The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

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Mother Ina tapped her fingers on her hollow wooden belly. It tied around her shoulders and the small of her back and sloped out in front, making the curve of a nine-month pregnancy. Mother Ina was very old, too old to be really pregnant. Her hair was white and so short that her black scalp showed through, shining. She tapped again, her thin fingers drumming so that the hollow sound echoed through the room. She clicked against the wood with her fingernails rhythmically until the scribes looked up at her.

Six boys, all around the age of puberty. Their faces were hairless and their eyes were bright in the morning light. The schoolroom was older even than Ina herself. Parts of the building had collapsed. The biggest spaces had once been gyms and theatres and auditoriums, but over the years they’d sagged and then fallen, weighted with rain or snow. The long corridors of offices stood empty. Squirrels nested in the file cabinets and the branches of trees grew in through the windows.

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