The Enchanted Ocean Of Fantasy's

To be Touched By Fae

Siobhan awoke to the Irish sun spilling in the open doorframe of their single-room cottage. Her back pressed against Sean's, and she moved carefully so as to not wake him on his day off morning duties- today, she would feed the cattle and chickens. She rolled over, a stray mattress feather poking her side, and saw Aoife's small body in her basket, enveloped by a blanket. A surge in Siobhan's chest shot her awake-Aoife hadn't cried once through the night. Siobhan scrambled to her feet, bare soles pressed into the cool packed dirt, no longer minding waking Sean. Aoife was still breathing, gently, though not stirring from her slumber.

The night before, Siobahn and Sean had broken many unforetold rules. They left their beautiful blond-haired, blue-eyed baby directly across an open door, ripe for the taking. The child was decorated with no red berries from rowan trees, nor garlands woven of daisies. Most egregious, they left no pail of buttermilk outside their front door on the Feast of the Assumption.
Though she was breathing, something had to be wrong. Aoife usually had Siobhan up half the night. Was it too soon for her to be starving? The rhythm of Aoife's tiny chest rising and falling didn't convince Siobhan that she would actually wake up. So, Siobahn was about to break another rule-she would wake a sleeping baby.

"Aoife, 're ye hungry?" She hooked her index finger and dragged it across the infant's smooth forehead.

Aoife hammered her wrinkled fists and wailed powerfully, unweakened by her empty stomach, to Siobhan's relief. Sean woke to the supernaturally shrill cries, groaned, and pulled on his boots.

"Sorry, dear," Siobhan scooped the wriggling babe into her arms, "I've to feed Aoife, then I'll go out."

"I'm already up," Sean grumbled. He lit the hearth in the middle of the room and warmed his palms.

"Fine. After she's fed, I'll get on the oatcakes."
Aoife refused to latch and continued screeching. She had fallen asleep somewhere else, where her name wasn't Aoife. Held by her mother, she snuggled into her skin, the color of honey, but slightly more transparent. This woman wasn't her mother. Dressed in rags and a stained fichu, with strings of mousy hair tumbling out of a crushed bonnet. And she only had two eyes, neither of which were solid black and flecked with gold.

Siobhan softly sang Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral and petted Aoife's peach-fuzz head. She stopped crying and looked around the room with wide, dark eyes. Darker than before, Siobhan would have sworn.

"Sean," Siobhan caught him in the doorway, "I'm worried about Aoife."

.

She continued to worry about Aoife, who grew into the most peculiar child.

At two years, Aoife hadn't started speaking. Siobhan would hold up and name a brooch, a comb, a spindle, prompting Aoife to parrot. But she wouldn't. Maybe a gurgle or babble. Siobhan knew the girl could hear because she calmed at lullabies and was unsettlingly attentive to the noises and space around her. Then, one day, Aoife looked up and asked, "May I please have a cup of milk, Mam?" And she spoke in no less than full sentences from that day forth.
As she got older, she came to possess a strange knowledge that no child should have. However, it was often so strange that the adults around her couldn't notice. Like how Aoife's favorite chicken, Goldie, to whom she felt a special connection and shared all of her secrets, had the same birthday as her. When collecting stones by the river, she would always grab the oldest one-and when gathering eggs for breakfast, she'd pick the ones with the richest yolks.

She disliked being touched and refused to hug her parents. She played alone, running around the farm collecting textured and striped rocks. Even other little treasures like pinecones and the spiny burrs of horse chestnuts. She'd dump her collections on the floor-to Siobhan's dismay, exasperated at having to step over the mess-and sort them into piles based on size, then shape, then color.