The Last Changeling

by Jane Yolen

  One large pine had fallen, evidently years ago, though its large root system still lay exposed to the elements, looking like some kind of instrument of torture.

  So much for beauty, Aspen thought.

  Snail and Odds sat on the smallest section of the tree’s trunk, deep in conversation.

  Aspen gave himself a brief moment of wishing he was in the professor’s place, sitting comfortably and talking idly, but he had been given servant’s work to do. And I must be about it, he thought, earn my keep, even though I keep no earnings from the task.

  The dwarfs were just pulling the unicorns from their traces, leaping acrobatically onto one another’s shoulders to reach them.

  They nodded at the hobbles Aspen held. He wondered if he should hand them over to the dwarfs but, as he approached, they walked away from the unicorns without a word.

  Free of their bindings, the unicorns clomped directly over to the thorn bushes and began munching away.

  So, Aspen thought miserably, now I must hobble those horned beasts. I wonder why, as they seem perfectly contented to stay and eat. Why should they wander off anyway? He shook his head. Longing for freedom? He doubted they had ever been free. Bred in captivity, more likely. Then what? So they are comfortable and have little fear? None but an ogre could possibly be a match for them. And there are no such creatures hereabouts. They are Unseelie folk.

  He shuddered, his body telling him what his mind had refused to consider: If war was truly come to the Seelie kingdom, ogres and Red Caps and Border Lords in their wild hunt would make quick work of such tamed unicorns, hobbled or not. Better to let them run free, he thought. At least that way they might have a chance . . . Hobbled, they had none at all.

  But no—he had orders to hobble them and so he must. Karl would do it, even if Prince Aspen would not.

  He approached the creatures with caution. They were huge, after all, and he was barely able to see over their backs.

  Eighteen hands at the shoulder? Twenty? He was proud of himself for remembering how to measure horses, but he hadn’t ridden one since he was seven and still lived at Astaeri Palace in the Seelie Court. And at that age, of course, he had only been allowed to ride ponies.

  They do not ride horses at the Unseelie castle, he thought bitterly. They eat them.

  Aspen looked down at the hobbles in his hand. Obviously the cuffs went around the unicorns’ ankles—if ankles they were called. Riders had odd names for the parts of their mounts, he thought. For all he knew, unicorn ankles were called joists or bounders or skarm drema. He would have to ask the dwarfs, but in a way that did not make him sound dim-witted or moon-touched. But of course the hobbles had to fit there, around the ankles, whatever they were called, because the hobbles obviously would not fit around anything else except their horns, and he wasn’t about to go near those. Besides, even a novice unicorn handler—as he surely was—could see that wasn’t the way to hobble them.

  But which ankles? Front or rear? He tried to remember what the servants had done back when he had been a child, but in his experience, you simply got off your mount and threw your reins to a servant when you were done riding. And that was that.

  So, if I do not know by experience, I must use logic.

  He looked at the unicorns, then back at the hobbles again, trying to imagine the two going together. The rope wasn’t long enough to go from front leg to back leg, so he pictured the hobbles on a unicorn’s front legs first. Then he made the unicorn in his mind try to walk with them on. The beast stumbled and fell forward, its horn sticking comically into the ground. He tried imagining them on the back ankles, then, and his mental unicorn stumbled, but only dragged its hind legs without falling.

  “The back legs it is, then,” he said with more confidence than he felt.

  Approaching the unicorns cautiously, he made the kind of cooing sounds he thought an ostler would use when approaching strange animals.

  One of the unicorns looked back at him suspiciously, but the other three kept munching on berries.

  Aspen held one hand up in what he hoped was a reassuring gesture, and kept the other—the one with the hobbles—behind his back. He decided to approach the unicorn that was already staring at him.

  At least I won’t surprise him.

  “There, there,” he said to his target. “I am just going to make you lot safer for the evening.”

  To Aspen’s untrained eye, the unicorn seemed calm enough, and when he was within arm’s reach, he gave it a pat on its right haunch.

  “There, there,” he said again, and the beast turned its head back to the bushes.

  Crouching down, Aspen placed all but one of the set of hobbles on the ground and squatted at the unicorn’s right rear leg. Only then did he realize he should have looked more carefully at how the cuffs worked before he was practically underneath the animal.

  Well, he thought, I am here now and they look simple enough: wrap it around the leg and fasten the dual buckles as if attaching pieces of armor, or a belt.

  Initially things went smoothly, but before he could fasten the first buckle, he felt something cold and hard slide up the back of his shirt.

  “What? Who?” he managed as he tried to turn. But he was suddenly hoisted high into the air.

  Roughly eighteen to twenty hands high, he thought as he realized what had happened. One of the other unicorns had slipped its horn up inside his shirt and was lifting him up.

  “No!” he shouted. “Bad unicorn! Put me down!” Though he was relieved the horn had not actually gone into his skin instead.

  That unicorn showed no sign of hearing him. But someone else did. On the other side of the thorn bushes that Aspen could now see over, he watched as someone broke for the trees. He was wearing a long cloak in patterns of dark green and black that had obscured his shape when he had been still. A large floppy hat in the same patterns obscured his features. He was slipping quickly and with a certain amount of practiced ease toward the pines. But he was not as quiet as he thought.

  Aspen watched the man only for a moment, because as the runner reached the pines—which pointed toward the limitless sky—his cloak helped him fade into them as if he were a part of the foliage.

  There was also a large crash from off to the left that distracted Aspen. It sounded like a boulder rolling through the woods, taking down trees as it came. Except the boulder must be bouncing, Aspen thought, because it seems to be thump-thumping as well.

  “What? Who?” Aspen said again, still dangling from the unicorn horn, this time looking for the cause of the big noise.

  The rest of the unicorns all had their heads up to look as well, fully alert and making short, breathy, houghing sounds to one another as if conferring.

  But when the cause of the noise came crashing out of the woods, they reared as one, trumpeting their terror, using both their mouths and horns like a band of great braying bugles. The one who’d speared Aspen’s shirt flung him aside like a terrier who had finished worrying a rat.

  As Aspen spun through the air, he was unable to tell which way was up. But even so, he recognized what had burst out of the woods and had time for one shout of warning to the camp before he hit the ground.

  “Trollllllll!”

  SNAIL TO THE RESCUE AGAIN

  Before the scream had finished leaving Aspen’s throat, before his head had hit the ground, sounding like a limb falling from a dead tree, Snail was on her feet and running. She cared little if the professor was running, too, or the dwarfs scrambling, or the unicorns fleeing—all of which seemed likely.

  As she ran, she stumbled over a tree root, crunched one of the hobbles underfoot, stubbed her toe on something hard she didn’t see, but still made it to Aspen’s body before the troll could. She stood before him and held out her hands, palms up and forward.

  Not in supplication. No one in their right mind would plead with a troll. Her heart
, banging away, reminded her of that.

  “Stop right now!” she shouted as if scolding a child with a finger too near a flame. “Stop it!” Her voice didn’t even quiver, which surprised her as much as the troll.

  The troll stopped. Eyes asquint, jaw jutting, her tusks nearly vibrating with shock, she glared at Snail. Then she put a meaty hand to the baby strapped to her chest. His bottom half was wrapped in an oddly familiar striped diaper.

  “Huldra?” Snail said, suddenly recognizing the troll.

  “Midwife?” the troll said, a bit whiny, like a toddler deprived of a sweet.

  “Remember the troll’s pledge!” Snail snapped, surprised—at herself, at the troll. “No eating a midwife. Especially not your midwife.”

  Stopping any troll in mid-hunt is always a chancy thing, even a troll one knows well. Even a troll a midwife had recently helped to birth a baby. Even then.

  And of course there was Aspen to consider. A prince. A knight. Most ballads about knights and trolls ended badly. In fact, now that Snail thought about it, all ballads about knights and trolls ended badly. Her heart was thudding out danger warnings so hard in her chest she was afraid it would burst through the fragile shield of skin. When she’d seen Aspen on the ground and the troll heading in his direction, she hadn’t given fear or danger a moment’s thought. She’d suddenly had the strength of several grown men. Midwives called it a knighthood flush, as females in labor—whatever size and kind they were—suddenly found themselves filled with courage and strength.

  Though now, in this moment, the only thought she had was, Prince . . . troll . . . this isn’t going to end well. Think, Snail, think.

  “Yes,” she said carefully, “I’m your midwife, and he . . .” She stepped to one side and pointed dramatically at Aspen, who was just starting to sit up, though he looked as if he’d had the breath knocked out of him, and his face was ashen. “He’s my apprentice. A midwife’s apprentice. You remember him, don’t you? He helped at your baby’s birth. So you can’t eat him, either.” She was relieved that he wasn’t already dead, but not yet convinced he wouldn’t be troll breakfast soon.

  “Well, I will eat him!” said the troll, pointing behind Snail.

  Slowly, so as not to alarm Huldra, Snail turned her head. The troll was pointing to Professor Odds, who stood there looking a bit amused and not at all alarmed.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Snail said, turning back to the troll. “He’s a wizard and could bring up the sun before you took two steps toward him. And then—well, you know what would happen then.” She shrugged dramatically. Everyone knew what happened to trolls if the full-risen sun shone on them.

  “I turn to stone.” Having offered that sentence without any sign of fear, Huldra suddenly flung herself down on her knees, careful not to fall forward onto the baby, but she was so mammoth and so heavy, her weight opened a small fissure beneath her. Now she looked unbearably sad. “I wish I was stone,” she said. “Hungry. So hungry.”

  Fully awake, Aspen was still white-faced and now looking confused. Snail wondered briefly if he’d landed on his head. She glanced at Odds, who seemed to be waiting to see what would unfold next. Somewhere from the forest came the sounds of unicorns munching on the undergrowth, obviously convinced the danger had passed.

  Simpletons! Snail thought. Troll danger is never over . . . till it’s daylight. She had no idea where the dwarfs were now. Or Maggie Light.

  Never neglect the mother, came Mistress Softhands’ voice in her ear. It was good advice, even if the mother was an unhappy, hungry troll.

  Or maybe especially then! Snail thought.

  She put her hand on baby Og, strapped to Huldra’s chest. With the troll on her knees, Snail could reach that far up, though she had to stand on her tiptoes to do so. “What’s wrong, mother? Why have you left the cave?”

  At that Huldra began to weep the way only trolls can: great globular tears inching from her eyes and grey snot like the trail of a real snail, only giant-sized, tracking from her nose till it was stopped—barricaded, Snail thought—by her chin bristles. Then the troll took a deep breath and howled.

  With that, baby Og began to howl, too.

  Not thinking, Snail reached out to the knot in the sling under Og’s bottom, untied it, and took him in her arms. He was scarcely ten days old and already as big as the bogie toddlers that kept the Unseelie castle free of mice. And cats.

  With an effort, she began to rock him till he stopped crying at last and started giggling instead. Then he fell immediately to sleep with a hiccupping snore. The striped diaper was wet all the way through.

  “Snail,” came a whimper from behind her.

  Without turning, she hissed, “Shhhh. Don’t say another word, Prin . . . er . . . ’prentice, or I’ll personally feed you limb by limb to this poor starving troll.”

  There was a deep, darkening silence behind her. She couldn’t tell if Aspen was angry, frightened, or dead. But at least he didn’t speak again.

  “Now . . .” She said the single word in the calmest way she could, though she felt neither calm nor sure it would work. Her next words were hardly calm at all, tumbling out of her like a river in full spate. “The apprentice is fine, the baby is fine, tell me what’s troubling you, Huldra. And then we will find you a cave or a cabin nearby where you can sleep during the day.” She stopped and took a deep breath, ready to say more.

  “Not sleep. Hungry. No food. Two days.” Huldra’s big hands clutched her belly.

  “You must eat for the baby’s sake,” Snail told her. How often she’d heard Mistress Softhands tell a mother that. Well, actually three times, she thought. The first had been an ostler’s wife who had the after-birthing wobbly-cobbles. The second, a drow’s wife upset that she’d only had four babies and not six, which meant her husband would beat her and possibly eat her or, failing that, throw her out of the nest. And third, a pretty young Border Lord’s wife who wanted to get up out of her birthing bed to go riding with her man.

  “There is no food for me. No . . .”

  “Why doesn’t . . .” Snail tried for a moment to remember Huldra’s mate’s name, but gave up. “Why doesn’t your mate hunt for you?”

  Even as she said it, she recalled the pitifully small rabbit he’d come home with when she and Aspen had just helped Huldra give birth. Surely the mate wasn’t much of a hunter.

  “Ukko is . . .” And then Huldra’s blubbing began anew, only this time, tears and snot fell like a storm threatening to drown Snail, baby, and all.

  As Huldra rambled in between wiping her nose with an increasingly messy sleeve, Snail listened and thought about next steps. And she kept bouncing the baby to make sure he stayed asleep.

  “Those jerker berserkers, those skirted scourges, those sword-waving hordes, those roguish brogue-ish monsters . . .” Huldra said.

  Suddenly Snail saw it: The baby is diapered in a swatch ripped from a kilt. Huldra is talking about the Border Lords. Of course.

  Just as Snail had that realization, Huldra’s story stumbled out of her gigantic mouth. She’d been in the forest doing an evening of berrying, the baby safe in Ukko’s arms back in their cave, when a troop (“Scouting party,” Aspen amended from behind Snail, but she didn’t take time to admonish him) must have stumbled onto the cave.

  “Probably drawn there by the smell of a haunch of venison cooking on an open fire,” Aspen whispered.

  “Hush!” This time she turned to warn him. But he was probably right. The cave in the Hunting Grounds where the trolls lived gave off magical odors to suit any prey’s desire. She’d smelled cabbage soup, and Aspen had smelled roasted nuts and honey. “Let her continue. We don’t have all night.” Or at least the troll didn’t.

  “So the Border Lords . . . er, the jerker berserkers found your cave, and then what happened?” Snail asked.

  Another mammoth wailing cry, and then Hu
ldra said, “Ukko fought bravely, but one of the little swords . . .”

  Nothing little about those swords, thought Snail, knowing even a Border Lord had to use two hands to wield one, but didn’t say it aloud for fear of stopping the story’s flow.

  But there was no fear of that, for Huldra was now herself the river in spate and nothing was going to stop her till the tale was done. “My handsome hulking husband, the lofty love of my life, was kicked and pricked by the kilted cult and died defending our son. Our Og.”

  Aspen said, “What did you do then?” before Snail could stop him.

  “I ate them, of course.”

  Snail felt sick at the thought but worked hard at not showing it.

  “I had not time to boil them. Nor the heart for hot food. Not with dear Ukko so dead.”

  The conversation was not going the way Snail had hoped. “And then?”

  “And then I buried Ukko. . . .” Here Huldra gave another, shorter wail accompanied by more snuffles. “It was a waste of meat, of course, but troll takes too long to butcher properly. It has to hang . . .”

  “Huldra, enough. And then . . . ?”

  “And then I set out with little Og before more of that awful tribe could find us. Only . . .”

  “Only what?” Snail prompted.

  “Only I’m not the hunter Ukko was and I am so, so hungry.” She looked once more at the professor and at the two male dwarfs, who now stood on either side of him, and the female, who stood in front of him, her fists raised.

  “Don’t worry, Huldra,” Snail said, “we’ll get you something to eat.”

  “We will?” asked everyone but Huldra.

  Huldra just grinned. It was not an improvement.

  “The little folk will hunt for you,” Snail said, waving at the three dwarfs.

  Aspen shook his head and got to his feet, still a bit shaky. “They dare not. All deer in the forest belong to the king. Taking a king’s deer is called poaching and any poacher caught is immediately hanged without trial or jury or sentence. Without recourse to a legal advisor or a last meal or time to say farewell to his family.”