A young woman went down to the river to bathe. The sun was high and warm over the water. A stand of cattails clumped upstream susurrated in the light breeze. Their motion was rhythmic, and as she bathed, she noticed an exaggerated motion in one of the reeds. Its head swayed back and forth, describing an arc more grand than the shimmy of the others. Something more than wind animated it. It dipped, at last, down touching the water. Up it sprang again. It had a come-hither-ness that it pleased her to humor.
Its stalk was the green of young spring and promised plenty. Its shoot held an uncharacteristic bulge. She took it in her hand and found that was warmer than her own skin. She uprooted the reed and carried it to shore.
She opened the shoot carefully with her flint knife, and inside it discovered a wonder. A baby whose first wail ended as a yawn. She took the small thing up and fell at once headlong in love.
Just then a group of demons approached. She masked her fear as they congealed around her and demanded the baby.
“What we haven’t yet broken is ours.”
She resisted. Her protest was wordless but unmistakable. But they were heedless brutes, with noses like weapons. A dagger, a shillelagh, the mildest among them had a nose like brass knuckles and his eyes were fire. They shed an intense heat without cease and a musk like something that died at the peak of its rut and whose rot was encouraged to ferment in the dark.
They were terrible—forces of un-nature without reason or compassion. The chitterer insulted her. The scrabbler attempted to set her clothes on fire and tie her hair into knots. The beastly one leered at her with its tongue thrust out, and it pinched its tail. She grew queasy all over, as if she’d swallowed a lump of cold fat.
With each of her senses under assault, she broke down. It were death to do else. It was the greatest courage even to keep sane in that moment.
When the demons left with the child, she wept and retched. The child sobbed once, low yet bold as it was carried off. She was desperate. She blamed herself. This is a common mistake where strength and obscenity overbear innocence, but what is natural is sometimes wrong.
She was visited by animals. A lynx licked away her tears. A dog wagered its warmth against her shivers. A fox watched her, a warm embrace in its eyes.
The young woman soon enough recovered her wits. She took counsel then with the fox who recognized her wisdom. The animals were all too happy to help her recover the child; they were no friends of the demons.
Her plan was simple, as effective plans often are. The fox discovered where the demons lolled in the shade of crooked trees with blasted leaves, bored already after their most recent conquest. They had hung the baby in an old spider web, the former occupant already plucked and gobbled. The child was silent, watchful.
The lynx bounded some distance off and screamed like a woman in distress. Sweet music! The demons, aroused, hastened away to pursue their mischief. Farther and farther the lynx led them; meanwhile the dog recovered the child. The fox trampled and scattered the demons’ treasures.
The young woman and child, reunited, made for the village. The following day, the child had grown from the size of a bean to that of an ear of green corn. In weeks it was a toddler; in months a young man. He was a wonder, the joy of the village. In due course, the young woman took him as her husband.