New Life (6)
Watching Black Wind’s wife struggle to bring a new life into the world, Monia found herself wondering if her own mother had looked the same when she gave birth to her.
It must have been hard.
The thought was simple, almost detached—she still couldn’t quite feel the weight of it. And once she started thinking about how hard it was to give life, her mind naturally drifted to the act of taking it.
To live was to kill. There was no need to feel anything special about killing something so that she herself could keep living. In the end, she too would die someday and become fertilizer for someone else’s life.
That was what Chester always said. His belief, his creed—the philosophy he had inherited from his father and carried with him ever since.
Monia had learned it from him, of course. She had snapped rabbits’ necks so she could eat. She had beaten pigs to death simply because she wanted tastier meat. And for the sake of her own survival, she and Chester had killed more than a dozen people together.
Yet every single one of those acts had been hard.
She had vomited after killing her first rabbit. The first time she butchered a living creature, the image stayed burned into her mind for days; she couldn’t touch meat for two full days afterward. Of course, life on the island was not the sort that let you go without meat for long, so she had forced herself to eat it again after those two days.
After the mental agony of being unable to eat meat gave way to the physical agony of needing it, Monia arrived at a kind of realization.
Life was so fierce that you couldn’t afford to spare a thought for anything else.
Life was fierce. Because it was fierce, you killed and were killed in order to live. You lived by devouring other lives.
And so Monia had taken many lives. By now she could no longer count how many. She didn’t even try.
She only knew that the number was large.
That was why the sight of a life being born stirred such a strange emotion in her.
Someday, me too.
Someday she would give birth to a new life as well. And that life would surely be one this man beside her had given her.
Monia quietly looked at Chester. He was watching the birth with the same calm expression he always wore.
Part of Chester’s life resembled that of a beast. Not in the way nobles casually called commoners livestock—he was a beast in the literal sense, a creature that lived in the wild.
From childhood he had followed his father into the mountains, fashioning everything he needed with bare hands and hunting for food. He had watched his father kill bandits and other men for the sake of the village and the family, and he had grown up prepared for the day he might have to kill for something precious himself.
The man who had sacrificed his own life for family and village was deeply human—yet that very humanity was what kept his more bestial nature in check.
The world of buildings raised by human hands never suited him as well as this one of dense forests that seemed ready to swallow even the sky. Here he seemed freer, happier.
What must it feel like, Monia wondered, to live with one foot planted in a world that did not fit you?
And what must it feel like to be cast out of that world and finally step into the one that did?
Monia had been stripped of everything and driven to this island.
A life of comfort, overflowing gold and jewels, hundreds—thousands—of people bowing their heads to her.
She had lost it all and become nothing more than a single human being. She had shaken off every weight that had clung to her and crushed her, and here on this island she had at last been able to cry out with the voice of a newborn and begin to live.
Chester was different.
He had given up his own future for a poor village and struggling parents.
In the duke’s household, surrounded by nobles, he had lived under constant cold stares with nowhere to rest his heart, slowly wearing himself down.
The village and family that had given him the strength to keep going, the will to hold himself together, had been wiped out four years earlier by starving bandits during the cruel drought that swept the kingdom.
He had lived by losing.
When Monia first learned the full story of his life, she had not known what to say.
In her eyes Chester had always been the man who smiled, who solved every difficulty with ease, who possessed a heart that never broke no matter what happened.
After she learned the truth, she could no longer understand how he managed to live that way.
If he was tired, she wanted to comfort him. If he was sad, she wanted to offer her chest and tell him to cry as long as he needed. Yet Chester still never showed any weakness.
It wasn’t that he was dull with emotion. She could clearly feel his eyes stealing glances at her chest or thighs; he laughed when something was funny, danced and sang when he was happy. He simply never let anyone see him weak.
That made Monia sad.
She wanted to help him, to walk beside him—yet she felt far too fragile to support the soft places he kept hidden.
“Oh—the head’s out.”
Chester’s voice snapped her back. She looked forward. Just as he said, the baby’s head was already emerging.
—Chester.
Black Wind called to him then.
Startled by the sudden summons, Chester hurried to Black Wind’s side and moved his hands exactly as the giant guided them.
Once Chester’s hands were positioned beneath the baby, Black Wind explained.
—Catch the child.
—What?
Chester started to shape a reply with his hands, but Black Wind caught them and pressed them firmly back under the baby.
—We are all family, yet there is a tradition of entrusting one’s child to the family one wishes to be bound to by soul. To the brother one trusts most, the one with whom one can truly say he has shared his life.
Black Wind looked at Chester with a grave face.
—Chester. I was arrogant, foolish, impatient, and hasty.
Still are, if you ask me, Chester thought rudely, but he kept the words inside.
—Chester. After meeting you and learning that a wider world and greater wisdom existed, I was able to change. Of course I have not changed completely. Yet I woke from my narrow world and became something larger.
Black Wind clapped him on the back.
—So please—receive my soul.
Having heard every word, Chester looked down at the baby still fighting its way into the world.
Catch the baby? The baby? Catch a baby…
His body locked solid with tension. How long had it been since he felt this taut? Not since he decided to hunt the bear and fought it, maybe. Or perhaps since the moment he charged in to fight Urgo again.
He was afraid.
A baby was a fragile creature. Every baby of every species was fragile. And Chester knew he was vastly stronger than any of them. He also knew his grip strength was extraordinary even among trained adult men.
What if, while catching the baby, he put even a little force into his hands? Even the gentlest pressure might be terrifyingly strong to something so small.
Damn it. What am I supposed to do?
Yet he could not refuse. There was no backing out of a moment like this. Chester steeled himself and deliberately drained every bit of strength from his body.
As soft and light as possible—like stroking air itself. Holding that image, he raised his senses until even the lines of light became visible.
More than half out now, the baby was wrinkled and ugly. And it was impossibly small for a child of the People of the Summit.
Chester carefully brought his hands close and gently received the emerging infant.
Once he held it, he simply stared at the still, unmoving form nestled against him.
“……”
—This way.
Black Wind led him outside. Chester hurried after the giant’s long strides, cradling the baby so it would not slip.
They reached the lake overflowing with the Grace of the Summit. Sitting at the water’s edge, they carefully lowered the baby into the lake.
They dipped it again and again, lifting it out at intervals so it would not drown, until every trace of amniotic fluid had been washed away.
How many times they did this, Chester could not say.
Then the body that had lain so still suddenly twitched. The baby spat a mouthful of water and began to squirm.
Softly, its cry spread through the air.
The People of the Summit heard that first cry and moved into the final rites of their magic, blessing the newborn.
And Chester simply watched the tiny creature that had been wriggling a moment before now cling tightly to him and wail.
—Give the child a name.
—A name?
Black Wind’s words pulled Chester back. He looked down at the baby, already breathing quietly as if the crying had never happened, already asleep.
“Monia.”
“Hm?”
“He wants us to name the baby.”
“A name? …In the style of the People of the Summit?”
“……I don’t know. Our way should be fine, right? It’s our baby.”
“O-our baby.”
At those words Monia’s expression grew serious.
“……Is it a boy or a girl?”
“……A boy.”
“Mm. Then something strong and manly.”
Monia watched the wrinkled little face shift through one expression after another, then spoke.
“Let’s call him Rex.”
“Rex?”
“Yes. So he’ll grow up strong. Rex.”
“That’s a grand name.”
“So what? You don’t like it?”
“No—I like it. Then… this child’s name is Rex.”
Chester held the baby in one arm and carefully stroked its head.
When he announced the name, Black Wind smiled and brushed a finger over the infant.
—A good name.
And so their new life with Rex began.