Knit one, purl two.
It was a simple pattern, as patterns went. Knit one, purl two. Knit one, purl two. Etienne could have done something more elaborate, of course, but that would mean more delicate knitting needles. More attention to the details. He was only knitting blankets for pixies, and pixies didn’t care about elaborate patterns. They liked color and they liked being warm in the January nights. That suited Etienne just fine. He could just let his hands go and let his mind wander as he knitted in front of the fireplace.
Bess had been the one to teach him to knit.
He’d been curious when she sat at her spinning wheel, calloused, sun-browned hands deftly twisting carded wool into nubby, chunky yarn. Some she would sell to the itinerant wool merchant, as finished yarn could command a higher price than raw fiber. Some she kept, knotting it with a pair of work-smoothed wooden needles into warm wraps for the cold days ahead. She would talk as she worked, telling him stories, secrets, and her hopes for the little one growing in her belly.
One day she plopped herself into his lap with a smile and put the needles in his hands with her warm hands over his to guide them. “This is how you cast on. Over, under, and through. And again. There you go.” Her smile turned mischievous. “Princes don’t knit where you come from?”
Etienne snorted softly, breathing in her scent. Sunshine, sweat, and beer. He missed that scent so much. “Princes are pretty worthless where I come from.” He pulled her in for a hug, dropping the stitch and then the needles to stroke his hands over her round belly. “This one won’t be worthless,” he said in a low voice, his breath lapping at her ear.
They didn’t get much knitting done that day.
His knitting did improve, eventually. As he worked, he watched his children come and grow, first Anne the fierce and brave. When she tumbled into the world to be caught by the capable hands of the midwife, Etienne was struck with awe. Bess had been incredible, and the baby was perfect. Bloody and screaming her defiance into the cold air, Etienne smiled like an idiot. “Look at what you did,” he whispered into Bess’s sweaty hair.
Bess patted his hand. “What we did.” Her voice was hoarse and exhausted, but he could hear her pride and relief.
Maybe he should have stopped with one child. He could see that birthing was dangerous. What he hadn’t anticipated was how hard the first days after labor would be. He couldn’t do that to her again.
But he and Bess had never been gifted at controlling themselves. Etienne grinned at the memory and started another row.
Maggie was next, emerging into the world with the quiet and patience that would become her hallmark, content to sit beside her mother and help with the spinning and brewing.
Hugh was the first boy and the biggest. As Etienne held his wife, supporting her as she crouched and strained, he felt fear. Big babies could kill a human woman. But difficult as the labor was, Bess finally delivered a healthy little boy into the world.
The next baby came early and in the middle of a deep snow, such a tiny thing that Etienne could hold her in one hand. He’d wrapped her in her mother’s knitting and held her close, trying to keep the little wight warm, and so he was holding her when she died.
He and Bess had never even gotten the chance to give her a name.
The rest followed with the seasons, Simon in the spring and John in the autumn of the succeeding year. Both boys were big, making Etienne fear. What if this time were the one that would take her away from him? But she held out and loved her children as hard as she could.
And then came Mary.
She emerged from her mother’s belly just as perfect as her older siblings, and Etienne released the dread that had come to plague him with each delivery. He and Bess held tiny Mary close and gave thanks to whoever was listening for the gift of a healthy baby.
Three months later Mary caught a bloody flux.
There was nothing they could do, and she was failing as they watched. The midwife tried everything she had ¬– which admittedly wasn’t much – and Etienne, being a blacksmith, was the village dentist of sorts, mostly because he was the only one who had pliers. He trekked to the surrounding villages, desperate for a cure.
He was two towns away when Mary died.
Etienne felt a tickle on his cheek and brushed a hand over it, wiping the tear away. He’d cried over his lost babies, cried for all of them. The following summer plague struck, and in the space of two days he lost Bess and two of their children. But they weren’t alone. There was no family in their village that didn’t mourn a loss. And in the space of a single afternoon the villagers resolved that Etienne, with his fae blood, was a soulless monster that had brought the plague with him to destroy them.
Never mind that Etienne had lived among them for nearly a decade without incident.
The old blacksmith’s widow warned him that he needed to leave before they came to kill him. Etienne, stripped of so much, had had to leave his surviving children behind. Grief like lead had gathered in his chest, and he made his slow, painful way back to Faerie.
Etienne’s hands were still over his knitting, gaze focused on the crackling fire in the library hearth. He missed them so much.
He swallowed past the burning of his throat and shifted in the armchair to a more upright position. He needed to finish the little blanket in his hands and start on a new one. Stupid pixies refused to leave the garden in the winter for the warmth of Faerie. Instead, they flitted around outside freezing their wings off.
He checked for dropped stitches and got back to work. He had pixies to keep warm.
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