A Gracious Sentinel

Lesson One: A midwife’s primary purpose is as a steward of life, ever vigilant to protect it miraculous nature. Lesson Two: A midwife’s secondary purpose is as a gracious sentinel, when death humbles us with our own mortality. Lesson Three: Life is your purpose, and so is death. These lessons had been drilled into her head from day one of her apprenticeship. Her teacher, an old woman who hid her wisdom under layers of intentionally over-the-top eccentricity, had always posited that these three lessons were more important to understand than any technical skill she would ever learn. As a seven year-old she couldn’t grasp more than the first two, nor the depth of their importance. The third she could never get her arms around. How was death her purpose too, when she was supposed to ensure women and their babies didn’t die? Was not death her adversary? ”You won’t understand until you understand.” was all her teacher would tut, further obscuring her meaning. Sabrina Hodges. The fourth day of the second month of summer. Twenty-one hours and thirteen minutes. Age twenty-two. Shocking red hair, brown eyes, button nose with a shock of freckles on pale skin. Her third child. Everything was normal. It all progressed to the plan. The child was positioned well and had been moving regularly. The child was born, healthy and strong – a boy like the other two. Then suddenly, without warning, her heart ceased to beat, and she died. The fourth day of the second month of summer. Twenty-one hours and thirteen minutes. Her teacher had stood by while her husband and children grieved. She comforted them. She cried with them. She held them. She assured them of her peaceful passing, of her eternal comfort wherever it was souls went to rest. She prepared them to continue living, and to move on. Her teacher had been right. She understood when she understood. Sabrina was one of many names and faces Phoebe knew by heart, ones she could not, would not, forget. Each person that died in her care she wore on her shoulders, a mantle of responsibility. Most only saw her primary purpose, bubbling, happy, soothing as she saw new life brought to the world. Only she felt the weight of her secondary purpose, to accept the things she could not change, and assist in as peaceful a passing as one could hope for. Early on the weight crushed her, but she learned to cope by an odd means, though she never had a sacred place in which to do so. Gods did not exist in Northwind after all. But feeling the crushing pressure of grief now, remembering what she had been told by Safrin, she went to the temple once Emmett and his siblings had fallen asleep. She was still in the rags of her dress, walking barefoot, an armful of small candles in her arms. The image of the Palmer house haunted her. She needed to do the only thing she knew to do to put their memories to rest. Phoebe arranged the candles on the alter, lighting them each as she imagined the face of each Palmer member that had died. The candles weren’t what she would have used ideally, they were too small and gave too faint a glow…but it was Long Night still. Once lit, she stepped back and kneeled, contemplating her words carefully. First, she said each of their names, starting with Emmett’s parents, and working her way down the list of his siblings that had been killed. ”…I am sorry. I am so, so sorry that I could do nothing to save you all. I pray you find peace and rest wherever it is Ludo takes you, that they grant you that final comfort. I promise I will do all that I can for Emmett, Chris, and Milly.” Tears briefly rose in her eyes, but quickly subsided as she sighed. For several minutes she sat in silence, sitting vigil over the flames that represented what the Palmers had been. That was all she could do. The dead were not to be raised, but bid rest by a gracious sentinel. Phoebe I'll be your shoulder when you cry