiled felting and made the feet a pair of simple arches so that it would rock a little.

Bountiful came and got me as I was finishing the rocker up, and we walked back together. When we got to the house, Julie had Ashes squatting down and beginning to rub warm oil on her 'taint' to help it stretch as the baby dropped down. She looked up at me and smiled.

"Baby's on the way Josh. Wash up and get back in here for the main event."

I did just that, and came back in a few moments later smelling of disenfectant and fear. Julie had me sit on my crossed legs behind Ashes, supporting her. With Julie quietly coaching her, Ashes started really laboring. Now, from my point of view, what followed was about four hours of sweaty, fear filled terror. The girls kept boiled water handy, and used it to cool Ashes off as she sweated. The front of my shirt was soaked, literally dripping wet with her sweat. I supported her and tried to encourage her as she worked.

About five hours into the labor itself, and most of eighteen hours after her water broke, Ashes went into the final stage of delivery. I held her as she started to push, and the other two girls held her hands as Julie coached her from the front. Ashes pushed, the girls helped, and in a moment, Julie said.

"Crowning." Then she reached up and did something, and the next thing I knew, there was this still blue baby in her arms. I knew what a blue baby was, and I closed my eyes as I started to cry.

"No." I said. Then I opened my eyes and saw Julie pry the little mouth open, clean it out, turn the baby face down, slap it a couple of times across the back lightly, turn it back right side up, use a syringe to suck something out of its mouth, and then put her mouth over the baby's whole face. Next thing I heard this tiny little almost meow sound. Then the baby cried lightly.

I had a son.

"Josh, get over here and stitch Ashes up, she tore. I'll take care of the baby." Julie rocked back on her heels, snipped a clamp around the cord, cut it a second later, and took the baby over to the table.

I had shaky hands, but Ashes needed a few stitches, so that brought me around enough to take care of her. She was bleeding a lot, and looking a bit shocky, but I got the tear cleaned up, powdered with an antiseptic, and then stitched closed. The girls led her to bed, where she was propped up on pillows, and Julie brought the baby over. He looked like a baby now, not some blue alien. He howled a little, but settled right down and went quiet when he landed on momma's belly. I laid down next to Ashes and held her a little.

I was exhausted, and so was Ashes. Next thing I knew, I'd slept some and when I opened my eyes there was my beautiful wife and little baby boy sleeping next to me. Julie and the girls had cleaned the place up a lot, and had let me sleep while life went on.

The first couple of days we got more sleep than we would in the next couple of weeks. Then, right in the middle of being tired all the time from the crying baby, what should happen but we did it all over again for Shining.

Shining's labor was a lot longer, almost thirty hours. Most of that labor was 'soft' labor though, as her body got ready to deliver, and when it was time for that baby to come, it came in under three hours. Shining delivered me a baby boy as well, and she did it like a champ. I swear that woman was born to have babies. Julie was a trooper once again, and she made sure we all got through the birth with flying colors. Shining's baby boy came out from momma squalling, and never went quiet after that.

We named my first son Miller, and the younger boy I named River. Julie showed the girls how to fashion slings for the babies, and helped them both get the kids latched on the nipple. It took a while for the girls to get their nipples toughened up for the abuse they were taking, but Julie was able to help them with some kind of animal fat grease she made up.

By the end of December, the household had settled down into a quiet routine of being exhausted all the time. DeadAndBack helped me around the camp, and the women from the bunkhouse were all tremendously useful in helping to take care of the babies. Ashes and Shining were able to trade the babies back and forth for breastfeeding, and we all started sleeping better. I went out one day and chopped down a small fir tree and set it up in the central court yard. As the snow fell, I gave the family presents and tried to explain to them about the change of seasons and the beginning of the new year. They told me the story of the sun hiding in a cave, afraid to come out, and how it made winter come. We all drank a little, and sang together. It was a beautiful thing.

"Julie." I said, the next morning. "Come over here."

I walked out of the house with her and we climbed up one of the wall ladders and stood on the platform overlooking the stream. She huddled in with me, sharing warmth against the snowy world around us under one of the fur blankets.

"You saved Miller's life."

"Josh, don't be silly ... I just knew what to do is all."

"Shut up Julie, don't make me spank you."

"Promises, promises Josh." She grinned at me all sexy like.

"Julie. You've proven to me that I was wrong about you."

"No Josh, you weren't wrong about me. I was a self-centered bitch. I deserved everything I got from you and the family. I deserved..."

"Julie, shut up."

"Okay Josh." She snuggled in tighter.

"Marry me?" I looked down at her beautiful face.

"Okay." She said, and started to cry.

We hugged for a while. Then we kissed. She pulled the blanket close around us, and the next thing I knew, we were softly fucking up against the wall. She held on to me as she came, and the tears streamed down her eyes.

"I can't have your babies, Josh." She whispered into my ear.

"Why not?"

"I had my tubes tied when I was younger, something was wrong with me when I was little. I can be your wife Josh, but I can't be a mother." The tears were warm on my chest in contrast to the cold around us.

"I'll take you as you are, Julie."

That went over real well, and we stayed out a bit longer.

Lo and behold, the GodLight picked Julie out to be my fourth wife, and after I blew the white powder on her face, we had a great old party. All DeadAndBack had to say to me about the whole thing was something close to. "About time, GreatOne."

During the party, I introduced my sons to the whole family, the old cave group, everyone. Lifting a scene from an old movie, I held each one over my head and named them in front of the group. All the folks wanted a chance to look at them, touch them, and whisper to them. I made sure that when all was said and done that the boys got washed damned well.

A little later that winter, Dead approached me about getting mated. Now, I had a lot of questions about this. Mind you, I didn't ask them so much, but I had 'em. If you remember what I said earlier in this story, DeadAndBack used to be mated to Mustache whose real name was BrightWind, when he was living in the cave and being chief hunter. I'd not heard a word from Mustache since I last saw her months ago with the new baby. After I'd patched Dead back up from the invader assault, Mustache just seemed to fade into the background. Any time we visited, she hung back and didn't interact with us much. So, I asked him about that.

"DeadAndBack?"

"Yes, GreatOne?"

"You want me to let you be mated to Luscious?" I smiled at him.

"Yes, GreatOne, if you please. I bring you sacred beetle powder and good hides for her."

"What about BrightWind and the baby? What will become of them?"

He looked at me, seeming to be really puzzled.

"What, GreatOne?"

"Isn't BrightWind your mate?"

"No, GreatOne. She was mated to BraveOne, who died. Do you remember? Then ListensToWind took her and the baby into his family. She is happy now."

I tried again. "Wouldn't she be happier to be back with you?"

He shook his head. "No, GreatOne. No one wants to be mated to a ghost. This is why I want a captive mate."

I nodded as if I understood his logic.

"Alright, you have my blessing to mate Luscious. But I also want you to mate LittleStinker too. You need two mates to take care of you."

I'd picked LittleStinker out because I knew that he liked both Luscious and her, but he'd been torn about which one to mate. So, I solved that for him. His face lit up in a big grin.

"If you say so, GreatOne. Many thanks!"

I married the three of them off a few days later, with the white powder and the whole rigmarole. I made up a larger partition for the bunk house to give them some more privacy, but I'm not sure they ever used it.

Miller developed some croup that winter, but our medical supplies took care of that, and River ran a fever a couple of times. In other situations, I knew that I might well have lost both boys. I was extremely grateful that I had the supplies I did. The girls seemed ongoingly surprised that I was able to keep everyone so well, but no one complained.

When the really hard freezes began to come in January, I shut the mill down and we had to go back to porting water from the river by hand. In mid-January, several sections of the water pipe broke from the freeze-thaw cycle, and the pipes also broke in both houses, where the pipe entered the warm interior. All taken, the piping was a bit of a disaster. Also, the combination of rains, mud, and frost heave all worked together to ruin much of the courtyard I'd laid out in the late summer. By late winter it was all a mess. With the mill down, the river water gone, and the pipes broken, it got back to being pretty primitive in camp in full mid winter. We didn't do much. It would snow three days out of four, and the temperature would stay well below freezing for several days at a time. However, even at the worst of the winter, we were warm in our houses, we had plenty of food and fire, and no one died of cough or cold.