Dreams and Shadows - By C. Robert Cargill Page 0,5
the rafters, but the way she’d looked when he first saw her over that French book. He remembered her the way she had looked on that walk. The way she looked at their wedding. The way she looked when they first held Baby Ewan in their arms.
He remembered all the ways he saw her, including the time he saw her last, as he performed his slow and dastardly procession.
The block was quieter than usual, with no one so much as jogging or walking their dog. As he approached the darkening water, he paused, looking down at the child in his arms, but the creature’s howls reassured him of his decision. He leaned down to the water’s edge, right along a concrete slab that led to a steep, immediate drop-off into the lake, and plunged the changeling underwater. The shrieking stopped, a still quiet filling the coming night. Jared looked down, catching glimpse of something lurking beneath the surface of the water. A shadow drifting slowly toward him.
He peered closer. Tiffany. She looked up, slowly rising to the surface, her arms outstretched, hair drifting in the current. But as she approached, her hair darkened, her skin grew pale, her eyes became black orbs swimming lifeless in their sockets. Before he knew what he was looking at, two watery arms took him by the lapels, pulling him headlong into its depths. He struggled, fighting, but could not reach the surface.
Two arms grappled him tightly, a woman holding firm upon his back, swimming them both ever deeper.
Jared was in the cold grip of the depths, his lungs swollen with mossy, alkaline lake water, gasping for a single breath.
The changeling floated helplessly a few feet beneath the surface. A second woman appeared, kicking like a dolphin, flinging herself out of the gloom toward the child above her. She grabbed the changeling, swimming him back to the surface, out into the night air.
“He’s ours now,” the woman whispered into Jared’s ear, her voice audible, without so much as a gurgle. Then came the blackness, hollow, crashing, choking. And with that, Jared Thatcher drowned, sinking slowly to the bottom of the lake.
Above, the pale woman emerged from the water, the changeling still shrieking in her arms, its tormented yowl shattering the stillness. “There, there,” she soothed, stroking his grotesque head while her eyes scanned the shoreline for any sign of witnesses. She smiled. “You’re home, child. You’re home.” The screaming stopped and the changeling cooed, smiling up at his new mother. He was home. Home for good. And he hungered no more.
CHAPTER TWO
ON THE BENDITH Y MAMAU AND THE CHANGELINGS THEY LEAVE BEHIND
An excerpt by Dr. Thaddeus Ray, Ph.D., from his book A Chronicle of the Dreamfolk
The Bendith Y Mamau can smell love, as if it were a tangible thing. They also detest it, for they do not understand it. While they are known to feel familial attachment, the Bendith Y Mamau cannot reproduce, thus they do not mate and never have the need for anything resembling love. It doesn’t help that they are amongst God’s ugliest creatures. However, that is not to say that they do not possess beauty of some sort.
The Bendith Y Mamau are the world’s greatest musicians. They cannot sing a note, their baritone voices more akin to a walrus’s bellow than anything else, but with an instrument in their hands they can weave some of the most sensuous, melodic music ever heard. It is music so complex, with such extraordinarily complicated structures, that it transcends normal composition and plays at notes as yet unknown to mortal men outside of the Aboriginal songlines of Australia. Each note contains the very essence of magic and weaves powerful spells that hold sway over emotion and memory. It is this music that fairy communities often use to hold captives, without need of chain or tether, which of course leads to the Bendith Y Mamau’s primary function in any fairy community.
Pronounced “ben-dith uh mo-may,” a Welsh phrase meaning “mother’s blessing,” they are the chief child thieves of any fairy court, and the first to whom a community will turn when they desire fresh infants. Each community has its own differing needs, but a thriving, healthy court will often call upon their Bendith Y Mamau to tend to the acquisition of living mortals. Their strength, speed, and agility make them incredible hunters, while their oafish nature gives them a single-minded purpose and focus not found among the more thoughtful races of the fae.