This is an excerpt from Rivera Sun’s novel, The Dandelion Insurrection, featuring a moment when Zadie Byrd Gray commits to being a love-motivated changemaker and living up to her inner potential. Find the whole novel here.
“There are three hundred million people in this country and someone has to pull their love from the womb of their hearts and spur them into action,” Zadie said.
He froze in the moonlight, looking younger than the night. She stilled beside him, seeming more ancient than the stars. Their feet sank into the fertile soil of the heartland. The country spread out around them in a compass rose. North, south, east, and west, change pulsed against the surface of reality. A new world was waiting to be born. Charlie saw it reflected in Zadie’s determined eyes. She peered into the void and saw kindness and compassion, connection and caring. Her long fingers slid across each other, ready to reach into the womb and pull out the future.
“I’m going to midwife this coming world,” she told him, certain.
He said nothing at first. Shivers ran up and down his spine, tingling across his scalp. He licked his lips. They split. He tasted blood.
“How?” he asked her.
“I have to find the mothers of the nation,” she said. “They’re out there. I have to pull their love from inside them and send it howling out into life. Then I have to find the fathers and hand them this newborn compassion. I have to lay it in their arms, tender and fragile, and let them love it like a child. Then I have to find the teachers, the aunties, the grandparents, the cousins . . .”
As she spoke, the vision gleamed in her eyes. Charlie caught himself glancing out into the night, hoping to see what she saw, but finding only the stark silver lines of the fields, the black river of road, and the whispering grasses that swept up to his feet.
“Do you have to go?” he asked. “Can’t you just track them down online – ”
“You can’t deliver a baby online,” she said, laughing at the notion. “What if it’s coming out the wrong way? What if the mother is too narrow or scared? Or all alone in the middle of nowhere, frightened? You’ve got to be there with them, Charlie.”
Charlie heard the conviction in her voice. She looked so ancient, this young midwife of the world, peering into mysteries that no one else could see. It was a Zadie he had never seen before, and yet had been there all along.
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An excerpt from Rivera Sun’s novel, The Dandelion Insurrection. Find reviews and copies here. You may also enjoy this excerpt from the novel: https://riverasun.com/midwife-to-the-coming-world-an-excerpt-from-the-dandelion-insurrection/