Disclaimer: I don't really own any of this, excpet for characters which you shall see in chapters to come.

This story mostly came about because I was extremely enamoured - if that is the right word - of Asenath's wonderful story A Savage Place, with faeries and centaurs and pixies and whatnot, and I was in turn extremely disappointed that it appears to have been abandoned. So I thought that it would be fun to try and have another go at writing a Hellsing story which included the message 'Think fairy. Think again.' (I nicked that from Eoin Colfer, by the way. That man is one of my heroes.)

So, enjoy my little attempt at reaching into the other 'sidhe' of things. (Bad pun, I know!) Asenath, if you're reading - this is for you. For everyone else - well, it's for you as well.

And yes,I did nick the summary from the back or Terry Pratchett's 'Lords and Ladies'.

Prologue

Siobhan had just finished changing the baby, and was putting her in her cot when she caught the flash of something out of the corner of her eye, from outside the nursery window; the billow of some type of material, from something in the garden.

Of course, she'd put the washing out earlier, but still…

Leaving Ciara in the cot, she made her way towards the window, put her hands on the sill and looked out into the garden, with its wonderful view of the surrounding countryside, just the sort of thing a growing girl should wake up to every morning; and with a full view of the swing under the tree only a little way from the house, which Patrick had installed as soon as they had moved in, even though it would be months before their daughter would be able to use it.

A blink, the fluttering of eyelids, and suddenly someone else was using it instead.

She stared at the red-haired, pale-faced girl in a dark, long skirted and long sleeved dress, sitting primly in the seat with her fingers wrapped around the ropes, swinging softly to and fro as if someone were pushing her gently – though there was no one else in sight at all, and there wasn't so much as a hint of a breeze in the garden. Her eyes were lowered and her head was slightly bent, as if in deep contemplation of something. Even with her face obscured by its position and her half trailing hair, Siobhan could see that she was a pretty girl, but she could also tell that there was something deeply, horribly wrong about her, and not just by the fact that she had suddenly appeared from nowhere to sit in the swing-seat in her garden.

Memories of warnings they'd had from the locals, about the spirits and sprites which had haunted the house for generations, suddenly came back to mind, as she noted with the dull, dry beginnings of not-quite-terror in the back of her mouth, that the style and fashion of the dress the girl wore was at least two or three hundred years out of date; that the child was not just pale but almost unnaturally so, even on this hot day, as if she had no blood left to give her any colour; that her very hair itself seemed to be stirred by a non-existent breeze.

Behind her Ciara began to wail, as she usually did when she was hungry.

At that first pealing bawl, the girl's head jerked up, and her green eyes met with Siobhan's own blue. She hardly had time to be overwhelmed by the raw emotion she saw lodged there – loss, pain unimaginable, hopelessness and despair unmatched - before she was forced to blink; and as soon as she did so the girl was gone, as if she had never sat there in the first place, save that the swing still swayed gently, to and fro.

She stood staring for a few moments, before becoming aware that Ciara's wailing had stopped, and that the baby was no doubt catching her breath before she really let loose.

"All right, all right," she quipped, trying to shake off her dull horror of the moment as she turned and advanced to the cot to feed her daughter, undoing the strap of her overalls as she stepped forward. "I know what you want-"

And then she reached the cot, and saw what was in it.

Her scream brought her husband running, to find his wife, his strong willed, unshakeable wife, cowered in a corner and shrieking; and something in the cot that was most definitely not his baby daughter.

He'd seen eyes like that once or twice before, but never on something living.

'Ciara' is the Irish version of Claire. It has several different spellings, but I'm using the version of my cousin's name. Siobhan is...just an Irish name on its own, and it's devilishly tricky to pronounce if you don't have the know, i.e. 'She-vaun'.

Incidentially, does anyone know if Anderson is Irish or Scottish? Because frankly, with that accent, it's pretty hard to tell.

And yes, the Hellsing cast will turn up next chapter.

Reviews for the half Irish seamstress, please!