The Last Changeling

by Jane Yolen

  “That is . . . um . . . great.”

  Jaunty smiled at him. If he meant it to be comforting, it missed by about six teeth’s worth.

  “You have truly never understood what being a scholar means, my dear boy.” He shambled toward the tent flaps. “It means finding the truth and speaking it, no matter the consequences.” He slid halfway through the flaps, then turned back. “Stay hidden, Prince Aspen Leaf. I shall return anon.” And then he was gone.

  Jaunty had ever called Aspen that when he was particularly pleased with him as a student. Somehow Aspen found it comforting that Jaunty, at least, had not changed. But he was suddenly exhausted beyond reckoning. He sat down on the cot and tried to remember the last time he’d slept. The camp was quieting as the Red Caps had obviously finished their preparations and had begun waiting. He wondered how long before they were called forth for their part in the coming battle.

  According to his brother, waiting was the most common soldier’s weapon. He recalled how fidgety he had been before being collected as the Hostage Prince. Not quite seven years old. His brother had come into his room and said, “Think of yourself as a Seelie soldier.”

  Aspen had whined, “I have no weapon. I am just waiting.”

  And his brother had said offhandedly—and it was the last thing he had said to Aspen before the delegates taking him to the Unseelie Court had arrived—“Soldiers learn how to wait. It is their most effective weapon, and their most dangerous.”

  So I wait, Aspen thought. What else can I do? Besides, if Jaunty reaches the king, perhaps there will be no battle at all.

  Imagining that outcome, Aspen permitted himself a small smile. He thought about lying down and resting, but perhaps that was what his brother had meant about the danger.

  If Jaunty settled things with Obs, he would once again be the Hostage Prince and could sleep in relative peace for the rest of his life, be it short or long.

  It was the first time he actually realized that stopping the war would most likely come at the price of him returning to Obs’s keep.

  I am not ready to lose my freedom, he thought, suddenly afraid, even desperate. For a moment he imagined leaving the tent, heading back into the forest, though it would mean remaining on the run. And it would compromise Jaunty’s life as well. So, he quickly quashed that coward’s thought.

  I pledged to do whatever it takes to stop the war. I cannot go back on that pledge.

  As soon as he thought the word war, it sounded as if one started right outside the tent. Scampering to the flaps, he pulled one aside the tiniest bit and peered out. A large contingent of wolf-riders flying the red-splotch banner of King Obs was rushing into camp and heading for the king’s tent.

  The king’s personal guards! I wonder what they are doing here.

  The Red Caps clambered around, blocking Aspen’s view, but he thought he saw the guards carrying a body into the king’s tent.

  Moments later Jaunty shuffled into his own tent, looking even more stooped than when he’d left.

  “Did you speak to the king?” Aspen asked. “What has happened?”

  Jaunty shook his head. “An assassin’s arrow. In the back. The skin around the wound was blue, reeked of cinnamon.”

  “Cinnamon?” Aspen was confused. “And that means . . . ?”

  “For Mab’s sake, boy, did you not listen the days we discussed poisons? It was Witch Apple. There will be no recovery.”

  “Poison!” His head roiled with memories. The dungeon master dead, the two assassins chasing him through the dungeons dead, the merman who tried to drag Snail out of the boat dead. All dead of poison.

  “King Obs dead?” he whispered.

  That huge, overbearing presence that had ruled his life for the past six years gone? The king with the platter-sized right hand who swatted lesser fey dead as others would a fly? So quickly. Without fanfare. Without hand-to-hand battle. Without the noble gesture. He tried to believe it, failed, tried again.

  Jaunty nodded.

  “But . . . but . . . but . . .” Aspen sputtered. Suddenly he knew why he could barely speak. Obs had been his captor, but he had also been his only father for years. A father he largely hated and feared, but a father nonetheless. Aspen felt a hole open in his chest, and he wasn’t sure how to fill it.

  Mind racing, Aspen sighed. He would mourn Obs later. Or not. “Surely the queen will listen to you? Can you go to her . . . ?”

  Jaunty looked at him strangely. “Oh, you have been away and never heard.”

  “Heard what?”

  “The queen died in childbirth. The infant heir is now our liege lord.”

  “Oh.” It took Aspen a moment to make the connection, see the pieces fall into place. The pieces that Old Jack Daw had laid on the board so long ago. “And his regent is?”

  Jaunty nodded, knowing that Aspen had already guessed the answer. “Old Jack Daw.”

  Aspen stood speechless. Old Jack Daw had planned all of this: the war, the queen’s death, the king’s death. The baby will never reach his majority either, I suppose. Jack did not just want war—he wanted the whole kingdom. And, Aspen chewed on the bitter truth, now he has it.

  “Fly, young Ailenbran,” Jaunty said, alarmingly calling Aspen by his Seelie name. “Fly as far away as you can and never return. This land is lost to you now. I do not know where you shall find another.”

  Nor do I, Aspen thought, but could not bring himself to say it aloud.

  Jaunty checked to see if the way was clear, then held up the back tent flap. Aspen stumbled out in a daze. Pulling the hood of his cloak over his head, he started trudging his way back up the hill under the cover of the trees.

  SNAIL MAKES A DECISION

  Snail turned over on the bed and woke slowly, disoriented and a bit muzzy and buzzy in her mind, as if a hive of bees had taken residence there. For a long moment she couldn’t figure out where she was, and then when she had some of it figured out, she was alarmed.

  She sat up too quickly and then felt so dizzy she lay back down again and reconstructed the last minutes she could: the search for Aspen, Odds’s strange speech, a hand over her mouth, and a voice . . .

  “Awake at last.”

  No, Snail thought, not that voice.

  In fact, that voice belonged to Dagmarra, who was sitting on the bed across the room from her.

  Snail had turned to look at the dwarf as Og—also on the bed—began to roll toward her, a dangerous thing except that Dagmarra put out a hand to stop him.

  “How did I get here?” Snail asked. That was the part she couldn’t remember.

  “Why, Maggie Light brought you. Said you were exhausted from all the work you did around the camp, and getting little sleep out there, so she’d decided . . .”

  “No!” Snail said, now remembering. “Maggie Light drugged me or something.” She almost had it, and then it was gone again. Without thinking, she rubbed her right hand over her mouth and brought the back of her hand to her nose. There was the slightest odor of pine and honey. It was the smell that brought everything back into focus.

  She sat up again, but carefully this time. “Said she was made . . .” She hesitated because she wanted to get it right. “She was made to do as she was told.”

  “That old excuse,” Dagmarra said. “She hauls it out whenever she finds what she has to do in the slightest bit distasteful.”

  It was not Maggie Light’s excuse but the sourness in Snail’s mouth that was distasteful, but she didn’t remark upon it. Instead she said, “I was looking for Karl.”

  “The prince? You know he’s been gone two days already. And good riddance, I say.”

  “How can you say that after what he did for Huldra and Og!” Dagmarra bristled at her tone, but Snail didn’t care. “He fought for them, hunted for them, risked his life for the child you now raise!”

  “He did fight well,
” Dagmarra agreed, none too graciously.

  “More than that. He fought nobly.” Snail was surprised that tears were running out of her eyes as quickly as if they were late for appointments. “I have to find him.”

  Dagmarra grumbled something. Looked uncomfortable.

  “What? What did you say?” Snail said.

  “I hate it when girls cry,” Dagmarra said. “It’s just what people expect. Stop it and I’ll think of something. For you, if not for him.”

  Snail snuffled up her tears, wiped her face with a sleeve. “Done,” she said.

  Dagmarra took out her pipe and, while she didn’t smoke it when inside the wagon, she sucked on it. The sound was somehow soothing. “With three different armies tromping about, you won’t be able to walk there,” she said at last. “Wherever there is.”

  “Well, I sure can’t fly,” Snail said. It came out angrier than she meant.

  “But the bowser can,” said Dagmarra. “Which is why we keep him here, chained inside the wagon. Trouble is not to get him flying, it’s to get him flying where you want him to go. He’s got a mind of his own.”

  “The rug is a he?”

  Dagmarra nodded.

  “How do you know?”

  “Well, that’s a wee bit tricky. First you—”

  “Wait,” Snail said, “he flies?”

  Dagmarra nodded again. “His mother was a simple rag rug but his father was a flying carpet. The main problem is, he doesn’t like females.”

  Snail thought about after the battle, when the bowser seemed to take comfort from her presence after all the terrifying noise. “I’ll manage.”

  “We’ll be needing Maggie Light for this,” Dagmarra told her.

  “But she was the one who . . .”

  “Without her help, you have no chance.”

  “Well there’s always the chance that she’ll tell Odds.”

  “You’ll have to take that chance,” Dagmarra told her. “It’s the only one you’ve got. Here, watch the baby, I’ll get Mags.”

  Snail sat on the bed next to Og, who slept restlessly, his legs twitching, his thumb continually seeking his mouth yet never quite finding it.

  Snail put a hand lightly on his back to keep him still, and counted the seconds until Dagmarra came back with Maggie Light. It took a count of five hundred sixty-seven. Each second felt like the toll of the castle bell when a member of the royal family died.

  When she saw them, Snail stood up. Og began to roll about the bed, which made Dagmarra rush to his side.

  Snail glared at Maggie Light, but she shrugged it off.

  “I would be sorry, but I cannot,” Maggie Light said. She continued without pause. “Come into the other room, Sofie-Snail, and we will set the bowser free. You do that, and he may even let you on his back.”

  Snail hesitated. “Will you tell the professor what I plan to do?”

  “I will have to,” Maggie Light said. “It is how I am made. But not soon. I have an internal clock I can dismantle for a bit until he notices it and sets me aright. That can give you several hours’ start. It may be enough.”

  It was the repetition of the word made that finally penetrated Snail’s fog.

  Made? Snail thought. Does she really mean she’s a made thing? Not a human or fey woman at all, but like the mechanical spiders and the various strange tools on Odds’s desk? Suddenly—like the puzzle Odds had set her to take apart and put together again—everything fell into place.

  “I understand you must do as Odds tells you,” she told Maggie Light. “But when you act on your own, you have more caring in you than many a true person.”

  “Maybe that is because the professor made me in the image of his mother,” Maggie Light said. “See?” She held up her arms and the draped sleeve fell away. In her armpit there was a stamped name. It began with an M. “Her name was Margaret Lightson. She was a singer and died young. I will never die. Though I may run down. Or rust.”

  “What’s rust?” Snail asked.

  “A natural process in which iron turns to—”

  “You are made of iron? But . . .”

  “Only my armature,” Maggie Light said.

  Snail was confused. Maggie Light’s arms looked perfectly fine to her. But before she could say so, Maggie Light continued.

  “Thanks really go to Dagmarra. Her arguments about helping you have been persuasive.” Maggie Light looked over at the dwarf, who had settled back on the bed, one hand now on Og’s belly to steady him.

  “What did she say?” asked Snail.

  “That we women have to be for one another when no one else will be for us. And that includes the professor and both of Dagmarra’s brothers.”

  • • •

  THEY WENT INTO the next room, where the twins stood guard over the bowser. The rug growled when Snail came close, and so she retreated. But only as far as the door.

  Maggie Light spoke a poem about flying and compassion and something else. Or it might have been about freedom. Not that the words actually said any of that specifically, but the words under the words did. Or at least that was how it seemed to Snail.

  The way is long, the night is deep,

  The hills are high, the valleys steep,

  And you have promises to keep,

  Be not a liar.

  The day is short, the rider light,

  The war is sharp, the battle tight,

  The need is great, the moment right,

  My trusty flier.

  The bowser shook itself all over, like a dog, and the growl seemed to lessen just a bit.

  A bit is better than a bite, Snail thought.

  “Come over here now,” Maggie Light called to Snail.

  She came, but cautiously.

  The bowser roused himself as if to examine her. She could see his mouth, the teeth now carefully shielded, but he had no eyes. She wondered how he could tell who she was.

  “Rider, bowser.” Maggie Light’s voice was soft but steel. “Bowser, rider.”

  Feeling slightly foolish, Snail nodded at the rug.

  The rug didn’t nod back, but he did stop growling.

  “Sit on him, pet him,” Maggie Light said, “and tell him how beautiful he is. He is easily flattered.”

  Snail sat. The bowser felt like a rug except for the occasional ripples beneath her. Like a horse, she thought, with little runnels of fear. Or anger.

  “You are a beauty,” she whispered. “I am honored that you will let me ride with you.” “With” not “on,” she thought, is better. Makes us equals. I must remember to tell that to Aspen. If the bowser lifts me. If I find Aspen. If I do not fall off along the way.

  “Now get off and we will take the bowser outside,” Maggie said. “The front end of the wagon, not the back; less likely that the professor will see us.”

  She and Maggie and the bowser went first, the bowser hunching awkwardly along the ground. The strange twins in their long black capes were next, moving as if they were boneless. Last came Dagmarra with the drooling Og.

  Seven of us. A crowd. Snail’s worries increased. We’re sure to make a stir. This isn’t a good idea. But as it’s Maggie Light directing this play, there’s no use arguing how many actors are in it.

  “Here,” said Dagmarra, holding the baby on her shoulder with one hand and digging into her leather pocket with the other. She pulled out a handful of dandelion fluff. “For your ears.”

  Snail knew the drill by now. Quickly, she rolled the fluff into two plugs and stuffed them in her ears. Then she sat down again on the bowser, remembering to praise him profusely, for his nap, his color, his acceptance of their flight together.

  Maggie began to sing again, not for the bowser, but a song that kept any human clan folk from noticing them, with a chorus that directed, “Look down, look down, look down.”

>   Snail could just barely hear it through the earplugs and still had to work to raise her own eyes to the skies.

  Dagmarra came close and said—loud enough for Snail to hear—“Hold tight to the bowser’s fur; steer with your mind.”

  “Steer where?”

  “You will know,” Dagmarra said. “And if you do not, the bowser likely will.”

  Snail lay down on her stomach, stretching to her full length on the bowser and grabbing handfuls of his fur with her fingers, all the while saying her praises of the rug’s beauty, his good sense and the sweetness of his temper (she hoped), as well as his generosity in letting her ride on his back. At least, she thought, I hope this is his back.

  The first lift upward so startled her, she almost fell off. She yanked at the fur, and the bowser showed his teeth to her. They were right next to her face.

  Fearing the bowser would buck her off like an angry horse, she loosened her grip slightly, but didn’t dare let go. She didn’t dare look down, either, but pressed herself even closer to the bowser, if that was possible, burying her face in his fur. He smelled clean and soapy and made her think of Aspen, whose task it had been to wash the rug.

  • • •

  AS THEY GAINED altitude, the temperature began to drop and Snail was almost able to convince herself that her shaking was due to the cold.

  Almost.

  The bowser sailed along, occasionally dipping to the right or left to catch a passing wind-stream. Snail could feel the change in his speed at those moments and a kind of unspoken joy rushed through her.

  Soon she felt comfortable and safe enough to look about to the left and right whenever they flew along the valleys.

  Eventually, she even enjoyed leaning over the edge of the bowser and looking straight down, catching her breath at the beauty that lay below. She loved it when they followed the silver ribbon of a river that seemed to wind on forever. And loved it when they skimmed the tops of trees, startling battalions of birds from their nests.

  She discovered she adored passing through the wispy, low clouds on the mountains. And once, banking near a high crag, she saw an eagle in its aerie, and the bowser flew close enough so she could have put out a hand and snatched a feather but didn’t dare.