Maythorn's Wish (The Fey Quartet Book 1) Read Free Page A

need—”
    “I’ll stop by tomorrow,” Ren Blacksmith said. “You rest now.” He dipped his head to the widow’s three daughters. “Good day, Ivy. Hazel. Larkspur. Remember, if you need help, I’m only five minutes away.” His great bulk blocked the doorway, and then he was gone.
    Widow Miller sat shivering under the stares of her daughters.
    “She needs to get dry!” The youngest daughter reached for the shawl covering the basket. “We can use thi s— ”
    “Careful!” the widow cried.
    Her daughters all froze, startled.
    “Careful,” the widow said again, in a more moderate tone.
    The youngest daughter cautiously drew the shawl aside. The sisters crowded close. They peered into the basket, and then their shocked gazes swung to their mother.
    “What . . . ?” the middle daughter said, and “No questions now,” the eldest daughter declared firmly.

CHAPTER THREE
    THE WIDOW’S DAUGHTERS fussed around her and soon she was dressed in warm, dry clothes and seated on a stool beside the fire, sipping meat broth, a blanket around her shoulders and the two large red-brown hounds at her feet. “Mother,” Hazel said urgently. “What happened?” But Ivy shook her head and said, “Let her drink.”
    The widow drank her broth, and Hazel fidgeted and paced, and no one looked directly at the basket on the trestle table. Finally, the widow lowered her mug. Hazel stopped pacing. All three daughters looked at her.
    “Mother,” Ivy said quietly. “Mother . . . what happened in the forest today?”
    Widow Miller sighed, and glanced at the basket on the table and the sleeping infant, and sighed again and told her tale. When she had finished, none of her daughters spoke.
    “I’ll take it back tomorrow and try to find its mother,” the widow said.
    “You won’t cross the border!” Larkspur cried, at the same moment that Hazel said resolutely, “I shall go with you.”
    “I won’t cross the border, my love—and you will not come with me, Hazel.”
    “But, Mother—”
    “No, Hazel.”
    “Take Ren, then! He’d go with yo u— ”
    “No,” Widow Miller said firmly. “Ren must not know about this. Would you have him risk his life? Think of his son!”
    There was a moment of silence.
    “No one goes but me,” the widow said, and this time, Hazel raised no protest.
    “According to the tales, Faerie women bear only one child,” Ivy said quietly. “Its mother must be frantic.”
    They all looked at the babe.
    “What if you can’t find its mother?” Larkspur asked.
    “Then I shall go to the Lord Warder.”
    As if their gazes had disturbed it, the sleeping infant woke. The widow flinched slightly from the impact of those ink-black eyes, and the babe blinked once, twice, and opened its mouth and wailed.
    Larkspur flinched, and Hazel clapped her hands over her ears, and the larger of the two red-brown hounds, Bartlemay, fled through the door, his tail between his legs.
    “It needs dry clothes and food,” Ivy said, reaching for her crutch and struggling to her feet. “Just as you did, Mother.”
     
----
     
    BUT CHANGING THE Faerie infant’s clothing proved no easy task. It flailed its fists and kicked its feet and was as loud and fierce as a baby could possibly be. The second red-brown hound slunk from the cottage, her ears back.
    Larkspur fetched a length of cloth. “We can wrap it in this.” And then she peered down at the screaming child and said hesitantly, “Its teeth are very sharp.”
    “No sharper than Bartlemay’s and Bess’s were, when they were pups,” Hazel said, and she set about the task of changing the baby’s clothing.
    The baby bit her three times, drawing blood, but Hazel didn’t balk. She stripped off the tiny clothes—made of cloth as soft and fine as gossamer—and briskly dried each flailing limb. “It’s a girl, Mother,” she said, and “Stop that!” as the babe bit her for a fourth time.
    Once the infant was warm and dry, its wailing didn’t cease.