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

tub, past hazelrood wickers and cunning woman alike, and skitters across the cottage — this unnatural pace, that convinces Brona the creature is not her boy. Her Cavan scuttled, meandered, waddled. He did not rear or gallop.  
     
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    The cottage door opens.
    “ Close it! Close it!” Brona cries, hobbling, a small-stepper, just like her son. “Stupid girls,” she says, startling Cora and M’Amie. The fury in her voice overwhelms their own ire, cuts it down and makes it stillborn. “He’s getting out! He’s taken my son!”
    The women stare at the creature hurtling towards them. Black fairytale incarnate, legend made flesh, nightmare given form. Their concerns, their aches and agonies give way to self-preservation; despite Brona’s exhortations they scamper out of the thing’s way. The cunning woman’s scream is something to hear. Fast and shrill, it doesn’t waste its time in the shanty’s cramped space, but shoots through the narrow door, almost as quick as the kelpie with his jumping, kicking gait.
    Brona can guess why the women have returned so soon. In her haste, she was careless. Inattentive in distraction. She’d given them the wrong herbs. Too few or too many ribbons. Perhaps she’d spoken the words for another bewitching. Her fingers on the clay were sluggish, too slow to quicken the manikins. She had not repaid the girls’ favour with her own.
    Even so, Brona is cunning. These dull maids are helpless without her, she knows — just as she is without them. Even so, even so. She hasn’t yet got what she wants, what she needs. But neither have they.  
    “ Catch it! Catch him! Or you’ll have no remedy from me, though you beg until the last sunset!”
    The women scurry as quickly as they can, both with bellies aching and hearts dimmed. Their feet, driven by misery, fear, despair, thud the packed earth, chasing after the kelpie. The fae colt lets loose shattering cries, mocking laughter as it teases, now trotting, now cantering, now slowing almost to a walk. Giving the women a chance to catch up. Making them believe they’ve a hope of grabbing his long tail, pulling him to a halt.
    Brona shuffles along behind, still some distance away, her feet aching, aching, aching. She can only see what happens from afar; her shouts make no difference. Even so, even so. She screeches her son’s name. Sees his fall recreated, just as she’s imagined so many times.
    One small misstep.
    His hoof catches on a dented brass arm-ring. Or a sword bowed by time. A thief’s crooked ribcage. It doesn’t matter, she realises. There was nothing she could do. Nothing she can do. He is caught, well and truly. He flails and topples, with M’Amie and Cora close behind.
    M’Amie leaps clumsily after the creature, tries to balance her new-found weight, fails. She lands on top of him, begins to tip, to tumble. Cora, anxious as a mother hen, follows in M’Amie’s wake, close enough to touch. To wrangle. Her attack is more confident, her aim more precise. She reaches past the snorting, struggling kelpie. Scoops her arms around the pregnant girl, and keeps her from falling.
    Dragging Cora with her, M’Amie wraps her hands — her strong, red-skinned, scullery maid’s hands — around the kelpie’s throat and begins to squeeze. The creature thrashes, its hooves catching at her shins and ankles. Still, M’Amie squeezes. Frail bones give way beneath her fingers. Tighter, and its cries diminish, muffle, mewl. Its scrunched face, purple and white, covered in mucus. Shrivelled as an old man’s.
    M’Amie squeezes and squeezes and squeezes until the last gasp soughs from the kelpie’s mouth, until the rough hairy body goes limp at last, until its substance melts away, and M’Amie is left with nothing more than a brown, desiccated skin sack that once held a boy.
    Even then, her grip does not loosen — nor does Cora’s, who has encircled the girl’s broad waist, holding her up, arms cradling the