“See, this is the world I wish to welcome our hatchlings into,” I say with a sigh. “Next time the pain grips my belly, we will push.”
“How?”
“Roll my shoulders forward by leaning over,” I reply with a quiver, betraying my nervousness. He envelops me in his arms, surrounding me with support. Tentacles caress my arms and kiss along my collarbone. My head falls against his chest as I absorb his affection. He licks up the side of my neck and nibbles my earlobe.
“This is good,” he purrs. “This feels like theworld is right.”
Phin and I hold our breath, waiting for the next round of pain. The water sloshes in the ceramic bowl where our hatchlings will spend their first day outside my womb. It dances the same pattern as the river water waltzes to the beat of the waving branches of the trees. Leaves flutter around the shelter’s opening like the warning of autumn’s arrival. The urgency to float south where the water’s warm enough for hatchlings rings alarm bells in the back of my mind. Can they survive winter outdoors? Did Phin winter in our swamps under a blanket of snow?
“Phin, how—”
My question dies on my tongue with the agonizing stab to my womb. Phin’s strong chest pushes against my back as his palms smooth down my arms. We roll my body until I’m curled around my belly. Phin bears down on me. I grunt with exertion as I push. My body says to push, but there’s no pressure at my opening. What am I forcing out? How will I know—
Oh.
“Stop pushing! Stop, Phin, we don’t need to push!”
The pain I’ve been experiencing isn’t a tightening of my belly but the dilating of my womb. Fluid trickles onto the raft. A wiggling startsdeep within me. I gasp with the strange sensation of tickling within my vagina. The fluid release intensifies.
I wish to squirm with the uncomfortable itchiness between my legs, but I don’t dare disturb whatever is happening to me. The tickles press on my inner labia. Curiosity has me reaching between my legs. Is it an eggshell? Phin said his eggs aren’t hard like chicken eggs, so did I just dispel a slimy sliver of a shell?
Shells don’t climb onto my fingers.
I raise the tiny peach creature to our faces. From its patch of brown hair—that matches my own—to its webbed toes, our hatchling fits in my hand. He’s a boy, with two tiny cocks the same shape as his father’s. His arms and legs are half the length of my thumb.
I raise him to the end of my nose to examine his face. His eyes are closed. A faintwelpemerges from his tiny, pink mouth as his tongue darts onto my skin. No tentacles or barbels adorn his chin. I giggle at his sounds.
“He’s so precious,” I coo at the hatchling as the tickling of our next hatchling begins deep inside me. “I just love him, Phin. Isn’t he adorable?”
“I’m happy you are pleased, my love. I’m sorry I doubted you,” he replies, kissing my temple. “He will be more comfortable in the water. If he’s like me, it’s easier to breathe through the skin.”
Phin takes our hatchling from my hand. He laughs at my pouting lip, not-so-secretly pleased that I’m attached to our firstborn son. While I’m scared for their survival—my second-born son’s body is smaller than the first—I’m grateful not to birth a ten-pound baby like most women. Such a feat could kill me in the wild without so much as a midwife to minimize the bleeding. After the opening of my womb, the pain reduced to manageable waves as each hatchling creeps into my vagina.
In my impatience, I reach inside me and pull out our first daughter. Not only does she have female genitalia, but she has long brown hair that curls at her shoulders. “She’s a tiny princess!”
“Yes, we shall call this one Princess,” Phin whispers before kissing the tiny head of our daughter.
She cries out when he places her in the water bowl with her brothers. The two swim to her side like protectors, which warms my heart. They’re just like their father, who protected his siblings as best he could in Leopold’s house of horrors. And while I’m legally still married to the vile man, Phin is the husband of my heart.
“We will need many boy’s names,” I say as I catch two wiggling, fighting hatchlings. These two will be troublemakers. They grab and smack at each other until I hold them in separate hands. Then, theirinch-long tentacles reach for one another as they cry in tiny squeals.
“Now boys,” Phin says in a fatherly voice I’ve never heard him use. “We will have none of your nonsense. You must try to get along and set a good example for your siblings.”
Oh, my ovaries! Phin’s paternal instincts bring out the best in him.
Phin
My heart threatens to burst. Harriett’s gentle handling of our hatchlings is everything I’ve dreamed of, wished for, and wanted rolled into one vision. She coos at them and kisses their tiny heads like a true mother. Nobody taught her what to do. Her fear melted into unconditional love like a fairytale when she looked upon them.
As she inspects each one, I judge her expressions. My tentacles grip her tightly, constantly tasting her moods. I wish I could trust that her lips curl into a smile instead of a sneer—that her tears are happy, not sad. How much did the lab break me? If I had never met Harriett, would I have noticed howwrongly my insides are arranged?
“I’m sorry,” I whisper against her shoulder. “I shouldn’t have doubted your heart.”
“It’s called trauma, an old Greek word for injury,” she murmurs, playing with our youngest and fifth son. He’s the largest of our brood, with green skin and tentacles strong enough to clasp her fingers. There are no suckers on them yet, so he misses tasting his mother’s joy at greeting him into the world. “Your distrust and confusion are Leopold’s fault. Yes—before you ask—you will heal. I listened to scientists lecture on injuries of the mind—traumas—with my father in Boston. The science is new, but the concept is as old as medicine. With love and time, you will glue your heart back together and learn how to trust.”
“You have lots of faith,” I reply, hypnotized by her play with our most alert hatchling. She holds her index finger above him, and he reaches a tentacle upward to investigate. A second joins the first, pulling his head off her opposite hand.
“He’s trying to stand,” she cheers. “Oh, Phin, can we name him Crusoe? I just loved that book. It was about a brave explorer. Our son is brave too. Please? I know he must return to his siblings in the water, but he’s so fun. I could watch him learn for hours.”
