Lady of Graynall, The Child Eater

As told by Teresa Mon-Éclair

Since the beginning of time, children have feared the dark. The kinder mind will say it is because of a fear of the unknown. But those that know are still afraid, for in that darkness sits the most Unseelie Maid, The Lady of Graynall.
In the fey courts of kings and queens, most abide by a simple rule of doing harm only when harm has been done to you. But the Lady of Graynall, she hunts for slights and brings them home to her den to suck the marrow from the improprieties and exact her revenge. Of all the creatures that the Lady devours and greedily eats, it is said that she finds children to be of the sweetest meat.
She dispatches her goblins and ghouls to look through town and villages where the children will not be missed, and if those cannot be found to seek out the children that are loved but unwanted. The very idea of monsters under the bed comes from the few lucky children that have escaped the clutches of her midnight ferrymen.
When the Lady of Graynall’s couriers of infant meat arrives at her door, she plays the part of the doting grandmother. She offers them sweets and riches and an ear to listen as they tell her of all the horribleness their villages or their families put upon them. Then over weeks, she fattens them on sweets and milk candies until at last, they are ready. Then she takes the mighty cauldron won by her from the mother of witches so long ago and draws water into it like a washbasin.
She coaxes the child into the iron casket bowl and lathers them with butter and seasoning, all the while slowly bringing the water to a boil. Too late, the child begins to fall asleep and realizes the warmth of their predicament. Then the Lady of Graynall gentle sets their head under the bubbling, roiling, boiling steaming stew, and the child is no longer a person, but food.
From her garden where fairies make their nests, she pulls carrots and beets and potatoes and leeks and throws them into the pot. She sniffs the air and licks her lips as the spirit released gives the entire brew a special sweetness, unique to each main ingredient. Then, reaching to her cupboard of spices and ingredients, she finds the perfect pairing for the misery of children.
For the ugly ones, it’s peppermint, to mask the tastes of misshapen features that would usually be sweet. For the pretty ones, it’s lemon, to pucker the features that were once too pure and amenable. For the thin ones, parsley, and nutmeg, giving strength to brittle limbs, and for the pudgy ones, shaved ginger to tighten up the fats. For the royal ones, cooked with pig-lard and roasted whole, for the paupers, thrown in with cinnamon and left to boil.
Then the brew freshly mixed, the Lady of Graynall would take the ladle from the cauldron to get a taste of it. She would smack her lips, and lick them dry, searching for the missing taste. Reaching once more into her cupboard, to a name she pulls out a blackthorn case. In the case it holds a simple vial that is marked with a tag and a name and instructions to consume. The tag is made of virgin skin and the name says “Essence of Youth: take with food.”
One, two, three drops of the silvery liquid goes into the bowl and as she begins to chant and stir, thirteen times against the moonshine rise, her voice echoes eerily against the bowl of her delicious, monstrous device.

From the cradle to the grave, you are now set free.

No longer confined to the mortal coil of misery.

In my pot, stirred thirteen times ‘round

I thank you for your life freely given, and bones freshly ground.

For in this stew, perfectly seasoned, lovingly made

Your essence shall bring me life, and your body free me from the grave.

Then at last, the incantation completed and the stew nearly done, she calls out into the darkening our, “Come in for dinner, everyone!” And from the dark and chilling evening, the others make their way to the cottage of the Lady of Graynall.
From beneath the flower beds come cherubs of patchwork skin, known for the flowers that grow like from their brows like strange cartilage, the Snapdragons come for dinner. Then creaking like the trees of old, like the treant who they are like cousins too, the Ashbark reach out wanting hands for a drop of the forbidden soup. Finally, with a cackle of glee, thirteen voices ring out with a cacophony canon of “Feed Me.” The last of the hungry come to the Graynall door, as her Gray Lads, her sons come home for dinner.
Each of these monsters and creatures that derive from the sins of mortals born, sits down for dinner at the behest of the mother who they all love and adore. To each of them, she gives a plate, first to the snapdragons in their den and then to the Ashbarks and finally to the sons of hers, all thirteen. She bides them all to bless their food, to give thanks to her and the ones who sacrificed so that they may chew upon softened bones and slurp up the delicious stew. To a name, like time and time again, they give thanks to Mother, Child, and all who gathered seasoning to make the meal so filling.
Then without missing a beat or taking a moments pause from then on, the bodies in the cottage devoured the food set before them, by the Lady of Graynall. She looked to all of them happily, and then turned to the task of cleaning up. Dishes piled high at the basin of her washbowl, she begins the task of wiping out the murk of boiled skin, and hair, and teeth, and bone. All things that her children and guests gnaw upon, but never consume, for fear that they will choke upon the byproducts of the brew.
The thirteen bowls her sons had used were clean, with tongues that lapped on all the sides to drink up every morsel and taste every drop of the ingredients used. Her youngest would always stay to help her clean, in the hopes that when the time came he would get to lick the pot or spoon. But when the bowls were clean, she would look to the dirt and grime left by the snapdragon and the ashbarks on the soup dishes they left behind.
Ever doting, ever loving, the Lady of Graynal would begin to wash these dishes and bowls and other utensils. Soon enough they would be finished, and her task was now completed. But then she would turn and remember her curse, for she still needed to clean the pot. Rolling up her sleeves and grabbing the hollysoap and gindle-rag, she would set to her task. It would go easy enough at first, as skin and bone were easy to scrape, and screams did not leave residue on iron magically imbued. But then the difficulty would arrive, for the thing hardest to remove, was sin.
Try as she might, the children that tasted best, that she most desired were the ones that had the most taste to them already. The ones who stole, who lied, who cheated, and would hide from their mothers and fathers when they asked them to help them clean. These little sins, these morsels of intrigue and disruption to their natural being, these were the things that made them taste so good and the things that burned at the bottom of her pot. But the taste was worth the effort of the scrubbing, and so the Lady of Graynall was willing to scrape it all off.
The easiest to cut away are the lies told by the children that she ate. The ones where they had said that they were ill and did not want to get out of bed for fear that their fever would spike, or they would faint, or would be so ill they would not be able to sleep at night. Harder still were the lies that covered other things, the lies to hide the thefts and crimes and other nasty things.
But once the lies were scraped away, ironstone would be needed to buff away the sins of larceny. The simplest were of course the thefts of simple goods, like candies and plumed apples and other pastry and foods. Even those for the beggar children, stealing to survive, tasted good to the Lady of Graynall and her horrible brood. But the best tasting thefts were those of gold and jewels and precious things. The children who had seen their mother's finery and their father's medals and said, “Those should be my things.” When the children were gone, safely tucked away in the bellies of the Gray Lads, their parents would find those gifts tucked away beneath the beds of those naughty ones, returned by the Lady as payment for what she had done.
And then the last of the sins, they burned the bottom of the pot, the ones that she would scrub and scrub but sometimes would never come off, flavoring the taste of every other meal from there on out, was the worst sin of all, the sin of betrayal. The children who had close friends who they had sold out to cover their own behinds, easily scraped away with their connection to the lies. But the children with betrayals to their parents and the teachers, the ones who looked after them and taught them right from wrong, these were the ones that the Lady of Graynall looked forward to most of all. For these were the sins that burned into the iron of the pot and changed the texture of the magic and every stock from then on would be flavored with those sins. Here, she would let her youngest son lick the ladle and the bowl, for his favorite taste was the sins that he could smell easiest of all.
Then when he was done and the place, at last, was clean, the Lady of Graynall would turn from the pot and put away the ladle and sit in her chair. She would look to her youngest son and begin to close her eyes, rocking back and forth. “Suppertime shall soon be here.” She’d say, “Take your brothers, dearest one, and find me another one for my pot.”
And so, the son would scamper to his brothers, and they would sniff the wind, searching for the things that attract them, that taste the sweetest in the dish. Then they would depart, from the thicket of the cottage of their mother and their friends, searching for the next child who would be the next meal, and the whole story would begin again.