desolate, for unlike me she was not entirely enthralled by the baby growing in her. Then came the night she went into labour. I had given birth a week or so before, and I was nursing my precious son as I waited for her to bear her child. Unlike my labour, which was swift and only briefly painful, hers was long and full of many agonies. This surprised me, for I had thought a faerie would give birth with ethereal decorousness, all flowers and glitter instead of blood and screams. I wondered aloud if all faerie births were so hard, and the faerie crone who tended her said, ‘No more than all mortal births are painful.’ She was not in awe of me, for it was she who had birthed my son, and suddenly she said, ‘It goes deeper with some than others and that can make a difference. You withheld nothing in the birthing of your child, but this one would keep some part of herself separate from it.’
My friend was beyond hearing her words, but our voices must have penetrated the haze of pain, for suddenly she shouted out the name of a woman – Alzbetta – begging her forgiveness and swearing she would find some way to help her. Then she screamed until foam flecked her cheeks and hoarsely willed her body to rid her of the child and of the love she had borne its feckless, fickle father, cursing both. There was a hail of rain against the window glass and I shivered, for in Faerie, curses are not just words.
‘Can’t you use magic to help her?’ I whispered to the crone, hours later, for Yssa was grown pale as milk and there was a greenish shadow about her mouth and a feverish glitter in her eyes that made me fear for her.
The faerie midwife gave me a keen look. ‘I could try, but it would be dangerous, for there is a kind of primitive but powerful magic in birthing that will truck no other kind.’
My son stirred at my breast and I looked down at him and felt a fist of love close about my heart. For a moment it seemed that I could not breathe, for the joy I felt was so deep it was akin to pain. Then there was a grunting groan from the bloody birthing bed and I looked up to see the midwife lurch forward and reach for the baby being born.
Few children are born to faerie folk, and many are not fully formed. No one knows why, but the children are loved no less than a complete child. Yet my friend looked at her child only once, and bade the crone take the baby away. I came to Yssa and held her hand and told her I loved her, and promised she would grow to love her babe as I loved my son. I could not conceive that a mother would not love her child as I did and so my concern was all for my friend, rather than for the child. Yssa wept then, as I had never heard her weep, and told me that the child was misconceived. I held her close and called her sister and kissed her and said I would speak to my husband and see what he could do.
She drew back from me so quickly that she wrenched herself from my embrace, breasts heaving above the bodice of her bloodstained nightdress. Her pale blue eyes looked silver as she said, ‘Ask him nothing, for he will be no more use to me than my own lord was. I am done with men. I should never have allowed myself to be distracted from my oath. Now I must atone.’
‘What oath?’ I cried, but she would not answer. I stroked her hair until she slept and then I went to feed my son. I fell asleep with him in my arms and when I woke, I saw a tiny silver feather by my side. It was a magic Yssa had, to limn small objects in silver, and she had done it to many tiny objects to please me. As soon as I saw the feather, I knew she had gone. I could not believe she would go without saying goodbye, and I was not surprised to find that she had left the child behind. It was only when I went to the nursery to look into its cradle that I realised that aside from being