Far to the west, in a country, a large island really, named Íriu, surrounded on all sides by wild sea, there lived a woman.

This woman was reckoned to have some grand tricks up her sleeves. She could dance down the rain, sing great harvests, fly through the sky like an owl, and leave her physical body art night to wander through people's dreams.

One day, this woman fell pregnant.

No-one knew who the father was. Least, she never told a soul. Rumours were that he was an old god of the forest, from the days when the land was fresh and young. Others said he was a spirit of the sea, from those dark depths where all was infinite mystery.

(Truth was, he was a travelling bhard, good for nothing but a roll in the hay. He's not important to this story.)

When the child was born, they had their mother's bright green eyes, but the sparse hair on their head was black like the night, so different from the woman's warm brown mane. The woman withdrew from engaging with the other people of the village for months before and after the child was born. No one even knew if it was a girl or a boy.

“How is she surviving without food?” the villagers asked themselves. “Surely she can't have enough food stocked for this long?”

But the smoke still curled from her chimney every night, and they would still hear singing, the words a little strange, but the sound sweet.

The real problem was, without the woman's dancing and singing to bring abundance to the village, the quality of life began to fall.

Only a little, the town was still prosperous enough, but the villagers had grown accustomed to a certain way of life.

A group of them came to the woman's door to ask for her help.

“I need some rest,” she said. “When I've rested well, I'll be back to my singing and dancing, but for now, yer doing well enough.”

The villagers were not happy with this response.

“My crop yield has fallen since the witch stopped her singing.”

“My little boy got sick the other day. No-one's been sick in this village for years.”

“I had a nightmare last night. Couldn't sleep after that. I'm exhausted!”

And then, when winter rolled around, hungry wolves attacked the village. At first they only came for the meat that the villagers hung outside the cure in the cold, but when the villagers came out to defend their food, the starving wolves turned on them.

The people of the village had lived under the witch's protection for too long. They should not have hung their meat outside. They should not have confronted the wolves.

But they did, and several people died that day.

The witch was singing sweetly when they arrived at her house.

“Cuirfead mo rún chun suain,

Cuirfead mo rún 'na luí,

Cuirfead mo rún chun suain go ciúin,

Le dilín ó deamhas ó dí.”

The villagers pounded on the witch's door.

“Come out, witch! People have died!”

“Are ye not protecting us any more? What did we do wrong?”

“Witch, explain to us!”

The woman opened her door and looked at them. In the warmth inside, her child gurgled happily, their hair now grown thick on their head. It was a scene of peace, so far removed from the sweating, blood-soaked villagers who crowded at the woman's door.

“I'm sorry,” she told them. “I must focus on my child right now. It's a dangerous time, and you, like those in all the other villages across this land, will have to manage by yerselves. T'weren't so long ago that ye lived without, ye'll just have to live without for a little bit again.”

So the villagers retreated back to their houses and buried their dead, and met in the night to talk.

“That selfish cow. 'Ye lived without, ye can live without again?' What gobshite is that?”

“How long is 'a bit'? Will we have to wait until her brat can walk? Til it can talk? Until it grows up?”

“I think we've grown complacent. Didn't we used to have the strongest warriors around?”

“Yeah, and remember how many died back then? Are we supposed to return to that time?”

“What if...” the person who spoke here lowered their voice. “... well, why is it that she's stopped giving us protection?”

“Her kid, of course.”

“What if she didn't have a reason to stop helping us anymore?”

“Are ye crazy? Are ye suggesting we do something to the child?”

“The witch will eat us alive!”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“We'd die in a second!”

“But... but if she didn't know-”

“How wouldn't she know?”

“Think with yer brain instead of yer arse.”

The meeting disbanded amidst general dissatisfaction.

Three months later, they convened again.

“Let's take the kid,” said a man with half his face burnt away. His mouth twitched in agony. His house had caught fire during the spring storms that brought destructive lightning.

“She goes out to collect herbs most days,” said a woman whose two children lay at home in bed with raging fevers. “We could go then.”

“Friends, there's something else,” said one of the village elders. “I had a revelation in a dream. I obtained some fairy-grass, and laid it under my pillow last night, and it came to me - it told me how to quickly get rid of all our misfortunes.”

“What?”

“How?”

“Easy. Give them to someone else.”

“To someone el- Ah...”

Still, it was no easy task to steal a child from under a witch's nose. Her house was laced with spells to deter intruders, and the villagers lurked unhappily outside whenever she went out to gather herbs, watching the child through the window.

Another three months, and the child was toddling. The villagers were seething with anger. Still the witch had not returned to assisting the village. Still the people suffered from the ills of the world – sickness, crop failure, attacks from wild animals.

“We've got to do something, quick.”

“But how the hell do we get that child out of there?”

The next day, when the witch had left her house, a couple of young village children peered in through her window at the child inside. They waved.

“Come and play with us!”

“Aren't you bored?”

The small child toddled to the door, but could not open it. The witch had tied it shut from the outside, and anyone who touched the cord felt their fingers burn. The village children were disappointed, but then a little voice piped up from inside, tumbling the words.

“Glas, nó charcar chromdaingen, nó chuimrech for bith.”

The cord untied itself from the door, and the child toddled cheerfully out. “Play!”

They led the child, staring in wonder with their big green eyes, to the village, and brought them to the village elder.

“Ye've done well, children. Come with me, little one. Ye're gonna help us.”

They took the child into the hills behind the village.

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“Don't strain yourself,” Sou Yuet urged, grasping the necromancer's hand. The witch's breath was shallow, and his eyes stared. “It's okay, you don't have to tell me.”

“I want to. I... I want to.”

“Why don't you take a break? How did you know how to untie the rope? Tell me about that.”

“Mam sang those words every time she came home to let her in. I just copied the sounds she made. When a kid hears something enough, they just repeat it, ye know? I wish... I wish I'd never...”

“Okay, it's okay. You're okay.”

The necromancer closed his eyes. Sou Yuet and Sunny moved closer to reassure him with their presence. At last, he took a deep sigh, opened his eyes, and continued.

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Here's a way to make a god:

First, you take a small child, who knows nothing of the world. You blindfold them, and lead them to a secluded place. A barrow is good. With the dead there, all kinds of dark things gather.

Second, you bind them. Bind them physically with rope and iron. Bind their soul with ink and blood. Bind their life with the closeness of death.

For the cycle of a moon, the child died and was reborn over and over.

A drop of blood of every one of the villagers was forced down their throat.

When they screamed and struggled, more chains were brought, and their mouth gagged.

They were crowned in mistletoe, and whipped with hazel twigs until the blood ran down their legs.

They were fed hawthorn berries, prickled with blackthorns, and yew splinters were hammered through the rims of their ears.

When the moon was dark once more, the child no longer screamed.

“Did we do it?” the villagers whispered to each other.

“We can only try and find out.”

The villager elder who had first had the revelation approached the bound figure. The small chest rose and fell, faintly.

“Oh God of this place, who selflessly accepts our ills, who suffers so that we may live in happiness. Please take my pain upon yourself, I beg.”

At once, the bound figure began to groan and shake. On its knees appeared, as if carved by a knife, two large stars, covering the small kneecaps. The bleeding stars healed and turned black before their very eyes. The village elder stood and tested his legs.

“The pain... it's gone!”

There was an immediately rush forward.

“Merciful God, these scars from the wolf's teeth still hurt. Please help me!”

“My children are sick! I plead that you take their fever away!”

“God, help us-”

“God, please-”

“God-”

“God-”

By the time the sun rose, the child hung limp, their body covered in blackened, raised scars. The ancient things that lurked within the barrow chittered and sniggered.

A new companion.

How delightful.

The earth turned. The sun rose and fell. The moon bloomed and faded.

The new god took all the ills of the village.

One day, the witch found the barrow.

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“How long had it been?”

“... three years, she told me. She'd been looking for three years.”

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“Give me back my child.”

The creatures of the barrow sniggered.

They're one of us now, fairy-woman.

You're too late! Too late!

Your child's gone, witch.

“My child is right there. You cannot stop me.”

We've stopped you long enough. Kept you away long enough that this child will never be human ever again.

“Wrong,” the witch said, and she sang out. She sang until the barrow trembled, and the cords and chains fell from the child, and she picked them up and took them away from that place.

The child woke the next day. The child did not wake the next day.

For months, a year, they sat staring blankly at the wall of the house. The light hurt their eyes. Their muscles were too wasted to even move. They would not touch any of the food the woman brought them.

She burnt whitethorn and bathed the child in the smoke. She rubbed their hands and feet.

She cried with her child catatonic in her arms.

She sang.

“Cuirfead mo rún chun suain,

Cuirfead mo rún 'na luí,

Cuirfead mo rún chun suain go ciúin,

Le dilín ó deamhas ó dí.”

On the last line, two voices sang. One was sweet and full of life. One was strained and filled with death.

The child's eyes closed, and they dropped into a blissful, dreamless sleep.

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There was nothing to say.

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Slowly, the child came back to the world. But never fully. The ghosts of the world whispered in their ears. Their body shifted and shifted again. Their scars writhed. They woke screaming in the night, and despite all the love in the world from those warm, safe arms... it was never enough.

“We're leaving tomorrow, child. Let's go south and east, where there air is sweeter and warmer.”

“Okay, Mam.”

That night, the child left the house, and went down to the village.

They heard the whispers from the barrow.

You'll always be one of us, child.

We'll have another one soon. The villagers are looking for another.

They fear your mother.

“They should fear me,” the child said. And they let loose, every grievance their body held. Every mark of wolf-tooth and wolf-claw. The burns of the rope that had choked the life from the elder's son, guilty for his part in the taking of the child. The chest pain from the arrow that had almost taken the life of one of the village warriors. The nightmares, the fear.

The village burned, and its people had nowhere to turn except into the arms of death.

The child watched their ghosts linger through the night until the sun rose, when they were barely visible in the light.

The witch came and stood beside her child, a pack of belongings in her arms. More smoke rose behind her. Their once-upon-a-time house was burning.

“Are ye ready?” she asked.

“I'm done here.”

“Let's go then, my child.”

She took their hand, and they never came back to that place.