The figure who appeared in the moonlit glade was slight and slender—only a little taller than me. A heavy dark cloak swathed them from head to toe, masking identifying features like species or gender and frankly making me a little jealous. It looked warm. They stood in silence—or perhaps wordless communication—with the Bright One for an excruciatingly long time.
At last, the cloaked figure reached beneath their cloak and drew out a bundle. They gripped the object tightly but carefully, then held it out in a rush. I leaned forward, distracted from my frigid frustration by the intrigue unfolding before me.
Ínne extended their huge hands, claws gleaming like daggers in the moonlight. They accepted the bundle. Which stirred. And began towail.
I clapped my hand over my mouth to stifle a gasp. I flung myself into the glare of moonlight, desperate for a closer look. Creeping knowledge twined through me like vines searching for sunlight, cutting with devious little thorns.
I lurched to a halt a pace away from the Bright One and the hooded figure. The baby—for so the bundle unmistakably was—was now cradled in Ínne’s arms, impossibly tiny against their massive eldritch frame. It squirmed within its blankets, tightly swaddled to protect from the chill. It was so, so small. Days—perhaps mere hours—old. Its mouth opened wide and wider, howling displeasure at the indignity of being awoken at such an hour. The hair on its tiny oblong head shone black in the moonlight. Its eyes were wide and willful—one light, one dark.
I stumbled backward as the inevitable realization strangled me.I might have made a sound, but my voice felt as small in my throat as that baby in its swaddle.
That baby.Me.
My gaze jerked to the woman who must be my mother. Deirdre. But before my eyes could dredge the shadows of her mantle, she was turning away, a choked, anguished sound escaping her lips. She fled, the sound of her weeping mingling with the baby’s fussing until it—and her dark-cloaked form—disappeared into shadowed forest.
Ínne stroked the tip of their forefinger down the baby’s forehead and nose, ever so gently. Once, twice. She quieted, her little lips pursing as her eyes drifted closed.
The moon netted through bare branches, and the crystalline hush remained.
A thicket of questions and accusations prickled sharp and hot in my chest. But the memory—although it could not be mine—was already shifting.
Dawn stroked bloody fingers over frosted grass. Ínne was gone—the babe, nested in her swaddling clothes at the heart of the glade, began squalling once more. Her little face reddened as she fought; her arms broke free, tiny fists balled as she protested the cold air. Her small hungry tummy. Existence itself.
Translucent wings caught the sunlight like stained glass. Sheeries fluttered down, coddled in acorn caps and dandelion vests. They clustered around her form, curiosity and concern raising their wispy voices in a council I could not understand. After a few more minutes of alarmed chatter, they zipped away into the forest. A pair of rainbow-plumed ravens, wakened by the ruckus, hopped from their roosts and pecked at the infant with more curiosity than malice. One of the sheeries came zooming back, tossing down an armful of conkers and lifting its fists to threaten the ravens, scolding all the time. The birds flapped away with a few aggrieved caws.
Before long, the rest of the sheeries returned, carrying bowls made of woven petals and acorn cups filled with luminous blueliquid. They tried to pour this down the baby’s throat, but she only screamed louder.
Soon, it seemed as if every inhabitant of the forest was gathered around the edge of the glade—fallow deer and darrigs, grumpy badgers and bemused ghillies, wrens and leipreacháin and even one huge, sleepy, shaggy bear.
At midday, when the cold sun stared and made the baby flinch away from the brightness, a ghillie fashioned a little tent from birch bark. In the late afternoon, when the baby’s enraged cries gave way to a more horrifying silence, a darrig made a small fire, visibly cringing when the tinder caught alight. Again, the concerned sheeries tried to feed the infant their enchanted dewdrops, but her closed eyelids had turned the blue of pond ice; her rosebud lips, the color of new snow.
At sundown, Ínne returned, striding soundless and majestic between the sighing trees. The Bright One took in the scene with a boundless kind of confusion—as though in all their endless wisdom and infinite grace they had simply never imagined that the animals and lower Folk of the forest would not be able to keep a half-human, half-Gentry newborn alive.
They knelt as the light slipped away, scooping the baby into their massive fur-striped arms. She was too tiny, too still. They bent and—with a face like a forest path, a mouth like an archway of trees—kissed her pale cold forehead. A discharge of energy bulged outward through the glen, then rushed back in. Leaves in summer’s full flush rustled in my ears. Green striped my vision. I tasted fresh loam wet with rain in the back of my throat.
Again, the vision shifted, warped, settled.
Springtime.The babe had grown, toddling merrily beneath alders thronged with cottony flowers as her chubby little feet stomped the cool moss. A towering ghillie chased her, its gnarled hands too large and too cautious as it tried to tie the girl’s wild dark curls into some semblance of order.
“Be still, child!” Its fingers fumbled and the soft braid fell apartlike loose threads of shadow. The girl giggled, clearly accustomed to such clumsy gestures of care.
Summertime.A darrig brought the child—older still and coughing terribly—a draught of muddy water from the deepest swamp, insisting that the rich, fetid liquid would make her strong. She vomited for days until the Bright One was once more summoned. Again, they gathered her in their arms, bleeding their magic into her ailing form until she was hale enough to dance reels by moonlight beneath a halo of singing sheeries.
Autumn.A trio of leannáin sidhe crooned strange lullabies that spoke of thorny embraces and drowning rivers. The girl slept, easily, cradled among their lithe, slender bodies, as they wondered in whispers above her soft dark head,What exactly makes a mother?
Winter again.The sheeries plied her with their strange recipes: mushrooms that made her float a few inches off the ground and frog-spawn porridge and fruits that sang melodies to her stomach and butterfly-wing crisps. None of them grasped what it was the child truly needed—warmth, nourishment, safety. These were foreign concepts to creatures born of dew and decay.
Still, the child grew, pale and slight and strange, but undeniably alive. Her laughter now fluted through the forest like wind through hollow reeds. She learned to climb the enchanted trees and speak to the night birds, who never gave straight answers but always made her laugh. She learned to listen to the breezes, though they told her secrets that sometimes made her afraid. Always the Folk watched her and cared for her, enchanted and bemused in equal measures by her vitality, her warmth, her spirit. They loved her, insofar as they were able—the unfamiliar weed blooming in their garden of eternal flowers.
Then, one autumn day, she was… gone. Leaves rich as brocade dropped from black branches. The sheeries fluttered in chaos for half a morning, then simply returned to their routines—painting blackberries and scolding ravens and hanging cobwebs to catch daydreams. A doleful wind rustled the grass. A hedgehog led hersleepy children toward their winter burrow. All returned to how it had been before.
Do you understand now, my child?The voice echoed not in my ears, but in my mind. I whirled to face Ínne as I wiped cold tears from my swollen face.
“Understand?” I repeated, with bitterness. “I understand nothing. Why did my mother leave me with you? With a host of Folk who knew nothing of how to care for a child?”
That is not our story to tell, Ínne told me gravely.As you have seen, youwerecared for.
“Caredfor? Cared for! That darrig tried to make me drink swamp water!” I shuddered with the grief and resentment of it all, even as the helpless kindness with which I had been raised twined fickle between my ribs. It felt easier to be angry than to be grateful. “I nearly froze to death more than once!”
