The Minister's Daughter

by Julie Hearn

  And Nell could run now. For two pins, she could chuck herself back through the crevice and run, never minding what beguiled or became of her on the way. Let down by her granny, insulted by a tiny man, and minus an icicle, she could happily run for all eternity.

  But “Yeeeeow!” and “**!!** ****!!! Get this thing out of me!” shrieks the laboring fairywoman, whose welfare in this chamber is Nell’s responsibility—for better or worse.

  “Give me herbs. Anything! Only, get it out, get it out, or I’ll … I’ll … sting you.”

  She is twirling madly. Twirling and cursing and whirling above her bed in a frenzy of beating wings and fluttering, flapping gauze.

  “Right,” snaps Nell, reaching for a snippet of mugwort. “This is it. For when a birthing fairy gets nasty, ’tis time for her to chant.”

  “But she’s always nasty,” says the consort, disarmed and distracted now by the speedy turn of events beyond his jurisdiction. “It’s her nature.”

  “Quiet!” Nell orders him. “And get back behind that rock, out of the way.”

  Mutely he does as he is told.

  “Good man.”

  Nell is calm now. Calm and in control.

  The fairywoman’s toes touch down on the moss, brace there for a few seconds while she rests, and then lift off again.

  “You’re doing well,” Nell tells her gently. “You be doing really, really well.” Without turning her head, she reaches for the eagle stone and balances it on the palm of her right hand. Her knees are cramping from being crouched down, but she must stay like this, as still as can be, holding her outstretched hand with the stone on it midway between the moss and the whirling, cursing fairywoman, ready and waiting to catch …

  “Now,” she breathes. “Start chanting.”

  It takes both seconds and forever, this final, vital stage. And each moment an eon of time is shot through. For Nell, with a sense of wonder as the sound of chanting swells like a symphony and throbs like a heart. For it isn’t just the fairywoman and her consort mouthing the ancient fairybirthing words. The very walls of the chamber echo with them as if hundreds of voices, along with whatever is providing the sparks of greenish light, are lifting and soaring and urging this delivery to a safe and happy conclusion. It is a magical chant, a secret mantra; and the words are blurred together, deliberately fast, so that no human can take them away. The whirl of it, the beauty of it, makes Nell giddy. But she holds her right hand as steady as a cup until … until … yes … yes …

  Here it is. Dropped suddenly and silently, like a winter leaf, into her upturned palm … a tiny fairyboybaby encased in a gossamer caul and attached, still, to his limply whirling mother by a silvery thread.

  It is seconds that count now. Real seconds. Human seconds.

  “Cut the cord!” squeals the consort—beside the moss now, and jumping up and down in a frenzy. “Cut the cord, you great booby!”

  And without thinking twice or summoning a single Power from anywhere, Nell bends her head, opens her mouth, and bites through the cord with one open-shut snap of her own front teeth.

  “With tooth and tongue, the job is done,” she intones for effect, through a mouthful of saliva and bitter filaments. “So mote it be.”

  Quickly, with fingers that cannot help but tremble, she eases the thumb-size scrap of fairy-life out of his caul. The fairymother, lying in a swoon, raises one little hand. Her consort takes it and presses it to his lips, but his eyes are fixed on Nell, and his face wears a blank expression that will tip into outrage or relief, depending on whether this baby has survived being chewed off at the stem like a dangling cherry.

  It is touch and go. It is literally touch and go as Nell begins massaging a smidgen of ointment into the fairybaby’s cooling skin. Made from cowslips and quicksilver, mixed with the grease of a white goose, then left for a year and a day where the beams of neither sun nor moon will touch it, this ointment must cover every millimeter of a newborn fairy’s skin if it is to be truly fairy and not succumb to old age, smallpox, knife wounds, or any of the umpteen other things that end human lives. And it must be administered by a human hand within seconds of the birth. That is the way of it. That is the reason Nell is here.

  The ointment is slippery and smells both sweet and foul by turns. Holding her breath, taking exquisite care not to press too heavily on a rib cage barely big enough to house an acorn, Nell moves her fingertips up and down, then round and round, in tick-size strokes and minute, gentle circles.

  Come on, she pleads silently. Come on, you. Or Im done for.

  The fairybaby’s eyes are closed, beneath bulging lids. When they open, suddenly, to reveal a gaze as blue-green and as fathomless as the ocean, the relief of it runs like an electrical charge right through Nell and makes her giddy.

  “Keep on!” commands the consort. “You’ve his heels to do still and the soles of his feet. Forget those, and any snakebites, blisters, bunions, or frost-burn will be your fault. Keep on! I’m watching.”

  The fairybaby is wriggling like a minnow and mewling for its mother. It is a delightful little thing, but becoming stranger and chillier as the ointment does its work. From now on, it will fear nothing. No cut, scald, sting, or fall will harm it. Neither will deeds or words. For the ointment works both outside and in, dulling the emotions and turning the heart, metaphorically speaking, into a hailstone. Like all fairies, this one will live in the present, be utterly ruthless, and never know love. It is a price these beings willingly pay for a chance at immortality. And since they understand no other way, it seems a natural state—superior, even, to the fraught and messy way humans go about things.

  “Well now,” says the consort, once Nell’s job is finally done. “That appears to be all, so be off with you.”

  With aching, smelly fingers, Nell sweeps her bits and bobs back into their bag. Her knees twinge as she gets to her feet, and her head is swimming. Below her the fairymother taps the top of her newborn’s head and smiles dutifully. She will feed it and wash it and give it a pair of boots one day, but she will never feel the awful lurch in the pit of her stomach that human mothers feel when their offspring trip over the grate or are late coming home for their suppers.

  Nell turns to the crevice in the wall and wonders how to leave.

  “Wait!” orders the consort. He has the caul in which the fairybaby was born between his hands and is offering it up to her. Damp and torn and a lot bigger than you might imagine, it hangs from his fingers like the veil of a drowned bride, its edges drifting a little in the fading greenish light.

  Nell hesitates. Then: “Much obliged,” she says politely, lifting the caul from his fingers and folding it away in her bag. It is customary, she knows, for a midwife to receive a gift from the fairies once her task is done. But what she or her granny will do with a bit of tatty old membrane, the Powers only know.

  The consort stifles a tiny yawn, amused yet bored by her bewilderment.

  “’Twill save a human life,” he tells her in a tone that says, quite clearly, that she is incredibly stupid and that he is explaining things only because it’s no skin off his nose either way.

  “Oh,” says Nell. “I see. Thank you.”

  Powdered or boiled? she wonders. And on a waxing or a waning moon?

  “Any life,” he adds. “Howsoever it appears to be ending. But you can use it only once.”

  “Oh,” says Nell again. “Interesting. But I be puzzled by its properties. Be it necessary to soak it awhile? With a pinch of dragons blood and a bit of myrrh, maybe? And what time of day or month be most favorable to … Oh. All right. I see. Never you mind … I’ll work it out. I’ll … Whoooaah.”

  Fairies don’t believe in saying good-bye. Not even for the sake of politeness. Maybe they will see you again one day, maybe they won’t—it’s all one to them. And whether they have known you for moments, months, or years, they will dismiss you suddenly and never think of you again once you have served your purpose.

  So back through the crevice Nell go
es, her bones loose for a moment, and her innards squashed but then released without damage. It is dark, very dark, on the other side, and there are no fairy hands this time to tug her in the right direction. Far ahead in the distance is an oval of light the size and shape of a rabbit hole. She must reach it alone. She must fix her sights on the way out, hang on to her bag, gather her wits, and walk.

  The ground is rough, and the way seems suddenly steep, so she hangs the bag by its string round her neck and uses her hands as well as her feet to clamber along. Seconds and forever … seconds and forever …

  Dont fret, she tells herself. Time means nothing here. Still the moments drag, and the blob of light appears no nearer as she scrabbles and crawls toward it.

  A drink. How she longs for something to drink. Her mouth is so dry, her tongue so parched, she would lick the stalagmites and stalactites in the hope of finding moisture if she only dared stray from her path.

  Come, come, come …

  Oh …

  There are three of them blocking the way forward. Three fairypeople from out of nowhere, their hair drifting in aureoles of copper and gold, and their wings gleaming like opals in the dark. How lovely their smiles are. How kind. And they are offering her refreshments—a ripe peach, cut in half … a goblet of sweet cider … a handful of snow.

  “No. No, thank you. I’m not thirsty right now.”

  Dont give in, she tells herself, over and over in her mind. Dont give in, or you’ll never get home. You’ll be here for evermore.

  Still they tempt her, sighing and coaxing and coming so close that the fruit hovers delectably under her nose and a trickle of melting snow falls just short of her mouth.

  “No,” she repeats, closing her eyes against them and hurrying blindly on. “No, I said. No, thank you.”

  Slowly, eventually, the sighs and the summery scent of peach juice fade away.

  Safe. Nell is safe now and no longer quite so thirsty. She opens her eyes. The rabbit hole looks closer, so she scrambles with renewed energy.

  How silent it is, she thinks after a while. Silent as the grave. She listens for her own heartbeat, thinking it might comfort her. But the silence is complete, pressing so hard against her skull that her head aches with it.

  “La, la, la, la, la,” she sings. “Tra-la, tra-la-la …” But the echo of her own voice against the innards of the hill sounds like the faint and useless chirruping of the last bird on earth.

  And just when she feels she could weep from loneliness, she hears the rise and fall of music. A rich, haunting sound, spilling and filling the silence the way honey poured from a comb will fill an empty pot.

  Come, come, come …

  “Where? Where are you?”

  He is up ahead, just off to the right—a rotund little chappie with a shock of silver curls and eyebrows as bushy and wild as two creatures. He has a flute to his lips, which he plays with such beauty and ease that the instrument itself seems human. Each note is a yearning … a calling … an enticement to Nell to follow wherever it leads. Each note changes the air, like a wish thrown into a well.

  Nell stops moving. Swallows. There are tears in her eyes, which she tries to blink away, but cant.

  Come … You know you want to …

  Behind the player a curtain lifts, and through swimming vision, Nell sees a party going on—people grouped in candlelight, eating slices of frosted cake and chattering through the crumbs. They don’t look like fairies, for their wings are folded, and some of them are old. They look normal and extremely pleasant. One of them—a gray-bearded fairyman in a waistcoat embroidered with buttercups—beckons to Nell and pats the seat of an empty chair. There is a plate set beside it on a low table and a goblet with a rim of jeweled stars.

  Nell shakes her head. She has never felt so alone. Such an outsider. But she mustn’t … she mustn’t …

  The player changes tempo, the notes of the flute leaping and gliding, leaping and gliding, like invisible fish. Some of the people behind him put down their cake, the better to sway and clap their hands in rhythm. Nell, too, is enchanted.

  Remember, girl, be not beguiled…. All will not be as it seems.

  Oh, Granny! she cries in her mind. Cant I follow him? Just for two minutes/weeks/month/years? I be in no hurry, really, to get home. Cant I rest for a while and enjoy the music?

  But, no. No. In her mind’s eye she sees the cunning woman shake her head. Life at home can be hard, says that shake of the head. Life at home can be sorrow sometimes. But even sorrow keenly felt can be worth knowing. Worth learning from. So you just get yourself back here, back to me and the dun chicken, and leave them pretenders and the music and all that marchpane behind.

  I will, thinks Nell. I will. And she starts to run.

  The player unfurls his wings as if to follow her, but cannot get them up.

  Tutting he lays aside his flute, produces a blue pill, and swallows it. He is still trying for liftoff as Nell passes in a cloud of glittering dirt.

  “Bye-bye,” she calls in passing. “And a dose of powdered bark, taken from a lusty oak, will solve your little problem. Bye-bye.”

  The hole in the hill is so close now that she is sure she can see the time of day through it. Dawn. It looks like dawn out there, all pale and misty.

  Nearly through, she tells herself. Almost safe.

  She can smell the air—a tang of grasses and fresh-fallen dew. She can feel a breeze wafting in. And she can hear, both far away and right behind her, the piercing cries of the fairyboybaby and the whirling of hundreds of wings beating in apparent distress.

  Come back, come back, come back …

  Nell pauses. What now? What’s happened? What can possibly have happened to make that newborn shriek so? It sounds like he has been abandoned or dropped on his head. It sounds like he’s in terrible pain. Only, he can’t be. He can’t possibly be in pain unless … unless she missed a bit of him, by mistake, with the ointment. Could she have done? She is almost certain she covered every pore of him, every dimple, fold, and follicle. But she is only human, after all, so maybe …

  She is on the point of turning round, of being drawn back, to check. But another sound, a thudding sound, distracts her. And out in the real world, framed by the rough edges of the hole, she sees a hare. It is looking right in at her and thumping its back legs. Danger, says each thump. Danger. Danger. Danger.

  It is supposed to be bad luck to encounter a hare—like having a toad hop over your foot or a bat fly three times around your house. But this one has something about it. This one seems incredibly bright—and completely focused on Nell.

  The baby-wailing rises a tone. It has an angry edge to it that wasn’t there a minute ago. And the fairies are growing impatient.

  Listen! Listen! Listen! Come back! Turn round!

  They really do sound like wasps. And they are swarming.

  Thump goes the hare, so hard that a trickle of soil spills into the hill and down over Nell’s fingers. It feels solid and real, that bit of earth, and it definitely does the trick.

  “My job is finished!” Nell screams, without looking round. “And I did it well. That baby be as cold and safe as a beetle in an icehouse, and this is all a deception.”

  And so saying, she launches herself at and through the rabbit hole, swimming and plunging and hauling herself to what feels like a second birth … a shivery yet triumphant delivering of her own body from the belly of the hill onto a broad green lap of sheep-nibbled turf and old bunny droppings.

  The hare has gone. Above her rears the fairyhorse, its rider slipping a little on its back. The fairymanchild is completely sozzled on six acorn-cups of blackberry wine and none too pleased at having been summoned from a snooze to take this midwife home.

  “Hulp-hic-ala,” he drawls, reaching down with an unsteady, glimmering hand.

  “You be as drunk as a fish,” Nell tells him sternly. “You be as tipsy as a lord and in no fit state to ride.” But she gets to her feet anyway, a little light-headed herself in the
cool sweet air, and allows him to haul her up onto the horses back.

  The animal skitters and turns. The fairymanchild burps and spurs it on. Even in the state he is, he will have Nell home before cockcrow. She can relax—even doze a little—as they reel back past trees and valleys, standing stones and fields of wheat. But before she does, she reaches into her bag, curious to know whether the caul she put into it seconds and forever ago will still be there.

  It is.

  The Confession of Patience Madden

  THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1692

  I told no one at first about meeting the Devil. No one. I just thanked the Lord that he hadn’t harmed me or taken me with him after all Then I went home. I even remembered to collect my cloak. But I knew full well that I would never venture out at night again—and in all these years, I tell you true, I never have. Except that one other time … the time my sister made me. But that came later….

  Meanwhile, as June turned to July, I was like a cat that jumps from its own shadow. Even the sound of our housekeeper beating eggs and milk to make a batter put me in mind of hoof beats and upset my concentration.

  “What’s the matter?” snapped Grace after a week of watching me tremble and start at the slightest noise. “Are you sick?”

  I said nothing. And anyway, she was the one who looked sick.

  The heat had led to thunderstorms, which gave way, eventually, to days of steady rainfall. The lanes were a quagmire; the sky, a pile of dirty clouds. My father returned from doing the Lord’s business looking strangely animated despite a grueling journey and a dripping hat. He had been to a place called Essex to meet with a man who, he informed us, was routing Satan from his community in a most impressive way.

  The man’s name was Matthew Hopkins. That was all I knew about him, which was a mercy, really, for had I understood the precise nature of his business so soon after meeting the Devil, I might have panicked and run away. As it was, I was just glad to have my father home and pleased that he was so busy and involved with the Lord, our protector.

  For a short while I felt better. I embroidered a lily on my sampler and said my prayers with renewed interest. Grace left me alone. She, too, had ceased her nocturnal wanderings, but that was no surprise. lt wasn’t the weather for frolicking. And if she looked paler than usual and left most of her breakfast, I assumed she was pining for her sweetheart, whoever he was, and wishing the rain would ease. Serves her right, I thought. She’s a sinner. Serves her right.