Pain Children

Image by J F Godin on Unsplash

by

Elana Gomel

Paula was a cancer baby. When she was born, the midwife called the servants in to admire her. Ordinary children are born scrunched-up like a wet cloth; she was a tiny princess, perfect in every detail: enormous eyes the color of the Lost Ocean and the full head of hair like spun gold. So, in a moment of weakness, I decided to keep her. I often regretted my decision. Paula was as good as she was beautiful: obedient, kind, and cheerful. But she was a stain on my reputation. A Healer is not supposed to keep her children. She is supposed to hover above the mass of suffering humanity like a merciful Angel, one of the Goddess’ retinue: smiling, benevolent, and aloof.
Paula had asked me about her father before I deemed her old enough to explain her origin. I had fended off her inquiries because I had some vague hope that she would follow in my footsteps. I should have known better. Healers are not born out of the corruption of flesh and blood. We are the Chosen Ones, marked by the touch of the Goddess. She had scattered her blessings at random before she departed for the Ocean, leaving the tainted city of Llyn Dian to stew in its misery. Now we lived in the hope of her return, while keeping ourselves pure. Pain taints. So does pleasure. Her gift to us was the ability to cast out both. I had birthed eleven children and I had never known a man’s touch.
When Paula was twelve, I took her to my study and told her what she was. She paled. She had never known the source of the income that provided us with the rose-wreathed mansion at the very edge of the city, far away from its stinking polluted heart. Our windows looked at the formal garden which, at that moment, was blazing with purple and red asters. Beyond the fence, the marshy plain sloped away, touched with the gold of autumn that mirrored my daughter’s hair.
“So, my father was a cancer patient in the lazarette?” she stammered. “Where is he buried?”
“Your ‘father’, if you want to call him by this name, is alive and well,” I said. “And he was never in the lazarette. His family was rich and important enough to pay for your birth.”
“My family?” she whispered. I rolled my eyes. My daughter’s beauty was matchless, her intellect less so.
“They don’t even know what became of you after you were born,” I explained again. “He is not your father in the flesh, and you have no claim on his family estate, not even such as the by-blows of great nobles might have on theirs. I only saw him once and spent just enough time with him to put a hand on his forehead and absorb his pain. You are this pain.”

I was offered another commission. I was not going to take it. I had enough money to retire in my country estate. Paula was as beautiful as her progenitor’s malady had been severe, and I had no doubt she would make a good match. My neighbors thought she was a by-blow, but money and beauty make up for the stain of illegitimacy, and she did not lack for suitors even in her young age. My occupation was secret, of course. Healers do not advertise in broadsheets or put out a shingle. Our clients arrived at our doorstep guided by the word of mouth, discreetly whispered in gentlemen’s clubs and stately mansions ‒ and so did this client.
He was a thin, ordinary-looking man, his face furrowed and pale. But his posture was ramrod-straight and his step as precise as that of a dancer – signs of somebody who had served in the Royal Guard. His black waistcoat was made of the finest ribbed silk, and his golden pocket watch was encrusted with diamonds.
I was relieved to see a military gentleman. They were less likely to go into a long description of their suffering, beg for their lives, or dissolve in tears. Not that it would sway me; I had heard it all before. But I tried to avoid unpleasantness in my business dealings.
“Miss Clarissa Barrow?” the man bowed perfunctorily.
“It is me. Who do I have the honor…?”
I had his visiting card, of course; but one glance told me that “Joseph Smith, Esq.” had never existed. This had already set me against accepting his proposal. It was a bad idea to approach a Healer under false pretenses.
The man smiled wryly.
“I will tell you my name if you agree to take my commission.”
I rose from my seat and reached for the bell.
“It was a pleasure meeting you, sir, but…”
“Wait! Hear me out!”
His very arrogance made me pause. Used as I was to humble entreaties, I craved something new. People who knew what I was approached me as an avatar of the Goddess. This man drove a hard bargain as if we were traders on the floor of the Stock Exchange. I was still determined to reject his proposal ‒ eleven births had left too many unpleasant reminders in my flesh for me to risk adding to my roster of stretch marks. But I was curious and decided to listen.
How I wish I had not!

When the Goddess abandoned the polluted city of Llyn Dian, angered by the greed and violence of its unruly inhabitants, she put a curse on it. The city had been built in the estuary of the great river Tamesas that emptied into the Ocean. It had derived its wealth from maritime trade. But more importantly, the fresh ocean breeze had dispelled the poisonous miasma of the city’s factories and kept the population healthy. The Goddess, however, extended the plain that separated the city from the Ocean and dammed the great river, transforming it into a series of boggy flats and stagnant pools that spread foul vapors and bred uncountable pestilences. The Ocean was lost to us, separated from the city by rolling fens and waterlogged plain that unfolded like a lady’s fan under the feet of weary travelers. Llyn Dian was landlocked, left to stew in its own disease and misery.
But a group of twelve women, faithful devotees of the Goddess, followed her as she strode out of the city, wrapped up in her mantle of pure white. They cried and begged and prayed.
And the Goddess relented.
To these twelve, she gave the secret gift of healing. But like any gift, it came with a price.
These women and other Healers who came after them could cure any disease, no matter how terrible. Cancer or lung rot, apoplexy or typhus, a Healer could put her hand on the sufferer’s forehead and draw the poison out of their body and into her own.
And the poison germinated like an orchid seed and became a baby. Nine months on, the Healer would give birth to another’s pain. The more severe the pain, the deadlier the disease, the more beautiful and accomplished the child.
In the slums of Llyn Dian, people were gnarled and distorted like old tree trunks, crippled by the maladies of unhealthy air and dirty water. But in richer quarters, far from the slummy heart of the city, lovely lads and maidens played in the walled gardens. Not many healed patients wanted to adopt the reminder of their brush with death. Yet there was always a demand for healthy and beautiful newborns. I had made almost as much money farming out my pain children as I had healing their wealthy progenitors.

Mr. John Smith, Esq. came to fetch me late at night. I had sent Paula to bed, but I had a suspicion she would be peeking from behind the curtain at the black carriage that stopped in our driveway and would quiz me on the identity of my new client. At this point, I knew his real name and station. I would be lying if I said that the promise of a title, in addition to the princely (pun intended) renumeration did not figure in my decision to have a twelfth child.
I was led by the back stairs into the darkened bedroom, swathed in purple velvet and yellow silk. Fragrant herbs were being burnt in braziers to ward off the miasma of sickness. Even so, attendants wore perfumed masks. The sick lady lay in canopied bed, her wasted face looking like a smudge of uncleanness on the plump snow-white cushions.
Besides her, there were only two people with uncovered faces in the entire room: Mr. Smith and myself. I had nothing to fear: no vapor would attach itself to a Healer against her will. I was not sure of his tolerance, but his saturnine face creased in an ambiguous smile when he saw me. Leaning against the bedpost, he gestured toward the lady who, I assumed, was his wife.
I looked at the woman. She appeared to be unconscious but even so, her wasted frame was shaken by contortions of pain. I was glad it was a woman: the pain-child is almost always of the opposite sex to the patient, and I was not averse to having a son. I had had a preponderance of daughters since my clients often calculated that a new wife was cheaper than a Healer’s service. Of course, no such calculus applied to themselves when they were sick.
I touched the woman’s dry feverish forehead and snatched my hand away as if burnt. Indeed, I looked at my palm to make sure there was no scorch mark on my flesh. I had been a Healer since I was Paula’s age, and never in my entire career had I felt a pain so intolerable, so all-consuming, so relentless.
I gathered my wits and bent over the patient, studying her, postponing the moment I needed to imbibe this draught of fire. She was, as I had thought, unconscious but her eyes were moving rapidly beneath her closed lids. Her face was gaunt and lumpy.
A prolonged illness can rob the freshest debutante of her charms, but this woman could have never been beautiful. I also noted that she had lost much of her hair. Loose strands tangled in the lace of her bedclothes.
“What is the nature of her illness, Your Highness?” I asked Mr. Smith.
He shrugged.
“What does it matter? I thought that Healers could cope with any sort of malady.”
“Indeed. We are not chirurgeons. We heal by the grace of the Goddess, not through human knowledge. Still, your poor lady is in torment. Would you not want to find out what caused it?”
I saw a shadow pass over his face, and I knew I was right. The woman was not his wife or mistress.
“It is of no consequence,” he said abruptly. “The only thing I want to know is whether you are able to draw her pain into your body and give birth to a child of that pain. Can you do it?”
My reputation, my skill, and my pride were on the line. And suddenly, I cared less for the money, the title, and the estate it came with than I cared for the son I was going to birth. If his beauty were proportionate to this woman’s anguish, he would be more perfect than any human being who had ever lived. The Angel of Light who stood by the Goddess’ right hand would not be as lovely as my son. And if this woman was indeed the victim of poisoning, what of it? I would cure her, and she would go back to whatever life she had had.
“I can,” I said, and bending over the suffering woman, drank deeply of her pain.

The pregnancy was difficult. I withdrew to my manor, telling my neighbors I suffered from a recurrent rheumatic fever. Some of them must have figured out that I was enceinte, but I had given enough money to local charities to stifle their wagging tongues.
Paula was by my side throughout the parturiency. I found this both endearing and irritating. By that time, we had had her tested in the Goddess Temple and knew she was no Healer. I told her she should attend balls and hunting parties to look for a husband, but she flatly refused.
When my time came, I called for the Temple midwife who had attended my previous accouchements. Paula cried to be allowed to be present, but I told her it was unbecoming for a marriageable maiden.
I had gone through eleven deliveries. The twelfth one was going to kill me. Or so I thought as I was biting through the wad of cloth the midwife pushed into my mouth. Healers are invulnerable to the contagion spread by their clients, but it does not mean we cannot sicken and die. Like everybody else, we are prey to the ravages of age and the terror of the grave. Only the Goddess and her celestial minions are immortal.
But finally, after the endless interval of torture, I heard the mewling cry of the newborn. The midwife smiled as she placed the tiny body by my side.
“You have the most beautiful daughter in the world,” she said.
Daughter? How was it possible? Enfeebled by the blood loss though I was, I lifted myself to examine the baby.
The midwife was true. The baby was indeed beautiful beyond compare. If Paula had shone like a star, this one was the sun itself. But there was no mistaking the baby’s gender. Against all precedent, I had given birth to a daughter.
And as I was trying to understand whether to rejoice in her loveliness or bemoan her weaker sex, I heard rapid footsteps outside, and Paula burst into the room.
“Mother!” she cried. “These men…they would not listen…”
Behind her back materialized the saturnine face of Mr. Smith, His Royal Highness and heir to the throne of Llyn Dian. More indistinct but undoubtedly male figures crowded the hallway.
Indignation gave me strength.
“What is the meaning of this, my lord?” I cried. “How can you desecrate the lying-in chamber?”
“You will be out of our company presently, Miss Barrow,” he said. “Or should I call you the Duchess of Cournoia? I keep my promises. All I need now is the baby.”
“But why? I don’t understand. What is your interest in her? Could you not get an heir in a more conventional way? In any case, being a girl, she is useless to you.”
“That’s where you are mistaken,” he said. “I knew you would have a daughter because the draught we gave to her was precisely calculated by our chemists. She is not just a female. She is the most important female in the history of Llyn Dian.”
And finally, I understood.
The baby lay on the stained bedclothes like a vision of heaven. She neither cried nor grizzled. An ambiguous smile was playing on her rosebud lips, and her eyes were the color of the summer sky before it is smudged by the smoke and foul miasma of our landlocked city. And her face was familiar – not because she was flesh of my flesh but because I had seen it in the paintings in the innermost chamber of our Temple.
I gasped, struck by the audacity of their plan. To create an avatar of the Goddess herself out of the pain of a murder victim! And to bring her up obedient to their designs, so she could undo the curse of her predecessor and bring Llyn Dian back to the Ocean!
I felt bile rising in my throat as my poor battered body throbbed in the aftermath of the labor. I had never been susceptible to the sentimentality of my sex. My few friends called me hard-hearted and cold behind my back. But I had dedicated my life to the Goddess. And though I had used her gift of Healing for personal enrichment, I had never broken her laws as I understood them. And now these men would make a lapdog out of my divinity!
I pulled my daughter close to my breast, hoping these men would be deterred by the sanctity of birth. Not they! The prince moved forth to tear the baby out of my arms.
But he was intercepted. Paula, unnoticed and forgotten, flew forward and snatched her sister. And before either the men or I could react, she rushed to the open casement and leaped through.
With an oath, the prince flew after her. But he was too late. The two girls disappeared, and I cringed, expecting to hear the crunch of two bodies broken on the cobblestones below. Disregarding my own pain, I stood up and hobbled to the window.
The sun was rising, and in its golden light I could see no bloodstains on the pavement. What I saw instead was the rush of foamy water as it raced through the plain, sweeping factories, tenements and lazarettes aside as it cleansed the city. Llyn Dian did not come back to the Ocean. The Ocean was coming back to Llyn Dian – on its own terms.

Elana Gomel is an academic and a writer. She has published six non-fiction books and numerous articles on posthumanism, science fiction, Victorian literature, and serial killers. Her fantasy, horror and science fiction stories appeared in Apex Magazine, New Horizons, Mythic, and many other magazines, and were also featured in several award-winning anthologies, including Apex Book of World Science Fiction. She is the author of three novels: A Tale of Three Cities (2013), The Hungry Ones (2018) and The Cryptids (2019). Her story “Where the Streets Have no Name” was the winner of the 2020 Gravity Award.

She can be found at https://www.citiesoflightanddarkness.com/ and on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram