by E. M. Fitch
“I have to push,” Laney whimpered. Her cry died out with the fizzle of firework sparklers. Her feet dug into the forest floor, and she squirmed in pain.
“Not yet,” Cassie said, struggling to peel the fabric off her friend. Laney’s breath rasped, her fists curling into and then pounding the long, soft grass. The sky above fell dark and silent. Cassie could see nothing of Laney in the blackness. She got her legs free and pushed the pants to the side. Moonlight glinted off the lean shape of Laney’s bare legs.
“Cass, I have to,” she said. Another whiz of noise, followed by a second and then a third, sounded in the dark. Pops of color exploded above and for one short moment Cassie could glimpse the ripple of Laney’s stomach muscles, the grimace of pain, the blood that leaked, glistening and black, from between her legs.
And another shape. Something round and small.
“All right, Laney,” Cassie whispered. The sky fell black and Cassie reached forward blindly, groping in the dark. She had a sudden and intense desire for her own mother. Her hand brushed the warm inside of her friend’s leg and traced inward, warmth and wetness coated her fingertips. “When you feel you have to, push.”
The world fell silent for a moment. The trees lay still. The sky stayed dark. Then a dozen firecrackers sang their way into the night, shooting up like errant stars, all gathering at the same spot. The sky shattered in a war of color, violent bursts that fractured the stillness of the forest. Laney cried out, her head coming off the grass, her chin pressing to her chest. She hunched forward and pushed, screaming into the night.
The warmth and wet pulsated over Cassie’s fingertips, her palms were coated in blood. Something hot and slippery moved into her hands, and she cradled it gently as Laney fell back, sobbing quietly.
The fireworks boomed through the air, urging her on. Because she wasn’t done. Her son wasn’t born yet, he hung, half in Laney’s world and half in Cassie’s, not truly belonging to either.
“Once more, sweetheart,” Cassie whispered. A fierce rush of love and devotion to her friend shook through her and spread. She looked down to her dark hands, to the small crown of hair that rested in her palms. “C’mon, Laney. Push.”
Laney hunched up again and yelled, pushing her child into Cassie’s waiting hands as her belly quivered and rippled with the effort. The fireworks finished their battle, leaving nothing but smoke and haze in their wake. The faint scent of gunpowder settled over them in the darkness.
The baby snuffled and then cried out, his voice clear and high. A purple cord hung from his belly, trailing in the dark to Laney’s center. She grunted in the grass, her hands pressing on her stomach, panting with the effort of finishing her labor.
“My son,” Laney called out after a moment. “Let me hold him.”
Cassie scooted over, moving slowly. She held the squirming boy in the crook of her arm. He wiggled and screamed, warm and slippery. Cassie placed him in Laney’s waiting embrace and lay down, still, beside her friend.
The baby settled immediately, soothed by the scent of his mother’s skin. Cassie let her head roll toward Laney. She pressed her forehead to Laney’s temple, sliding a bit on the sweat that clung there. Laney’s eyes clenched shut tight.
Her soft sob was loud in the stillness.
“Who can I call?” Cassie whispered. The terror from before, the guttural fear of watching Laney as a creature of the trees, hunched and springing toward her, it sprang to life as a small twist in her chest. The thought of the boys, the creatures that look so young, blackened a corner of Cassie’s mind with fear. She tensed, but softened again as she looked over and found tears coating Laney’s cheeks.
“There is no one,” her friend rasped, pressing her face to the nuzzling head of her son. The infant snuffled along his mother’s collarbone, his lips seeking.
“That’s not true,” Cassie said. “There’s your parents. And me. There’s always me.”
Laney shook her head sadly. “No. Not anymore. I don’t belong in that world; I can’t go back to it.”
“You could—”
“No, Cass,” Laney said softly. “I can’t. I don’t belong anywhere. Not anymore. I belonged with him. And he’s gone.”
Tears came freely and Laney struggled to wipe them away as she clumsily held her baby. He cried out as she brought her shoulder to her face, rubbing at the moisture.
“I think he’s hungry,” Cassie said. She couldn’t help the smile that followed. Despite the dampness of the forest floor, the black sway of the trees, the blood that dried on her fingers and caked under her nails, a sense of peace stole over her.
The same could not be said for Laney though. At Cassie’s words, a short sob followed, a noise of anguished pain.
“I can’t,” she cried out.
“Of course, you can,” Cassie admonished gently. She rose to one elbow, hovering over the crying girl and the now crying infant. “He’s yours. You’re his mother. He’s hungry.”
“I’m his mother,” Laney whispered, pausing to press a kiss to his squirming head. “And he’s mine. But I can’t keep him.”
Cassie sat up fully, looking down on the darkened shapes that lay entwined on the matted grass. She didn’t have words. Laney didn’t need to hear the question anyway. She spoke softly, her voice echoing through the trees.
“The Fae don’t keep their babies.”
The crowds parted for her, the wild-looking girl with a screaming newborn. The baby in her arms squirmed and yelled. Cassie had taken off her sweatshirt and swaddled the bundle as best she could. Her bare arms goose pimpled in the cooling spring air. The lights from the fairgrounds illuminated both girl and child now. The drying blood that covered them both looked like rust flakes on their skin.
Cassie couldn’t focus on the people, couldn’t see them, but she could hear the muttering, the whispering that followed her. None of that mattered, she was so used to hearing voices by now.
No, the small boy sucked up all of her attention. He cried and wailed, high pitched and terrible, because Cassie had nothing that could soothe him. She tried to whisper, but it came out as mostly nonsense, harsh and garbled as it stuck in her throat. It reminded Cassie so forcefully of the swaying and the rush of the trees that she had to stop. Instead, she shifted the boy higher. He found a patch of bare skin close to Cassie’s neck and his lips worked to find a way to latch. She had been right, he was hungry.
She kept walking, through the people and into the heart of the fairgrounds, because she didn’t have anywhere else to go. She needed someone to find her, and take the infant, and help him, because she had no idea what to do.
“Will they come for me?” Cassie had asked, her voice laced with fear. She had stood, face-to-face with her best friend, Laney’s blood-coated son firmly in her arms.
“No, they won’t,” Laney had assured. She couldn’t look away from her baby, her eyes locked on his tiny, scrunched up face even as he screamed in Cassie’s arms. “And they won’t come for him, not until he’s much, much older.”
“They’ll steal him back?” Cassie remembered asking, twisting her body away from Laney. It was a slight shift of her hips, but Laney noticed. Her eyes darkened. A spiral of anger and fear coursed through Cassie, that these creatures wouldn’t raise him as their own, that they’d give him to some other family to love, only to steal him back once he was older. Just like Laney had been stolen, and Mark, and Jessica. The thought was unbearable. Laney was quick to argue.
“No,” she said, her fingers reaching for her son. He turned his face and latched onto her thumb, sucking it forcefully into his mouth as Cassie watched, tensed. “Not steal, just watch. And when he’s older, tell him who he is.”
“And me? You were coming to kill me, weren’t you?”
Instead of the guilt she expected to see on her face, Laney’s expression crumbled with pain.
“I was, yes,” she whispered. “For him. Without Corey, it’s been … unbearable.”
&
nbsp; There was no apology, no admission of wrongdoing. In a way, it was a forceful reminder of who Laney had once been, a stubborn, bull-headed girl who could never admit she was wrong. It was also a shocking glimpse of her new life, a life of instant gratification and no guilt, a life Cassie still refused. She was sickened to see Laney accept it all so easily.
“And Aidan,” Cassie continued, swallowing hard. “He’ll never stop.”
“He will,” came a voice from the darkness. Laney’s head shot up and her eyes glowed with relief. She murmured a name, soft and low, and the redheaded woman named Corra eased out from the forest line. “He has already taken this too far. He has no choice now.”
She moved swiftly toward Laney, opening her arms as she reached her. Laney fell into the older woman’s arms like a daughter to mother, pressing her cheek to her bosom. Corra whispered softly and suddenly the trees were swaying. Cassie couldn’t hear the words over the rush of the forest. Laney was crying again, though quietly, a healing kind of cry. Cassie shifted the warm weight in her arms.
“Aidan will leave you alone,” Corra said, her eyes regarding Cassie. Her deep auburn hair drifted in the breeze, errant locks floating back, as though they were seeking the forest at her back. “I’ll ensure it. If you take that boy someplace safe.”
“He won’t—”
“This child,” Corra interrupted, gazing longingly at the baby shifting in Cassie’s arms. “This is his nephew, his own blood. He will find comfort in this arrangement, in that it’s you who is taking him to safety, and you who will ensure his well-being.”
Cassie opened her mouth, intent of telling her that of course she would, she would have anyway, because he was Laney’s, and by extension, Cassie felt as though he was a part of her, too. She stopped herself in time. Instead she nodded, her eyes darting to her friend.
The smaller girl regarded her with sad, faraway eyes. She darted forward, pressed a kiss to the boy’s bloody forehead and then leaned farther still, resting her lips against Cassie’s cheek.
“Take care of him for me.”
In a blink, they were gone.
Cassie recognized that the lights flashing in her vision now were police lights, that the sway of blue and red and blue again meant that there was help coming, that someone would help Laney’s son and soon.
Her mind was full of dark trees and hushed foliage, of life leaking into every surface around her, dark and pungent and earthy. The boy in her arms smelt of these things, visceral and real. The lights felt intrusive and wrong. The smells of artificial food flavoring, the forced sweetness of cotton candy, the nauseating smell of fake butter poured over cardboard popcorn, it was all such a fraud that Cassie recoiled.
The woods called to her, beckoned her and the infant back into the folds of darkness and warmth and reality, a true reality, nature unfurling around them, cloaking them.
It was Ryan’s voice that cemented her. She blinked when she heard her name shouted through his lips. He flew into her sight and his hands gripped her upper arms, moments later, his face bent low to hers. She squinted, tried to focus on his expression and hear the words he was speaking.
It was all a blur of lights and sounds and smells. Her head pounded in the rhythm of her rapid pulse and the only things she could hear was the wailing of the infant and the panicked cry of her name through Ryan’s lips.
“Where will you take him?” Cassie asked. She reached forward, let her fingers play on the babe’s exposed cheek. He was quiet now, clean and swaddled. He had been fed. Not by his mother. Laney was off somewhere, in the woods most likely, healing whatever wounds she could hold closed with whatever monsters would be willing to help her. The hospital had fed the baby immediately, the smallest amount of baby formula Cassie had ever seen, though apparently, it had been enough.
Cassie had refused to leave his side, threatening to not say a word if she was pulled out of the room.
She’d have to leave eventually. The thought felt like abandonment. She wasn’t sure she could do it.
Though she knew that was the right thing. He deserved a chance. He deserved someplace safe and loving.
The woman that sat with her smiled gently. “State services will be here soon. They’ll have a foster home waiting.”
“A foster home?” Cassie asked, concern spiking. She longed to pick the baby up again, though she was unsure how. Even though she had delivered him less than an hour before, she was suddenly nervous. Her hands trembled against his warm skin. A sudden yearning to keep him bloomed in her chest.
“That’s standard,” the nurse answered kindly. She looked up quickly, her eyes roving Cassie’s face, before getting up and ducking out of the room to the stack of paperwork waiting for her.
Ryan was in the hall, pacing, Cassie could hear the squeak of his sneakers on the linoleum. He had volunteered to go to the lobby to wait for her parents. Cassie guessed he needed the space. She didn’t blame him. He hadn’t left her side, riding with her in the ambulance and calling her parents as soon as they got to the hospital and his hands stopped shaking. He didn’t touch her the entire bumpy ride from the fairground, sitting on the bench, squeezed next to one of the EMTs, his eyes jumping from her to the screaming baby she refused to let go.
There would be a group of people wanting to talk to her. The hospital, her parents, the police.
One officer was already there. Robert Gibbons sat on the end of the empty hospital bed. Other than Laney’s child, he was the only other person in the room with Cassie. His eyes flew from the sleeping infant, a tiny bundle in a bassinet that looked too big. She held his gaze, her gray eyes locked on his.
“They never went away,” she whispered, watching his expression tighten as she did.
“The carnies?”
“They were never carnies.”
Cassie started with the flowers. She explained the deliveries to her home, how her parents thought it was Ryan and Ryan thought it was a mistake and all along Cassie knew it was someone else. She saw the question in his eyes, the wondering why she hadn’t told him, told anyone, that someone had been stalking her.
“I thought he would take me,” Cassie said in a low voice. Beyond the open door to the hallway, she could hear that Ryan had stopped pacing. There were others standing with him, she could hear their subtle shifting. She thought maybe it was her parents. She didn’t stop speaking. “He had friends. And I … they followed me, threatened me. I didn’t think anyone would believe me.”
It was the closest thing to the truth she could give him, and he deserved that much.
Gibbons stepped out into the hall after Cassie had finished talking. The door swung shut behind him, though not before Cassie got a good look at her parents and Ryan. Her mother was crying.
The child, Laney’s son, snuffled in his sleep, squirming in the tight bundle the nurse had wrapped him into. Cassie stood and went to him, unable to bear him fussing alone in his bassinet.
Take care of him for me.
Laney’s words lingered in Cassie’s ear. They would probably never leave. She wasn’t sure what else she could do for Laney’s child. At least not long term. Here, now, she could comfort him. She slipped her hands under the warm bundle, lifting the child to her chest.
Inexplicably, an old, Irish lullaby surfaced on her lips. She sung it clumsily, softly. She was sure she was off-key and the tightness in her throat was evident in the stuttering of the words, but it did seem to soothe him.
“You don’t even have a name,” Cassie crooned, pressing her lips to the warm crown of his head. For some reason, the thought brought tears to her eyes, they wavered, warm weights on her eyelids but she blinked them back. It seemed so important that he should have something she could call him by.
Out of nowhere, a conversation she had once with Laney came back to her. They had been younger, not even able to drive, and stuck at home on a snowy, winter day after school had been canceled. They spent the day hanging upside down over the edge of
the couch, watching television shows inverted and laughing at the funny faces the characters made.
Laney had started reeling off a list of names, all girls. She turned toward Cassie, her dark hair trailing over the beige carpet below them.
“Which one do you like best? I’m making my list,” she had said. Cassie remembered not understanding what Laney was talking about. She had shaken her head, laughing in confusion.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about!”
“Baby names! You know, for all the gorgeous babies me and some hot guy are gonna have some day!”
The girls had peeled off in prepubescent hysterics, giggling and batting at each other. Once Laney had settled again, with the help of a well-aimed pillow to her face thrown by Cassie, her friend looked at her quizzically.
“Those were all girl names, what if you have a boy?”
Laney had wrinkled her face but her features softened quickly. “Liam,” she had whispered. Cassie cocked her head at her.
“Just the one?”
“Mhmm,” Laney mumbled, not meeting her friend’s eye. “It’s gonna be Liam. It’s short for William.”
“William? Like your dad?” Cassie asked. Laney nodded, a jerk of her upside down chin toward the ceiling.
“Yeah,” she admitted softly. “I think he’d really like it. But don’t you dare tell anyone!”
The memory faded and with a blink, Cassie was back in the hospital room, cold all over except for the warm spot against her chest. She looked down at the sleeping child.
“Hello, Liam,” she whispered. She pressed her lips to the baby’s head, lingering against his soft, sweet-smelling skin.
Her parents and Ryan entered the room, ushered in by Officer Gibbons, moments later. Her mother enfolded Cassie in her arms, wrapping herself around her daughter and the new baby she still held. Her father hovered close behind. Cassie could tell by his uneven breathing that he was having a hard time holding himself together.