But in this, even Iseult is surprised—she gives birth not to one babe, but to two.

All told, her birth is a strange and involved affair.

There are cunning folk that Iseult has kept in touch with, and even those of the fey courts have a hand.

They all turn up at the doors of Domhan Mhín, one after another, and Jenny is sore beside herself. After the first, second, and third visitors come, Iseult thinks that Jenny will start turning them away at the door.

Certainly that’s the way it seems as she stands poised there, dressed in cursed coins with her hair ringing her head like a fury, barring the entrance.

“We come to visit the mother and child,” one fey man who Iseult does not recognize says.

He is stooped and hunched, with a kind of wheedling voice. He carries a satchel that bulges oddly. It stops when he compresses it in his hands, as if cowed, but then soon after starts up again. To watch it is to feel strangely and vaguely ill.

“I didn’t ask what you were doing here,” Jenny says, her already strong voice rising and growing tarter. “I asked what that has to do with me.”