But first, she was feeling queasy. She might as well start with the drugstore in Kaufmann’s basement.
She went down the baby aisle, scented with baby powder. There were only two boxes of Preggie Pops. She dropped one box into her basket and opened the second one for a lollipop to suck on while she shopped.
“What is that?” Jewel Tear took the first package out of Olivia’s basket and eyed the obviously pregnant woman on the cover.
“It’s medicine.” Olivia tore the plastic wrap off the lollipop. “For pregnant females. I’m going to have a baby.” And then to make things perfectly clear, she added, “A human baby.”
“Is that why she’s fat?” Jewel Tear continued to stare in fascination at the box’s art.
“Yes.”
“But you are not fat.” Jewel Tear held out the lollipop package to compare Olivia’s profile to the woman’s on the box.
Olivia sighed. “I’m only two months pregnant. I’ll look like that when I get to be—” She eyed the picture,—“about six months pregnant.” Which was kind of stupid since most women had morning sickness mostly in the first trimester.
“Six months?” Jewel Tear echoed in surprise. “Half a year? How long will you be pregnant?”
How long were elves pregnant when they had babies? They were immortal. Did that mean they were pregnant for years? Was that why the Wyverns weren’t worried about Olivia being with Forest Moss at the moment?
Maybe answering Jewel Tear’s questions was a mistake. Olivia cleaned the store out of prenatal vitamins, and then added in diaper cream, diaper wipes, pacifiers, and rattles until the basket was overflowing. She pushed the full basket at the Wyvern hovering nearby to get rid of him.
“Go get me another basket,” she ordered.
“How do you know that you’re pregnant without magic to tell you?” Jewel Tear whispered.
Olivia eyed her. What did this crazy elf want? She’d been silent at the bank and through the first floor of the department store, and even the first few aisles of the drugstore. And now this whispered question and fearful glance to see if they were overheard.
The Wyverns only agreed to Olivia staying with Forest Moss because she was already pregnant by a human. Domana weren’t allowed to have half-caste babies. Olivia wasn’t sure what they were going to do once she had her baby and was fertile again. Until a few days ago, she wasn’t sure if she would survive the winter. She would worry about spring when it arrived.
What would pregnancy mean, though, to Jewel Tear? The elf had been kidnapped and dragged off into the wilderness for days. Olivia glanced down at the bruises on Jewel Tear’s arms and legs. Had she been raped? Was she worried that she was carrying an oni bastard? Did elves permit abortions? Some Christians believed that a woman’s life was secondary to a handful of cells that someday might be something that could exist outside her body. Did the elves use the reverse of the same twisted logic? Jewel Tear should die along with the half-oni fetus? Like the female drowned in the chamberpot?
“Come with me.” Olivia went down the aisle to where the condoms were displayed and snatched up the same test she’d used two months earlier. “Where’s the nearest restroom?” Olivia asked the sales clerk as she pushed money across the counter to pay for the test.
“Down—Down the hall, to the right.” The clerk was staring over her shoulder at the Wyverns.
She collected her change. “I’ll be back to pay for the other items.”
They had to let the Wyverns check the bathroom for assassins and escape hatches before achieving privacy.
“I don’t know for sure this will work.” Olivia ripped open the test. “It detects a human pregnancy hormone. I’m not sure if elves have the same hormone. Weirdly enough, I know these don’t work for animals like horses and cows. But humans can interbreed with elves, so we can’t be that different.”
“Like the Wind Clan half-breed, Blue Sky?”
Olivia nodded. She’d read about the boy in the newspaper. “Yes, his mother was human and his father was one of the Wind Clan sekasha.” She uncapped the test. “See this part. Pee on it.”
Jewel Tear eyed the test and then looked at her. “I’m sorry, your Elvish is sometimes hard to follow. Did you say ‘pee on it’?”
The digital readout on the little plastic stick read “pregnant.”
Jewel Tear would have thrown it in the toilet to flush away the evidence if Olivia hadn’t stopped her.
“No, no, that won’t work.” Olivia knew from experience. “Here, wrap it up with toilet paper and shove it into the bottom of this trash can.”
They both washed their hands afterward. Olivia studied Jewel Tear in the mirror. The elf seemed to be running through some intense interior dialogue and was oblivious of her. Every emotion from fear, to uncertainty, to amusement chased over her face but she didn’t seem devastated by the news.
“You are two months pregnant, yes?” Jewel Tear whispered.
Olivia nodded.
“So it takes several months before someone can look at you and tell?” Jewel Tear asked hopefully.
“Do you want to have the baby? There are ways to stop it.”
“Yes, there are,” Jewel Tear whispered.
“Humans have safe ways to do it,” Olivia explained more clearly, just in case the elves’ way involved something like swords and chamberpots.
Jewel Tear wrapped her arms about her, almost seeming protective of the child she carried. “I don’t know what I want to do.” She stood a moment, rocking in place, staring off into the distance. And then her gaze snapped to Olivia and sharpened. “No one can know about this.”
“I won’t tell anyone.” Olivia had enough troubles of her own. Jewel Tear’s problem, however, could be her own in less than a year. “What would they do to you if they found out?”
“They would kill it,” Jewel Tear whispered. “Half-caste, they might show mercy to, but not half-oni.”
“What about half-human?”
Jewel Tear looked surprised. “I thought your child was full human.”
“It is,” Olivia admitted. “But I don’t know what will happen after I have the baby. Will they take Forest Moss from me?”
Jewel Tear looked surprised. “You love him?”
“Yes.”
Jewel Tear waved away her concern. “After your child is born, he will make you an elf, like Wolf made his domi an elf.”
“What?” Olivia cried.
“Forest Moss cannot change you now. The risk is too great that your child would be horribly deformed or killed in the womb. Nor is it entirely safe to dashavat children. He will have to wait until the child is mature before making it an elf.”
Events of the summer made more sense. “Windwolf made Tinker an elf because he could not take her as domi otherwise?”
“Yes, his sekasha would not allow him a non-domana lover.”
They returned to the drugstore, silent in their fearful worries. Olivia collected her basket and took it to the front counter to pay for the contents. There was a mirror behind the cashier. She found herself staring at her reflection as he scanned all her items.
“She is with child. I cannot dashavat her until the baby is born,” Forest Moss had said when arguing with the Wyvern that morning.
Olivia reached up and touched both of her human ears.