Babydoll

"...and then we'll cut the cord and take her measurements -- length, weight, all that -- and do some quick health checks just to be sure everything looks good. Then I'll get out of your hair and you two will be alone with your new baby girl."

She paused to give the anxious mother-to-be time to process the information overload she'd just gotten. It was always interesting to see how they reacted to the reality of hearing what a home birth would actually be like, when they were so adament about wanting one beforehand. The 'natural' way wasn't always quite so appealing when you realized you'd be on your hands and knees in a cheap inflatable kiddie pool in your kitchen, without the aid of modern pain management, for much of what was often 24-48 hours of labor.

"Oh my gosh, that sounds so amazing!"

The woman was practically gushing, as if she'd just been told about a wedding cake recipe rather than a birth plan.

"I've always known I wanted to give birth at home, in the spiritually cleansed oasis, surrounded by the healing power of my plants and crystals, where I can meditate or even do a quick charm if I need to... and then Nyx can be there for the birth too! Oh, that will be so special for her to be able to meet her new sister right away!"

She was afraid to ask, but knew she had to. "Oh, who's Nyx? You have an older child?"

"Oh no, Babydoll here will be our first. Nyx is my albino burmese python I got for my 16th birthday, she's my soulmate and my familiar."

She paused to give herself time to breathe a couple times before answering. As a midwife in Portland, Oregon, she'd dealt with some eccentric personalities before. This, however, was setting a new bar.

"I'm afraid I'll have to request that you keep any animals away from the birthing area for sanitation. Newborns have weak immune systems at first, so you may want to limit Nyx to... distant observation... for the first few months at least too."

There. That felt almost like she'd managed to sound non-judgemental as she told this crazy lady not to bring her snake along to hang out during active labor.

"Oh no, of course she wouldn't be there during the birth," the woman laughed.

Good, she was reasonable after all.

"I'm giving birth under the new moon -- Nyx will be outside in the lunar garden with my friends for the ritual!"

As much as she was curious, that was one path of questioning she refused to go down. There was no way she wanted to know how, exactly, she planned to ensure she gave birth on that specific date without medical intervention either. It was time to wrap this up before she found herself being asked to volunteer as a human sacrifice or bathe in the blood of some innocent animal.

"GREAT," she practically yelled. "Then I think we're all set! I have your information and your doctor's notes with your estimated due date, so just call me when you go into labor and I'll meet you at your house! Can you give me the address one more time so I make sure I have it right?"

"It's 63682 Night Oak Lane, but I'll send you a location pin because GPS never really gets it right. We're out in the country and it can't figure out where things are out here -- you know how it is. Always tries to take you into the middle of the woods!"

Her client was giggling at that, but she found it hard to do the same after the conversation they'd had.

She received the pin and saved the location to her map, noting just how 'out in the country' it really was. She'd need to keep a close eye on things when she was there -- if they needed to get to a hospital, the closest one was almost an hour away from the pinned location. Even after the call ended she didn't move for a few minutes, leaning on the kitchen counter and staring unseeing across the room as she tapped her toes on the barstool footrail.

She tried to imagine what the house would be like -- a big, dark Victorian mansion with peeling paint and moth-bitten velvet curtains in the windows that you could swear fell back into place to cover a face that couldn't possibly have been there? An old, white farmhouse with a wrap-around porch and a big red barn standing ominously behind, barred and padlocked so no one can disturb its unnatural occupants? Perhaps a small, mossy log cabin buried in a copse of overgrown trees with ivy tracing the stones of the tall chimney that emits a most odd-smelling smoke. Or, she thought to herself, maybe it's just a house and I'm letting my imagination run far too wild after a conversation with an expectant mother who happens to be a bit more on the eccentric side than most.

She hadn't thought much of it when she'd gotten the call. It was three days prior to the woman's due date, not an unusual timeframe by any means. She'd called back to check in when she was on her way, about an hour into her 86-minute drive out to the house, and heard something going on in the background she couldn't quite make out. As she got out of the city, though, she finally noticed it -- the moon. Or rather, the lack of moon. Just as the woman had said she would, she was giving birth on the new moon. Weird, a bit goose bump-inducing, but not enough to turn around and drive home. When she got to the house, though...

The driveway looked innocent enough, just a standard mailbox on a standard road with a gravel drive leading down a hill. The gravel seemed to sparkle unnaturally, more like fireworks than mineral reflection, almost as if it had little chips of fire in it. As she carefully drove down the hill, she could finally she the house in the valley below. As wild as her imaginings had gotten, they never would have come up with something quite like this. The whole thing appeared to be some sort of mud or stucco-like material and it started with a normal rectangular house shape in the center, with a peaked roof and everything, but it appeared almost as if the house had been added onto from there by a hundred different people with a thousand different ideas. There were a couple of towers, the one at the front being tall enough that she was sure she should have been able to see it over the hill. There was some sort of glass-walled greenhouse or conservatory right beside that, though you could hardly see through the windows for all the plants inside. There was a dome sticking up off the other side that appeared to have a sliding door opening on its roof like it was -- an observatory??

As she had the thought, a periscope of sorts appeared out the top of the dome and seemed to generate segments of itself from thin air enough to bend and stretch over to the front porch. When it got close enough to see her standing outside her car, she could have sworn she saw it blink before it retracted rapidly back into the dome. Suddenly, the top half of the front door -- was that door even there a minute ago? -- was opening, and a smiling face greeted her.

"You must be the midwife! Welcome to our home," the man called out. From what she could see, he couldn't have been more than five feet tall -- and it seemed that the bushel of curly red hair atop his head made up a sizable portion of his height.

"I am, and you must be the father?"

He smiled even more broadly, revealing so many teeth she felt like she was watching a shark documentary. He waved her inside with sweeping gestures and equally exuberant greetings, stating that the mother-to-be was resting comfortably in the 'Crystal Garden Oasis' (which seemed to be the glass-walled addition she had observed). As she stepped in she could have sworn she heard something screeching outside, but he ushered her in and closed the door too quickly for her to investigate.

Though it had only been another hour, the mother-to-be was already getting restless. It seemed she was set on delivering her baby on the day of the new moon, and not the morning after. She was nearly 8cm dilated already, but hadn't progressed any since before the midwife's arrival.

"Why don't we take a walk? Sometimes movement can help get the baby moving again too," she suggested tentatively, hoping she wouldn't offend the woman by suggesting that she leave her 'spiritually cleansed oasis' for even a minute.

She'd nearly stumbled over the doorjamb when she'd first entered the room. It was a remarkable thing, this oasis -- crystals hanging from or posted on nearly every available surface including the plants, incense burning in strategic locations where it was less likely (though not impossible) to catch a plant aflame, bundles of dried sage hung all along the roof, and the plants themselves! They were as varied and colorful as anything she'd ever seen. All, apparently, had some medicinal or magickal use: sage of course, lavender, wormwood, opium poppy, mushrooms of every imaginable kind. It was truly incredible, and she had to admit that it did make for a relaxing space in which to give birth (though she would hold judgement on whether that had anything to do with the 'cleansing').

"Oh, that sounds lovely. I love this incense but I could really do with some fresh air!"

Of course, even though it was a glass-walled room with two-and-a-half walls facing the outside, there was no way to reach an exit in the oasis. They had to hobble back inside, pausing occasionally for contractions, and make their way to the side door of the house which turned out to be in the back tower. As she reached for the door, this time she was sure she could hear screeching outside.

"You know, I think I'm good in the oasis. I kind of miss the incense smell! Fresh air is overrated anyway, let's just turn around and go--"

But she had already pushed the door open, because she wasn't going to lose a third chance to find out what the noises were. Especially if they obviously didn't want her to know. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the bright blaze of the flame in front of her, but once they did she could hardly close them for fear of missing some tiny detail that might explain what she was seeing.

In what must be the lunar garden, a circle of stones and flower-covered trellises surrounding a large cauldron currently housing the blazing bonfire, a small group of men and women were chanting and flailing their bodies wildly as they moved around it. One woman appeared to have a snake wrapped around her waist and neck, a snake which she realized must be Nyx. All of them were nude except for body paint used to give them the appearance of some sort of... doll? They had white faces with red circle cheeks like clowns, but white and blue overalls and shirts like some sort of raggedy doll. She could see flashes of wet red streaks on their arms and legs, as if they had cut themselves to bleed for whatever ritual it was they were performing.

As she stood in the doorway staring, the woman wearing Nyx stopped dead. The snake slid off her neck, suspended from her waist only, and turned to stare straight at her. Her tongue flicked out once, twice. Suddenly, Nyx's jaw opened wide and the midwife heard the full power of the screech she'd heard only snippets of all day.

"Come, let's go back to the oasis."

She followed behind the pregnant woman silently, mind floundering for logical explanations of what she'd just seen and coming up empty. Suddenly, there was no one in her line of sight as the woman in front of her fell to the floor with the force of her contraction.

"She's coming!"

"One last push, you're almost done! You've done so good!" Active labor could not have come at a better time, she thought, forced to focus on the task at hand. No longer could she spiral over what she'd witnessed in the garden, she had to get this baby out safely or both mother and baby could be in grave danger and much too far from a hospital for help.

As she made her last push and the baby fell into the waiting arms of the midwife, she sighed in relief to be done with the weirdness of the day. She looked down at the newborn life in her arms.

'No,' she thought to herself. 'There is no way this is possible. There is no physical, genetic, scientific, mystical, anything way this is possible. Right? You're hallucinating. You need sleep. Just close your eyes, and when you open them again everything will be normal. Ready?' She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply.

'One...' She held her breath.

'Two...' She began to let it out.

'Three,' and she opened her eyes. But no, the bundle in her arms remained the same. Somehow, despite all logic telling her it wasn't possible... with everything else she'd seen and experienced today, she knew that it was true.

She was holding a living...

breathing...

newborn...

umbilical cord still connected...

babydoll.

As if it had been waiting for her acceptance of its existence, it opened its mouth and let out its first cry.