A SHIVER IN THE AIR
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A <strong>SHIVER</strong> <strong>IN</strong><br />
<strong>THE</strong> <strong>AIR</strong><br />
ASorrowsHilStory<br />
Jean McKinney
A <strong>SHIVER</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>THE</strong> <strong>AIR</strong><br />
Blue night, blue cold. Blue the lips of the child in Maddie Cain’s arms, and its face the<br />
white of the moonlight that pours in through the frost-glazed window.<br />
It was a hard birth, one of the hardest Maddie’s ever attended. Now Juney Hobson<br />
sleeps exhausted, and her man Simon too, while Maddie watches the winter stars over<br />
Hart Mountain and waits for their brand new baby girl to die. Maddie’s a fearsome<br />
witch and maybe the greatest healer the mountain’s ever known, but there are some<br />
things even she can’t fix.<br />
A log cracks in the fireplace. Maddie’s eyes snap open. She hadn’t meant to doze,<br />
not with the baby so poorly. There’s a stinging prickle in the air, a scent of snow and a<br />
chill deeper than the night. An unseen hand slips beneath the baby, lifting her from<br />
Maddie’s arms.<br />
Maddie’s fingers tighten on the blanket and the hand falls away. The empty air in<br />
front of the fireplace shimmers. Maddie blinks, making herself look with the other Sight,<br />
that sees more deeply than the eyes alone can see.<br />
It’s a glamour, calling card of the Fair Folk, the Gentry; the ones the mountain folk<br />
call the Shee. Maddie squints into the shimmer, resisting the urge to look away. The<br />
sheeny mist between the fireplace and the table resolves itself into a slender woman<br />
clad all in white, black hair drifting like seawrack upon her shoulders. In the crook of<br />
one arm she holds a bundle wrapped in silky grey.<br />
Maddie’s heart beats a wee bit faster, but she makes herself stare into the<br />
newcomer’s beautiful, soulless eyes.<br />
“Begone, and thrice begone. There’s nothing for you here.”<br />
The Shee-woman’s lips tighten. “You see me?”<br />
“Well.” Maddie gathers the baby tight to her breast. “O’ course; it’s only glamour,<br />
ain’t it? Anybody can see through, if they know how to look.”<br />
The Shee leans in. One long finger traces the waxy curve of the dying child’s cheek.<br />
“So beautiful,’ she whispers. “Like us.”<br />
The bundle in the Shee’s arms squirms and whimpers; a tiny hand, fragile as a<br />
starfish, peeps from a fold in that spider silk blanket, and suddenly Maddie understands.
“That’s a changeling,” Maddie says. "You don't mean to leave it here."<br />
The Shee lifts her chin. “A fair exchange. That child for this. The woman can hardly<br />
complain.”<br />
Maddie glances at the bed in the corner. Juney still sleeps, her face shadowed and<br />
drawn. This child came near to killing her; she’ll never have another.<br />
The changeling child fidgets. The blanket falls away, showing a rosy face topped<br />
with brown curls, rosebud lips pursed to cry. Maddie, who grew up on tales of human<br />
babies replaced by ugly malformed tricksters, frowns.<br />
“What’s wrong with that one, then? Will it turn to a toad or somethin like?”<br />
The Shee’s delicate face twists. “Or something like. More legs, I expect. There is a<br />
lady in the Bright Court who has learned a nasty lesson. So sweet and so dangerous,<br />
to take a lover from the Shadowlands. But one must be discreet. “<br />
Maddie considers the Shee child. A thin veil of glamour hangs about its small, nearly<br />
human face. She lets herself look sideways, with the Sight. Ah, that’s the dilemma.<br />
Deep within the baby’s chubby body waits the Shadow: a carapace black and gleaming,<br />
long legs made to dance on a web. The Gentry are insanely fascinated by mortal folk:<br />
a human child is a cherished pet; a man or woman can be an entertainment for a<br />
season or a lifetime. But this faery lady’s tastes must have been strange as they come.<br />
The air tingles gently with the presence of Shee. Maddie sifts her mental storehouse<br />
for a banishing spell. None come to mind. She shakes her head.<br />
“Let the child be,” Maddie says. “She won’t live out the night.”<br />
The Shee’s eyes make Maddie think of the frost on the windowpane.<br />
“With us, she will. And many more besides.”<br />
Maddie opens her mouth to speak, closes it again. Death treads delicately in this<br />
room. But then so does life, soft as the snowflakes falling in the blackness of the night.<br />
It’s a healer’s business, to meet the two head-on.<br />
The Shee woman strokes the changeling’s cheek. Nothing more than a pretty girl<br />
baby now; the glamour has settled in again like a second skin. Only a narrowness of<br />
the features, a purity to that white skin, hint at the child’s true self.<br />
The Shee’s voice is cold and steady. “You say that one is dying. Do you think this<br />
one would live in the courts of the Fair? Listen, witch. Within an hour of her birth I had
my orders: take her to the hills and leave her there, for the sprites to strip her bones.<br />
But I brought her here instead.”<br />
Maddie glances at the Hobson baby, at Juney in her weary sleep. The Shee waits,<br />
for the Shee have all the time in the world.<br />
Maddie kisses the child’s cold forehead and wraps the blanket closer. Wordlessly,<br />
she lifts the baby up. Raising one elegant eyebrow, the Shee gathers the tiny bundle<br />
into the curve of her free arm and lowers the changeling child gently into Maddie’s lap.<br />
Shiver of air and a ghost of a laugh, and Maddie’s staring into emptiness.<br />
The changeling has a tiny spiderweb mark upon her rosepetal cheek, like a tracery of<br />
lace. Blinking back tears, Maddie gathers her up and walks light as the snowfall across<br />
the cold room. Juney Hobson hears her anyway; she waits braced for grief as Maddie<br />
leans in and places the warm heavy bundle into her arms.<br />
Maddie smiles.<br />
“Juney, sit up, now: your little ‘un’s hungry.”<br />
***<br />
About The Sorrow Hill Series:<br />
The stories of Sorrows Hill take place in the haunted hills and hollows of Northern<br />
Virginia and Appalachia during the bloody and tragic years of the American Civil War.<br />
Inspired by ghost tales, Celtic fairy legends and the narratives of those who lived and<br />
fought during those times, the Sorrows Hill stories chronicle the lives and adventures of<br />
those who live in our world as well as the mysterious realm under the faerie mound<br />
known as Sorrows Hill, where the serpentine Sea King rules and a day can last a minute<br />
or a hundred years.<br />
The Sorrows Hill series features a gallery of characters including ageless<br />
shapeshifter Daniel MacKenzie, the hill witch Maddie Cain, schoolmaster Isaac Bonner<br />
and the Merchant clan of dark magicians. Up in Washington, the operatives of President<br />
Lincoln’s secret force, the Office of Extraordinary Phenomena, run by the mysterious<br />
Mr. Geddes and his trusted agent Thomas Cooper, search for magical means to win the<br />
war. Alliances and shapes change again and again, as the world above and the world<br />
below meet in that dread place known as Sorrows Hill.
A ShiverintheAir<br />
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JeanMcKinney<br />
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www.jeanmckinney.com