Hotel of Ghosts & Shadows - Marjorie

Marjorie stared at the tiny bundle of blankets and limbs, transfixed as always on the beautiful sleeping face, eyelashes flickering a little while they snoozed. She thought they were all beautiful. Hers was a special and bittersweet role, but she chose it for herself. She rocked the tiny creature in her arms swaying slowly from side to side, as she sang The Skye Boat Song softly. She could feel this one was almost ready. By the second verse they had started to drift away, and by the end of the song all she was left holding was a bundle of blankets. She sighed, wiped the tears from her face, and set to caring for the rest of the infants. Marjorie was the nursemaid, her place was in the nursery on the second floor of the hotel. She looked after the babies and infants who briefly passed through with a love as strong as if they were all her own. In a way, they were. Many of them were barely beyond the first moments of birth, some only scant months old, and a few were a little older. She could tell right away the difference between a young baby and a sick one, with experience gained from her past life as a midwife, and had learned to estimate with astonishing accuracy when they were ready to move on. Babies were different from adults and even older children. Most of them didn’t linger. Only the ones who were victims of a more traumatic or sudden demise found their way to the hotel, and even then they just appeared in a cot in the nursery, like they knew this was where they needed to be. So she cared for them, soothed them, rocked them in their almost-sleep, until they settled, and surrounded by her gentle voice and comforting arms, they just... disappeared. The first one was the hardest. Marjorie came to the hotel as an older mother, having died during childbirth, confused, despairing and clutching at her own baby who lay in her arms. Isabella saved her. She took them both in, calmed Marjorie, and eventually, when she was ready, showed her how to sing her baby into passing. She could feel her child’s trauma receding and the comfort and love flowing into her, and when she disappeared... she wasn’t completely gone. Marjorie could still feel a soft warmth in her womb, the weight of the baby she had nurtured with her body and a sense of peace that comforted her. When the next baby appeared, she knew exactly what to do. She hoped that the other mothers who had suffered the same terrible loss would somehow feel that their baby was not alone, that they were loved and that this comforted them and helped ease the pain that she knew would never fully leave them. Her own child didn’t need her now, but these little ones did, so she stayed and sang and felt herself becoming a little less broken with every passing.