If my eldest brother had heard me, he gave no sign.
I was naïve to expect any different. I might have been a brownie myself, laboring under my family’s noses while they never acknowledged me. It was like they didn’t see me at all.
I sighed and propped the child on my hip. “You see me, do you not?” I asked him.
The bairn nodded, and patted the side of my throat, where my birthmark bloomed red. He was certainly a charming one, with his red-golden curls and rosy cheeks.
He was also getting heavy.
“Now, if I set you down, will you stay put and let me sweep up the broken pitcher?”
The lad nodded, and I put him in the corner of the room. He pulled a string loose from his tunic, and began teasing the cat with it, staying well out of my way.
Too bad I could not say the same for the rest of his kin. The two older lads came dashing through the house, yelling, and stirring up my freshly swept floor. From the smell of it, one of them had trod on a cow pat, and both appeared as if they had been rolling in the mud. Lovely. I yelled after them and they darted upstairs to the loft, no doubt to trail mud all over Eamon’s bed. At least they were out of my way.
I dropped to a crouch beside the broken pitcher, gathering the pieces into my skirt. In sauntered my brother Tavish, sloshing a tankard of ale. At Mairi’s funeral, he had been of sober mien, and in his darkest, finest garb. Now he swaggered from side to side, with a big wet stain on his front I could only hope was ale. Like the others, he had celebrated Mairi’s life with overindulgence, such a wake as I had never seen.
And I, who cared for her longest and loved her dearly, had been too busy playing housemistress to participate.
I scowled at Tavish as I straightened. “Took you long enough. Did you not hear me call? Your lad broke Mairi’s best pitcher.” Not that she was around anymore to care. A tear welled in my eye, and I wiped it away.
Tavish waved me off and belched. “Always carping ye are, Bess. Seems ye’ve got it taken care of well enough.”
“No thanks to you.” I stood, careful not to drop my gathered shards.
Tavish did not acknowledge my reprimand but laughed and yanked on my plait, as if I were a lass again. He reeked of Sorcha’s ale.
Isn’t that just how it is? People talk about how unreliable the years are in the land of Faery, but to me there is no time so tricksy as when all your elder siblings come home. Even a brief visit, and you turn back into a small and overlooked child.
Cursing under my breath, I took the broken bits of pitcher out to the midden, holding my nose against the stench of dung and rotting food. When I returned, Tavish was looming over his youngest child, and the cat, whom I knew for a canny fae, was rushing out of the way.
Tavish looked to me then something large, base, and inhuman. A lumbering giant with his arm raised to squash the boy like the wee-est of mites. “Broke your grandmother’s pitcher, did you, Jamie?” he bellowed. “Do you know what happens to naughty children like you?” He grabbed for the boy.
Time seemed to flatten; something surged inside me, a call in my blood I couldn’t ignore. “Stop it!” I placed myself between my hulking brother and wee Jamie, who had started crying again. My breath heaved in my chest, but I stood firm and did not cower. “Hit me instead, if ye must.”
And know the wrath of the Underhill when you do.
Tavish’s eyes went wide, as if he saw something in me besides his overworked little sister. He blinked away the cobwebs and lowered his arm slightly.
I pressed my vantage, knowing Jamie was under my protection now, in some way I could not yet understand. “Jamie is a wee bairn, and he did not do it. It was those other miscreants—the dark-haired lad and the freckled one who looks like you. Go after those two if you must—but leave him be.”
Jamie wound himself around my legs, and I put a hand on his back.
Tavish dropped his arm, then took another swig of ale. “Lusty lads. I was the same at their age.”
I knew him then for a foul bully and tasted bitter hate in my mouth. “So, when it’s a wee tot who broke the pitcher, you’ll raise your hand to him, yet when it’s lads old enough to know better you won’t?” I shook my head. “Their grandmother is newly in the ground. Will ye not step in and teach them some respect?”
“Lads are just feeling their oats.” Tavish lurched and gestured at Jamie. “That one there’s the uncanny one. Nigh on three years old, and yet to say a word.”
Jamie’s lips trembled, and his green eyes shone wet with tears.
“Like as not, ye’ve not given him a chance to get a word in.” I lifted Jamie again, and his arms went around my neck. “Oh, my sweet. My little love, do not fret.” I rubbed his back soothingly, thinking,Nigh on three? He is small for it, isn’t he?And my brother was such an ungainly oaf. Did they even feed the boy at all?
Tavish wasn’t done. His gaze like flint, he glowered at the child in my arms. “Weakling. We ought to bring him to Carterhaugh and ask the fair folk to take him away.”
Something tightened inside me, squeezing around my chest, and making me hot. How dare my brother treat his own child like this? How dare he behave this way to any bairn? Humans took their fertility for granted, rutting and producing offspring after offspring with no care for how they might feed or protect them, ignoring them then yelling for the slightest reason.
Lightning danced in my fingertips; my arms prickled as though they were full of thorns. “Woe betide your ill-made face. May your path never lead you home. May your cattle give no milk, and your hens lay no eggs.” I glared at my brother—not my brother, surely, but Bess’s, for I wanted naught to do with the overgrown lout. “The fair folk would be glad to have your Jamie. I hope they do come take him away.”
