" [The] chanting died away and silence flooded back the moonlit grove, a silence as solid and lucent as glass. A cloud drew across the moon, plunging the clearing into into darkness. The forest held its breath.

Then the ground around them began to tremble, shaking as if a thousand horses were charging by. As the cloud peeled back from the moon, Gytha could see something rising in front of them just beyond the circle. A wisp of mist was uncurling from the ground, pushing up the earth around it, like the first shoot of a plant. Then the column of mist burst out of the black earth with a thin wail like a newborn baby's cry. It whirled around and around, and as it turned there came a low moaning in the forest as if an icy winter wind was wandering among the branches of the trees, but the trees were quite still. The moaning grew into a shriek, rising higher and higher till the very darkness was vibrating with the pain of it. Then, just as suddenly, the shrieking stopped.

A naked infant stood in front of them, its body so thin the ribs stood out like the timbers of a wrecked ship. The lips were drawn back to reveal the toothless bones of its jaws, its empty eye sockets were as dark as black fire.

Madron turned her sightless eyes towards her daughter. 'Has he come? Do you see him?'

Gytha could not wrench her gaze from the little corpse in front of her. 'He is here, Madron, the babe is here,' she whispered. "

― Karen Maitland , The Gallows Curse