Edith stared out the window as they drove along, thinking about the meeting with the principal. Sure, what mom had said about how important it was to bring life into the world was true, but Edith was less sure about just how often she wanted to do it. Maybe one more round of children after marrying Jake, then calling it quits. Teenaged Edith had her limits.
Her mother was burdened with no such qualms, and neither was her amazing fecundity -- a word that Edith had just learned in her English class. Edith was the odd girl out, actually; the only single birth in her very large family.
She was also the oldest, at 16. After her were the first set of twins, Amy and Sarah, now 13; the quads: Mary, Joanne, Beth, and Susan, 9; triplets: Caroline, Debra, and Eleanore, 7; another pair of twins, Mia and Gina, 5; yet another pair of twins, currently sitting in the back seat: Martha and Katie, 3; and another set of triplets, just a few months old and taking up the center seats: Heloise, Jennifer, and Filia. 17 children in all, and Edith's mother was now heavily pregnant with quadruplets, and big enough to get mistaken for having a few more in her. Edith absently rubbed her belly, which was just large enough to put some serious strain on her uniform, and hoped that she'd never have this many children.
They pulled into the driveway, and, as Edith helped her mother unload the younger siblings from the van, the charm still dangling off her wrist caught her mother's eye.
"Edith, where did you get this?"
"Oh, uh," Edith puzzled over that for a moment. "Some new store in the mall."
"Can I see it once we're in the house? It's very pretty."
Edith nodded, and once the little ones were all corralled indoors, they met in the kitchen, where Edith dutifully handed over the bracelet.
"Oh, yes, that's lovely!" Her mother exclaimed, and tried it on.
Almost immediately, the magic latched onto Edith's mother's pregnancy mania. Whereas Edith had become, well, a little boring with her pregnancy-related desires, Lucy Anderson was a veritable fountain of eagerness.
The kitchen began to get more and more crowded as mother and daughter both began to swell larger and larger. Lucy went from a large five children to an enormous eight, and Edith bloated up from twins to quints, her belly coming into view as the charm didn't even try to create a school uniform big enough to encompass her gravid form. A dozen siblings sprung into being, with each set of births gaining an additional ch1ld, and Edith suddenly became one of seven children. Their already large house doubled in size to contain all the new people living under its roof: 29 children, two parents.
Lucy's fervent belief in the amazing power of motherhood didn't stop at the family's four walls, however. Across town, anyone who knew the Andersons, even just in passing, began to swell up with ch1ld -- and in many cases, children.
The previously barren couple down the street suddenly was expecting triplets. Mrs. Ath went from a single ch1ld to five of them filling her womb. Many of Edith's school friends, and their mothers, found themselves expecting, and all of them, to a woman, loved it.
Thanks to the charm, the city was now looking at having its population double over the next year. Babies would be everywhere.
Thu Mar 19 03:01:42 2009