Page 107 of The Knucker King

Trewoofe bristled. “You know me?”

He nodded. His sleeves were rolled up, and his muscles tensed to hold the swaddled bundle.

“Horns, fangs, red eyes, claws…” he noted. “Though I thought you would be a Dragon—”

“Knucker,” Trewoofe snarled. “I am a Knucker.”

The man lowered his eyes. “Apologies, Lord.”

“Why, exactly, are you here?” he asked, gaze drawn to the wriggling in his arms.

“I came to ask for help from Midwife Avice.”

The Well King’s expression sharpened. “Why?”

“My…” – he jiggled his arms – “my wife, Emma, she had our daughter this morning. It all happened so fast, too early. I did not have a chance to send for the midwife. I—”

Trewoofe held up his hand. “Show me your offspring.”

His throat bobbed. “Lord, are you sure? She is… wrong.”

“Show me.”

The man blanched from the bite in his voice, then pulled back the blankets wrapping the wriggling child. Trewoofe crouched, so he could more closely inspect her in the shorter man’s arms.

His blood ran cold at what he saw.

The baby was large for one apparently born early. Her pale skin was patched with mossy green fur. She had three fingers and a thumb on each hand, and four toes on each foot. His stomach dropped at the skull she had in place of a face, not even human in nature, but fox shaped.

Trewoofe tenderly ran a claw over her crown. While the other babies he had saved had flutters on the top of their heads, she did not. The skull was solid, and she appeared to have some sort of face beneath the bone, as her furry green eyelids were closed under the orbitals. Tufty ears poked from the temporal bones on each side of her head. His touch drifted down to her chest and pulled back the blanket. There it was. The emerald leaf mark, and that smell of the deep woods and wilderness.

Trewoofe met the man’s desperate face. “I am sorry this has happened to your offspring.”

“Can you or the midwife help her? Emma told me about the other babies. Could you find it in your heart to aid my daughter?” he asked, bowing his head.

He ground his fangs. He could, but who would the child go to? Knuckers could only make more Knuckers by having their own offspring. The Wulver and Piskie changing magic was spent. He tapped his claw to his chin. He bristled when he realised his precious time with his little witch would be cut short. Once he had returned to the Underneath and settled the child somewhere, he had the Tall Ones to deal with. While he was determined to make his Kingdom safe for Avice, that just meant it would be all the longer until he saw her again.

Trewoofe closed his eyes as his mind turned like a spinning wheel. Shuffling through different images of his Faerie subjects that lived in the Underneath. He opened them again when the realisation struck him. The Bucca. They were the next suitable Good Neighbours to take on the care of the child, even if they were a little… eccentric.

“Before I take your offspring,” Trewoofe said, “you must understand that you may never see her again, and she will not be human anymore.”

The man’s jaw clenched. “She is not human now.”

“Agreed.” Trewoofe offered his arms, ready to take the baby. “Have you named your daughter?”

“My wife, she likes the name Mary,” the man explained as he slipped the squirming bundle from his arms to the King’s.

“Mary it is.” Trewoofe nodded, securing the wriggling infant in his grip. “You may leave. I will take your offspring.”

The man lingered, fidgeting with the hem of his bloodied tunic. “My Lord, the midwife.”

He bared his fangs. “What of her?”

He lowered his eyes. “My wife, she needs her care.”

“Has she not done enough?” Trewoofe hissed. “Look around you.”

It was then the King took in the results of their efforts from the night before, shifting the wriggling child into the crook of his arm. He had been so enraged about the presence of a human male near his Avice – after all the harm they had done to them both – his focus had been on him, and he had not yet taken it all in.