The Last Changeling

by Jane Yolen

  Maggie Light, he thought suddenly. He was pleased he remembered her name.

  Clambering off the bed, he gave Maggie Light a deep, courtly bow, though his legs were wobbly. “It was a bare collection of notes before you gave it wings.” He knew Snail would say he sounded like a toff, but there was no way to express his amazement at Maggie’s singing in a commoner’s plain speaking. “Your voice is . . . transcendent.”

  The manservant spoke then. “Even magical, you might say.”

  Aspen shook his head. He was born and bred to magic and had sensed no glamour while she sang. And besides . . .“How would you know magic, mud-man. You are a—”

  “Yes,” the manservant interrupted in a stern voice that somehow stopped Aspen cold.

  Belatedly, Aspen realized that traveling minstrels—unlike royalty—must have to deal with all species of peoples on a relatively even footing. And if those people had just saved his life, the footing was probably considerably less than even.

  “I . . . um . . . apologize,” he stuttered, unsure of how to do it formally without sounding too toffly. “I have forgotten my manners. And—”

  “And you’re unused to dealing with my people as, well, people,” the manservant said, interrupting Aspen again. “Everyone to you is an animal or a manimal.” He held Aspen’s gaze with his steel-grey eyes, daring him to contradict the statement. Aspen felt that the man was judging him, marking his pros and cons in a mental clerk’s ledger. He did not think the man was wasting a lot of ink in the “pros” column.

  “Um . . . yes . . . look . . . I . . .” Aspen sighed. He really didn’t want to apologize to the clerk again. But he did not want to offend the touchy creature, either. Or make the stunning Maggie Light think less of him. “Perhaps, if I could just talk to your master, and thank him for his assistance, we could . . .” He trailed off as the clerk looked at him as if he were Dagmarra’s spit drying in the dust outside the wagon.

  Shaking his head, the clerk turned to the dwarfs. “Dagmarra. Boys. Let’s get moving before the soldiers remember where they were going. And do what they remember they were planning to do.”

  The dwarfs nodded and shuttled out. Thridi was last through the door, and Aspen thought he heard him mutter, “Dim-witted, you might say.”

  The clerk then looked at Snail. “When you are done greeting your minstrel, your wastrel, perhaps we could have a word alone?” To Maggie he practically snarled, “I don’t want to see him again.”

  “Yes, Professor,” she said to his back as he stomped out of the room, making the sound of soldiers leading a man to his execution.

  Aspen gaped at the door through which the dwarfs and the clerk had just exited. Then he looked at Maggie, who was frowning. It did not make her any less beautiful. Only then did he turn to Snail, who was glaring at him.

  “Professor?” he said. “That’s Professor Odds?”

  “Yes,” Snail said grimly, “and odds are you weren’t expecting someone like him.” She followed the professor out the door.

  “I’m sorry,” Aspen said to no one in particular.

  Maggie Light gave a soft giggle that burbled like a mountain brook. “Not yet you aren’t, but I imagine you will be soon. He can do that to people.” She put a light hand on his shoulder. “Come, let’s find you somewhere to stay, Popinjay. This room is already taken.”

  SNAIL’S JOURNEY BEGINS

  The professor slumped into a chair by a workbench in the small room. To the side of the workbench was a single bed, its covers pulled so tight, they almost seemed painted on.

  The workbench itself was covered with small silvery beads and strands of wire. There were silver implements like nothing Snail had ever seen: odd pincers with tiny pointed ends, hefty scissors that looked as if they could shear through cold iron, and three sizes of hammers, each smaller than the last. A pair of very strange glasses lay to one side, with lenses as thick as winter ice.

  Snail thought the professor might be a crafter who made jewelry to sell at their performances, not a magician at all. She’d seen no jewels on either the dwarf woman or Maggie Light, but that could mean nothing. After all, midwives don’t deliver their own babies. How often had Mistress Softhands said so.

  But, she told herself, some of those tools might be useful for midwives. She glanced again at the scissors, saw a small pair in silver that might be just the thing. And a pair of silver tongs small enough to fit this task. She wondered if she might ask the professor to borrow them in case . . .

  Then she had to laugh at herself. Tongs. Just what a midwife always needs. But these are much too tiny to fit around a baby’s head, whether elf or brownie. Besides, who would be giving birth here—Maggie Light? The dwarf woman? Besides, I don’t wish to reveal who I really am.

  But, in fact, all the new tools were tempting. Her fingers itched to try each one.

  “That friend of yours!” Professor Odds’s voice dripped with sarcasm that slashed through her reverie. “That so-called Karl . . .”

  “Just Karl, sir. Not So-called Karl,” Snail said, trying to make light of it. Hoping she was succeeding.

  “Do you think a professor is fooled by such a Karl-less name? I’m trained to identify such improbables. I have degrees in it. I would take odds against it. In fact, as Odds, I am against it.”

  Snail’s head was spinning. She couldn’t tell if he was speaking sense or nonsense. Or both at once.

  Hardly noticing her response, the professor continued. “He is no doubt called Prince Balersterei Meddlesome IV, or some such nonsense. Karl does not suit him. The plainness of it. The short, sharp shock of it. He should be wearing a high-sounding name and a high-fashion suit. Not the way he talks, all hoity and toity, all furbelows, falsettos, and false-set-tos. And tiresome beyond measure.” He rubbed his right eye.

  “He’s not like that at all,” Snail said, though she knew that sometimes he was. But they’d rescued each other so often, she and Aspen, that defending him was the very least she could do.

  “I have performed for and dined with his kind for years now,” Odds said, his voice harsh with the criticism. “It never gets easier. They all think that who they were born to gives them the right to . . .”

  Snail had to stop herself from shuddering. Such talk could get them all imprisoned, or put to the flames. She tried again, keeping her tone mild. “That is not how I know him, sir. And he thinks his rank . . .” She bit her lips and added hastily, “Whatever that rank is . . . that it means he has to act nobly.”

  The professor’s lips drew together as if he’d suddenly tasted a sour piece of fruit. “Don’t keep addressing me as sir, child. Professor will do nicely, thank you. After all, it’s my rank. And I got it the hard way.” He smiled slyly. “I earned it!”

  “Professor,” said Snail, but she spoke it the way people at the Unseelie Court did, with a certain amount of casual disdain that was not lost on Odds at all, “I think you are mistaking Karl.”

  He smiled slowly, as if deliberately ignoring her small insolence, and said, “Then there is a huge gap, a crevasse, a cavern between how he thinks he should act and how he actually does.”

  Snail wasn’t sure what he was talking about. Crevasse was not a word she’d ever heard before. But she could tell from his tone what he meant. “He was the Hos—” she began, and then paused. Wouldn’t it be better to keep that information to herself? Or should she just trust the professor, despite his remarks about Prince Aspen? About toffs in general? After all, except for Aspen she felt the same way about them. And Odds had magicked the two of them away from the soldiers. With Maggie Light’s help, of course. Surely he meant no harm to the prince or to her.

  But suddenly her mind whirled with alternatives: The professor could be waiting to sell them both to the highest bidder. He could want to turn them in to the king himself on his own terms, maybe get himself a higher rank by doing so. He could be willing t
o bide his time and wreak vengeance on both courts—since clearly he doesn’t like toffs. He could use Aspen to . . . to . . . Here her imagination stopped working and she ran out of possibilities.

  That was when she realized this strange man was in fact truly strange, an actual stranger to them. She’d no idea what he thought or how he thought. But since, all her life, everything she’d ever heard about the Seelie folk was how twisty and untrustworthy they were, in the end she thought it was best to say nothing at all.

  Odds turned his steely eyes on her. “Karl was what?” he asked, his voice low, soothing.

  She didn’t dare keep looking at those steel-colored eyes. She’d already seen the things he could do with them. Instead she hastily glanced down at the floor. “He was the host—the host—of a rival troop of soldiers at his . . . um . . . great hall and things went badly. So the other soldiers are looking to punish him. Us. Thank you for helping.” She didn’t dare let him see the lies fully exposed in her eyes, in the hot flush on her cheeks. She was not practiced in lying.

  “Always a pleasure, if a measured one,” mumbled the professor, “not quite a quart but more than a cup.” He turned away as if he didn’t believe her or else really didn’t care. But as long as Odds was hiding them from harm—at least from some harm—she thought she should try and be nice to him.

  “Those are very interesting tools,” she said, changing the subject. It was an awkward shift and she was sure he had known at once what she was trying to do, but she kept at it anyway, pointing to several hammers and a clamp, but never at the ones she had a real interest in, for fear of giving herself away completely.

  “You like tools?” he asked quickly.

  That surprised her, and then she thought, He spoke too quickly.

  “I . . . I liked to watch the cook boys polishing the master chef’s knives and forks and things,” she said, “when we were fed after a performance.” That was smooth, she thought, and warming to her story, she added, “My. . . um . . . da was a . . . a . . .” her mind went blank for a moment trying to conjure up this pretend father and then she had it. “The town blacksmith. And he had a lot of . . . um . . . tools, too. Smithing tools.” She took a deep breath, knowing that while she’d started well enough, things were now going badly. “And my mam, well she was a midwife.” She could tell him that without saying she herself was a midwife’s apprentice and still be on firmer ground. “And Mam, she had lovely tools. Small hand tongs for the breach babes, and soft linen ropes to help pull out a tardy infant, and silver scissors like those there . . .” she pointed to the professor’s table. She saw he was staring intently at her face and, blushing, she finished with a rush. “But I didn’t want to be a blacksmith or a birther so I ran away to the city to join a troop of roaming players and there . . .”

  “There you met our toff, who decided to take you with him on the road,” Odds said. “A pretty enough story if it were true. But . . .”

  And just as he was going to uncover her true occupation—she was sure of it—the floor gave a sudden jolt, the walls began to creak ominously, and Snail almost lost her footing.

  “Ah,” said Professor Odds, raising his right hand with the pointing finger straight up and the other fingers curled. “We have begun.” He pronounced the words like a wizard’s incantation, and at that, the players’ long cart started to move.

  Snail glanced around for a window to see exactly where they were going, but there was none. Not even an arrow slit. Perhaps another peephole? If there was one here, she couldn’t identify it. Besides, I can’t just walk up to the wall and search for one, can I? I can’t be that obvious.

  “What have we begun, professor?” she asked, hoping it sounded innocent and not desperate.

  “We have begun the beginning of your journey and the end of mine; the first step of many and the last step of even more. Our journey home,” he said.

  Home? It was the last place in the world she wanted to go. All that awaited her there was a dungeon and death. But how could she tell him that?

  From what he’d said so far, she’d have laid odds herself that he didn’t care what she thought at all.

  • • •

  THE DOOR OF the professor’s room opened and Maggie Light came through, gliding in that unforced way that continued to astonish Snail.

  “I have put the boy in with the twins,” she told the professor. “The bowser is already complaining. It is past time, I think, to give it a bath and brush its teeth.”

  “Let Karl do that when we stop for the night,” said the professor, emphasizing the prince’s new name with such disdain, Snail knew he wasn’t going to let the matter go.

  “I’ll gladly do it,” said Snail quickly, happy to have something else to talk about. “In my . . . um . . . profession, we know how to clean things.” And then she realized she’d given away half of what she’d already told him. He would guess now that she was, like her make-believe mother, a birther after all.

  “A bowser,” the professor said dryly, as if he’d noticed nothing, “is not a thing but rather an animate rug. It herds things. And this one is not fond of females. Best leave it to the host.” He emphasized the last word, which made Snail understand that he hadn’t been fooled for even an instant by what she’d considered her quick thinking.

  I am such a bad liar, she thought. Besides, I can always help the prince bathe the bowser when no one is paying us any attention.

  It was the last thought she had before the cart began to shudder and shake so badly, it was as if the road had suddenly developed contractions and was about to give birth.

  ASPEN HOBBLES A UNICORN

  Aspen sat in the drab room Maggie Light had led him to and moped.

  Has it really come to this? He looked at the grey cloaks hanging from the walls, the dull brown rug, the bed he assumed he’d have to share with the room’s other occupants. At least at the Unseelie castle he’d had his own room.

  Fallen! he thought miserably. He had to take a deep breath in order not to cry.

  Lying down on the smallest of the single beds, he stared at the ceiling, willing this to be a nightmare from which he could wake up. He never noticed the wagon had started to move. He was already asleep when the rocking began.

  He awakened with a start some time later. He was never to know how long he had been out. But the bed was swaying. The entire room was swaying, and not in a good way. He could feel his stomach becoming more and more upset. Sitting up, he was glad that he had had no lunch, or the rug would have ended up even more discolored in the very near future.

  When the wagon finally found a smooth part of the road, Aspen lay back down on the bed, but as soon as he did, the room twirled and swirled and his belly rumbled and . . .

  He jumped to his feet and swallowed forcefully, commanding his innards to behave.

  They listened.

  For now.

  A sudden shuddering and juddering of the wagon began with a single bounce that almost sent him sprawling on the floor. It went on for some time. Soon the wagon was regularly alternating between a smooth ride and a jouncy one.

  It was amazing to him that nothing had fallen off shelves and onto the floor until he realized that everything in the room was tied down in one way or another: brushes and water cups and clothing were all packed securely in boxes that were tacked to the sides of the wagon.

  Just as he made this discovery, the wagon began to shudder more violently than before. He thought he was going to be forced to decide between being sick on the rug or finding a door or window to fling himself out of, when as suddenly as the shaking had begun, it stopped.

  With a great sigh of relief, Aspen threw himself instead back onto the bed. But before he could even close his eyes, Maggie Light returned.

  “Dear Karl,” she said sweetly, tossing some odd implements onto the bed next to him. “We have found our place for the night. You’re to
hobble the unicorns and gather wood for a fire.”

  “Me?” Aspen asked. “Surely you have . . .” Servants for that? he stopped himself from saying. They’re all barely more than servants themselves. This really is going to take a lot of getting used to. “Someone more experienced in doing that?” he finished lamely.

  “Oh, it’s just like hobbling a horse,” Maggie said, as if everyone knew how to do that. “The unicorns are well trained. You should have no problem.”

  Surely, he thought, she is joking. He tried to smile and failed.

  “Well, then I shall have to try.” He meant it to sound jolly, cooperative, but even he could see it was tentative and graceless. Begrudging, even. As if he didn’t really think it was a joke. Or did not enjoy jokes. Or . . .

  And then he looked at what she’d thrown onto the bed: leather cuffs, connected in pairs by a short, thick rope. Four sets in all. If it was a joke, it was a very carefully thought through, elaborate jest indeed.

  But something niggled at the back of his mind. He realized it was the thing he had tried to speak before. The question from the Sticksman. He opened his mouth to ask, but Maggie Light shook her head.

  “You must get it done. The professor requires it.” It was as if her voice laid an enchantment over him, stronger than the geas, if such was possible.

  He sighed. “I’ll just go do that, then. I mean now.”

  Maggie Light chuckled at his discomfort and left.

  With another, even greater sigh, Aspen gathered up the hobbles and followed.

  • • •

  OUTSIDE, THE SETTING sun was just approaching the horizon and light the color of honey slanted across the landscape.

  The wagon had been pulled off the road into a wooded glade that Aspen had to admit was quite beautiful. A stream ran past a stand of fruiting thorn bushes, and tall pines were scattered about, their needles coating the ground. A copse of pine kept the land below clear of undergrowth and would mean, he assumed, fewer bothersome animals at night.