One Small Step, an anthology of discoveries by Marianne de Pierres Tehani Wessely

these years. She lifts a flaccid thigh from the preserving fluids, pinning a leech with her thumb. Has the boyish hide stretched? Has her son grown while she wasn’t looking? Cavan, dear hollow one, always in such a hurry. Always rushing.
    She strokes and strokes and strokes.
    He’s filling out , she thinks, the slurry in her veins slurping and sloshing through a heart that hasn’t beat so quickly since the child rushed his life short. Barely three, and he hadn’t quite learned to run, hadn’t toughened his muscles. But he could plod, stomp, hurry from place to place. He could sneak though the smallest gaps: in the cottage’s siding, the sapling briars, blades of grass on the soggy shores. Cavan hadn’t been a runner, not quite, but he’d sure had a stride on him. An inexorable, unforgettable stride.  
    One small step into the Grum and Cavan’s foot caught on a dented brass arm-ring. Or a sword bowed by time. A thief’s crooked ribcage. Brona had imagined it thousands of times. She could picture it perfectly. The twist of her son’s ankle, shackled to muck. Nightjars taking up his screech, sending it back, beak-shrill. Surprise turned panic, just for a second, before his precious face was swallowed. Gone beneath the surface with the other treasures and bones, gone gone until Brona had woken from her untimely doze. Until she’d splashed and scooped and sobbed and searched, having slept just a minute — just a few minutes — drowsing in the afternoon heat… Until she’d liberated his limp shell from the drowning-shallows.
    Until now, at last, when she’d harvested every last skerrick of his soul from the wet.
    It’s working.
    Soon there is meat to him, not just wrinkled skin, not just leather. Finally . Certain of it now, her hands are a blur. Finally, it’s working.  
    Another moment and Cavan’s torso begins to lift on its own. His limbs flail, contorting into grotesque positions. Brona slips her hands under his legs, feels sinew and cord. Not toddler’s legs, pudgy even as they stretched into boyhood. The knees, once pink and dimpled, are wizened and black, bending backwards like a nag’s. They press into her palms, sharp and knobbly. Covered in a pelt of slimy hair.
    Not to worry , she tells herself, a bit too quickly. It’s just a bit of sludge, a bit of soul-scum. We’ll scrub you up nicely, my boy, once the spirit’s settled. Not to worry.  
    Webbing gums the spaces between Cavan’s fingers and toes. Now his cheeks and chin lengthen, equine. Once-bright irises are muddied; orbs of gold and rust bulge from the sockets, wide-set and rolling with a wild horse’s glare.
    The thing whinnies, shakes its weedy mane, claps its scaled hands against the walls. Splat splat splat , erasing the five-fingered prints with its own. The leeches, spent, fall off the swollen skin. Splat splat splat into the filthy water, too exhausted to flee as the púca flips onto its belly and plunges face-first into the tub.  
    Púca .  
    Brona doesn’t gasp — she doesn’t believe it. Will not .  
    She grabs a cake of lye and lard, and starts to grind it across her son’s spine, shoulder blades, ribs. We’ll scrub you up nicely… Not to worry… But Cavan’s ears point and droop. Bristles sprout from his neck and spike all the way down to his long-tailed rump. And the smell — oh, the smell! — sweat and rot and meat. Mouthfuls at a time, he crunches and slurps and snorts all the leeches until the bath is depleted. There are none left to restore him, none to rescue. Left too long in the Grum, the boy’s spirit has diluted, decayed, mingled with unsavoury wights. Mischief-makers with a mind to drown their riders, not carry them safely across bog and fens. Letting loose a loud burp, the beast rolls over and smiles. His teeth are wood-tinged and covered in moss.  
    Not púca, Brona thinks, unable to deny what’s in front of her. Kelpie. Look how he runs—  
    And it is this speed — as he leaps out of the