A Shiver in the Air

Blue night, blue cold. Blue the lips of the child in Maddie Cain’s arms, and its face the white of the moonlight that pours in through the frost-glazed window.

It was a hard birth, one of the hardest Maddie’s ever attended. Now Juney Hobson sleeps exhausted, while Maddie watches the winter stars over Hart Mountain and waits for Juney’s baby girl to die. Maddie’s a fearsome witch and maybe the greatest healer the mountain’s ever known, but there are some things even she can’t fix.

A log cracks in the fireplace. There’s a stinging prickle in the air, bringing with it a scent of snow and a chill deeper than the night. An unseen hand slips beneath the baby, lifting her from Maddie’s arms. Maddie’s fingers tighten on the blanket and the hand falls away. The empty air in front of the fireplace shimmers. Maddie blinks, making herself look with the other Sight, that sees more deeply than the eyes alone can see.

It’s a glamour, the calling card of the Fair Folk, the Gentry, the ones the mountain folk call the Shee. Maddie squints into the shimmer, resisting the urge to look away. The sheeny mist between the fireplace and the table resolves itself into a slender woman in a green woven coat, black hair drifting like sea wrack upon her shoulders. In the crook of one arm, she holds a bundle wrapped against the cold in a soft grey blanket.

Maddie’s heart beats a wee bit faster, but she makes herself stare into the newcomer’s beautiful, soulless eyes.

“Begone, and thrice begone. There’s nothing for you here.”

The Shee-woman’s lips tighten. “You see me?”

“Well.” Maddie gathers Juney’s baby tight to her breast. “O’ course; it’s only glamour, ain’t it? Anybody can see through that if they know how to look.”

The Shee leans in, peering at the dying child. One long finger traces the waxy curve of her cheek. “So beautiful,’ she whispers. “Like us.”

The bundle in the Shee’s arms squirms and whimpers. A tiny hand, fragile as a starfish, peeps from a fold in the blanket, and suddenly Maddie understands.

“That’s a changeling,” Maddie says. "You don't mean to leave it here."

The Shee lifts her chin. “A fair exchange. That child for this. The woman can hardly complain.”

Maddie glances at the bed in the corner. Juney still sleeps, her face shadowed and drawn. This child came near to killing her. She’ll never have another.

The changeling child fidgets. The blanket falls away, showing a round little face topped with brown curls, rosebud mouth opening for a full-throated cry. Maddie, who grew up on the old tales of human babies replaced by ugly malformed tricksters, frowns.

“What’s wrong with that one, then? Will it turn to a toad or something like?”

The Shee’s delicate face twists. “Or something like, if it stays among us. More legs, I expect. There is a lady of the Bright Court who has learned a nasty lesson. So sweet and so dangerous, to take a lover from the Shadowlands – and a shape changer at that. But one must be discreet.”

Maddie considers the Shee child. A thin veil of glamour hangs about its small, nearly human face. She lets herself look sideways, with the Sight. Ah, that’s the dilemma. Deep within the baby’s chubby body waits the true self: a carapace black and gleaming, long legs made to dance on a web. This faery lady’s tastes must have been strange as they come.

Everybody knows the Shee are insanely fascinated by mortal folk. A human child becomes a cherished pet; a man or woman can be an entertainment for a season or a lifetime. But the stories all say they’re a proud and haughty race, lording it over the lesser beings of the Otherlands. Small wonder this lady wants that ill-fated liaison to leave no trace.

The air sizzles gently with the presence of the Shee. Maddie sifts her mental storehouse for a stronger banishing spell. None come to mind. She shakes her head.

“Let the child be,” Maddie says. “She won’t see the sunrise. But she’ll be with her mama till then. And after, she’ll lie beside her papa in the churchyard.”

The Shee’s eyes make Maddie think of frost on the windowpane.

“With us, she’ll see that sunrise. And many more besides.”

Maddie opens her mouth to speak, closes it again. Death treads delicately in this room. But then so does life, soft as the snowflakes falling in the blackness of the night. It’s a healer’s business, to meet the two head-on.

The Shee woman strokes the changeling’s cheek. She’s nothing more than a pretty girl baby now; the glamour has settled in again like a second skin. Only a narrowness of the features, a glassy smoothness to the cheek, hints at the child’s true self.

The Shee’s voice is cold and steady. “You say that one is dying. Do you think this one would live in the courts of the Fair? Listen, witch. Within an hour of her birth, I had my orders: take her to the hills and leave her there, for the sprites to strip her bones. But I brought her here instead. For a chance at life.”

Maddie glances at the Hobson baby, at Juney in her weary sleep. At nineteen, Juney’s already a brand-new widow, with more grief surely on its way.

The Shee waits, for the Shee have all the time in the world.

Maddie kisses the dying child’s forehead and wraps the blanket tight around her. Wordlessly, she lifts the baby up. Raising one elegant eyebrow, the Shee gathers the tiny bundle into the curve of her free arm and lowers the changeling gently into Maddie’s lap.

Shiver of air and a ghost of a laugh, and Maddie’s left staring into emptiness.

The changeling has a tiny spiderweb mark upon her rosepetal cheek, like a tracery of lace. Blinking back tears, Maddie gathers her up and walks gentle as the snowfall across the cold room. But Juney Hobson hears her anyway. She waits braced for sorrow as Maddie settles the warm, fussing bundle into her arms.

Maddie smiles.

“Juney, sit up, now. Your little ‘un’s hungry.”

Behind the Scenes: This story is part of the Sorrows Hill historical fantasy series, set in Civil War era Virginia. Sorrows Hill is a faerie mound, a gateway to the Otherlands of myth and legend, but it's inspired by the real-life mounds found in places like Ohio and West Virginia. The Sorrows Hill series follows Maddie Cain, the sorcerous Merchant clan and a long list of other characters as they navigate life on the borderland between the magical and the mundane.