After she had watched him dab the milk off his clothes (and weren’t they rather fine for a self-professed, poor carpenter?), she said, “You might have got a changeling. If your wife or parents left open any doors or windows all unprotected and then left your baby alone even for just a moment.”
“Oh, no,” the man said, eyes wide. “No, they would never be so careless. We know too well about the changelings.”
That deserved a small frown because everyone always said that, but the witch restrained herself. “Well, I’d still be obliged if you went and asked your family whether they did. Best yet if you send your wife over with the child instead of yourself so I can ask her what happened, hear her own story and see the child with my own eyes.” Which, the witch thought, was really something they should have thought of doing in the first place.
The man gave a firm tight nod.
“I can’t do anything if I don’t know what happened and what the child is like,” she told him just a touch less gently than she might have, for the carpenter made her bones ache and her nose itch and she stood up to stir in her soup until the man realised that she had nothing more to say. Part of her was glad that he didn’t stay for lunch and wondered where he lived that she’d never seen him before. Most of her was concerned with the vegetables in her garden and whether the goats had managed to get at them.
Nearing twilight the billy goat managed to tear down the fence and speed off onto the moors. Apparently he considered making an old lady give chase over uneven ground a grand way to spend the time as it took her until evenfall to catch him. When she’d finally penned him in with the nanny, praying they’d both stay there, her bones were fair aching with weariness and she hobbled to her door only to find a woman pacing outside it. The new stranger was beautiful, save that it looked like she hadn’t slept in days and the witch wouldn’t have been surprised to see birds sticking twigs into her hair. Still, the woman smelled so strongly of foreign spices that the witch’s nose itched even worse. Despite her dishevelment, the woman possessed more courtesy than the carpenter had that afternoon. She, at least, had tried to worry a trench into the gravel path rather than the house floor. Inviting her in, Kara offered the woman some of the soup she’d been making that afternoon. The woman accepted.
While they ate, the witch urged her guest to share why she’d come. The woman was the carpenter’s wife, she said, and Kara urged her to share what had happened. It sounded so much like the husband’s tale that the witch had to wonder whether they’d rehearsed it before coming to her for help. Again, Kara asked whether the baby had been left unattended and unprotected, but this was denied even more fiercely than when the husband had done so. Tucking that piece of information away, Kara shifted the mother’s thoughts toward those illnesses that could seem like the baby had become a changeling. None of them matched, quite, with what the mother told her and where was the baby anyway? At the last, out of options, the old witch circled back to the question of whether the baby had even been left unattended. “Think carefully before you answer,” she added, “because your beliefs may be veiling the truth.”
And so the young mother sat, wooden spoon lifted halfway to her lips, her face frowning in thought. (It was such a pretty sight that the witch hoped the memory would stay with her to cheer her on a bad day.) At last the mother told her that the baby had never been unattended or unprotected. And (this puzzled the witch) there seemed to be a ring of truth to the words that was sharper than to those she’d spoken before.
“Well, then. Have you tried to brew an eggshell where the child could see it?”
The woman frowned at her again, as well one might, but this time it was fringed with danger. “I have never heard the like of this,” she answered, slowly and carefully. To the witch’s ears her voice sounded more, now, like that of the noble in a harper’s tale than like a rural woman’s and this too did Kara store away in her mind. Run away for love, perhaps.
Wondering at the wisdom of it, she explained. “It’s said that if you show a changeling such a thing, it will reveal itself and be forced to return your child to you.” She paused to stir her soup. “Although some hold with stuffing the baby in a hot oven a while.” And if some of her tone was more bitter than might have been expected, it softened at the distressed look on the mother’s face. “I’ll have to see the child, you understand. Tomorrow.” She fervently hoped three would indeed be a charm.
As the mother looked a mixture of relieved and horrified, the witch set about rummaging in her store of herbs and enchantable items, muttering her arcane words of nonsense as her fingers wove what she took into a small wreath. Some of her words were louder than others and some made more sense than others, and in a few more minutes she was holding a charm of goat’s hair, chicken down and some herbs known to offer protection. It was a tight, careful weave and the old witch was proud her fingers were so deft that night. She offered it to the woman, saying, “Hang it above your bed tonight and nothing will disturb your sleep.”
The young mother couldn’t have recoiled faster if she’d been one of the Fair Folk and the old witch had tried to hit her with iron. Certainly she was faster than any mother practically asleep on her feet had any right to be. Once, the old witch might have been that fast herself. She sighed and returned the charm to one of the boxes. With her back thus turned, it was only the dirty, cracked mirror that told her the other woman had spoken at all. ‘Untruths and lies will not help us sleep.’ The words had been spoken so softly that the witch knew they had not been meant for her ears. The woman didn’t look particularly pious, despite her apparent aversion to Kara’s charms.
“I’ll make you a proper sleeping draught if you don’t want a charm, then. Nothing fancy, just herbs to make a person sleep more soundly at night.” As she said, so she did, and she even gave the mother some of her goat’s milk to drink it with when she got home. The witch was quite certain that the woman had her own, and probably a cow besides, but she’d been raised to be polite.
“I thank you,” the mother said, standing on the threshold. She brushed at the lintel with her hand to no apparent purpose. It was just a plain lintel. The witch watched her guest hurry down the lane, the bundle pressed close to her chest as she walked. When the carpenter’s wife rounded the bend, Kara went inside to pour some milk into a saucer for the smaller Fair Folk that dwelled near, if one knew how to look or was either a very lucky or a very unlucky sort of person.
The old witch wasn’t sure which of those last she was, but she muttered an apology over the milk anyway.
It wasn’t cock’s crowing that woke the old witch the next morning, but the incessant thumping of a fist on her door and the loud wailing of a baby. It had better be the carpenter’s child, Kara thought. She didn’t bother to get dressed and shuffled to the door in her night gown. Bleary-eyed she blinked at the couple, then remembered her manners and let them in. The carpenter tried to quiet the child by bouncing her on his knee (though he looked awkward doing it) while the old witch shuffled about the cottage in search of a way to wake herself up quickly. Looking through her herb box for anything to make tea with, she sneezed. The baby’s cries were shrill in her ears and she had a few moments in which she wished she were as deaf as a mole was blind and still asleep in her warm bed.
The mother didn’t seem to be inclined to do much beyond seat herself in Kara’s remaining chair, so the witch busied herself making breakfast porridge and heating up some water for tea. Neither of her guests wanted anything, so she took as much time over her food as she felt comfortable taking and then took the baby from the carpenter. Though Kara had never been a mother to anyone herself (what was the need, she’d always though; there were enough people in the world already), she had birthed plenty and looked after half the people in her village at some point or another. Babies were no strangers to her, and this one had a particular fascination with Kara’s unbound, grey curls. The witch never made a noise of complaint and the baby was as quiet as a breeze in her arms. The parents looke
d at the old witch as though she were a miracle descended from the heavens to aid them in their hour of need, and if only she would take the baby from them now they would be pious and good the rest of their days. Grateful at least.
“Doesn’t look much like either of you,” Kara remarked after a while. Though, truth be told, the baby didn’t look particularly ill or wan or anything else that changeling children were supposed to look like either. The baby looked like a perfectly healthy (and contented) baby. “I reckon she just misses her family something fierce.”
The father made to speak, but one glance from the supposed mother was enough to silence him. Kara bounced the girl in her arms, making her gurgle a baby laugh.
“Now,” the old witch said, offering the baby back to the carpenter. Almost as soon as the man touched her, the baby started crying again, so Kara took her back. Her arms ached. “I don’t know why you wanted the child, or whether you wanted her at all, but I know, as you said yesterday, madam, that you don’t hold with untruth and lies and I’m guessing that the babe doesn’t either. You’ve got a changeling, right enough, though perhaps you didn’t know it or want to believe it until just now.”
In lieu of holding out a hand to silence them, the old witch shook her head and continued, “You’d best find out who your baby was switched with and then switch them back. It didn’t happen around here or I’d have heard it before now and you’d do best to feed the girl milk proper for a human child and not think of her as your own. That’s my advice.” With that, she handed the baby back to the woman, who held the girl as far away from her body as possible, even though no disgust registered on her face. Indeed, the lady seemed merely to be studying the little girl and then, very stiffly and very formally, she thanked the old witch for her help.
A crash from outside caught Kara’s attention — she truly ought to get something done about that fence — and the family vanished. Rushing out after her goats, the old woman did have a moment to wonder whether she should have offered them more aid (not that she knew how else she could have helped), but, as she spent the rest of the day chasing goats over the rain-soaked moors, she thought but little of it.
A week went by without premonition aches or nose-itches, although the old witch had caught a cold from her day in the rain. A week went by wherein her fence was fixed and the weather got worse and worse and, come market day, Kara found that she could not get out of bed. Well, she could, but there was no way that she’d be able to get to market or even do most of her chores. Hobbling through the cottage to make herself some food — nice and decent food that her stomach wouldn’t rebel against and contained enough healing herbs to make her feel better — she had to wonder whether, perhaps, the Fair Folk were displeased with her and whether it was worth the effort of trying to fight them with her own strength. It wasn’t difficult, but it could cost her more than she was willing to spend.
In the late afternoon, some of the village people who had missed her at the market came dripping into the old witch’s home. They found her half-sitting up in bed and they fussed over her so fiercely that she snapped at them to behave themselves or go home. She’d be perfectly all right if people would just let her rest.
But three days later the old witch only felt worse. Her food wouldn’t stay down, her house was a mess, her bones ached, and her nose was driving her to madness — though possibly the fact that she couldn’t find the strength to lift her hand to scratch it was the real culprit of her annoyance. She felt old and frail and grumpy, and she had half a mind to tell whoever was knocking on her door to leave her in peace because she wanted to sleep without worrying about people messing up her home further. Instead, she called for them to come in, her voice so cracked and soft it must have been a miracle if it had actually been heard outside.
What walked into Kara’s small cottage had no right to be there, none at all. It dazzled the old witch and it annoyed her both at once. Her house was already a mess. No trace of sleeplessness lined the woman’s face now and her arms held a baby girl, a sleeping, quiet, beautiful baby girl. No words were spoken as the woman — some stories claim it was Herself, but who knows — sat down beside Kara, the baby cradled in one arm and precious like all the jewels in the world. Perhaps it was the same baby that had given so much trouble and perhaps it was not, but it was quiet and the lady stroked the old witch’s messy hair and sat silently by the bed until Kara fell asleep.
When the old witch woke again, the cottage was as empty as it had been before the lady had shown up and Kara felt so much better that she got up and set about making a savoury stew. Her stomach was growling.
I wrote this for a friend of mine. I really enjoyed playing with the traditional folk tale elements in this piece. There are a fair number of stories about babies getting taken by the fairies and replaced with a changeling.
Those stories rarely end well for either the family or the changeling, so this piece was a fun way to explore a slight shift into the dynamics of those pieces. What if the fairies were as unhappy with having a human child as humans are about having a fairy child?
‘Twas a dark and stormy night
That one so chose to stain.
It glimmered silver-red, the knife,
And blood fanned and billowed like a sail
As the blue-dust fled, a soul,
And all below can see.
Its shape a violent red crow
Blue-faded red it flies
Amid the life-dust alone.
It cries a silent cry, a moan,
And death so far, so far lies
Trapped in blue-dust glow.
But this soul, now, is free,
Free and lost and found and whole
In ways for which a life’s too frail,
For ways of life, of life, of life.
And in the rain, the endless rain,
A still whole soul has taken flight.
A still whole soul has taken flight
Across and through the silent night,
Amid the falling, crashing rain.
Its red a fading, losing stain
Upon the blue-dust of life,
Its crow-shape shrinking to a knife
A shimmering sharp point, frail
Yet strong as a canvas sail.
Then, a tear, a tiny hole
Left by the farewell of a soul
Now soaring free, free, free
Through sky’s blackened sea
Chasing after a foreign glow
Stardust here, moondust there, crow
Shapes guiding to where Death lies.
Soul singing, life humming, red-dust flies.
The winds whip and sigh and scream and moan
As it flies all on its own, alone.
As it flies all on its own, alone,
The red-dust dances, caught in flight,
Listening to its own, silent moan,
Away from dawn, through the night.
The soul soars on; heedless it flies,
on and on through wind and rain,
And down it goes to where Death lies.
A mortal-hidden scene, a red-dust stain
All dark. A fallen, heart-less crow.
Blue-dust drained of colour; life
Stolen with a single, caressed blow.
Far down, far above, a knife
Falls into a thin, faint-coloured sea.
A form — blue-dust — so frail,
But now spirit free, free, free
As blue-faded red sailing
Sailing the path of souls
That it may become whole.
That it may become whole.
A lone, alone. A speck alone
Travels the red-stained soul,
Caught in bird’s strong flight.
In wayless track assailed
By wind’s, by time’s, echoless moans.
Blue-dust sprinkled soul so free
Is carried far and far through night,
Through day, through all so frail
; As the sheer wings of a damselfly,
As delicate as a mortal eye can’t see.
And still, colourless, it rains.
And still, reddened, the knife
— lone tool of man — lies
Forgotten. A wind blows
And the blue-dust stains
More. Taken, a life,
As flies the dark red crow.
As flies the dark red crow,
In its shapelessness whole,
So too follows life.
A streak of blue-dust, alone
A streak of red-dust, stained.
Perhaps, but not the soul,
Borne into the cold wind-blows
With the red-black crow in flight.
And who knows where Death lies?
Who knows where Death sails?
Wings soft as feathers, sharp as knives;
Calling harsh, demanding, moaning,
In the mortal, blue-dust rain.
Now both are free, so free,
For all the world to know, to see.
But none dare look on a stormy night,
And the red-black-blue bird flies
As time strong; as eggs frail.
As time strong; as eggs frail,
Death, it soars. Always, the crow.
The crow, the blue-red dust fly,
Fly into nothing’s hole, all thing’s hole,
Fly into the immortal rim of night,
Fly into the eternal part of life.
Across the oceans, beneath the seas
On top the stars, below the lands, alone,
Not alone and wild and infinitely free.
Free of mortal sin, of mortal’s stain,
So free, as dust flutters in the rain.
Blue-red dust that once was soul
Dancing now through wind’s moan.
As the crow flies, the winds now blow
Following Death, cutting as a knife
Into the soul-dust’s frantic flight
Until death-still, still as sails,
The crow lands, and soul-dust lies.
The crow lands, and soul-dust lies
A sea of two-toned shimmer, frail
Feather by Feather and Other Stories Page 19