“The guid neighbors did take our wee Jamie,” Broca continued, “and left that thing in his place.”
“You thinkJamieis a changeling.” I felt only a moment’s relief before anger took over, burning low and deep inside me. Jamie was no fae, just a wee bairn whose own family thought he did not belong. Poor mite.
“Aye. Tavish even took a rountree branch to him. He hoped to beat the creature out of the boy. It dinna work.” She did not seem to find this at all unusual or cruel.
My blood chilled, and I felt Eamon Grieve’s rod upon my back. I had not been fast enough to answer his demands, I lingered overlong with Mairi over her patrons, I let the pottage on the hearth grow cold.Crack!Down came the rod.
Wee Jamie was only three years old.
“Of course, it did not work!” Jamie was no evil fae. He was only a bairn. Bile rose inside me, heat flowed like lightning beneath my skin. Humans think us wicked, while they beat their own kin thus. “To beat his own child unprovoked...”
“’Tis not our bairn! I tell you, he’s a faery!” Broca’s lips trembled. “Nothing we’ve done will get rid of him. And I don’t know what Tavish will do next.”
I wanted to steal Jamie away. Wished I could spirit him off to Faery, where no one would ever lay a hand against him again.
Even though I feared to return there myself.
I could not bear to look at Broca but stared straight ahead at the walls of the room. Suddenly, I felt I was back at the hollow tree by which I had begun to return home. Little faces peeked out of the walls and the corners, beautiful faces like the high Sith, lit by an invisible sun. Snub-nosed wights all covered with leaves. A friendly goat boy with horns peeking out through his curls.
Would you welcome him?I asked these shadows of my people.Would you welcome me?
This vision made no response, and as for Broca, she did not see the shadow fae at all.
“I don’t know how it happened,” she protested. “I did everything you are supposed to. I hung a horseshoe over the mantle and put salt in his cradle. I turned his shirt inside out and said the Lord’s Prayer every night, and nothing happened. I’m at my wit’s end, Bess. Is there nothing ye can do?”
Give him to us,said the faces in the walls.Let us take him away... And then a hissed whispering followed, almost too quiet to hear: ...our liege.
I saw roses and cowslips, lights floating in a sky deep as twilight, with nary a cloud. A goat boy tottering on his hooves, with eyes of the deepest, warmest brown.
The fae could be no crueler to Jamie than his own kin. Particularly if he had the protection of their queen.
You do not know for certain. You have the word only of a known dissembler and shape-shifter.But my instinct told me this was right.
“You have taken all the right steps to keep the good folk away,” I said carefully. “And yet ye say it is too late.”
Broca nodded, swallowing hard. “If only they would take him and restore my true child. That alone would still Tavish’s hand.”
Nothing would still Tavish’s hand. Not against Broca, and not against their son. But I could get Jamie away from it, and away from him.
I met the eyes of the fae in the walls. To Broca I said, “Ye must take down the horseshoe, shake the bedding free of salt, and put the child’s tunic on right-side-out. Nay”—for I thought better—“dress the child in green and set a dish of milk and honey at the foot of his bed. Make the faeries welcome, and mayhap they will bring the right one back.”
And soon Jamie shall play in Faeryland, and never a hand be raised against him again.
Not unless they wish to face my wrath,said a voice in my head, deeper and more commanding than my own.
“This will work?” Broca asked.
The faces in the wall nodded.
“Yes,” I said simply, in wonder at what I had done.
Broca went to collect her child from Thomas, all unawares of what I had set in place.
When Broca and Jamie had departed, Thomas and Cullen came in from the yard. Thomas was quiet, his mien sober as he took his seat beside me on the bed. His hand snaked around mine and our fingers entwined, as Cullen lay himself at our feet.
“Jamie is a good lad,” he finally said.
I nodded, playing with his hand.
