A SHIVER IN THE AIR

“That’s a changeling,” Maddie says. "You don't mean to leave it here."
The Shee lifts her chin. “A fair exchange. That child for this. The woman can hardly
complain.”
Maddie glances at the bed in the corner. Juney still sleeps, her face shadowed and
drawn. This child came near to killing her; she’ll never have another.
The changeling child fidgets. The blanket falls away, showing a rosy face topped
with brown curls, rosebud lips pursed to cry. Maddie, who grew up on tales of human
babies replaced by ugly malformed tricksters, frowns.
“What’s wrong with that one, then? Will it turn to a toad or somethin like?”
The Shee’s delicate face twists. “Or something like. More legs, I expect. There is a
lady in the Bright Court who has learned a nasty lesson. So sweet and so dangerous,
to take a lover from the Shadowlands. But one must be discreet. “
Maddie considers the Shee child. A thin veil of glamour hangs about its small, nearly
human face. She lets herself look sideways, with the Sight. Ah, that’s the dilemma.
Deep within the baby’s chubby body waits the Shadow: a carapace black and gleaming,
long legs made to dance on a web. The Gentry are insanely fascinated by mortal folk:
a human child is a cherished pet; a man or woman can be an entertainment for a
season or a lifetime. But this faery lady’s tastes must have been strange as they come.
The air tingles gently with the presence of Shee. Maddie sifts her mental storehouse
for a banishing spell. None come to mind. She shakes her head.
“Let the child be,” Maddie says. “She won’t live out the night.”
The Shee’s eyes make Maddie think of the frost on the windowpane.
“With us, she will. And many more besides.”
Maddie opens her mouth to speak, closes it again. Death treads delicately in this
room. But then so does life, soft as the snowflakes falling in the blackness of the night.
It’s a healer’s business, to meet the two head-on.
The Shee woman strokes the changeling’s cheek. Nothing more than a pretty girl
baby now; the glamour has settled in again like a second skin. Only a narrowness of
the features, a purity to that white skin, hint at the child’s true self.
The Shee’s voice is cold and steady. “You say that one is dying. Do you think this
one would live in the courts of the Fair? Listen, witch. Within an hour of her birth I had