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Her water breaks, early, when she sets eyes upon the father of her child. When she sees him lying dead and naked to the cold, with pieces cut out of him and his curls the only thing left moving as his hair is tossed in the wind.
She drags Aglukkaq past Goodsir's body and to the tents, even as the cramping starts and tears blur her vision and fluid soaks her legs, running slick down the insides of her thighs and all the way into her boots. She settles him into a bed and tends his wounds as best she can until the contractions are too painful for her to continue, and she is doubled over by the force of her own muscles fighting to expel the great, miraculous burden which has been growing within her.
She limps into the privacy of a different tent on sore feet; its meager shelter is as close to a good place as anything here. She bites into one of her mittens to keep from shrieking as she rids herself of her clothing, shaking all the while, sweat beginning to gather across her skin, pooling in her aching lower back and itching on her scalp. She gets hot water when she can manage to do so. Her hair is not bound so that the labor will be smooth, and she lays down a caribou skin to catch the baby itself. The rest of the time she paces, and breathes, and squats to push, and then paces some more, as if her unsteady, shuffling little steps would be enough to put distance between her and the agony which has beset her, the turmoil in her heart refusing to allow her any stillness.
Silna weeps. In the blue of the night, as the wind howls and rages, she lets the tears overflow and she cries, but even then she manages to keep silent.
They only had one night together. She cannot help but remember how gentle and timid he had been, when he'd turned to her, and when he thanked her for coming to him, for holding him. She'd held him tighter, and had pressed her face to his, and his face flushed dark even in the darkness, but he hadn't pulled away. He'd pushed slightly closer and had stopped there, daringly, hopefully, a reverent light in his gaze as he'd studied her expression.
She'd run her fingers through the coarse tangle on his cheeks until she touched his mouth, and when she traced his lips he grabbed her hand and pressed his lips to her fingertips. He'd explained it to her as a kiss. She'd done the same, brushing her eyelashes to his brow, his cheek, his prickly chin.
Silna remembers this and she cries until her eyes run dry. And then she cleans her face and blows her nose, and, swaying with exhaustion, she kneels upon the bed and bears down for the final heave.
She almost collapses as soon as it's done, but there are other things yet to do, even now that the hardest is over. She clears out the infant's gaping, gumless mouth of mucus, and pats its back until its tiny chest sucks in its first breath, and she rocks it. Silna hears the first squalling note as the sun rises, the tent wall illuminated by a slash of dappled gold.
It's a daughter. She has a thick crop of wavy hair plastered across her small, soft skull, and a florid, shapeless face crumpled into a squashed expression of complaint, and her perfect, tiny hands with their tiny, transparent nails are curled into chubby little fists. Her feet are wheeling and kicking against the air, and when her scream runs out of breath she pulls in another and she screams again, her voice even louder than before, as piercing as a falcon's.
The umbilical cord, Silna cuts with the ulu she used to sever Aglukkaq's hand from his wrist. After tying off the oozing stump of the cord with a braided sinew she is finally ready to rest before passing the placenta. There is no community to celebrate this baby's arrival with her, nor to name her, nor shake her little hand in welcome; there is no midwife, anyone to be the child's arnaliaq. There is only Silna. She puts the babe to her breast, skin to skin, wet as if the two of them are silt, as if they will meld back together despite having only just been split in twain.
And then she realizes that she has more tears yet to shed, saltwater slipping hot and burning from her puffy eyes as the baby draws her first drops of milk from her mother's body. As Silna realizes that, while she will never have her Harry back, she will keep their daughter.
She never chose to be an angatkuq, nor to fail at being one, though she had always wanted to walk the path. She'd wanted to follow in her father's footsteps for as long as she'd known that he meant her to, and she'd tried to fulfill her duties. She'd tried to uphold the task entrusted to her. She'd given over the whole of herself to that pursuit, albeit all too late for her fear, and she had still lost the Tuunbaq. She will still be exiled for the sake of her people, and for herself.
But, as she looks down at the unexpected gift cradled to her chest, and as she notices that the baby has uncurled one of her fists only long enough to blindly clutch at Silna's hair and capture a lock in her small yet mighty grip, a new purpose arises, and Silna's life reorients, snapping into place; into glorious, incomparable clarity. Something fierce and magnificent and beyond all measure expands within her.
Her daughter needs her.
And when she later tries to leave Aglukkaq with the others, where he will be most likely to survive and to be found and retrieved by his own people, her daughter fusses. Aglukkaq is as attuned to the baby's needs as Silna is by then, the both of them roused to action at the merest whimper. The little one is the only thing he smiles for, now, ever ready to care for her, to dote over her.
He's never asked, but Silna thinks he knows who the father was. She hears him speaking to the baby of Goodsir, sometimes. Speaking as much in Inuktut as he can so that she will learn her mother's tongue, despite her mother no longer having one. He does not question it when Silna communicates to him that she has named the child Harry. She wonders if he believes as she does; that aspects of Goodsir live on, in this way.
Aglukkaq awakens when she tries to leave. “Safer in numbers. Keep you safe. Her safe,” he says, standing in her way, pleading desperation in the gestures he uses to hold her at bay, and Silna understands that he will not be going back to the England which Goodsir spoke of, where everyone was better and kinder and nobler. He cannot go back to a place which does not exist. Where he no longer fits.
Where he has no purpose, either.
Silna leaves in the night with her child, and Aglukkaq leaves with them.