from the laws of nature, as was the Virgin when she was assumed into heaven, and as the prophet Elijah who was borne off to heaven, body and soul. God has seen to if that you would find your way into the world more than once through the loins of a woman, and perhaps even through a woman’s sin.”
“Aye, that’s certain!” said the Laird darkly. “If it wasn’t out of the little ones, by the sin of a witch and a child of our clan it had to be.”
My father was both frightened and ashamed. I looked at the priest. I wanted to tell of my mother, of the extra finger on her left hand, and how she had held it up to me and that she had said it was a witch’s finger, but I didn’t dare to do this. I knew the old Laird wanted to destroy me. I felt his hatred, and it was worse than the most dreadful bitter cold.
“The mark of God was on the birth, I tell you,” said the great Laird. “My damned son has done what not all the little people in the hills have been able to do for hundreds of years.”
“Did you see the acorn fall from the oak?” asked the priest. “How do you know but that this is a changeling and not our spawn? How!”
“She had the sixth finger,” my father said in a whisper.
“And you lay with her!” demanded the Laird.
And my father nodded, yes, that he had; and he whispered that she was a great lady, and he could not name her, but that she was great enough to have made him afraid.
“No one must hear of this,” said the priest. “No one must know what has taken place. I will take this blessed child in hand and see that he is consecrated to the Virgin, that he never touches the flesh of a woman.”
He then put me into a warm chamber where I might pass the night. He bolted the door on me. There was only a tiny window. The cold air crept in, but I could see a tiny bit of heaven, a few very small and bright stars.
What did all these words mean? I didn’t know. When I stood on the bed and peeped out the window, when I saw the dark forest and the jagged cut of the mountains, I felt fear. And I thought I could see the little people coming. I thought I could hear them. I could hear their drums. They would use their drums to freeze the Taltos, to render him helpless, and then they would surround him. Make a giant for us, make a giantess; make a race that shall punish the people; wipe them from the earth. One of them would climb the wall, and pry loose the bars, and in they would come—!
I fell back. But when I looked up again, I saw the bars were secure. This had been a fancy. In truth I had spent nights in rustic inns with farting drunkards and belching whores, and in the very woods where even the wolves ran from the little people.
Now I was safe.
It must have been an hour before daylight that the priest called me. For all I knew it was the witching hour, for a bell was tolling, ominously and endlessly, and as I woke, I knew I had heard this bell, like a hammer dropping again and again upon an anvil—in my sleep.
The priest shook me by the shoulder. “Come with me, Ashlar,” he said.
I saw the battlements of the town. I saw the torches of the watch. I saw the black sky above and the stars. The snow lay still upon the ground. Again and again, the bell rang, and the sound clattered through me, shook me, so that the priest reached out to make me steady and see that I walked at his side.
“That’s the Devil’s Knell,” said the priest. “It is ringing to drive the devils and spirits out of the valley, to scatter the Sluagh, and the Ganfers, and whatever evil lurks in the glen. To rout the little people if they have dared to come out. They may know already that you have come. The bell will protect us. The bell will drive them away with all the unseelie court and into the forest, where they can do no harm save to their own kind.”
“But who are such beings?” I whispered. “I’m afraid of the sound of