"So," Binabik explained in his speaking voice, "old Tohuq the sky-lord is selling his daughter to Kikkasut for a beautiful cape of feathers, which he will use to make the clouds. Sedda is then going with her new husband to his country beyond the mountains, where she is becoming the Queen of Birds. But the marriage has not much happiness. Soon Kikkasut, he begins to ignore her, coming home only to eat and curse at Sedda." The troll laughed quietly, wiping the end of his flute on his fur collar. "Oh, Simon, this is always being such a length of story…Well, Sedda goes to a wise woman, who tells that she could gain back Kikkasut's wandering heart if she will be giving him children.
"With a charm the wise woman has given, made from bones and mockfoil and black snow, Sedda is able to then conceive, and she gives birth to nine children. Kikkasut is bearing, and sends word that he is coming to take them from her, so that it is properly raised as birds they will be, and not by Sedda raised as useless moonchildren.
"When she is hearing this, Sedda takes the two most young and hides them. Kikkasut comes for taking away the others, and he asks of her the happenstances of the missing two. Sedda tells him they had become sick and dead. He goes away from her, and she curses him."
Deathless she'll keep them…"
"You are seeing," Binabik interrupted himself, "Sedda did not want her children to have mortalness and be dying, as the birds and the beasts of the fields. They were her all and onlyness…
She spreads on night's sky
The Dragonbone Chair, by Tad Williams (Memory, Sorrow and Thorn #1)
