Free Merlin's Harp by Anne Eliot Crompton

even-lengthed fingers and toes were mine. I bore him in a low sapling-tent near the lake, half-hoping that he would prove deformed or feeble. If he missed so much as a fingernail, I could drown him. I never expected the world to thrill and shake and reform itself at his first cry! I never expected to carry him home to the villa as the Goddess's finest gift to me, and my finest gift to Her world.
      Proud after pain, delighted after bewilderment, I brought him home and treasured him, and named him Bran. Delighted, the Lady received him.
      We laughed with him at the villa fire when every gesture, every gurgle fed laughter. We conversed brilliantly with him before he could talk. One bright morning, crawling across the Dana mosaic, Bran rose up and stood on soft feet.
      The Lady gasped and crowed. My heart rose and bloomed, a tall flower. And again we laughed.
      Bran learned to walk on the tiled villa floors where I had learned. He named his colors from the Dana mosaic where I had named them. Once walking, he followed me everywhere, reeling, falling, rolling down hillocks, scrambling among rocks. "M-Ma," he yelled constantly, like a lost lamb.
      He trapped me. I despaired of invisibility or speed. With Bran at heel I walked for all the world like a Human woman, obvious as a tree, turtle-slow. Angrily I counted the moons that must pass before he could go free in the forest, and leave me free.
      But then his cry of "M-Ma!" would tear at my heart and I would go back and pick him up, kiss him, smell his sweetness, devour him with love. So have I seen a bear cuff her cub head over heels, then embrace and nurse and kiss him.
      Bran became a fine child, brown and leggy and bright, like a red deer calf. He was never ill. (Because we Fey live alone or in very small groups, illness is rare with us. Merlin taught me later that sickness is not a God's curse, as Humans believe. It is in truth a living being, an unseen child of the Goddess, who hunts his meat as we hunt ours. But we are his meat.)
      Bran ran and learned faster than most Fey children. Earlier than most, he struck out on his own. No more did he struggle after me, calling "M-Ma!" like a lost lamb. He left me free to hunt eggs, braid reeds or invite visions. Little Bran pranced off by himself, eager, competent, nearly invisible as I had taught him to be, under the apple trees of Avalon.
      In the evening he would skip across the Dana mosaic into our courtyard, swinging a duck by the neck or a rabbit by the ears. Still he crept under my cloak, stolen long ago off an aged Human's feet, to sleep with me on a cold night.
      But I knew of the shelters Bran had built for himself around the island. Otter Mellias had shown me. (Since he never had Lugh's passion for the Human world, but only a yen for occasional adventure, the Otter spent as much time in Avalon as he did playing "Squire." He watched my son grow.)
      "He builds well," Mellias declared, proud as though the child were his own. "Back to the wind, feet dry. Look, can you see that hut in the willows?" I shook my head. Mellias had to lead me to it and place my hand on it. It looked exactly like the surrounding thicket.
      I should have rejoiced. In truth, I smiled proudly at Mellias, as though the child were his, but my heart sank. In truth, I felt abandoned. Bran did not really need me or my cloak at night. He came home now only from habit.
      That night he was late coming home, and I watched the door anxiously.
      The Lady said, "Let the child go, Niviene!"
      "He is so small!"
      "He is not a baby." She peered at me sharply. "Have yourself another baby."
      Watching the door, I shook my head.
      "If you do not want to sacrifice again so soon, steal one."
      That brought my eyes back to her. "Steal?"
      "Certainly. Human children often turn out quite well."
      Several nights after that Bran did not come home at all. I could not sleep. Heavy autumn rain dripped through a new hole