The Last Changeling

by Jane Yolen

  “What?” He sounded stupid, even to himself.

  Dagmarra pulled a pipe from a pouch in her belt and began searching for a flint and tinder. “I said, where away? You seem rather well equipped for an evening stroll.”

  Having no other reply ready, he answered with the simple truth. “I do not know.”

  “Hrmmm,” Dagmarra said. She’d found flint and tinder and looked at them wistfully for a moment before not lighting her pipe. “I’ll walk with ye. I don’t like yer chances alone with the skarm drema. And your girl will sever my head if I let anything happen to you.”

  Aspen felt a strange glow at the thought that Snail would care that much. But he quashed that thought, too. Concentrate, he told himself.

  He thought about his chances of walking about the encampment without a guard like Dagmarra. They were better if she was along. But . . . if she realized he was abandoning the camp without the professor’s permission . . .

  However, he thought, it is odd that she would act as my friend of a sudden, as if caring for a child has made her motherly toward me, as well. It was a puzzle, and he set his mind to figuring it out.

  And suddenly he knew what to do.

  “I would appreciate your company,” he said, bowing politely. “But are you sure Og should be wandering about on his own?”

  “What?” Dagmarra sputtered. “He doesn’t walk yet!”

  “But I just saw him through the peephole, crawling off toward the fires. You know how babies are fascinated by fires.” He worried that the last confabulation might be a bit too much. He had no idea if babies were drawn to flames. But then, perhaps Dagmarra did not either.

  Evidently, she did not doubt him for an instant, for pipe, flint, and tinder rattled onto the wagon boards as she leapt off the far side.

  Aspen heard her thump to the ground moments later and hoped she had not injured herself; it was a far longer fall for her than it would have been for him.

  But the sound of her footsteps hurrying away from the wagon assured him that while she was clearly unhurt, he had best be long away before she discovered Og still sleeping in the wagon where she’d left him. In fact, the baby’s only danger came from the large puddle of drool he was almost certainly leaving on the pillow.

  Aspen pulled the cloak out of his pack and wrapped it around his shoulders, trying not to shudder at the thought of how its original owner had died. He could feel the shadows calling to the magic in the cloak and he didn’t resist, following their pull quickly and quietly into the dark, concealing forest.

  As he walked through the night, Aspen felt safe for the first time in days. Even though he was no night-sighted Unseelie, he was still an elf and the Seelie forests were his ancestral home. The dark was not something to fear but was as concealing as the cloak. He found easy footing and a trail that beckoned him forward.

  By the time the sun was rising, he had the feel of the ground underfoot, recognized the call of the birds, and had charted the course of the stars overhead. Only when he felt far enough away from the camp did he rest. By then, he was exhausted.

  I will take my chances, he thought. And wrapping the cloak completely around him, he crawled into the underbrush, falling quickly asleep.

  The sun was high overhead when he woke. He broke off a piece of waybread and chewed it while walking again. But oddly the sun did not seem to be moving.

  Magic, he thought, and after an hour of walking through the woods, he realized he had no idea in which direction he was going in.

  He gave a short, sharp hough through his nose. And I do not care. What does it matter?

  He thought about his meager supplies. I shall wander till my food runs out and then I shall hunt. It was as good a plan as any other.

  • • •

  AFTER HE HAD walked for another hour, the sun had begun to move again. Whatever wizards’ battle had happened was either won or lost, done or undone. But at least now he realized he was heading north.

  The forest was still thick, but he thought it might be thinning as the terrain rose, and he began to wonder what he would see when he reached the top of the long hill he’d begun to climb.

  He looked ahead but could not see what lay beyond the trees. I will know soon enough.

  A half hour later, the trees indeed thinned out, and when he reached the top of the hill he had been climbing—he was secretly relieved it wasn’t a mountain—he looked out onto a wide plain.

  A few miles to his right, he could see the track they had followed from Bogborough to the humans’ camp. There was still smoke on the horizon there. Aspen wondered if the town still burned.

  To his left, the mountains faded into the plains, and he could see the thin green line of the Welcome Hedge, though it, too, was shrouded in smoke, as if parts of it burned as well.

  But it was the plain that riveted his attention, for down below were two huge armies separated still by many miles but moving ponderously toward one another.

  The Unseelie army had finally brought his father to battle.

  Now he understood why the sun had stood so long in the middle of the sky. The wizards hadn’t been warring. They were too evenly matched for that. They had been testing the other army’s strength, its generals’ commitment to the fight, the battle readiness of the men.

  Why fight here? he wondered. Here, so far away from either kingdom’s seat of power. What brings them to this empty place to decide the outcome of the Seelie war?

  He tried to think of the advantages, the plots, the machinations that brought them to this spot, but in his heart, he knew the answer.

  Me.

  He had not escaped the notice of wizards and spies. When he cast the flames in Bogborough, the wizards had seen him. And when he’d drawn his weapon, spies had noticed him. Perhaps the cloaked man had even sent a message by pigeon or by hawk.

  Both courts, both armies, both councils of wizards had come for him. But instead of finding him, they had found one another.

  And where wizards and spies went, the armies followed.

  Now, between the two large armies, smaller groups clashed, looking like colonies of ants from this distance.

  “Skirmishers.” He remembered Jaunty naming them in one of his history lessons. Scouts and rangers who check the ground and test the strength of the enemy lines before a battle.

  “Is their work really that vital?” he had asked.

  “They fight just to blood the foe,” the old tutor had said, somewhat wearily, “so no one has to work to reach battle fury on the morrow. Use your imagination, my prince. I know you have it in abundance.”

  But do I? he wondered, and stared at the scene below, trying to match what he was seeing with the pictures drawn on Jaunty’s battle scrolls.

  All of a sudden, Aspen understood how long it would take for the two larger bodies of fighters, most of them foot soldiers, to reach the enemy lines. The skirmishers were more mobile, swifter. They could turn and return at will. Jaunty had been absolutely right. All the skirmishers needed to do was to bloody one or two of the outliers in the army to unsettle them, make them fear what was to come.

  They will fight tomorrow, he thought, but they will remember their bloodied companions. And they will forget their order and be careless with their own lives.

  Once again, he remembered his pledge to stop this war. A prince’s pledge. Promises made in haste, Jaunty had warned him once, are most often repented in sorrow. He thought about that.

  Just a day ago he had dismissed his pledge as impossible, undoable, even foolish. But Fate or Mab’s justice or sheer stupidity had brought him to this place and time. Somehow there was a reason. There was no such thing as coincidence on this scale.

  And what was that reason?

  In a lightning moment, he knew what it was: He had to fulfill his pledge, foolish or otherwise, and there was just one night left to do it.r />
  SNAIL HEARS ODDS’S BIG SPEECH

  “He’s gone?” Snail asked. “What do you mean, gone?” She’d noticed Aspen skulking for a while on the outskirts of the campsites, then figured he’d realized no one wanted to invite him to sit for a meal or a natter, so he’d most probably settled into the wagon, in his toffy-nosed, standoffish way.

  But two days later, when the worst of her anger was behind her, and she’d decided to try and talk to him in a reasonable fashion, she couldn’t find him. She’d already circled the encampment five times and checked into the wagon at least that often, asking each guard and lookout. None had seen him, though one had grunted, “Good riddance to that elf rubbish.”

  That’s when she’d begun to worry. He was, after all, her first real and truest friend, no matter what arguments they’d had. They’d saved each other from dungeons and torture and carnivorous mermen, from hungry trolls, two armies, and . . .

  And yet when he’d told her the unvarnished truth about where she came from, she’d tried to skewer him for the messenger he was, instead of railing at the message.

  It was Dagmarra who informed her that he was, in fact, gone.

  “Tricked me, by Oberon’s beard,” the dwarf said. “Gone these two days.” She was burping little Og across her knees in the dwarfs’ bedroom. He was almost as big as Dagmarra now, and must—Snail thought—be quite a burden to carry. But Dagmarra didn’t mind. In fact, she seemed besotted with him.

  Little Og! He’ll never be little, Snail reminded herself. He’s a troll.

  Then she asked, “But where did Aspen go?” She was horrified that she couldn’t keep the whine out of her voice.

  Now Dagmarra shouldered Og to finish the burping job. The sound he made when the burp was finally dislodged was loud enough to wake anyone in the wagon, and that included the bowser, who growled loudly.

  “I don’t know, but I can guess.” Dagmarra spoke in what—for her—was a growl as well, though it was much quieter than Og’s burp.

  “Where . . . ?”

  “Back to the Unseelie Court where he belongs. As a hostage.”

  “He can’t do that, they’ll . . .” Snail’s hand went over her mouth without her willing it.

  “Kill him? As well they should,” said Dagmarra. “No one tricks me and lives!”

  “He would never go back to that awful place,” Snail said with an absolute conviction she realized she didn’t have.

  Dagmarra put the baby onto her bed. He was asleep again, with a little bead of goat’s milk falling from his lower lip instead of drool.

  Turning to Snail, Dagmarra shook her head. “He’s a prince. They do all kinds of stupid things and call it noble.”

  What the dwarf had just said seemed to fizz in Snail’s head, like fresh water drunk straight out of a waterfall. “That’s it!” Snail declared. “That’s it. He’s gone off to do the most foolish, noble thing he can think of.”

  “And what’s that, if not to give himself over to the ghastly Unseelie crew?”

  “No, no—he’s gone off to stop the entire war.”

  Dagmarra snorted through her nose, which made baby Og open his eyes and give a loud cry, before falling immediately back to sleep again. “One prince . . . one boy! How can he stop an entire war?”

  “I don’t know,” Snail said. “But I hope he succeeds.”

  Dagmarra looked at Snail strangely, then said, “You might feel different after the professor’s announcement tonight.”

  Snail knew the camp had been abuzz with guesses, though no one actually seemed to have a clue as to what Odds was going to say. But as one woman with long yellow braids piled like a crown atop her head had said, “This is the reason we’ve been called here!” On that point, all the people near her had agreed.

  Except for Snail. “Why would anything Odds says change how I feel?” But saying that aloud had made her feel stupid. Hadn’t the last thing Odds had told her—about her being a stolen human child—changed her forever?

  Now Dagmarra just shook her head. “I know yer smart, girl. I can tell, with the doctoring and all. And solving those bewitched puzzles the old man throws about. And I know yer brave, too. I’ve seen you in the battles. But don’t try to go against the professor. He thinks on a level far above the likes of us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I’ve known him my whole life. He pulled my brothers and me out of war and poverty when we were just babes. He saved us and raised us, and I’d die for him. My brothers, too.” She looked down at her pipe, then back at Snail. “But that doesna mean he’d do the same for us.”

  “That doesn’t seem fair.”

  Dagmarra chuckled. “Fair’s a human thing. Not a fey notion. You’re skarm drema for sure.” Still chuckling, she left the room.

  Snail gazed after her. I thought Odds was human, too. So why isn’t he fair? And then she wondered if she was thinking of fairness in the wrong way, through the eyes of friendship, not the eyes of the real world.

  • • •

  SNAIL WAITED THE long day, her thoughts flitting like spring birds. She worried about Aspen. He was truly clueless when it came to dealing with people, and she feared he’d gone off and gotten himself into trouble that even his princely powers couldn’t get him out of.

  I should never have ignored him, she thought. I should have left with him. I’ve been selfish and . . . Then just as quickly, she excused herself: He didn’t tell me he was leaving!

  Now her worry turned to anger and she stomped around the wagon muttering to herself until Dagmarra threatened to tie her to a chair if she woke the baby.

  So she went outside and wandered the camp for a while, but her newfound friends could sense her mood, somewhere between anger and despair, and kept their distance.

  By the time evening fell, Snail was in a truly foul temper, and hungry as well.

  Heading back to the wagon, she saw that it once again had been transformed into a stage, and she hadn’t even noticed that happening.

  “How could I not?” she asked herself. There must have been the groaning of the wagon sides as the stage went up. The clabber of the metal spider. The jabber of the humans watching.

  But she’d been on the far side of the camp, deep in her own thoughts, mired in guilt. Trying to figure out Aspen’s plans, trying to think what she could possibly say once she’d caught up with him.

  Because she had to find him. Had to tell him that they were friends no matter what.

  She looked again at the stage.

  This time there were no actors up there, no Aspen in his princess dress or Dagmarra in her princely outfit, or the dragon with its drooping wings. This time only Professor Odds stood at the front. He wore a scholar’s robe, and it made him look somehow regal. When he held out his arms for silence, the crowd complied, and Snail felt herself go quiet as well.

  “Well met, good people,” Odds said. He spoke normally, but his voice filled the clearing, and the people around Snail muttered back, “Well met.”

  Snail alone was silent, arms crossed over her chest.

  “We are called mud-folk, changelings, lowest of the low,” Odds said, then paused a beat. “They say we are peasants, servants, slaves, born that way and deserving of nothing else.” He paused another beat.

  The crowd held its collective breath.

  “We are not.”

  For once he’s not speaking in riddles, she thought, and wondered if he’d written this speech out beforehand or was speaking from the heart.

  That presumes, she thought, that he has a heart!

  She could see the people in the audience nodding with the rhythm of his words. They were definitely understanding what he was telling them. And something more. It was as if he was casting a spell over them, but he’d told her he’d no skill with magic.

  Maybe he lied.

  “W
e call ourselves human even if we have only tasted—however briefly—the untainted air of our homeland.” He lifted his head as if he could smell the human world on the wind. “But we are more than that.” He looked back at the crowd. “We are skarm drema.”

  All around her Snail heard the humans mumble the name, skarm drema. The hairs on her arm tingled. There were unbidden tears in her eyes.

  It has to be magic, she thought, furiously wiping the tears away.

  As if unaware of how his words were working, Odds kept speaking. “That’s what the dwarfs call us. ‘Free ones.’ For each of us has drawn at least one free breath in our lifetime.” He looked around and drew in a huge breath.

  The crowd did the same.

  Even Snail found herself taking a big breath, filling her lungs with the air of freedom. As soon as she realized what she was doing—what Odds was doing to her—she exhaled sharply.

  “But that,” Odds said, “is not enough. Not enough for me!” His fists were clenched now, and he shouted the next line at the audience. “Is it enough for you?”

  “No!” the crowd shouted back, and Snail shouted with them, caught up again in the injustice of it all.

  Dragged from my home, she thought bitterly, taken to another land and enslaved . . . She stopped, afraid that Odds’s spell had really caught her now. She shook her head as if to dislodge any magic there, but she knew, deep down, that it was not magic. Aspen had essentially told her the same thing. She was hearing true words, spoken well.

  Is that the power humans have?

  Odds raised his hands and the crowd quieted once more. “We are Free Ones in mind. Tonight we shall become Free Ones in body as well.”

  The woman with the yellow braids shouted, “How?” at the stage, and others cried out, “It’s impossible!”

  Odds frowned at the naysayers before smiling benevolently down at the rest of the crowd. “Of course it’s impossible. They have armies and magic and power beyond our imagining. If we try to attack the Seelie Court, their wizards can curse us and their warriors will pierce us with arrows. If we attack the Unseelie Court, the Border Lords can crush us, their bogies can eat us, and King Obs will decorate his walls with whatever is left over.” He hung his head dramatically and waited for the audience to settle.