Miracle

Flash fiction by Katie Gray

JW Waterhouse, ‘The magic circle’, 1886.

Barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, she felt the first signs of labour as she was brewing a potion. She touched her swollen belly and waited. Another contraction, firm and real. She ran her hands over her womb, warm and tender with pride.

She set down her wooden spoon and said to the fire, ‘Stay low.’ The fire obliged her, sinking down to a red glow in the wood.

In the snug safety of her bedroom, she drew the curtain against prying eyes. She took off her apron, tossing it onto the chair. She lifted her skirt, squatted, and pushed.

It didn’t take long; it was not, after all, her first time. She heaved once, twice, swore aloud—and out it came, her little miracle. The head, sliding out of her in wet pulses like an expanding grey bubble of spit. The shoulders and arms and legs, a slippery tangle of limbs. The sinuous cord and fat afterbirth.

She had spawned it by eating clay and of clay it was made. Soft, malleable clay the colour of ashes. The infant lay in a dirty spatter on the floor. Its clay mouth worked silently as it tried to cry. Its hands waved in chubby, muddy fists. The cord glistened slick in the faint sunlight from the window.

Smiling, she touched its nose. She pressed her finger to its palm and clay digits wrapped around it. Then she lifted it with both hands and, staggering, still shaky from the birth, carried it into the kitchen. It wriggled in her arms, kicking out, face screwing up in silent bawls as she took it to the waiting cauldron.

Plop. Down it went, into the potion, which bubbled nicely. Its screwed-up face floated on the surface for a moment before slipping below. Its hands waved, clasping and unclasping, before sinking beneath the surface.

Picking up her spoon she told the fire, ‘Burn high.’ As she stirred she hummed the tune that would wake the potion and make the magic run hot.

The liquid came to a rolling boil. The dark surface was soon streaked with grey, the colour of ashes. She stirred and sang and stirred and sang until it was a uniform nutty brown, bubbling hot and fierce.

She sang the last notes and the surface of her potion rippled and shone and turned golden. When she stirred she found it thick, like syrup, like caramel. The scent that rose from it was heady, like the air on a hot summer’s day, like lightning.

She raised her spoon to her lips and drank the molten gold. It flowed down her throat, smooth and rich, tasting of metal and fire and decadence. She licked her lips, chasing the stray drops of it. She rubbed her still-rounded belly, the warmth of the potion spreading through her from throat to stomach to groin.

Her next child would be of gold; and who knew what magic she might work with gold.

Katie Gray is an author of science fiction and fantasy based in Scotland. She has a masters in creative writing from the University of Edinburgh. Her work has appeared in MYTHIC, Corvid Queen, Microtext 3, an anthology from Medusa’s Laugh Press, and Shoreline of Infinity, Scotland’s dedicated sci-fi magazine. Her short story 3.8 Missions was reprinted in Best of British Science Fiction 2017. When she’s not writing, she works as an office admin for a social care provider.