The Law of Man — Michelle West

A short story of 9.5k words, originally published in Elf Fantastic, edited by Martin H. Greenberg & Larry SegriffAn elderly woman walking the old ways comes to the Faerie circles to die—so that the child she carries, the last of her kin, might live.With her life as the payment, the Fey take the newborn infant into the court of their Queen, to watch her grow, age, and die—for mortality fascinates those whom age does not change.But the child is mortal and human, and what a child wants or needs is not what immortals do. The lands are changing; the old ways are dying. The time is coming when the Fey must reckon with the Law of Man.