by Holley Cornetto
(600 words)
I know they want her, because she’s perfect. Ten fingers, ten toes, and chubby red cheeks. The pregnancy was a breeze. I was never sick, never had complications. I was lucky. Even in the womb, she was a good baby.
After she was born, I couldn’t get enough of her. I needed to see every smile and hear every coo or cry, not that my darling baby ever cried those first few months.
One night, as I nodded off in the rocking chair with her still in my lap, my husband lifted her from my arms.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, reaching for her baby powder scented form.
“You’re so tired you’re falling asleep sitting up. I can take her for a while. Go sleep.”
I did, and it was my first mistake.
The baby my husband tucked back into my arms that night as I slept was not my little girl. She was something else.
Wails, like she is being pricked by needles, wake me from my slumber. My quiet, perfect baby screams for hours upon hours. Nothing consoles her. I rock and cuddle and coo, and when that doesn’t work, I beg and plead and cry right along with her.
I know what this is. I’ve heard of it once before. I wrap her in a red blanket and place a horseshoe under her pillow, yet she cries still.
When boiling eggshells doesn’t work, I know there is only one more thing that I can do. I build up a large fire in the hearth, and I scoot her bed close.
The flames rise and heat radiates throughout the room. Her skin turns pink and her shrieks pierce the air. I pray it is that thing, returning to where it came from, but before it is done, my husband rushes in and sweeps her away.
Now I know the truth.
“Take a long bath, relax,” my husband tells me. His eyes reflect practiced concern. They’ve coached him well.
“I can’t leave her,” is the only reply I can muster, clutching tight the screaming bundle at my chest.
They’ve used their magic to make her hate me. She is only quiet when she sleeps, because she dreams of a carefree life beyond the veil. When she wakes to this ordinary life, where flowers lose a glimmer of brightness, and folksongs cease to be carried on the wind, she is angry.
I sleep when she sleeps, but through my exhaustion I hear snippets of conversation. My husband talks about sending her away for a few days, so that I can rest. There are hushed conversations about how I will react, things he will say. He thinks I cannot hear him, but his whispers slip through the cracks of the door and penetrate my dreams.
The doctor says it might be stomach troubles. When we switch from breastmilk to formula, she begins to sleep better, and cry less. That is how I knew she is no longer mine.
My eyes and breasts both weep for something I have lost.
I wait until twilight to sneak from the house. My husband will protest, but was it not he who sold her away?
I will not raise this changeling, this child of the fae. A sliver of moonlight cuts through the trees and makes enough light for me to stumble along the path. I walk deeper into the woods, searching for the fairy ring that will rid me of this burden. Perhaps the ones who took her will show mercy and return my daughter to me.
I lay her on a bed of toadstools, wrap her in blanket of moss, and settle in to wait.
END
Holley Cornetto is a librarian and English professor who writes dark speculative fiction. Her writing appears in over a dozen magazines and anthologies. Holley is a regular reviewer and contributor for The Horror Tree. She can be found lurking on Twitter @HLCornetto.