A/N: Title from the English folk song, "The Cuckoo."

Krypton was not the last holdout of the old high magic against the the taint. Not the very last.

But it was among them.

And then, of course, it fell.

Finding a baby in their fields would have been worrying enough on its own. Watching the baby appear out of nowhere in a flash of light was a whole other level of concern.

Martha stared at the perfect circle of burned corn with the baby in the middle of it. "It's probably got the taint."

"Probably," Jonathan agreed.

"And that's assuming that it isn't just some magic thingy or other."

"Or that." He poked one of the scorched stalks experimentally.

The baby, who to that point had kept to stunned silence, began to wail.

Which. Well. Even if it was a trap, they couldn't just leave it there, could they?

Jonathan went forward first and cautiously bent to pick the baby up. He waited expectantly for a moment, and when nothing terrible happened, he cradled the baby closer and rocked his arms soothingly. The wail slowly died off until the baby was smiling up at him.

Jonathan looked helplessly at Martha.

"Well. We don't know that it's got the taint," she admitted, letting out a long breath with a whoosh.

"And a baby's not an it in any case," Jonathan pointed out. "We can't just leave him."

"A boy baby." She gnawed on her lip. "We'd have to be careful."

"Very careful," he agreed, bouncing the boy a bit.

"Probably best not to tell people how we found him."

"Probably."

"Might still turn out badly."

"Might," he agreed.

"But we'll have tried," she concluded. She walked over and smiled down at the baby. "You're a cute little one, aren't you? What are we going to call him?"

Jonathan wracked his head for a name. "Clark?"

"That sounds normal enough," she approved. "You hear that, Clark? You're going to be a perfectly normal little baby, aren't you?"

Clark cooed.

Clark was a perfectly normal little baby. The Kents were relieved.

Then, two summers after they found him, he rolled out of bed and didn't hit the floor. He hovered.

Martha looked at Jonathan. Jonathan looked at Martha.

"He's sure got a lot of kiddy magic," Martha finally said.

"Yep."

Clark beamed at both of them.

Five summers after they found him, he had a dream about flying and floated all the way up to the ceiling. Jonathan had to put a stool on top of the bed to tug him down.

They tucked him in extra tightly after that.

"Didn't you have a second cousin who used to do something like that?" Jonathan finally said.

Martha paused to think. She had a rather extensive network of cousins. Most of the village was cousins, one way or another. "Third cousin might have done something like that."

He was the one who'd fallen to the taint a few harvest moons ago and had gotten caught in the barn he'd set on fire.

They didn't mention that.

Ten summers after they found him, he won the annual solstice race by a . . . frankly unbelievable margin.

"Kiddy magic sure is something," Martha said into the sudden silence.

And Jonathan said, "Well, that'll be useful come harvest time."

Which was true. And everyone calmed down a little when a few months later Clark did just that.

Tainted people, after all, did not do something helpful like harvest crops, Martha told herself firmly as she chopped the carrots for the night's stew. They just didn't. Clark just had real strong kiddy magic, that was all.

Real strong.

Fourteen summers after they found him, Clark proved that wasn't the only thing about him that was strong when a wheel broke off the wagon on his way back from market.

Martha stood in front of her house and stared at her son, who was fidgeting awkwardly.

"I didn't have the tools to fix it," he explained.

"Mm."

"And I couldn't just leave the cart," he said earnestly.

"Mm."

"For one thing, I couldn't have carried everything in it without dropping something."

"So naturally, you just decided to carry the cart." Martha was not naturally a sarcastic person, but she thought she'd earned it under the circumstances.

"I just wondered if I could is all, and, well. I could." He nodded to the old horse that was shying away from him a bit nervously. "I brought Bessie back."

"Well," Martha sighed, "at least you didn't carry her too."

Sixteen summers after they found him, Clark had to try and set a fire with damp wood. He was glaring at the logs so hard, it was amazing they didn't set ablaze just from that, as the saying went.

Until suddenly it wasn't a saying because there was actual fire coming out of his boy's eyes.

Jonathan looked at the fire. He looked at his son.

"I did it!" Clark said proudly.

" . . . You sure did," Jonathan said slowly. "Good job." He was silent for a long minute. "Let's not tell your mother."

Seventeen summers after they found him, Clark's ax slipped while he was chopping wood with all of his considerable speed and strength. By all rights, it should have chopped his hand off.

Instead, the metal bounced off.

"Jonathan," Martha said as she watched the boy shrug and continue working, "when's the last time you saw that boy bleed?"

Jonathan opened his mouth and then closed it again. "I don't rightly know."

Martha swallowed. "Kiddy magic," she said determinedly.

"Useful thing, that," Jonathan agreed.

Martha refused to admit to herself that at this point, it was mostly a useful excuse.

Eighteen summers after they found him, Jonathan said, "It'll be hard to do the harvest without the magic this year."

"We'll manage," Martha said.

"I'll still work really hard," Clark promised.

Martha patted his arm. "We never doubted that. We'll be just fine."

Come harvest, Clark was just as fast and strong as ever.

Martha looked at Jonathan. Jonathan looked at Martha.

"We don't actually know exactly when he was born," Martha said.

"Nope," Jonathan agreed.

Neither of them mentioned that at this point, it should have at least been slowing down.

Nineteen summers after they found him, they had to face facts. The neighbors were giving them all the side-eye by this point, and Martha didn't blame them. If it was anyone else, she'd be sure it was taint by now.

But this was Clark. Her baby. Her son. He didn't have a tainted bone in his body, and she knew it.

So they didn't talk about it, right up until Clark laid down his spoon at supper and said, "There's something wrong with me, isn't there?"

And Martha couldn't bring herself to look into her baby's eyes and say Yes.

"Of course not," Martha said firmly. "You're just a bit special is all. Why, I wouldn't be surprised if you - If you had some of the high magic. Like those old wizards in all the tales," she added triumphantly, pleased that she remembered hearing something about that at the midwinter festival.

"Isn't that mostly gone?" Clark asked doubtfully. "And don't you have to study to do it?"

"You're talented," Martha said firmly. "Now eat your soup."

It still wasn't a surprise when not a month later, Clark announced his intention to go to the city to earn some money to send home. Old Mabel had taught him how to read and write just like the rest of the village children; maybe he could make something of himself.

Jonathan wasn't sure if he was hoping the city would have more to tell him about the high magic, if he wanted to make sure he wouldn't hurt the people he grew up with, or if he was just worried about all the whispers.

Whatever the reasons, they weren't able to talk him out of it.

Clark left their tiny community of farms and headed for the city-state they all technically owed allegiance to: Metropolis.

The prince of the city, Lex of the house of Luthor, had little need to funnel all of his resources into defense with the city so far from the center of the Spiral. Instead, he'd poured them into funding a renaissance of the arts and sciences. Included in this was a small team of clerks he'd personally hired to make sure the history of the city got recorded when it happened.

Clark got a position on said team through an uncanny knack for being right there when most of that history took place.

Most of the team resented the presence of a farm boy when they'd all worked hard to be where they were. Lois, the team's sole female clerk, took it in stride.

Clark was pretty sure this was because he didn't mind when she ranted about her work being edited to be more likely to appeal the prince, but that was alright. He liked working with Lois and working as a clerk gave him plenty of access to the city's library, so he could search for information about the high magic and the taint to his heart's content.

Most weren't sure quite what to think when a man practically oozing magic showed up and started fighting crime and the occasional taint occasion and did it all in a ridiculous red cape.

Some thought he was a wizard from the tales, like those who had died at Krypton. Prince Lex and his faction were convinced that he was a being of the taint.

Lois noticed that he had some sort of don't-notice-me charm going on his face when she sat down and tried to write an actual description of him instead of the sensationalized nonsense even her fellow clerks were putting down.

So the next time she saw him, she didn't focus on his face. She looked at his hands. Were they calloused like a soldier's? Were they worn a laborer's? Were they well cared for like a nobleman's?

What they most noticeably were was stained with a little bit of ink.

There were a lot of clerks in this city. But only one of them was currently sporting the impression of those particular lines of text from where his hand had accidentally brushed the still wet ink.

She and Clark were going to have a talk.

A/N: When I was writing the first story in this series, I referenced Krypton to explain how Nightwing got his name in this verse.

But it got me thinking. Where does Clark get his powers in this AU? How do people perceive him?

I decided that the children's magic was a remnant of an older, more powerful magic that was slowly losing against the taint as its strongholds fell. Which means Clark is a relic of that magic . . . and that most people would probably still assume he had the taint because they're rightfully paranoid.