Leanan Sidhe's Arc

Chapter 5 of 6

The Leanan Sidhe left the empty horse in the reeds and turned toward the star-tower. Danu did not stop her. The goddess had claimed her blood but not her hunt. She still meant to take the bog man tonight. She spread her wings and rose over the peat, and the child inside her pulled at her ribs like a stone tied to a bird. She felt it with every wingbeat. The glamour she wore, the beauty she had carried for a thousand years, ran out through her belly and into the thing growing there. By the time she saw the star-tower's lamp, her arms shook. She landed hard in the wet grass. She could barely hold her face together. She reached for the old shape anyway, the pale skin, the long throat, the mouth men wrote poems about. It flickered like a wet candle. A yellow light moved between the reeds. Florence came down the path alone, barefoot, a clay cup in her hands. Bright flowers were braided into her red hair, the same flowers that grew in her drying garden behind the hut. The Leanan Sidhe knew the smell. Yellow wort. The thing that broke fae spells. "Drink," Florence said. She held out the cup. Her voice was flat. "You look thirsty." The Leanan Sidhe laughed, or tried to. "Child, I do not drink from witches." "You will." Florence stepped inside her reach, quick as a bird, and pressed the cup to her mouth. The Leanan Sidhe's arms would not lift to stop her. The child pulled again. She swallowed to keep from choking. It tasted of honey and bitter sun. The glamour tore off her like a wet sheet. She felt her real face for the first time in a hundred lifetimes. Not beautiful. Not ugly. Something older. Her hands, when she looked at them, were long and brown and steady. The ache in her belly was not a wound. It was a heartbeat. Two heartbeats. Hers, and the small one, and a third that was neither. Life ran through her the way water runs through a root. It had always been there. The glamour had been a mask laid over it so she could hunt. She sat down in the grass. She began to cry, which she had not done in a thousand years. "I do not want him," she said. Her voice was her own. "I do not want any of them." Florence lowered the cup. She did not smile. She did not touch her. She only nodded once. Down at the low place, Danu stood by the stone cradle in the green light. She looked up the slope at the Leanan Sidhe and raised one small hand. Come. The Leanan Sidhe stood. Her legs held. She walked past Florence toward her mother, and the child inside her stopped pulling and began, at last, to grow.