“What do you want?” The Dark Fairy stood tall as a young tree, with such beauty that all who looked at her despaired.
“I have an infant inside me who struggles to breathe for the cord around her neck,” the peasant woman answered, for she felt sure the baby was a girl. “She may be alive, not taken yet by the death handed to my fourteen others these years past.”
“Allow me to bind myself to you and my magic will save your unborn infant from death.” A light of lust flickered in the Dark Fairy’s emerald eyes, seeming to shimmer even in her yards of flowing, emerald hair. “But remember, by this binding, forevermore I will be able to exercise my magic wherever you are, even should you return to the King’s Boundary.”
The peasant woman looked at the powerful figure before her. Ten years past, the evil fairy had been exiled for binding humans and even fairies against their will, stealing whatever power she could until she was nearly as strong as the oldest, wisest godmother. To give the Dark Fairy permission made a binding all the more potent, but such permission also required the enchantress to keep her promise. Once spoken and agreed to, the magical word was bond.
The woman did not hesitate. “I allow the binding.”
With the swirl of the Dark Fairy’s spell, the peasant woman felt a child’s squirm within.
And the Dark Fairy strode away with menacing laughter.
To read more of this short story, download the ebook The Gruff Variations.
