Illustration for A Pestilence Come for Old Ma Salt by Dayna K. Smith (Lackington’s issue #15)
“Julia says the baby’s coughing now to shake the whole bed,” Liberty said, and that was enough to convince Ma to force her own labored breath into order and hurry on.
Ma was big and soft where she wasn’t hard as tacks— elbows, knuckles, and knees— and tongue, truth be told! She might let the Meara boy chop her wood for her, but she’d haul a child straight into life with nothing but the strength of her trunk and hands.
Now, the real village was all the way down in the valley, made up of near twenty families, give or take. The mountain itself was for more ornery folk. The Pitch place was all the way past the high-dweller’s houses and up a bit of tricky footing, but Ma would be damned if she couldn’t make a trip in the daylight that she had in the dark, rum-headed or no.
By the time the first house came into view on the sidewinder path up the mountain, Ma was finally shaking off slumber. Cold breeze through the dawn-touched trees sure helped. Not a creature was stirring in the Riggs’ cabin, no doubt because Jimmy was somewheres in the eternal cycle of sleeping off a head worse than Ma’s was now.
