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She stood over the rough hewn cot. Tiny shards of bells, and iron lay scattered over the packed dirt floor. She sank to her knees in disbelief, reaching out one trembling hand to familiar homespun clothing right side out ringed in four leaf clovers.
Her beautiful happy charming babe was gone and all she had left was a taunt.
Time trickled by like thick honey.
Her babe.
Her babe.
Gone.
Trapped in that state between disbelief and denial, she grasped the gown she had made and cradled into against her chest. How could it be real? How could this be real. She knew, they all knew, how to ward off those Gentle Folk, the Good People. She knew they had been watching her babe as she carried him picking herbs. She knew as she gave offerings back to the forest that her babe was in danger. She knew, they all knew, how to keep their babes safe.
No changeling to trick and ease the pain.
No sweet babe gurgling happily to himself, the birds, the world.
Nothing.
But this.
Why didn’t it work?
She rose with all the grace of a newly crowned queen and walked out of her home.
It wasn’t until later she would learn how. It wasn’t until later she would learn why. It wasn’t until later she would learn herself.
Her sister fluttered around her, a distressed but beautiful butterfly and equally as useless.
“Oh, oh dear. I mean are you sure you put the iron next to him?” She gestured as she spoke, sunlight glinted off the thick bracelets adorning her arms.
The question seemed distant and unimportant. Staring at white washed wall of her successful sister's house, now that seemed important.
Of course she was sure. She checked, and checked again. They were there when she went to sleep and there when she woke. Only after she had put him down to nap, after she had left to feed the chickens just outside, had they gone.
Like him. Her babe. Her first.
“I’m sure Annette.” She spoke an empty hollowness inflecting every syllable. Every breath in harder than the one before. “I’m sure.”
“Isolda,” Annette’s voice gentled, her hand landing light on Isolda’s own. “We all know how to,” she paused looking around furtively as though she expected one of them to be listening in, “ward the People away. It works. It always works.” She patted it gently, “We all know this. I’m sorry.”
Isolda tore her gaze away and slowly travelled to her sister's face. Her beautiful sister, married to a successful and rich merchant with three equally beautiful children to show for it, pride of their parents was sorry.
Of course she was.
She had been equally sorry that Isolda had chosen - ran away with a cobbler for love instead of the smith. She had been sorry for the miscarriages that still haunted Isolda, made her weep for the lost love of her babes now given to the Gods and the Land. She had been so sorry that she had never had the courage to marry her own love and share in Isolda’s disgrace.
She was always so sorry.
But so useless.
Isolda’s free hand slipped to the rounding of her stomach, a memento left from a hard pregnancy that would very likely be her only.
Annette continued to speak, her charming lilting voice becoming unheeded background noise. Her vision blurred as the cold emptiness in her chest gave birth to a struggling ember. Sparks of pain flickered and flared, gaining strength as startlingly hot tears were pushed out one after another; escaping even when Isolda tried to shut their avenue of escape.
Her stomach and chest acting in concert as she tried to gain control over her breathing even as it slipped from her grasp. How could she know? How could Annette ever know what it was to lose a child? A dearly beloved, hard fought for child?
Isolda pressed her hand harder against the empty womb which once kept her child safe, even against her own body as if she might be able to feel the child - her bright beautiful son - safe, home underneath her own heart beat. She bent forward, her rough hand with her dirty cracked nails digging into the soft delicate skin of her sisters. A keen, bitter and arctic as the winter wind tore itself from her soul. And another, and another. It came like the steady hoof beats of horses on the cobble streets outside and paid as much mind.
They stayed like that until the Sun painted their final masterpiece on the canvas of sky for their beloved the Moon to admire. One sister shining bright like a newly minted coin in summer sunlight trying to understand the depth of loss of the other sister that was as dark, drab, and dusty as a skulking starving dog in the woods.
She screamed out her despair, her loss, the injustice visited upon her. She screamed until she heaved, until blood spotted the formerly pristine table in front of her. She screamed until she was a ghost of herself.
She watched listlessly as her husband, grubby from the farm, spoke in hurried concerned whispers with her bright and shining sister. She watched him approach, much like he did whenever he caught a wilder animal than anticipated in his snare. A wolf cub, a fox, on one memorable occasion a badger, that one had left a rather nasty scar on his side.
She watched as he took her hand and as light and easily as a leaf buffeted by winds, she allowed him to lead her to their cart. She allowed him to help her up onto the seat, pretending not to see, not to hear the townsfolk who just so happened to be walking by on their way. She stared, unblinkingly at the draft horse’s ears as they swiveled from side to side. She allowed him to press his thigh against her as he gathered the reins in his hands. She allowed him to take her home, the scenery melting away in rivulets of sound and colour.
As her feet touched the soil, she pulled away and wandered into the starkly silent house like a traveller, long gone, returned to find everything and nothing changed. Barely bothering to step out of her shoes, she climbed onto the bed and curled up. She shut her eyes, steadfastly ignoring her husband's heavy footfalls, and sought solace in sleep.
Blades of sorrow forged in the blazing fire of pain and coldness pierced her heart, driving its rhythm faster, harder. It beat in her chest, thundered in her veins and drove strength into her tired and weak limbs. It infused her with intent and gilded her in armor of bright fury. She stood tall and strong like the towering giant trees surrounding her. Staring down at the shimmering portal from the edge of the bank, the colours playfully flirting and flitting like exotic dragonflies over and under the gentle stream of the river.
The charms, the wards, they had all failed to protect and keep safe her babe.
But she…
She would not, and she was Coming.
There would be Legends told later, whispers told in the dark and always shushed quickly lest the wrong kind overhear, of a woman that fought and won against the Good People. Some would say she won the heart of one of Their Own and allowed her to raise her son among them. Some, that she won their respect and given special powers that allowed her and her son to cross the Veil as they pleased. That the son grew to be a fine, charming young man who had his choice amongst the lasses he met, that his descendants would be favoured by the Good People and offered a Choice. Although no one storyteller could agree as to what this Choice entailed.
Or perhaps fought and lost, doomed to forever wander the shadows of the forest calling, crying, begging for her lost son. A warning for small children lest they be snatched. Or maybe that she died from the heartbreak sustained, some would say a kind hearted Folk unknowingly cruel, transformed her into a tree overlooking the river rumoured to be the way into their world as a way to see the child that was so cruelly stolen. Another might say that she returned home and lived a mundane life - shortened by her adventures and slipped away quietly in the night never to be seen again.
Others, the cynical, the non believers, the foreigners would scoff and say nonsense. They would deny any truth of the tale. Always having one or more reasons or explanations.
But truthfully, there was once a woman whose child was stolen.
What happened after that is simply up to you, dear reader.