The decision to have a child was not one made lightly. In general, it is not a decision to be made lightly, and certainly not as quickly as some make it, but for me, it was an especially difficult choice to make. The life of a witch is neither easy nor kind, and that meant that all the kindness in their life would come from me. They would be prey to the most horrible dangers imaginable, with only me, and later, what I’d taught them, to keep them safe. They would consume my entire life for years, years after they’d left me, and though I would at times for drama be forced to hide it, I would be committing myself from this moment on to live and die for them. I would be pledging to endure countless little humiliations and countless tiny joys and the potential that I would still get a spoiled brat at the end of it (a spoiled brat that I would still adore).

So, honestly, no different from the choice every parent makes.

The only difference, of course, is how I made her.

Most witches (in fact, I daresay nearly all witches), if they find themselves in want of a child, do things the natural way: they steal them. Or bargain for them (in such a scheming and backhanded way as to technically count, in the magical world, as theft). Few were blessed with the ability to have children of their own, and those that did often chose not to. There were many, many children in the world already, and the first thing a witch learns is to avoid an excess of anything. Adoption (or theft) was thus a far more sensible choice.

Knowing this, my decision to make a daughter was…scandalous, to say the least. Few other witches chose this path. Making a child was delicate work, thankless work, and work that could easily backfire. If one small detail was off, the gift of life would not take, and the resulting creature would be miserable and wretched and angry unless cared for by the most benevolent and loving of parents, which even I, for all that I was prepared for this, could not boast to be. Magical children were unpredictable in their destinies, uncontrollable in their whims, but they were not bound by the fates of their parents and the sins of their bloodlines and the inescapable chains of their genetic makeup.

I started small, gathering talents here and there, which is not as easy as it sounds. For one thing, it is far more important a detail than it sounds, and, being somewhat fair-minded and ethical in my practice, I refuse to over-charge simply because I have an agenda. Another little known-fact is that when a witch says they will take “your greatest talent,” more often than not, it will be what you consider your greatest talent, regardless of whether or not you’re actually good at it, and regardless of whether or not they agree. That is how I ended up with a daughter who is good at skipping rope (traded for true love), writing naughty poetry (freely given in thanks for accidentally saving a princess’s life), knitting (freely given from an old knight who was delighted to hear I was thinking of having a child, and wanted her to have a useful skill), and recognizing constellations (from a princess who really had no desire to get married). Three of those skills are rather useful for a witch to have, and the other is…well. I’m sure she’ll find a use for it somewhere.

Her voice came from a disillusioned and terrified singer. She came to my doorstep on the arm of a charming and gentle young man, whose cheeks were rosy and whose heart was warm, but there was more terror in her heart than newlywed joy. She traded her voice for freedom, the power of speech for anonymity and safety. I added a little bit of her dear husband into the spell as well, after I saw the way he looked at her when she was turned away. I took nothing from him that he’d notice, only the crow’s feet about his eyes, the ones he would have inherited from his mother. They would look beautiful, I thought, on my daughter’s face. I kept the voice in a shell hanging above my bed, and sometimes in the morning, I heard her humming. The crow’s feets were pressed between the pages of a book I despised, to lower the risk of me opening the pages too soon and letting them escape.

Her heart was that of a warrior’s. He came to trade his own life for that of his love’s, and I figured, hey, while I’m here? A common misconception is that, when you traded your life for someone else’s, it was the witch that got the life. That is false, and absurd. What use have I for a life? Unless I wanted to try and resurrect myself, but that is more trouble than it’s worth. No, all good witches know that the life goes where it goes, and the witch just takes…a little something extra. It’s all about wording. I informed him in wonderfully circular prose that I would take his “heart’s blood” in exchange for the soul of his departed husband, and failed to mention the particulars. He was going to be dead, so it wasn’t as if he was going to miss it. I took it from him in his dying breath and I placed it in a figurine carved in his likeness. That wasn’t required, but I thought it would be a nice touch. So we would always remember to be grateful to him.

Not the physical heart, of course. That would be messy. But in a world like ours, she would need to be brave, to be fierce, to be caring, and humble, and, of course, to be just egotistical enough to declare herself the protector of something or other.

Her life, of course, came from that of another child destined not to be, conceived in another’s womb. That was the only way to do it, really, which is why most witches choose to steal or buy children rather than make them. A born person was not clean enough, not pure enough, to start life anew. It was a very convenient deal. She was a woman who had ambitions and plans, and no desire or time for a child, and I was a witch with nothing but time, nothing but desire, but who lacked the ability to conceive. She was surprisingly hesitant about the whole thing, truthfully, and refused to make the deal unless I swore upon my own soul-name that I would love and care for the child as she could not. I promised that and more: I would tell her the girl’s name, and even let her visit sometimes, if she wanted. In the end, I exchanged good fortune for the life of her child, which is a far fairer bargain that it would at first glance appear. She went on to change the world, and I had my child.

Life, of course, was too precious and fragile to be put in a manmade container, so, in a bit of irony, I placed it within myself. For months, my daughter lived in the bottom of my right lung, rejuvenated and kept alive by the steady breaths, and slighted every time water went down the wrong pipe.

There were other things, of course, little details that didn’t require so much negotiation, things that could simply be taken from pure excess: the indescribable adrenaline rush at the climax of an orchestral score, the content elation of a bird being carried by the wind, the sharp pain of stubbing one’s toe on the table leg, the love/hate relationship we all have with mirrors. I gathered the frost off the first wind of autumn, the shade of the sky when the sun and the stars briefly share the same space, and a scale of salt from the most bitter of seas.

Then, of course, there was her body. Her physical heart, and the rest of her body, was a tale slightly less heart-warming than the others. A little girl came to me, and spun a tale of fairy queens and missing sisters, and she swore she would not let this theft go unpunished. I was but the middleman in this exchange, but I got my due. A physical body cannot enter the realm of the fae, and I swore to defend her flesh until she returned, victorious or otherwise. Should she not return, however, I would keep it for myself. It was fair, and economical. The only thing it really lacked was a parent’s permission, which is usually required for that kind of deal, but she invoked the right of orphans. Technically, she had parents, but she argued so strongly that step-parents didn’t count that I could do nothing but bow to her will. I sent her through with heartfelt wishes of luck, and I extended my contract an extra three months in the hopes that she would return. When the solstice came and she had not returned, I wrapped her body in a quilt of starlight and winter frost and wisping clouds, and I laid her to rest.

It was a good body. Young, but she obviously loved herself and took good care of herself. She had beautiful hair and curling eyelashes and a broad nose like my own. She almost looked related to me.

I do not mean to imply that I was in any way happy to gain her body. I genuinely mourned the loss of a life so young and bright, and I did what I could to ease her fate on the other side, but the first thing one learns as a witch is to waste not. No mortal could live that long in the fae world and come back to their body, so I honored the girl’s bravery the only way I could. There were not many willing to brave the fae’s wrath, even for a beloved sibling. With any luck, some of her goodness would linger in her flesh, and my daughter would be blessed.

The final ingredient, of course, was time. It takes nine months for a human (or near-enough-to-human) to have a child, no matter how you go about it. Once everything was in place, I needed only wait.

And while I waited, I planned, as parents are wont to do. I journeyed, never too far from home, and gathered only the best. I felled a sylvan from the endless woods to carve her cradle, and I gathered the wool from the sunrise clouds to make her dresses. I braved the depths of man’s despair to find pearls for her to wear, and from the shadows under the bed, I fetched dark creatures to be her playthings. Other witches were warned, to cross her and beware, for she was made of the finest things, assembled by one whose heart was pure and full of love, for only one who truly adored their creation could ever truly bring it to life. I played tricks on the fae and bottled up their laughter, and hung it from the window for her nightlight. From the moon herself, I demanded nothing short of perfection, a clear night when she needed light, and utter darkness when she did not. I made deals with kings and brought back their riches, their prowess and their charm and, of course, their stories, and I left them out for her to take up if she chose. I stole the fortunes of new lovers for her to do with as she pleased, for every young witch delights in tangling the heart-strings of the young. I filled the long months with quest after quest, errand after errand, to make everything perfect for her arrival.

On a moonless night where the stars shone bright enough to light my way, I pulled out my least favorite book off the shelf and I took the shell down from above my bed, and I removed the figurine from the mantle. I took the body of the bravest little girl I’d ever known. I sprinkled the crow’s feet in her future, the future she would live to see. I let her voice drift down deep in her breast, to come out when she had grown into it. I carved a hole in her chest and placed her heart deep within. Talents, of course, went in her fingertips and her shoulders, and on the insides of her eyelids. I placed the rush of music in the shells of her ears, and I put the bird’s delight on her broad lips. I put sharp pain in the crook of her right elbow, and I put mirrors in her eyes. The frost went in her navel, and the color of the sky spread across her skin like a well-fitting dress. I placed salt beneath her tongue and under her nails and nestled deep in her chest, where she would need it the most.

At last, at last, at long last, I leaned over and exhaled, and my daughter came to life.