Bruar's Rest

you, not like this.’ He knelt, cradled her through each excruciating push, feeling as useless as a hermit crab without its shell.
    ‘I’ll not see this baby alive if I don’t get help! Go now!’ Again her attempts to move the infant failed, as she arched her spine and screamed: ‘Please, please, man, it’s not coming. I feel sick and faint, I need help, get Helen.’ She clenched her teeth and her breath hissed through each nerve-ripping surge of agony, beads of sweat bursting from every inch of stretched skin.
    Little Bruar crept, like a terror-struck rabbit, under a corner of blanket and tunnelled deep. His mother never normally shouted or screamed, so he’d be best to stay hidden until she stopped making frightening sounds.

     
    Rory in his panic pulled on broken leather boots. It would take him half an hour to reach his sister’s house, but there was a closer neighbour. Not far away, just along the beach, in a cave, lived an old man. A strange creature, and it was said he could see future events. People living in that area relied on ‘the Gifted One’ for that. But not Rory: even as a child he did not like the man and would avoid the dreadful dingy cave in which he dwelt. Only people seeking word of their future went near him.
    But now Rory was desperate. Stumbling over grass clumps, sinking into mounds of wind-blown sand, splashing through the incoming tide he called out, ‘Balnakiel, old man, my lassie needs help!’ He kicked off his seaweed-tangled boots; broken shells and sharp stones cut into his bare feet, blood oozed. Bounding over rocky, rye-grassed banks, he found the cloaked seer hunched over a low-burning fire, his hooded head adding to the mystery of the man.
    ‘Did you hear me? I need help; my wife is in her child hour; can you go fetch my sister, or stay with my family in the tent, while I fetch her?’
    Silence followed. The man showed little sign of concern at his young wife’s threatened predicament; he just muttered, eyeballs rolling in an oval-shaped head. Then, as if possessed, he rose up onto unsteady legs, thrust an arm skyward and prophesied: ‘No use! No use!’
    Rory dropped on his knees and begged. ‘For God’s sake, old man, my lassie will die!’
    But to his horror, Balnakiel fell back in his chair of knotted driftwood, the hood draped over his lowered head, and with a shaking arm he pointed to a circle of pebbles at his feet.
    ‘See, Stewart; see how the stones never lie! She will meet a cold dawn!’
    Rory grabbed the old skeletal creature, kicked the seer stones sending them in every direction, and shook him violently; but over and over Balnakiel repeated, ‘Cold dawn, no use, I see the Ban Nigh , the washer of the ford—she covers your woman in her shroud. The baby lives, it lives...’
    Rory didn’t feel his fist thud into the old man’s lantern jaw, nor hear his wispy red-haired skull crack against rock, or see blood spurt from his eye; he was already running and stumbling back to help his lassie.
    Crawling under the closed tent door he called out, ‘He wouldn’t help me—God curse that evil old bastard, he wouldn’t...’
    The sight that met him as he rushed into the tent halted all words. A new baby, coiled around its birth-cord, mouthing silent cries like a fish lying on a stone, weakly punched the dank air from within its mother’s pale, twisted form. His precious wife had, with her last ounce of strength, delivered him another son.
    Opening wide eyes too young to understand reality or feel death’s sting, Bruar had awakened from a sleep to the sounds of his father’s deep sobs. He sat staring at his mother’s twisted face and lifeless body. Was he dreaming? From his corner of woollen blankets and damp feather pillow he shivered, lost in the turmoil of frightening pictures and the weird sounds whistling outside around his tent. If older he might have dived for cover, fearing unearthly horrors, but he was only three years old. Nothing made sense to him, just a mother’s cuddle and a father’s smile.
    Rory cupped his dead wife’s face in his big hands, apologising profusely for his failure, crying and sobbing; all the while rocking back and forth: ‘don’t leave me lassie, I can’t do it without you, oh please...’
    He sat for ages, head sunk in shaking hands, mumbling incoherently. Then a faint cry came from the new-born, uncomfortable at the sensation of blood congealing and tightening on his gossamer skin.
    Clumsily the new father, now