Author’s Note: One of my readers got me thinking about keeping voices distinctive. This is an old draft I revised to try and play with voice.
“Well this is a fine how-do-you-do.” Cerna picked her jagged teeth with a talon and glared into the crib.
“How-Do-I-Do what?” asked Tenga. She preened her red feathers constantly and kept a nail kit in a baggie in her purse, along with a little vial of tea tree oil. She loved the smell.
Midge joined them, preventing Cerna from having to answer.
“All set.” Her yellow slitted eyes twinkled. “The fire is lit and the bodies will—what’s that?”
Like the others, she peered into the crib, where a toddler whacked a stuffed dog with a rattle. He laughed gleefully at the sound of a hundred little beads.
“Cerna. Check the contract.” Midge cringed when the cherub squealed and reached for her. “I distinctly remember only reading two names on the list.”
A snap of fingers and the contract appeared in Cerna’s clawed hand. Tenga and Midge stood on tiptoes to look over her shoulders. Cerna mumbled, grumbled, then mumbled some more.
“Well?” Midge grew impatient, pursing her lips and scratching her scaly arms. “C’mon, Cerna. I’m starting to peel.”
“Sorry girls. We’re only supposed to take Trevor and Lydia. It doesn’t say anything about a baby.” Cerna rubbed the single great horn that sprang from the left side of her head and picked her teeth some more. A line of drool landed on her muumuu.
“Well I doubt it’s named Baby, anyway.” Tenga pointed to the wall where the child’s newly-deceased parents had hung some block letters. “See? It’s named Trevor. Well, maybe it’s named Trevor? Or maybe Daddy wanted Baby to learn his name first? Maybe Mommy and Daddy were in some kind of compet—”
“Shut up,” Cerna said.
“So what do we do?” Midge reached down for the child. Cerna slapped her hand.
“Don’t touch it! There could be a spell on it!”
“There’s no magic here!” Midge flicked her forked tongue. “The parents didn’t have any, that’s for sure.”
Cerna sniffed the air as well, searching.
“And it’s just a baby,” Tenga pouted.
“Who is part of a bureaucratic oversight,” Cerna growled. The heat was intensifying; smoke drifted into the bedroom.
“We could just eat it?” Midge licked her lips and tasted the air again.
“We can’t!” Tenga cautioned. “Remember the promise at the Council of Reeds? There’s a moratorium on eating children.”
“Promises were made to be broken.” Midge scratched more flakes from her arms.
“Not one made before the Council.” Tenga shook her head, certain of immediate consequences. “I want no part of it. It’s Baby Trevor, not Baby Tartare.”
“Well how will they ever know?” Midge flapped her arms and a cloud of dandruff puffed around her.
“How will they not is the better question,” Cerna said. “No, we’ll simply do away with the child like we did with the parents.” She swiped at the child with her spit-covered claws. Her arm bounced off an invisible barrier.
“Ow!” She grabbed her smoking hand and turned away in anguish.
“Well, that’s new.” Tenga cocked her head, curious.
“Maybe we can smother him?” Midge suggested and pushed the child down with a pillow. But Baby Trevor just giggled, even as the wall started to blacken and the smoke thickened.
“Oh, move over.” To everyone’s surprise, Tenga swept the child up in her arms. Cerna and Midge followed her to the living room.
“How did you do that?” Cerna asked.
“With my arms.”
“No, no, no. How come you picked him up when we couldn’t?”
Tenga rocked the baby against her feather-covered bosom. He held firmly to one of her claws. “Why… I don’t know. I just wanted to get him out of that room. I mean hellfire and smoke don’t bother us, but Baby Trevor might choke—”
“You want to adopt this child, don’t you?” Cerna said, and began rubbing her side-horn in earnest.
“Oh, don’t be mad, Cerna. It could be fun! We could raise him as our own. I mean it’s always done in threes, and there’s precedent, I’m sure. The fairies did it with Aurora—”
“But they were all crazy.” Midge sampled the air again. “He would taste good with garlic. I’m sure.”
“Not everything is edible, Midge.” Cerna pulled her away from the child by the back of her neck. “And Tenga, the Fey never have enough to do. That’s why they’re always in other peoples’ business.”
“How about the Fates? Didn’t they—”
“All powerful,” Midge hissed.
“And too busy for mortals,” Cerna laughed. “They’re worse than us. They don’t even see humans as human—just woven bits of thread.”
Midge reached for the child. “Well, I’m getting hungry, and I still say we eat him. Damn the Council.” But the glint in Tenga’s raptor eyes held her at bay.
“Oh, fine then,” Midge conceded. “You two figure it out. I’ll see if they have some snacks or something.” She stalked into the kitchen, clanking dishes and opening cabinets in her search.
A wail of sirens drew close.
“There’s gotta be some way we can keep him, Cerna. Please?” Tenga rocked the toddler, her feathers ruffling.
“I’m sorry, Tenga, but we can’t. None of us are prepared for parenthood; it’s not in our nature. I mean, Midge ate her last brood!”
“I know, it’s just… you know the saying ‘the one that gets away is your undoing?’”
“Uh huh.”
Midge returned with a platter bearing cups of tea and a plate of animal crackers. Tenga sat Baby Trevor on the sofa and snuggled him against her side, petting him with the back of a feathered hand.
“Well, what if this one gets away and becomes our undoing? At least if he’s in our care, we can raise him not to attack us.”
The sirens were right outside. Red, blue, and white lights lit the front yard and shone around the edges of the drapes.
Cerna sniffed her tea. “It, Tenga. Not He. It. Have you considered that if we try to raise it, we might be inviting our doom as well?”
“Sip your tea, Cerna,” Midge said. “It’s chamomile. Your favorite.”
Hammering rattled the front door. Men shouted on the other side.
“There’s not much time now.” Midge purposefully looked away from Tenga. “We can’t kill it and you won’t eat it. You’re going to have to give it up now—let it die in the fire. But I am not going to find out from the Fey how to raise a human child. I have a life, and a fabulous social circle, and a child will just cramp my style.”
Cerna rolled her eyes. “You eat your dates and expel the bones, Midge. That’s not a social circle; it’s a buffet.”
“If we take him, he’ll know where we are. He might hate us, and we’ll be as regretful as one of Midge’s dates.”
Midge looked affronted. Cerna just picked her teeth. Tenga scooped the baby back into her arms. She plucked a zebra cracker from the plate and tried to feed him; he pushed it away and yawned.
“But if we give him to the people outside, they’ll raise him and love him and care for him.”
“Maybe,” Cerna said. “The saying is true for the humans, too.”
Tenga smiled down at the child’s pink face. “But maybe there’s a way for Baby Trevor to know that we’re not letting him get away.” She leaned close and whispered something in his ear. He reached up and plucked a feather from her cheek.
A pair of firefighters burst through the door. Midge snapped her fingers and the back end of the house burst into a white fireball, forcing them back.
“That’ll hold them for a little longer.” She studied her talons. “C’mon, Tenga. I got a date tonight.”
“Poor thing,” Cerna said. Midge bared her fangs and hissed.
“Oh, please. You really think I’m scared?”
The firefighters returned. Tenga laid the boy down on the sofa. He cried out, and the men saw him. They quickly rescued him from the inferno.
Cerna patted Tenga’s feathery arm. “You did the right thing.”
Tenga ate the zebra cookie Baby Trevor had rejected. “You know,” she said. “I prefer Girl Scout cookies. Like the ones from that assignment in Muncie… and the one in Tucson… and the—”
“Yes, yes,” Cerna said. “We could relive it all again, but I still have to get this paperwork filed, and Midge has to go eat her date. Are you going to be okay?”
Tenga nodded. “I’m going to have a spa day, I think. Clavis is so talented with his tentacles…”
In the ambulance, the EMTs examined the little boy.
“What’s he got there?” one of them asked. “Looks like a feather.”
Nicanor Abbott 