Bargain

Marisa Moreno had never been good at taking no for an answer. Her parents doted on her throughout her childhood and young adulthood. Once she came of age, she captured the attention of the most popular boy in the village of Grasmere, and he was as delighted to marry her as she was to marry him. From the moment they started courting onward, Alonso always treated her as much like a queen as he could, given that neither of them came from wealth. Especially once she gave birth to their first child, a son, Marisa could do no wrong in her husband’s eyes.

But disease cared not for Marisa’s strength of will. A strange illness had befallen her son, one that the Grasmere apothecaries did not recognize or know how to treat. The infant boy she clutched to her breast was listless and feverish, reluctant to nurse. His weak, pathetic cries tormented Marisa’s soul. A nasty rash had spread all over his tiny,underweight body.

“There’s nothing I can do for him, ma’am. He’s not likely to recover. You had best forget that one and start trying for another,” the Grasmere apothecary had advised Marisa, causing her to lambast her with language that would make a sailor blush. She had rushed out of the apothecary shop without waiting for a response. If the apothecary wouldn’t help her, Marisa would simply have to seek other options.

The Grasmere chapel was closed with its only priest on a pilgrimage, but Marisa was undeterred. She would find a way to heal her son, one way or another. If the people she was supposed to ask couldn’t or wouldn’t help, then she would simply have to look somewhere else. And so Marisa tied her son to her chest with a shawl and set off into the woods. Villagers had long whispered about a witch who lived somewhere in these woods, a vile old hag with a bad temper who cursed those who crossed her. Marisa was willing to brave any curse, though, as long as her son was healed and would live.

The woods were pleasantly cool on that summer’s day. Birds flitted through the treetops, singing and scolding one another. Squirrels chased each other through the branches, chittering and scrabbling. Marisa even saw a small bunny quivering beneath some ferns. On another day, she might have tried to trap it and bring it home for dinner, but on this day her hands and heart had room only for her son, who seemed to grow weaker and cry more pitifully the further she ventured into the woods.

Then, in the distance, she saw sunlight breaking through the canopy of leaves. Musical, lilting laughter met her ears. Intrigued, Marisa crept closer to the light and sound, keeping her footsteps as quiet as she could. Soon she found herself at the edge of a clearing where wildflowers bloomed in abundance. Bumblebees buzzed from blossom to blossom. Most of them were ordinary in size, but one was larger than the infant Marisa held against her bosom, and she shied back from it as it bulldozed some nearby buttercups.

“What in the world?” Marisa whispered. Then her eyes were drawn to a shrub a short distance away, laden with wild roses. Beneath it, a mere wisp of a girl sat astride a snail the size of a spaniel, surrounded by purple and orange mushrooms that Marisa herself could use as chairs.

“Have I stumbled into fairy-land?” Marisa wondered aloud. The small girl looked up at Marisa with wide violet eyes. A storm of butterflies erupted from the rosebush above her, making Marisa gasp.

“Who are you?” the girl demanded in a high, tinkling voice. Marisa realized with a start that her hair was vibrant pink and her dress was made from flower petals.

“My name is Marisa. And who might you be?” Marisa asked in a bright, kindly tone. This has to be a fairy, she told herself, and fairies have magic. She can help my son, I’m certain of it. She started to approach the small girl.

“Mama said no humans would come here. You can’t be here.”

Against her will, Marisa’s feet stopped moving forward. An unseen force pushed her back to the edge of the clearing, making her yelp in alarm. Her infant son let out a shuddery moan.

“It’s okay, little one. I’ll get you help, I promise,” Marisa reassured her child.

The pink-haired being cocked her head to one side, intrigued by the tiny bundle in Marisa’s arms. She urged her snail closer to Marisa’s edge of the clearing.

“What do you have there? A pet?” she asked.

“My child,” Marisa answered, fixing the tiny snail-rider with a glare for a moment before rearranging her features into a more plaintive expression. “Please, I need your help. You have power, I’m sure of it, and my baby is dying. Please save his life.”

The snail moved more quickly than Marisa expected. Mere moments passed before the diminutive, magical being was peering at her son.

“Ewww. Nasty rash!” The pink-haired girl wrinkled her nose in disgust at the infant.

“Yes, I know. It’s terrible, and it’s paining him so. But you can heal him, I know you can. It would take only a little of your magic–”

“But what will you give me?”

“Beg pardon?”

“What will you give me to fix the baby? Papa says we never do favors for mortals. We only make deals.”

Marisa arched an eyebrow at the small girl in the flower-petal dress. This must be a child, though no natural child, to be sure. For the first time, she began to wonder whether this being really could help her baby, but she squashed that thought immediately. She didn’t have any other options presenting themselves. Perhaps, with the right approach, she could still make this work.

“Well…what do you want?” Marisa inquired. She almost added, I’d give you anything to save him, but she bit her tongue and hoped the small creature couldn’t read thoughts. Revealing her desperation wasn’t likely to work in her favor.

“A million ambrosia cakes!” the pink-haired girl announced.

Marisa blinked in confusion. “What?”

“Right. Mortals don’t have those.”

Despite her best efforts, Marisa started to cry, overwhelmed by the hopelessness of her situation. The priest wasn’t available, the apothecary wouldn’t help her, and she hadn’t found a witch, only a toddler fairy who was proving impossible to deal with. In her arms, her baby started crying, too, a thin keening wail that tore at Marisa’s heartstrings.

The small girl astride the snail crumpled her whole face and covered her ears, apparently offended by the crying. “You have to stop that sound. Both of you,” the fairy child ordered.

Marisa’s tears continued to flow, but no sounds accompanied them. Her son, too, was suddenly silent and Marisa had to check inside the shawl to make sure he was still breathing.

“What have you done?” Marisa demanded. A pang of relief went through her when she saw that he, too, was still crying, just without any sound.

The fairy child shrugged. “I wanted the crying to stop.”

“He wouldn’t have cause to cry if you would heal him.”

“But what do I get from healing him? You can’t give me ambrosia cakes.”

Marisa shook her head and cried harder. She had no guesses as to what she could offer a fairy child who seemingly had the ability to conjure whatever she wanted, to satisfy her whims in a blink. What she wouldn’t give to have such power of her own so that she could just heal her son herself!

A tiny finger brushed Marisa’s cheek. Marisa looked up to find the small girl staring at a tear on her fingertip–one of Marisa’s own tears that the fairy must have stolen. After a few moments of contemplating the tear, the child’s tongue poked out and tasted it. Her violet eyes widened as her face turned into a portrait of delight.

“Ooooo! These are better than ambrosia cakes! Fill a bowl with these, and I will make the baby better.” The child scooped up an acorn cap from the ground, and a moment later the acorn cap was the size of the soup bowls in Marisa’s kitchen cupboard. The fairy thrust the acorn cap bowl at Marisa expectantly.

Then there is a way, after all, Marisa told herself. The hope of that thought nearly dried up her tears, but looking at her son’s rashy face and noiseless, wailing mouth brought the tears back to her eyes. She took the acorn cup from the fairy child and held it under her chin with one hand, doing her best to catch every tear in it as she continued to cry. Strange it was that she cried without sound as the afternoon passed on, but somehow her tears didn’t cease until the bowl was full. The sun hung low in the west by the time she passed the full bowl to the fairy child.

“Yay!” Cadmi took the bowl from Marisa eagerly and then took a long drink. A delighted shiver ran through her whole tiny body. “These are just so good. I will want more of them. You’ll have to refill this bowl, once a moon, and leave it here for me. Or the baby will get sick again. A worse sickness.”

“You have my word,” Marisa agreed immediately. No price was too high to make her son well. She sensed he was barely hanging onto life, bundled against her breasts. “I’ll give you a bowl of my tears every moon, for as long as I live, if you keep my son alive and healthy. And give him his voice back.”

The fairy child smiled a brilliant, unsettling smile, nodded once, and waved a hand at Marisa’s infant child. In the blink of an eye, the rash faded from his tiny face. His temperature went from feverish to normal, and a contented gurgle escaped from his little mouth.

“Oh my word. Thank you. Thank you so much. You’re an angel. I’ll be back in a moon to provide your payment. I promise. Thank you. Thank you.” Marisa practically skipped out of the clearing, clutching her healthy child to her chest. She didn’t know how she would tell her husband what had happened, or how she would manage to cry a whole bowl of tears for a fairy child every moon when her pride and joy was well again and all seemed right in the world, but those were problems for later. For the moment, her son was well and could be well for the rest of her life. What more could she ask for?

***~O~***

Back in the clearing, the fairy child barely heard Marisa’s expressions of gratitude. All her attention was on the bowl of tears in her hands. She took another long drink and shivered in delight again. Beneath her, the snail she rode turned from yellow to purple and green in swirling spirals. Nearby flowers also took on strange hues and grew in coils, with cruel thorns sprouting from their vines.

“Cadmi! Are you all right? We saw a human–” a fae woman called as she flitted into the clearing. “Oh, there you are, dearest. What–” She stopped short at the sight of her child. Cadmi’s pink hair had turned a deep violet, and her eyes were glowing green.

“What’s in that bowl, Cadmi?” a fae man demanded, flying up behind the woman with suspicious eyes fixed on the snail-riding child.

“The lady made water from her eyes so I could heal her baby,” Cadmi explained, cheerful as ever, but her bell-chime voice held dark undertones. “And the eye-water is delicious.”

Cadmi’s parents turned to one another, wide-eyed in horror. “Cadmi, you mustn’t drink that. Human tears are…dangerous for our kind,” her father admonished her.

“Dangerous? But how? They’re so tasty.” Cadmi took another drink from her bowl. The large bumblebee happened to fly close at the same moment, and it transformed in an instant to a giant, red-tinged wasp. Cadmi’s mother zapped it with a bolt of bright blue lightning from her palms, reducing it to a sizzling husk beside Cadmi’s snail mount.

“That’s enough, Cadmi,” she told her daughter in a voice that permitted no argument. She crossed the clearing in an instant and tore the acorn bowl from her daughter’s hands, then dumped the bowl on the ground. “We’re going home.”

Cadmi’s features turn ferocious for a moment, but then relax into an unsettling calm.

“That’s okay. She’ll give me more. Every moon. She has to. Or the baby will die. That was the deal.”

Cadmi’s parents exchange another look. “You made a deal with a mortal?”

Cadmi nods. “A good deal! Delicious eye-water to keep the baby healthy. I win. Just like you said we should.”

“Yes.” Cadmi’s father gave his partner a meaningful glance over their daughter’s head. “I believe we will have an audience with the Fairy Queen to…discuss your…achievement, daughter. Come along.”