The Brewery of Eggshells

They said the fairies were strong in that hollow by the ash, and a new mother should keep iron near the cradle and kind words in her mouth. Máire did both, but for all her care, the baby who had kicked like a salmon in the womb lay strangely quiet now, his eyes old as pebbles.

He would not nurse properly. He stiffened when the door swung and smiled at the rafters, not at faces. The neighbours offered advice like dandelion clocks—plenty of it, and none that would root. “Colic,” said one. “Moon look,” said another. The midwife only frowned and asked where the old iron had gone.

“By the fire,” said Máire, and they both turned to see that the poker and tongs were neat but not near.

The midwife pursed her lips. “Changeling.” The word fell into the room like a sparrow—small, quick, and not there to harm but to startle. “If so,” she said softly, “there’s a way to learn it.”

Máire’s heart tripped but did not fall. “Tell me.”

“Do something so foolish no human would do. The not-human will find its tongue to mock you and betray itself. Then speak to the hill with respect. Children are not lost, only mislaid.”

That evening Máire set a pot to boil. She cracked a dozen eggs neatly in two and saved the shells, washing them and setting them on the hearthstone. When the water sang, she ladled it into the eggshell halves as if they were stout mugs at a fair.

“Sure, it’s a grand wash-day for the fleas,” she said cheerfully to the empty air. “We’ll brew their bath a drop at a time.”

The baby on the cradle blinked. His old-pebble eyes sharpened. An expression of elderly astonishment crept over his soft new face. At last, in a voice dry as last year’s leaves, he croaked:

“In my time I have seen the acorn before the oak and the egg before the hen, but never have I seen a woman boil in eggshells!”

Máire bowed to the cradle as if to a judge. “And may you never see it again,” she said kindly. She opened the door and the night came in like a cat. “Neighbours of the hill,” she called, “I know I have something that is yours, and you have something that is mine. Let us trade with grace.”

A breeze slipped around her ankles like a child. The fire dipped as if someone had put a hand to it in greeting. The changeling sighed, a long small sound, and the old gaze went out of him like a lamp.

In the morning a cry rose pure and new—the thin, excellent wail of a human child who is impatient for breakfast. Máire lifted her son and found him heavy with sleep and ordinary needs. She kissed his head until he smelled of her and bread.

No one in the village spoke harshly of fairies after that, at least not within earshot of the ash. If Máire found the poker strayed from the fire on a winter night, she put it back with a smile. And once a year she left a saucer of cream and a clean eggshell by the door, for courtesies keep bridges from washing out, and the world is better for all the small trades made kindly.