cobweb blankets were neat.
On the other hand, she’s thinking, you are not my real parents, who would never make me sleep under poisonous spider butt-silk sheets and wouldn’t make me drink bloody flower water and where the absolute hell is my bunny and my ninja and My Little Pony and MY MUUUUUUUUUM?
For their part, her parents are not impressed with the obvious substitute they found in the stroller. This whey-faced, doughy, dull little baby with all the personality of an undercooked bread roll.
Humans are not of themselves magic, but they’re not stupid, and they are, as explained, inexplicably attached to their children.
These parents are going back to the gardens with this dull little changeling and they’re going to stand under the tree where they last saw their own child and they are going demand the return of their daughter. Loudly. Repeatedly. Insistently. With many, many swear words and very little in the way of attempts to bargain with the magic folk. Screw diplomacy.
Give us back our daughter you creepy little winged freaks before we find a way to burn down your fairy fucking halls.
And frankly, the Faerie Queen is going to be much too relieved to be rid of this bold, brave, uncompromising, strong-willed and vocally enhanced human child to worry overmuch about the lack of courtesy.
HOORFROST
Author’s note: This is an origin story for Kitty and Cadaver, about a rock and roll band that fights monsters with music.
London June 1258
If anyone but Will knew what was causing this snow – that thing in the river – they weren’t doing anything about it. Will was, though. He was swearing.
‘God’s nails!’ Will swore as he trudged through the fresh fall of snow. He suspected he’d wandered off the road to the Ludgate. Surely this grove of elms was further west than he meant to be? He couldn’t see the sun, much less any shadows, to judge the time in this milky light, but it must be no later than the third hour, barely half way to noon.
The air was cold enough that his swarthy skin – heritage of a Spanish mother with Moorish blood – was relatively pale in the frame of his dark hair. His dark eyes ached in the glare of the snow and cloud.
He cursed as his feet crunched down.
God curse this winter and the famine that it brings; God pity the thousands dead for want of food. God curse the frozen Thames and the strange skies of this unspeakable winter. God curse the even stranger thing that lurks in the river’s mud.
And triple curse this cocking snow that will not cease falling.
When cursing didn’t help, Will tried to spell it warmer with a rhyme.
Un-freeze, damn’d-dirt, God’s-heart, it’s-cold.
His teeth chattered too hard for the chant to be spoken, and numb with cold as he was, it was a poor chant. The result was weak – he never could make much use of water; earth responded best to his call – but the beat of it kept his body moving, less cold than if he stood still. He’d have unslung his tabor, but the drum’s skin was brittle with frost. Even encased in fur gloves, his hands were stiff. At least he had boots, and the moss stuffed in the left stopped the snow leeching in through the hole and biting his heel.
Having no lodgings, St Martin’s Le Grand’s curfew knell last night had forced Will to sleep beyond the city walls or risk prison. He’d sheltered in St Bartholomew’s Priory – its founder had been a minstrel, and the brothers there had given him water and a bite of what little bread they had. This morning he’d left, hoping to find some scraps.
But the bells of St Martin’s Le Grand hadn’t rung to herald the opening of the markets, and that was how William Hawk knew he no longer had a choice in what he did next. Whether the problem was no bell, or no markets, the silence meant this unnatural winter was deepening and a cold and hungry death was coming for them all.
He didn’t know what to do about the thing in the river either, but he would make his way back into the city to do it. If the church was wrong and God loved him after all, he would succeed.
A sweet, fluting sound pierced Will’s cursing and he halted, listening.
It was the trill of a pipe, played dancingly by a musician of rare skill. Will felt warmer just hearing it. And then his fingers ached less. Will grinned with sudden certainty. He followed the music through the woods and paused when he found its source.
A young man knelt on the ground in a circle of bare earth, playing his pipe. His dark blond hair stood up all over his head, as though he’d spent the morning scratching through it. The cold made his cheeks ruddy, and his grey-blue eyes were dark-rimmed with fatigue.
The melody he played was intricate, dancing swiftly through flurries of notes. The melody line was strong and the notes around it did not rise and fall so much as build and flicker.
In the centre of the ring of earth was a fire, small but bright, fuelled only by air and music. The ground on which the piper sat was dry, but beyond him the snow was pristine, freshly fallen white, marked with the footprints that showed the way by which the piper had come.
Will stepped out of the shelter of the trees.
‘God give you good day, friend.’
The music stopped abruptly and the young man rose, his wooden whistle clutched in his left hand, a knife in his right. His stark glare was equal parts anger and fear.
Will held up his hands, palm out.
‘Peace, friend. I too am a musician,’ he gestured to the drumsticks tucked into his belt. ‘Shall I play for you?’ He reached slowly for the sticks without waiting for a reply.
The other did not lower his knife, or move, or speak.
Will fetched his sticks but didn’t unhitch his tabor. He knelt. With the side of his hand, he pushed aside the snow to reveal the frozen ground. He pulled the gloves off his chapped red hands, took up his sticks, and beat the ground with one stick, then the other.
‘Look to your fire, good fellow,’ he said, and sang as he played the tattoo.
Slumber not, oh root and seed
for Winter has now overstayed
Earth bring forth thy buried tinder
Let fire feed; the frostbite hinder
The fire feeding on air was fading, but the ground beneath it was heaving, cracking, as the fallen branches of the autumn and early winter broke through, pushed on the backs of shifting roots. The fire licked down towards the dry wood and took hungry hold. It crackled and burned brighter.
The heartbeat drum, the breathing fife
We play to ask you give us life
The strength you had when spring did turn
Release as bones of trees to burn
And flamed higher still.
Will stopped
