Death and the Maiden

Death and the Maiden

 I moved six times while I was pregnant with our first child. We lost the pub and travelled around trying to make a home for ourselves. K lost his carer he had spent seven years working towards. He was devastated. That was the first time the Demon D appeared in our lives. Even our wedding and child only lifted him for a little while. People had a lot of advice and very little actual help.

I needed him to “snap out of it” and “get a grip”. Rather than say anything to him, it was me they dumped all their “advice” on. Including whether or not to keep my baby. A lot of people felt they had the right to tell me I should get rid of “it”.

Yet she was my calm, my anchor, in a sea of stress.

We finally got somewhere to live and though it was small, it was a start.

I drew faeries all over the walls of the tiny room that barely fit the crib into it.(She still has wee-folk on her walls, but now they are Feegles).We never bought a baby monitor, the house was too small to need to. K got a crap job and was working split shifts so was barely home. I was alone. Just me, the dog, and when she came, my daughter. She was strange and wonderful. Beautiful, but not girly. With eyes that shifted in colour everyday. From navy, a strange metallic silver, to green and hazel. She was a miracle, all be it one that for four months didn't sleep. As soon as she began to sleep I began to do readings, mostly tarot. Even though the street we lived on was call Heroine Street by the locals, the dog and the magick kept us safe.

Not from the in-laws but that is a whole different story!

The cupboards would bang about from time to time and K was still sceptical of faeries at the time. They clearly believed in him however and until very recently they would move and torment him alone.

I wish we had never moved from there now, at least not were we went but hindsight is bitch sometimes. Once I got some sleep being a Mum was the thing I was amazing at and I loved it. We figured when Witchling was 8 months that if we started trying now, I'd probably be pregnant by Christmas. Two weeks later, I was pregnant, we had to move and worse, we could not take the dog with us. We were all devastated.

That should have been a sign. Yet we moved into a big beautiful house in a lovely area.

I did a lot of magick there. The garden was lovely. I began teaching two students. One baby at the table practising her letters (before she was 2), one on my hip or tit. Kara was a beautiful baby, not that Witchling wasn't. They were just as different as twilight and dawn. Witchling was cool and purple, mysterious and intelligent with wise old eyes. Kara was like summer, gold and oranges and pinks. I almost called her Summer. Ka, meaning soul, and Ra the Egyptian sun God, was Ken's choice. For a while things were better, though Ken was hardly well. I was happy.

Then one night I went to bed and the day I woke to would shake my life forever.

I was helping Witchling brush her teeth, while brushing my own, when K started screaming.

I ran downstairs and grabbed the phone from the hall. I dialled 999 and saw K move Kara's small body. She was stiff and blue.

I started to scream then. I could see she was gone. K kept breathing into her. The paramedics arrived. I don't remember when they told me she was gone, but in the back of the ambulance they gave me her tiny cold body, with her eyes half shut and the air that was breathed in making small bubbles from her lips.

The police went through our home and an armed officer guarded her body while we were there. I don't remember much of the day, except the last time I saw her. So cold and still.

I told them that I wanted her organs to be donated but they could only use her heart valves.

She was seven and a half months old, and she died on the full moon before Winter solstice the 9^th of December. I was an organised mess. They had to get a special child pathologist from Birmingham and it took weeks but we were finally allowed to bury her.

I planned a large Christmas meal for Witchling's sake. I did all I could to organise, and clean. Anything and everything, yet I burned salt marks down my face.

My sister and “Mother” turned up for dinner but my sister helped herself to the big desert that was to be the big fish of the meal. We got into a fight. I remember looking at the frying pan and thinking I was going to hit here with it. I went out to get some air.

My “Mother” comes outside and spends the whole time making excuses for my sister. That she is having “a tough time”. I had buried my daughter less than a week before.

Something in me snapped. My need for her approval or love, that unconditional thing children have for their mother was broken that day.