The Last Changeling

by Jane Yolen

  Finally, having demolished his own argument, he nodded his agreement.

  Odds looked at him strangely, as if he had expected a different reaction. Then he went on. “Both our musicians and a number of our players rode on ahead after our final show. So we are one actor short for our production of Eal, Ollm, and Fydir.”

  Aspen was familiar with the famous play about Princess Eal, the dragon Fydir who kidnaps her, and the brave Prince Ollm who rescues her.

  “I thought final production means—well—final.”

  “We’d brought along enough foodstuffs to get to our destination without performing again,” said Odds. “But we weren’t trolling for a troll. I never wanted to lose control like that again, thank you very much. I—”

  Aspen took a chance and interrupted. “I thought that Eal, Ollm, and Fydir is a three-person play. Surely you have enough people in the wagons—what with Maggie Light and the dwarfs and the twins and . . .”

  “When I said ‘a number of our players rode on ahead,’ the number I was thinking of was ‘most.’”

  “And the others?” Aspen was not going to let go of it.

  Professor Odds sighed. “The others are needed to keep the crowds in order, do the music, take tickets, guard the wagons.”

  “So you want me to play Prince Ollm?”

  “An obvious choice.”

  “I am not trained in the acting arts, but I think—”

  “But not a possible choice,” Odds interrupted. “That role is taken.”

  “By whom?”

  “Dagmarra.”

  “Oh.”

  “You could try to convince her to play a different part.”

  Aspen thought about that. “Has anyone ever tried convincing Dagmarra of anything?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did that go?”

  “I’m certain they’re fully recovered by now.”

  Aspen shuddered. “The dread dragon, Fydir?” he said hopefully, then remembering two lines from the play spoken by the dragon, added,

  I bluster, I fester, I blow,

  and down your castle will go!

  Usually children of the Border Lords cheered at those lines. Sometimes, as a boy, Aspen had cheered along with them.

  Odds shook his head.

  “Maggie Light—”

  “Doesn’t act.”

  “Snail could—”

  “She has a different task.”

  “The twins?” Aspen said desperately. “The dwarf brothers?”

  “Don’t be frivolous.” Odds handed Aspen the sheaf of papers he’d been holding. “The princess’s lines are here. But they should be here—” He pointed to Aspen’s head. “Before midday on the morrow. Which, judging by the moon, has already become today. It always does, you know.”

  “Memorize the lines by midday?”

  Odds nodded. “And Maggie Light will fit you for your costume. So you will be more than fit to play.”

  Aspen shuddered at the thought, which made Odds smile.

  “Come, Your Serenity,” he said. “You’ll finally be dressed appropriately to your station. Meet Maggie in her room.” He pointed to the door, then turned away, a clear signal that the meeting was over.

  Aspen left through the indicated door, and walked into Maggie’s chamber, where she had already laid out a selection of frilly, brightly colored fabrics for him to choose from, knowing he would have agreed to play the role.

  “Breeches and a shirt from the orange?” he asked hopefully.

  Maggie Light smiled prettily. “The orange it is.”

  They both knew it would not be breeches she planned to sew.

  SNAIL TALKS TOUGH

  Maggie Light found Snail a while later. She was sitting curled up on Maggie’s big bed, her head in her hands.

  “Do you wish to speak with me?” Maggie Light asked.

  Snail was silent.

  “Or will you hear what I have to say?”

  If anything, Snail was even more silent. No permission given for or against.

  I’m no longer here, Snail told herself. I’ve already left. Or at least I will leave once it’s light. She knew that courage was one thing, stupidity another. And the definition of stupidity would be wandering around in a forest at night all by herself with two armies, Border Lords, and a hungry troll close by.

  “Though you may not think it now,” Maggie Light continued as if permission had been given, “the professor is a great man, greater than you can ever know.”

  Snail houghed through her nose, sounding, she knew, like one of the unicorns.

  “He is willing to make the hard but necessary decisions,” Maggie Light said.

  “Like telling you to sing the cloaked man to his death?” Snail bit her lip and thought, I didn’t mean to talk to her, or to anyone. Just get up at first light and leave.

  “And to let the troll eat the spy as well,” Maggie Light added.

  Snail sat up. “He didn’t!” Her voice was sharp, even shrill. “She didn’t!”

  “The professor did. The troll did.” Maggie’s face looked neither happy nor sad at what she was saying. She only looked . . . beautiful.

  “That’s . . . that’s. . . !” Snail couldn’t think of what to call it. But began to shake with anger.

  “That is the only logical decision that could have been made. Think about it, girl: We have a dead body, a prince who cannot hunt for us in the enchanted forest because he has been wounded, and not enough stores to get us to where we are going without a hungry new mother troll devouring us one at a time because she, regrettably, is hungry and has no husband or anyone else who can feed her.” She stopped, and drew a breath, though not one Snail could hear. “It is not the troll’s fault or our fault or . . .”

  “It’s just wrong!” Snail said. Her indignation turning to anger, she glared at the singer.

  “It just is,” Maggie Light told her. “And only one person could make that decision quickly, decisively. The spy’s death will mean another day or two of life for Huldra and Og.”

  “And then?”

  “And then we will be at the fairgrounds and will perform and—hopefully—with a good crowd, we will make enough coins to restock from the fair merchants for the rest of our trip.”

  “But Huldra will still be with us.” She thought, I don’t really mean us, because we aren’t us anymore. The closer we get to daylight . . . “And she will still be hungry.”

  “Yes. But by then she may be able to go back to the Shifting Lands, where she lived before. Since they are not under the Seelie king’s magic, she can possibly hunt for herself and her child. Or return over the bridge to the Unseelie lands, where she can possibly find another mate.” Maggie Light smiled again. “So you see . . . many things can happen now, whereas before only one thing was possible and this the professor understood as no one else could.”

  “All I see,” Snail said, standing, “is that no good comes out of bad.”

  She walked to the door that led to the next room, away from Professor Odds’s room. Opening the door, she turned and said over her shoulder. “And following one wickedness with another is bad addition.”

  “Bad addition,” the bird squawked from the next room. “Two wrongs! Bad addition!”

  As she went through, she heard Maggie Light call after her, “There are many things more in mathematics than addition.” Snail didn’t know if she was answering her or the parrot. “That is why the professor is the one who makes the hard decisions.”

  She might have said more, but by then Snail was no longer listening.

  • • •

  SNAIL FOUND ASPEN dozing in the twins’ room, lying on top of the golden rug. Without disturbing him, she glanced at his arm, but there was no blood soaking through the bandage. Someone had obviously made a good job of it, so she left h
im to sleep. It was the best medicine at this point.

  In the next room, where the dwarfs’ small beds were crowded together, the bird called out to her, “Pay the troll.”

  “We’ve already paid the misbegotten troll several times over,” she told it. “We’re out of coins. Out of patience. And out of time.”

  As if happy with that answer, the bird put its head under its wing and promptly went to sleep.

  • • •

  ONCE OUTSIDE, SNAIL found the dwarf brothers sitting toe to toe on the raised platform, pipes in their mouths. Over their heads circled little curls of smoke that resembled dragons with tails in their mouths.

  On the far side of the meadow, the unicorns still grazed noisily. Near them, Huldra and Dagmarra were walking along, taking turns playing with baby Og, throwing him up in the air between them. His laughter rang out like bells.

  The whole scene—unicorns, the happy mother troll, her new friend, the gurgling baby—threw Snail into another fit of anger. No one seemed to care that something awful, something truly terrible, had just happened there.

  Nobody but me, she thought.

  Grumpily, she went back into the wagons. There was nothing to do but go to sleep. She was sure to have bad dreams.

  This time, as she passed by Aspen, the bowser growled and showed about a hundred sharp teeth.

  She growled back at it so ferociously, it shut its mouth.

  The prince stirred, opened his eyes, mumbled her name.

  “Oh, go back to sleep,” she said sharply.

  Her tone really woke him up.

  “Snail,” he told her, “we cannot stay here longer. It is too . . . too . . .”

  “Too awful.” She knelt quickly and actually checked Aspen’s wound this time. It was already scabbing over and there seemed to be no redness or infection at all.

  “Too dangerous,” he whispered. “What if Odds has Maggie sing us into a final sleep next?”

  “She wouldn’t do that.”

  “She told me she does not question what Odds tells her to do, she just does it.”

  Snail couldn’t disagree. She already knew that was the truth. “Go back to sleep. The sleep of the brave.” Then she added, “I’ll sleep as well. We’re both too exhausted to think properly right now. We’ll make plans in the morning.”

  Our plans, she thought. Suddenly, it had a nice ring.

  ASPEN AND THE BEST-LAID PLANS

  Aspen woke in pain. His arm hurt from the sword wound. His head hurt from his fall. His knuckles hurt from the one punch he’d thrown that had connected.

  I think the rest of me hurts just so as not to be left out.

  He got to his feet while trying not to move any appendage too swiftly nor rock his head about in any way. It was made difficult by the fact that the wagon was in motion. But he must have been successful because he didn’t immediately fall back over.

  On the bed next to him lay a formal gown in orange with pink trim. In his size.

  “Oh,” he said. “Ow.”

  Staring at it made his head feel worse, so he stumbled from the room. He had no destination in mind at first; he just wanted to get away from the awful dress. But when he found himself at the front of the wagon, he realized that he was hoping to find Snail. He knew she liked to take the air with the dwarfs up front whenever the wagon was moving. And though it was still dark, they were already moving forward.

  Suddenly, Aspen remembered why he wanted to see Snail and have a quiet word.

  She was perched on the front with the two dwarf brothers, looking refreshed from having gotten some sleep. Or from the fresh night breeze blowing off the mountains. Or maybe it was from the full moon, now almost gone behind the near hill, burnishing her face, making her look ethereal.

  Though actually, he thought, it is probably the prospect of leaving the wagon and escaping into the wilds again that has brought color back to her cheeks. At any rate, she looks far better than she did last night, when she was so drawn and pale.

  She spotted him emerging from the wagon and shouted, “Halloo!” before he could give her a silent signal to come and talk. “You having trouble sleeping, too?”

  The dwarfs looked up at her hail, and when they saw who it was, grinned at him.

  “Did you see the costume Maggie Light made you?”

  “You’ll be dressed for success,” Thridi said.

  “No skirting the issue,” Annar added.

  Aspen waited for more, and was surprised when that was all they had to say. “Come now,” he said, “I expect better from the two of you.”

  Annar gave a theatrical sigh. “It’s early yet.”

  “The professor had us up all night,” Thridi said.

  “And we’re to give over our room to the troll and her babe,” Annar told him.

  “Can’t be out in the sun or she’ll turn to stone.”

  “So we’ve had nah chance to break our fast.”

  “It’s been all fast and nah break, you could say.”

  “Or you could just say we’re hungry.”

  “Ravenous.”

  “Hungry as Huldra.”

  “And we all know how that ends!”

  “How do you mean?” Aspen asked, puzzled.

  Snail shook her head.

  “He doesna know,” said Thridi, turning to his brother.

  “He slept through the pother,” Annar added.

  Triumphantly, they said together, “The troll ate the spy!”

  “Look out, teeth, take care gums,” Annar said.

  “Down the gullet, here he comes,” Thridi finished.

  “Shut up!” Snail glared at the two of them. “You’ve big mouths for little folk!”

  Aspen gulped. “Why did the professor not stop her?”

  The dwarfs giggled. It was a high chittering sound.

  “The professor told her to do it. Said we couldn’t very well travel with a dead body; tossing it somewhere would make the discovery inevitable.” Annar grinned. “Do you like that word, brother?”

  “Inevitably,” Thridi replied.

  “He said we didn’t have the time or energy to bury the man. Besides, you couldn’t hunt for Huldra anymore, so he gave her a direct order to eat up, and make it quick,” Annar said.

  “He went down headfirst,” Thridi added. “In case you wanted to know.”

  Aspen felt sick and suddenly understood why Snail had looked so blanched and pale. The troll had eaten the cloaked man after all, and Odds was clearly not what he seemed.

  The sooner we get out of here, the better.

  He managed to control his face, but just. How do we do it?

  He wondered about that for a moment, and then suddenly had a plan.

  “You could have dinner now,” he said, “or breakfast. Snail and I will watch the unicorns for a bit.”

  The brothers looked at each other and quickly came to an unspoken agreement. Annar handed the reins to Snail and they both jumped past Aspen, who was scrambling up to the driver’s perch.

  “Back in two shakes of a bear’s tail,” Annar said.

  Aspen knew what was expected. “Bears do not have tails,” he said.

  Thridi winked at him. “We’ll be twice as quick, then!”

  The dwarfs disappeared into the wagon and Aspen sat down next to Snail.

  “We could leave now,” he whispered.

  She looked at him sharply. “Don’t be ridiculous. We can’t wander around in the dark. Annar says we’ll reach town by midday and they’ll be doing a show. We can sneak out during it.” She gasped. “Oh, but what about Huldra and Og? We can’t leave them with Odds.”

  “You must be joking!” he said.

  “I brought that baby into the world and . . .”

  “You were fine before with leaving them here.”


  “That was before I remembered my oath.”

  He was puzzled. “Your oath?”

  “My midwife’s oath.”

  “Oh that!”

  She gave him another of her glares. “So a midwife’s oath is worth less than a prince’s?”

  “Well, of course it is.”

  “Isn’t!”

  “Is!”

  Of a sudden, he realized they were squabbling like drows in a nest. He was glad the unicorns didn’t seem to need any direction to stay on the weedy track that passed for a road, because Snail was paying no attention to them at all.

  “We may have to leave them, oath or not,” he said. “We cannot feed them, and they certainly cannot hide very well.”

  “But Odds might kill them.”

  “We do not know that. But I fear we have done all we can for them and must look to our own safety now.” He glanced at the reins in Snail’s hands and then up ahead to where the road curved. “And I still think we should leave now.”

  “Why? It makes no sense to leave now.”

  “Well, Odds has cast me in the play. So we will not be able to sneak out during it.”

  Snail shrugged. “Then we’ll sneak out after the play.” She blinked twice rapidly. “Wait! The play is Eal, Ollm, and Fydir, right?”

  Aspen nodded.

  “And you’re in it?”

  He nodded again.

  “Hrmmm, you’re right. We may need to sneak out earlier. You onstage as a prince might make you entirely too recognizable.” Suddenly, she slammed her fist holding the reins on the seat beside them. The unicorns jumped nervously in their harnesses as the reins tightened unexpectedly. “How could Odds do that?”

  “Yes, um . . . exactly.” He reached for the reins. “Maybe I should . . .”

  She yanked the reins away from him and half the unicorns leaned left while the others leaned right. “Wait a moment! Odds didn’t cast you as the prince, did he? He’s far too clever for that.”