The Changeling.

Two houses: one of stone,
walled and gated to thwart barons,
yet shaped within till stone seemed
most supple branch, arrayed
in pointed windows traced like trees;
A house to raise a lady's pride
like wind-blown banners
when lord's host rides.

And yet the house can't shut
the wind-thrown fever out,
nor charm away with coloured glass
the frailties of flesh.
Behind the towers and traceries
a high-born lady keeps with groans
two souls, unborn and bearing,
alive.

The other house hides
in a sleeve of the night,
secretly breathing forest mist
through single window.
Fey folk, lit with hearth fire
gather about a scream,
and will away in whispered lay
the birth pangs of their queen.
But she is lost to birth-lore now,
and knows alone the heavy truth
that on this night
the faerie womb will take one life
for the life it gives.

The lord's wife lies in new sheets
under wooden bed-head halo
of scrolls and cherubs.
Her limbs lie cleansed of labour,
still as the death that womb
bequeathed to hidden grave
an age before, a day not past.
The maids have ceased to sob
and only the wind sounds
over the carven sill.

They enter as if a prayer
had summoned, though no prayer
rose in the lady's heart,
to her accustomed saints.
With fey light strange to light of day
around them, and with stately step they bear
their newborn queen, and trill
a keening song of long farewell.
With tears like dewy gems these fey
entrust their own to human hands.
The lady knows a pact is made,
assenting wordless to the words
half willed, half whispered,
of the faerie circle.

Though strange speech finds
no hold in her ear, her soul receives
and keeps in trust
the weird benedictions,
and prophetic shadowing.
As the fey crew vanish lamenting
a word remains of all they uttered
like an alien shell left
to the strand by the ebbing tide,
a riddle from the sea.
The lady hears her own voice,
soft as cobwebs in her chamber,
utter "Aisling",
and the strange-eyed bairn
screams for human milk.

© L.Cannons, G. Hayes 2003