The Last Changeling

by Jane Yolen

  “What?” Snail screamed at him. “You knew?”

  He gaped at her. “You did not? How could you not? I mean . . .”

  “You think I was given a tutor and history lessons like some toff?”

  “Well, no but . . .”

  “You think the Unseelie spend a lot of time educating their servants and underthings?”

  “Um . . .”

  “Did you think Mistress Softhands would ever tell me that I was stolen from my real folks and put right to work?”

  He had no answer.

  “That’s how I didn’t know.”

  Aspen held up his hands in an instinctual attempt to stem the flood of angry words. It seemed to work, because when Snail spoke again it was in a lower tone.

  “So, tell me,” she said again, “what do you know about changelings?”

  Her voice might have been lower, but he didn’t think she was any calmer.

  She asked again, as if issuing a challenge to a duel. “What do you know about changelings?”

  “What is it you want to know?” he asked.

  She shrugged.

  He knew very little, but what he did know, he told her, straight out and with nothing held back, friend to . . . well, whatever.

  SNAIL MEETS HER CLAN

  As Aspen began to speak about changelings, his face turned serious, as if weighing each word and finding it wanting.

  “What is it you want to know?” he asked.

  Snail was caught short by the question. What do I want? The only answer she could come up with was that she wanted to be back to what she was before. A midwife’s apprentice with few friends, but a life ahead of me that I studied for and enjoyed. And tipsy cake. And eating leftovers in the kitchen. And . . .

  Even she had to admit it was a pretty thin list. And as for enjoying her life, well looking back, it had certainly been better than the dungeon, the threat of the dungeon master, the escape across a river of carnivorous mermen, being tied up by a hungry troll, the race ahead of two armies, and the bloody aftermath of a battle.

  It looked enjoyable in hindsight, and the truth was that she couldn’t go back. This was now, not then. Two armies still searched for her. There was no one trying to keep her safe except an odd professor, an odder singer, three dwarfs, and a useless prince.

  So I’d better learn more about this changeling thing. She leaned in toward Aspen and gave him her full concentration.

  “Changelings,” he was saying, “are human children stolen from their parents and brought into the faery world. And a simulacrum—a piece of wood made to look and act like a child, only badly—is left behind in the cradle or crib in the child’s place.”

  “I know that much,” Snail said impatiently. “But who stole me and how did I end up with Mistress Softhands?”

  “Jaunty—my tutor—said that humans are simply better at some things than either the Seelie or Unseelie folk but rubbish at magic. They are better at mathematics and as good as mountain dwarfs at the making of . . .”

  “Of . . . ?

  “Things.”

  “Things?”

  “Making gates and weaving cloth and brewing good ale and . . .”

  “Midwifery?” She could feel herself get icy cold, as if a Frost Giant had laid a hand on her heart. Not that she believed in Frost Giants. They were just bogies to frighten small children into behaving. She used to think the same of changelings.

  He nodded. “All kinds of doctoring. For the sorts of illnesses that can’t be cured with spells. I do not know about midwives. Were your midwife tutors changelings?”

  “They could do spells.”

  “Then probably not.” He shook his head, but his face didn’t change, so she had no way of knowing if he was lying to her.

  Snail couldn’t tell if she was shaking because the wagon was moving or because she was all a-tremble, finally deciding it was both. “Tell me more. Tell me how I came here.”

  “I cannot say for certain.” His voice got lower as if he was ashamed of something. “I would have been only a child myself and living at the Seelie Court then.”

  “Well . . .” She could feel her face now turning hot, sure that her cheeks were suddenly ablaze. That happened with redheads. And, now that she thought of it, didn’t seem to happen to anyone truly fey. They only got whiter or pink, or looked confused, or downright angry. They didn’t carry a fire on their cheeks.

  “Well, what?” He looked truly puzzled.

  “Well, what did your tutor have to say about that?”

  He looked down at his feet, and the wagon made a sudden lurch at the same time. She saw something shift in his face, as if he had decided to lie to her and then decided it would not be a noble thing to do.

  “Jaunty,” she prompted. “Your Unseelie tutor?”

  He looked up, and his eyes almost held tears. “He said that because the Seelie folk look more like humans than most Unseelie, we are the ones who go into the human world and steal the children. To order. Only he didn’t say steal. As I recall, he said collect. The Seelie folk collect the human children and bring them to a central tower, and then when there are enough to make it worth their while, the Seelie collectors take the changelings into the Shifting Lands and sell them to . . .”

  Snail interrupted. “Sold? I was sold?”

  He nodded miserably.

  “How do you know. . . ?” And then she stopped herself. Aspen, as the Hostage Prince, probably made much the same journey. She could ask him, she supposed. It might hurt him to remember.

  And then she shook her head. This isn’t about him. It’s about me. Only she had no memory of being taken, sold, exchanged. The hurt, whatever it had been then, was suddenly here. Now. And it wasn’t a hurt at all but a blazing anger.

  “You know,” he said suddenly, “it was actually better that way than the Unseelie going into the human world. I mean, some of them get hungry and eat . . .”

  She turned away, furious with him. He just didn’t think that anyone beneath his rank might have feelings. That they might have had parents who loved them, mourned them.

  Over her shoulder she said, “Better that collecting didn’t happen at all. Just leave me alone, your royal high mucky-muck. Go away. I just don’t want to talk to you anymore.”

  She lay back down on the bed and pulled the covers over her head, counting slowly to a hundred.

  Very slowly.

  When she was done, she peeked out and saw that she was alone in the room.

  “Good,” she said. Though she knew it wasn’t. Not really.

  • • •

  THERE WAS A dress laid out on the bed. Snail doubted Aspen had left it there.

  Maggie Light probably had. She was glad to change because her own clothes were crusted with the blood of all the wounds she’d treated.

  She pumped water from the small cistern and washed her hands and face and the parts of her arms that were blood-soaked as well. She’d never been as dirty as this that she could remember. Midwives simply weren’t allowed to get dirty. And after every birth, they got to soak for a long time in a tub of heated water. Even in the dungeon she hadn’t been this filthy. Nor helping Huldra birth baby Og. Nor climbing the chimney while trying to escape from the Seelie castle. Nor traipsing through the fields and the bog. Nor . . .

  She dried herself with a cloth hanging on a hook by the cistern and put on the dress. It was made of a soft, dark blue cotton that matched one of her eyes, with green threads shooting through the sleeves that matched the other eye. There was an apron, too, not striped like her apprentice apron, but a lighter shade of the blue and somewhat stiffer. Plus a pair of blue hose.

  Nothing could be done about her shoes.

  She took the brush that had been set out on a small table next to the cistern and attacked her hair until she beat it into submission. At last
she was ready to go outside.

  • • •

  WHAT GREETED HER was a surprise. During her long sleep, the wagon must have come an enormous distance. They were now in a kind of large bowl set between high mountains.

  In the bowl, buzzing like honey ants in a broken mound, were hundreds—maybe even thousands—of folk who, she had to assume, were changelings just like her.

  She could see some of them were bandaged, and as she walked amongst them, they waved and shouted out their thanks. But others seemed untouched by any battles and hardly noticed her passage.

  Cook-fires glowed all around. And families—or what passed for families, for she realized that many of the groups consisted of young people just her age—were busy cooking in great metal pots, not the usual pottery pans that the fey used for their meals.

  The smells were enticing. She thought there might be onions and wild garlic and herbs for seasoning. But what meat in the pot she couldn’t begin to guess. Venison or boar or rabbit or squirrel or . . .

  She checked that the unicorns were still tethered close to Odds’s wagon and was relieved to see them there, comfortably grazing on the grass.

  Too new at being a changeling—a human she supposed she should call herself—she found she was shy about speaking to any of the families. Just nodded and smiled.

  She started to turn back to Odds’s wagon when a girl a bit younger than she came up, equally shyly, and held out her hand.

  “Will you eat with us, physician?” she asked.

  Snail thought for a moment that the girl was talking to someone else, someone behind her. But when the girl took her hand, Snail had to admit the invitation was for her.

  She resisted saying that she was no physician, only a midwife’s apprentice. She’d already brought one baby—one very big baby—into the world. And she had bandaged many a battle wound, saving limbs and saving lives as best she could. She supposed she was, in fact, some kind of physician/midwife now. Mistress Softhands often said, “A midwife is born in the birthing room as surely as the baby.”

  Meaning, she now realized, that until you have been through the worst of it on your own, you cannot really claim the title. And both the troll baby’s birth and the battle doctoring she’d done on her own. Learning as she went, and making up the rest.

  Bowing her head quickly, she said, “I would be honored. Call me Sofie.” It was the first thing that came into her mind.

  The girl head-bobbed back.

  Sofie. That was something she was never called, though it was her name. Mistress Softhands had used it once or twice. But it was as if Snail—the Snail who was awkward and uncomfortable and accident-prone—had died in the battle, the Seelie War, and Sofie had been reforged in its fire.

  Sofie. It was an odd name. Meaningless. Maybe that’s why no one in the Unseelie Court ever called her that—just Snail and Useless and You There. And, once, Duck. Though that was less a name than a call for her to get out of the way of a flying object. She hadn’t ducked fast enough and they all thought that was hilariously funny, so for a while it had become her name amongst the other apprentices.

  Duck.

  Well, she thought, I’ll have to give the name Sofie meaning. It will be my own invention. It will simply mean what I want it to mean.

  And so thinking, she went over to meet and eat with some of the members of her clan.

  ASPEN CHANGES PLANS . . . AGAIN

  They hate me, Aspen thought, looking out the wagon’s peephole at the hordes of humans in the camp. He told himself this not with sadness, but with a careful thoughtfulness, and not for the first time. He supposed that all the human changelings he’d ever met had probably hated him but had been much better at hiding it. Or he had never cared to notice. But here amongst their own, in numbers Aspen had not known existed, they had no reason to hide their feelings. And because of Snail, he now cared.

  Whenever he left the wagon, the humans sneered at him, turning their backs and talking in pointed whispers. Young men gathered in groups and stared angrily at him, and he knew it was only the stories the battle survivors told of the fire he commanded that kept them from setting upon him. Fear kept them away, kept him safe.

  But how long will that last? And if they do have at me, do I dare to wield the flame again?

  He was no longer worrying about the two courts’ wizards finding him. They would be busy with the war that had so obviously started. He guessed that if the wizards had still been searching for him, they would have appeared in the days after the battle, arriving in puffs of smoke, or flying in on giant bats’ wings, or riding fell creatures summoned from the void.

  And what would I do if they come now? Aspen wondered. He saw what happened when he drew sword or wielded flame. He could not get the cries out of his head.

  A peasant girl screaming . . . a soldier coughing blood . . . a bogle’s surprised face when an old brownie is pushed onto his pike by her ally.

  He did not know if he could ever go through that horror again.

  Aspen watched through the peephole until Maggie Light brought him a bowl of something spicy to eat. He thanked her and choked it down, though it was obviously made for a more earthy palate than his own. Would he ever eat hummingbird breast again, crispy rose petals, sugared violets? Would he ever have another cup of honey mead?

  He tried one more time to leave the wagon and speak to the humans, tell them that he wasn’t there to hurt them or rule them, he just wanted to find his friend—his human friend—and find out if she would still speak to him.

  But the men who followed him this time had cudgels and cold iron knives, and he hurried back to the wagon before they were able to get too close. No matter how they dealt with him in camp, none had yet dared to follow him into the wagon. He realized suddenly that if Odds removed his protection, he would not make it through another night. He wondered how long the professor’s good will would last.

  Or is it good will? he thought morosely. The man talked in riddles. Perhaps he thought in them as well.

  Climbing up the back end of the wagon, Aspen thought, Odds may not even know what use he has for me yet. Perhaps he sees me as a valuable piece in whatever game he is playing.

  Suddenly he had a revelation. Is that not what I have always been: a valuable game piece—for my father, for King Obs, for Jack Daw?

  It felt as if an icy hand was palm down on his back, and he wondered if cold iron was about to sever his neck.

  Perhaps, he thought, that might be the best way out. At least dead I could no longer be used by anyone.

  But his body had its own agenda—and that was to keep itself alive. Without willing it, he had already ducked through the door.

  He felt the bowser before he saw it, for it scrunched up and wrapped itself around his knees.

  “What if the professor decides I’m not that valuable after all?” He said that aloud, which caused the bowser to squeeze his knees even more, as if it was afraid to lose him.

  It was then he thought that he really had to leave. Even if he never spoke to Snail again, it was the right thing to do.

  For her sake.

  For his own.

  • • •

  ASPEN SPENT THE next day trying to have a quiet word with Snail, but she never approached the wagon. He was sure she saw him waving to her—from the back door, from the dwarfs’ driving porch, from the roof—but she never acknowledged him. Never so much as blinked before turning and walking away, usually surrounded by at least a half-dozen well-wishers.

  He finally figured out that she was sleeping at the campfires with the other humans, pointedly staying away from the wagon. In his good moments, he thought she might be avoiding Odds. But in his bad moments, he knew she was avoiding him.

  That night, he made the actual decision to leave.

  It is better that way. She has found her people and should stay with th
em. At that moment, Aspen realized that he no longer knew who his people were.

  I’m not a toff anymore, though all here would call me so. And I cannot be one of those here, for I do not know how. He made a face and told himself the bitter truth. We do not have the same blood. We do not have the same gifts. We do not . . .

  Then told himself the real truth. They would not have me anyway.

  So, if he was leaving, he would need supplies for his journey. He would need a new plan. The old one had been useless anyway. He hoped he would need no help, because he knew he would not get any.

  • • •

  FAR INTO THE night, he made his preparations. With a waterskin and the watcher’s green-and-black cloak he found stuffed under Maggie Light’s bed, a traveling pack, three days’ worth of waybread stolen carefully from the wagon’s stores plus the bow and quiver of arrows he had used to hunt the deer for the troll, he waited for the camp to settle down. There would still be sentries posted, but they would be watching for enemies approaching the camp, not leaving it.

  He would leave through the back of the wagon, which faced the nearby dense woods. Once into the woods, he could slip on the cloak and fade into the wilderness.

  And then where?

  He stopped that line of thought immediately. He only knew he had to leave. Everything else he would figure out later.

  Or not figure out.

  Shrugging, he thought, It is not as if anyone will mourn me if I wander into the wilds and die.

  He had already forgotten his earlier wish to die, and quashed those thoughts.I need to concentrate on the one obstacle left: the dwarfs.

  He wasn’t sure if they had any orders regarding him. Will they try to follow me? Stop me from leaving? Alert Odds? He had no idea.

  “Only one way to find out,” he muttered, and opened the door of the wagon.

  He was two steps out when he heard Dagmarra’s voice calling to him. “Where away, popinjay?”

  He turned slowly and looked up. Only Dagmarra sat on the driver’s perch. Perhaps her brothers were off with the humans. They seemed to have no trouble interacting with them.