Council of Elders (6)

Mi continued fiddling with her ink droplets. El and Joe remained silent for a long time before Joe finally asked, "And what are you talking about regarding female power?"

“Yes, I’d call it the power of awakening. Because women no longer want to be blind; they see injustice and possess the power to change it.” Mi looked up at the sky, where gray clouds once again obscured the shroud. She gazed at the sky, curious about the eyes behind it. She said, “Seeing is a terrifying power. Change always begins with seeing, even if it’s just a transparent shroud hidden in the air. It’s also the power that what’s behind the shroud fears, because it doesn’t know the determination and power I possess; it fears that this shroud will eventually be broken.”

"A shield? What shield?"

“That’s not important.” Mi didn’t want to talk about this purely speculative matter. She even suspected that El and Joe were planted, and that those elders who suddenly appeared and disappeared were just there to tell her stories and distract her. Mi lowered her head. Since El and Joe appeared, she had gone from transparent air to a drop of gray ink. They brought change, and Mi had to follow these arrangements. She continued to ask, “Who is that singing woman, that motherly woman?”

“You’re talking about the Sixth Elder, right? She was once known as Mother Morabi. She was the Queen of the Principality of Avira on Morabi Star and had thirteen children in her lifetime.” Elton paused for a moment, “She married her children off to different principalities throughout Morabi Star. She had a keen eye for talent; no matter whether her children married princes or dukes, they all eventually ascended the throne. That’s why she was called Mother Morabi.”

“Thirteen children,” Mi repeated unconsciously. “Are the women of Morabi so prolific?”

“Oh, no. On Morabi, an average woman can give birth to seven or eight children in her lifetime, but less than half of them survive. It’s normal for a family to have three or four children who grow up to adulthood.” El thought for a moment before saying, “The case of the Sixth Elder giving birth to so many children and all of them surviving is by no means unique.”

"Is there anything special about the Sixth Elder?"

"I think this is due to three factors. First, the Sixth Elder herself is in excellent physical condition. She has been healthy since childhood. Her parents raised her and her brothers and sisters together, learning to ride horses, hunt, and fencing. By the way, her swordsmanship is even better than her eldest brother's. Also, her parents had nine children and raised them all."

“That’s because of good genes,” Mi muttered.

“Secondly, the Sixth Elder and her husband were very much in love. Grand Duke Aivila never had a lover in his life; he devoted himself solely to the Sixth Elder, remaining completely celibate during her pregnancy. The Sixth Elder married Grand Duke Aivila at eighteen, became pregnant at nineteen, gave birth to her eldest daughter, Princess Aila, at twenty, and continued until she was fifty-two when she gave birth to her youngest daughter, Princess Vera.” El paused, and after a long while, she continued, “You know, those grand dukes almost never see their wives after they turn forty, let alone have more children.”

"Thirteen children, a pregnancy and childbirth spanning thirty-three years, no twins or anything like that?" A scene flashed before Mi's eyes: a beautiful young girl's belly swelled, then flattened, her girlish braids replaced by a woman's elegant updo; a young woman's belly swelled again, then flattened again, a string of babies at her feet, wrinkles on her face, she was getting old; but her belly continued to swell, beside her was a girl with a similarly swollen belly, they were like twins in a mirror, her belly flattened again, both women holding newborn babies in their arms. Mi shuddered, banishing these images from his mind.

“No, the Sixth Elder only gave birth to one child at a time. I think that’s why all her children survived; each child received enough nutrition from their mother,” El continued. “The most important reason, I think, is that the Sixth Elder’s mother was very good at raising children. She provided her with a dozen experienced nannies, who played a very important role in her children’s healthy growth. By the way, these nannies later trained many nannies themselves; the Avila nannies refer to these women, who helped many women raise their children.”

Do these nannies have their own children?

"Uh, I don't know, but I think it's not true." El recalled how the Sixth Elder spoke of her nannies with respect and nostalgia. The nannies loved her children selflessly, gave them meticulous care despite their hardships, and paid attention to her children every minute of every day.

Are there still humans on Morabi?

"I don't know why you ask that?"

“I just think that noble women on Morabi can have many children, and their children need many nannies.” Mi tried to clarify her question. “But these noble women keep having children, and their children are still nobles, but their servants can’t produce as many servants as they do. Who will take care of their children?”

El was stumped. She didn't know if those nannies had given birth; perhaps they had, but she didn't know how the children grew up. The nannies of Avira were very famous. Every noblewoman on Morabi planet would prepare at least three Avira nannies for childbirth, and the Sixth Elder, like her mother, had prepared twelve Avira nannies for each of her children. Throughout the entire Duchy of Avira, women worked as nannies.

Al stopped talking, and Mi didn't ask any more questions; she already knew what had happened. These nannies treated her like a child, acting as her mother, teaching her to care for her younger siblings, and then, as they grew up, taking care of other people's children, generation after generation.

"Does Avira have a male nanny?" Mi asked, rephrasing the question.

“I haven’t heard of that.” Al shook his head. Joe chimed in, “How can a man take care of a child?”

Why not?

Joe was taken aback by the question. She stammered, "Men are clumsy and rough, and they don't have milk."

“You’re talking about a wet nurse. Avira is famous as a nanny. Does taking care of a child have to be divided into men and women?” Mi looked at Joe strangely. “Men can do so many jobs, so why can’t they take care of children? Men are clumsy and rough, so they shouldn’t be able to do any job.”

"I can't argue with you," Joe huffed, turning away. El looked at her gently: "Why do you think so?"

“I don’t know. Maybe they think nannies are inferior, that this kind of work is only for women; maybe they think housework and childcare are women’s duties, and only women can do them.” Mi shook her head. “I think this is probably the only job that men wouldn’t do. But why is that?”

El looked up, and Mi, who had been asking questions incessantly, spread out her body again. Mi didn't know that each of these tiny ink droplets was herself. She couldn't control her body yet, which was why such a fishing net was spreading everywhere.

Mi gathered ink droplets again and began to shape them into different forms: circles, triangles, and cones. When Mi realized that she had transformed herself into the cone in the Fifth Elder's hand, she launched an attack on the river. She thrust the sharpest part of the cone into the river, but she was blocked. She watched as the ink droplets were squeezed and deformed little by little, finally being pressed into a curved pancake above the river's surface.

“What is this thing?” Mi stared at the invisible barrier. Across the river, all was shrouded in mist; she couldn't see anything. She went back to find El and Joe, who had come from the other side. But El and Joe were gone. They weren't on the rock in the center of the forest, nor atop the giant tree. Mi knocked on the tightly closed dormant flowers, one by one. Each flower extended a petal, gently pushing her away, not wanting her to disturb the deep sleep of the beings within.

Mi sat alone atop the giant tree, stretching the ink droplet into an incredibly long straight line. One end rested at the top of the tree, while the other wandered through the clouds. The gray clouds gently caressed her, like warm seawater under the sun. The line would sometimes be coiled into a ball by the clouds, and sometimes it would pass through the seawater, trying to reach the bottom of the ocean where no one could reach.

El called it the Witch's Forest, the elders called it the Forest of Witches, but Mi felt it was more like a prison for women. Even the supposedly responsible and good Elder carried the burden of his wife and daughters' sins. In the interstellar age, in the age of artificial wombs, in the age of children being raised like chickens, this man from the high-tech planet Kabla, no matter how much he professed his love for his wife and daughters, still chose to let his wife carry the child for ten months, rather than have an artificial womb suffer in her place. Why?

Mi sat atop a tree, deep in thought. "That's right," he thought. "The artificial womb needs blood. Whether it's the father's or the mother's blood makes no difference to the baby inside. Only when the child is in the mother's womb can the father supply blood. But what about his daughter? She could clearly use an artificial womb, so why would he rather prevent her from dating than choose one?" Mi realized the Elder was first and foremost a man, then a husband and a father. He valued a man's essence above all else, which was why he refused to use an artificial womb, and why his wife and daughter repeatedly died during childbirth.

Is such a technological age still worth looking forward to? Mi pondered, shaking her head, banishing the elder family from her mind. The invention of the artificial womb meant humanity had witnessed the immense sacrifices women made for childbirth. Those men who insisted on natural childbirth simply didn't have to carry a child for ten months, didn't have to experience the pain of childbirth. When someone witnesses another's suffering, no matter how intense, they can only offer a few words of sympathy, saying, "You've suffered, it's all for the child's good."

Society as a whole is praising the greatness of mothers and making demands on them, because every life is born from the blood of a mother, and only by constantly praising them can mothers continue to make selfless contributions.

Mi thought again of the families of women who insisted on vaginal delivery and refused C-sections; those who, disregarding the fact that the woman had just given birth, gave her large amounts of lactation-inducing soups, always saying, "Vaginal delivery is better for the baby." No matter how long the mother struggled, some still refused to sign the surgical consent form. "Breast milk is good for the baby." Infant formula, no matter how perfect its formula or how rich its nutrition, many people still insist on breastfeeding. Mi chuckled. Only with breastfeeding would the father not have to get up in the middle of the night to make formula. Men can certainly be babysitters!

Mi returned to the riverbank, staring at the transparent dome blocking her way and gazing at the observers outside. This time, she asked, "What exactly do you want? You let these people in just to tell me that even if planets are as small as train stations, nebulae are inhabited, women still give birth, and women still die giving birth?"

White clouds drifted slowly across the blue sky, the clear river remained as still as ever, the dome still existed, no one answered her questions, the flowers evaded Mi's detection, the entire forest returned to its previous silence, as if these people had never appeared, except that Mi had turned into an ink droplet and was no longer transparent.