Changeling

by William Ritter

  The bushes behind the boys rustled, and they both jumped. Beyond the foliage something large was pressing toward them through the branches, huffing and chuffing as it moved.

  “Are you two coming?” Fable yelled from the opposite direction.

  Tinn swallowed. He glanced from his brother to the bushes behind them to the forest up ahead. Cole took a deep breath and jumped up onto a fallen tree after Fable. “We’re coming,” he said.

  The thing beyond the leaves was growing louder as it neared, and Tinn did not have any desire to greet it alone when it emerged. He vaulted up after his brother, and together they hurried to follow the strange girl into the strange woods.

  TEN

  Annie Burton brushed a hand along the knotty trunk of her boys’ climbing tree. She panted. She had been hanging on to the tenuous hope that the boys would be here, playing pirates or just hanging upside down from the branches. Tinn’s note had said that they would be taking a secret path all the way from their tree to the far side of the Deep Dark, and not to worry over them, and also not to be too cross about them stealing the tarts, which, he had added, was Cole’s idea.

  Annie tried to slow her breathing. A lesser mother might have been panicking just then. A mother whose nerves had not been tested by two puckish little boys for nearly thirteen years might have been a mess of anxious energy and nerves. Annie Burton gritted her teeth. Her boys did not need a lesser mother right now. They needed her.

  She scanned the area and spotted muddy footprints on the far side of the creek. Bingo. She took a deep breath. Once they were safe she could fall to pieces and rant and holler and ground them for a million years. Until then, Annie Burton was going to be strong, she was going to be tough, and she was going into the Wild Wood.

  ELEVEN

  “Hold on a minute. I need to use the lavatory,” said Tinn.

  “What’s a lavatory?” said Fable.

  “A bathroom?” said Tinn.

  Fable looked at him blankly.

  “Oh, never mind. I’m going to go behind this tree. Wait for me for just a second.”

  Tinn stepped behind a thick pine. Fable peeked her head around the other side. “Okay. What’s a bathroom?”

  “Oh! For goodness’ sake. I need to . . . you know . . . go.” He nodded downward.

  “But we said we would go together.”

  “PEE! I need to pee!”

  “Oh. Why are you hiding? I don’t mind. I pee. Everybody pees.”

  “Well, I do mind. I don’t want to pee in front of someone.”

  “I bet your brother doesn’t mind, either. Aren’t you exactly the same, anyway? It isn’t like he hasn’t seen what you look like underneath. Can I see what you look like underneath?”

  “Ack! No! Go away!”

  Fable shrugged and walked back to Cole.

  “Your brother is weird.”

  Cole shrugged. “We’ve been called a lot worse.”

  “What do people call you?”

  “Well, goblins, mostly.”

  “Why do people call you goblins?”

  “Because we are, I guess. Or one of us is. That’s the story, anyway. That’s why we need to get to the other side of the forest and find the goblin horde. One of us is a . . . well, a changeling.” It felt strange to say it out loud so matter-of-factly. He had never had to tell anyone in town the story. They all already knew as much as he did. He spent more time awkwardly avoiding talking about it because of how uncomfortable it made most of the other kids.

  “That’s neat. Which one of you is it?” asked Fable.

  “We don’t know,” said Cole. “We just know it’s one of us.”

  “How can you not know what you are on the inside?”

  “I don’t know. How does anybody know what they are? One of us is a human and one of us is a goblin. That’s all we know.”

  Fable considered this. “Maybe you’re both half-goblin and half-human. Then you’re exactly one person and one goblin put together.”

  “No, it doesn’t work like that.”

  “Yes it does. It’s called math. A half and a half and a half and a half make two.”

  “I know what math is. That’s just not how being a person works. Either you’re a person or you’re not.”

  “That’s silly. I’m lots of things at the same time. Sometimes I’m tired and excited and hungry all at once.”

  “That’s different. That’s feelings.”

  Fable leaned against a log. “So, what does being a goblin feel like?”

  Cole took a deep breath. “I don’t know. I think maybe it feels like . . .” He trailed off.

  “Do you feel like a goblin?”

  “Sometimes?” Cole sighed. “I don’t know!”

  Fable watched his expression with interest.

  “It’s like this,” Cole tried. “I don’t mean to be trouble. It’s not like I do it on purpose. Not usually. I mean—sometimes.” He felt his ears get hot as the words tumbled clumsily in his mouth. “Sometimes I get an idea, and it feels like a really good idea at the time, and so I just do it. I don’t even feel like I’m doing something bad until it’s too late. But it is a bad idea. It’s pretty much always a bad idea. And afterward I know it was a bad idea, but I still did it, and I’ll still do it again the next time, too. And worse, when I’ve already messed up, I almost always know what I should do to make things better, but I get another bad idea instead, and I just do that. I don’t mean to screw everything up. I just—it’s like there’s something inside me that wants to make everything . . . I don’t know . . . bad.”

  Fable nodded sagely. “So, is that a goblin feeling, or a person feeling?”

  “I don’t know.” Cole slumped down on the log beside her. “I worry sometimes that it is the goblin. I don’t want to be the changeling. I don’t want my mom to not really be my mom.” He rubbed the back of his neck and stared at his muddy shoes. “But, other times . . .”

  “Other times what?”

  “Other times I don’t worry. Other times I wish.”

  “You wish you were a goblin?”

  “Sort of? A little? Ugh. I mean—goblins are supposed to cause all kinds of mischief and run around having crazy adventures, you know? Maybe being the changeling would be kind of okay.”

  “But you already make mischief as a human boy. Why would being a goblin be different?”

  “Well, if I was a goblin, maybe I wouldn’t have to feel bad about it.”

  “Goblins don’t feel bad about stuff?”

  “I don’t know! Argh! All I know is that people who might be goblins feel bad about stuff all the time! That’s why I think it might just be better for everybody if I wasn’t a real boy.” He sagged. “That—and the other thing.”

  “What’s the other thing?”

  Cole glanced at the pine tree. He lowered his voice. “If I’m the one who doesn’t belong,” he said, “if I’m the goblin child—then Tinn doesn’t have to be. I don’t want to go live in some wild goblin horde, not really. Not even when I’m feeling especially wicked. I don’t want to lose my mom and my brother. But Tinn . . . I could never do that to him. He’s not as strong as me.”

  “I thought you were exactly the same.”

  “Only on the outside. On the inside . . .” Cole sighed again, trying to find the words. “Tinn’s special. He’s just—he’s a better person than I am. If all the worst stuff we do is because of me, then all the best stuff we do is because of Tinn. He’s . . . good, deep down. Even when I’m terrible, he never leaves me to get in trouble alone. He’s always fixing my mistakes. If I could only do one worthy thing in my whole life, it would be letting Tinn be the real boy.”

  Fable nodded, but her brows furrowed. “I can’t tell. Are you more worried that you are a goblin or more worried that you’re not?”

  Cole sighed again. “Yes?” he said.

  Fable looked like she would like to say more, but Tinn was finally coming out from behind the tree, and Cole shot her a stern glance before standin
g up.

  “Took you long enough,” Cole jibed.

  “You know I can’t pee when it feels like someone’s watching,” said Tinn. “She made me all nervous. What were you two talking about?”

  “Nobody was watching,” said Cole.

  “I was kinda watching,” said Fable. “But you made it really hard to see what you were doing and that tree was right in the way. Do you pee standing up? People pee smells funny.”

  “Shut up! You can’t smell my pee from way over there.”

  “I’m a really good smeller.”

  “Come on,” said Cole. “We should get moving. I don’t want to be out here when the sun goes down.”

  TWELVE

  Kull waited. He sat with infinite patience on the soggy log, waggled his calloused green toes, drummed his fingernails on the mossy wood. He waited. Gradually, his patience became somewhat less infinite. In fact, it began to grow decidedly finite.

  He was tucked out of sight of any accidental observer, unless they were to march directly up the ancient path—and even then they would need to be nearly on top of him before he would be spotted. There was no way to stumble upon the hidden bridge unless you were goblin-born. There was magic involved, yes, but it was much more elegant than that. The goblin ward was nothing more than a subtle nudge. The real artistry was in the angles. However one approached the bridge, every instinct pulled a traveler away. Seeking good fortune? The clearings to either side looked much more promising. Avoiding trouble? The path that led to the bridge looked trickiest and wildest. Seeking to explore the unknown? There appeared to be nothing down this route but mist and mire and a dull, dead end.

  Kull waited.

  His changeling would come. The wee goblin child had worn those human eyes for so long, he might not even remember how to be a goblin—but underneath his glamour, a goblin was still a goblin. He was still kin. He had to feel the pull. This path was still his heritage. It would call to him. And, of course, failing all that, he had the map that Kull had drawn.

  Yes, he would meet the child here, where Chief Nudd could hardly accuse Kull of crossing into human lands, and then he would march the changeling back into the horde with his head held high. Finally, after all these years, they would be happy to see him.

  Kull waited.

  Annie Burton ran along the forest path. It had not been hard to follow the thick, muddy footprints from the creek up to the narrow trail. The jagged C carvings she continued to spot in the tree trunks along the path reassured her that Cole had definitely been this way—and wherever Cole had gone, Tinn had surely followed.

  More than once, the path faded, erased by the encroaching forest, but she was able to find signs of the boys again each time. Now and then she would hear a sudden flutter of wing beats or a roar in the distance, and each sound made her heart skip.

  After she had been searching for what must have been hours, the footprints seemed to veer off the forest path. Annie pressed through the underbrush until she saw a wide, misty swamp stretching out before her. Surely her boys knew better than to go anywhere near the Oddmire. Her eyes continued scanning the ground for trampled grass or broken twigs or—marmalade? At the foot of a sticky log lay her crumpled yellow dish towel. Annie snatched it up. It was muddy and covered in crumbs and sticky orange jam. She peered around. The ground was a mess of recent impressions: familiar shoe prints overlapped with the marks of enormous paws.

  The forest spun around her and she took slow breaths. She tried to see where the prints led, but they all seemed to double over themselves in a meaningless knot. Finally, she spotted a paper, caught in the branches of a little bush. Its edges were flapping in the faint breeze that came rolling off the mire.

  She picked it up and unfolded it. On one side was a note. It began, Once upon a time . . . On the other side was a crudely drawn map.

  The changeling should have come along hours since. Kull had promised Chief Nudd he would not go to the boy, promised him on his goblin heart that he would not steal, summon, or even speak to the children as long as they remained within the safety of the human town. Goblin promises are more powerful than human ones. It had only been through Kull’s painstakingly creative interpretation of his own oath that he had found it possible to come so close. If the boy came to him, well, then there was no promise broken.

  Time was no longer running out—it was out. Kull jumped down from the damp log. He was just going to have to . . .

  Footsteps thudded through the bracken ahead.

  Kull’s ears perked up. He was here! After thirteen miserable years, something in Kull’s wretched life was finally going to go right. He stood up straighter, adjusting his manky, matted vest. He put his hands behind his back, then held them at his sides instead. He considered leaning nonchalantly against the log, then decided against it. Deep breath. This was it.

  At last, the arrival exploded through the leaves, a tattered goblin map clutched in her hands.

  Kull stared at the woman, who stared back at Kull.

  THIRTEEN

  Thick black vines quivered like the strands of a spiderweb. There were footsteps moving through the forest. Deep within the inky darkness, in the center of a mountain of thorns, the Thing awoke. It sniffed the air.

  Beyond its shadowy home, beyond the stench of dust and rot and dry bones, beyond the chill winds of the Deep Dark Forest, the Thing smelled fear. There were flies moving across its web. It could feel them. It could taste them.

  The forest around it was dying. The Thing knew it. It could feel death seeping in. There were so few beings left to call the woods their home, fewer still with any real magic. The Thing had gotten greedy and careless. It had killed too many, eaten too deeply. It had starved itself with its own gluttony, and now the meals came so few and far between.

  The Thing was starting to remember old feelings now, feelings it thought it had buried long ago with its own true shadow. For the first time in years, it felt empty and cold. And small. It had been so long since the Thing had allowed itself to feel small. It did not know if it was strong enough to be small again. It did not wish to find out.

  No. The Thing was never going back. In the heart of that dying forest, the Thing drew the shadows around itself, growing larger and larger, until it stood as tall as it had on its first night, still cloaked in its tattered shroud of darkness.

  As the forest died, so too the Thing would die. It had accepted this fate. But before it died, it would feed one last time. It would gorge. It would suck the marrow from the bone.

  FOURTEEN

  “Wait up,” said Tinn, pulling his foot free of a particularly persistent, stringy root. “We’ve been walking for ages. Are you sure you’re not lost?”

  Fable made a face. “I keep telling you, this is my forest. Mine and my mama’s. I know exactly where I am.”

  “Hey!” called Cole from a little way up the next hill. “There’s a building over here! Beneath the vines!”

  “You found it!” Fable clapped. “I was wondering if you’d notice.”

  “It’s a whole cottage! It’s got a front door and everything.” Cole peeled back the greenery, layer by layer. “Is this your mother’s house?”

  “No,” said Fable. “My mother doesn’t like to come here. It makes her sad.”

  Tinn slowed, giving the cottage a wide berth as his brother picked his way around it, tugging at ivy and peering in through the cracks. “Why should this old house make your mother sad?” Tinn asked.

  “It reminds her that she was too late,” Fable answered.

  “Too late for what?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. She won’t tell me that part. She always gets sorta quiet and then remembers something important we really need to do somewhere else.”

  Tinn swallowed, glancing around at the mossy trees that encircled the hovel. “I don’t like it.”

  Fable stared at Tinn. The boy looked identical to his brother, down to the last freckle. Really looking at them, it was easy to believe that one of t
hem was a magical copy of the other. Cole had seemed nervous to speak openly about the changeling thing. If she was going to bring it up with Tinn, she would need—what was the people word?—tact. Fable had learned all about tact. Tact was the thing that people did to make their words behave. Tact kept other people from feeling bad because of the things you said. Fable pursed her lips as she considered how to bring up the matter tactfully.

  “Why are you staring at me?” said Tinn. “ Stop it.”

  “Are you a goblin?” said Fable. Tact was hard. “Sorry,” she said. “But are you?”

  Tinn shrugged. “I don’t know.” That question had haunted him his whole life. After all these years, if they ever reached the goblin horde, this might be the last time that he did not have an answer. He felt a lump in his throat as he thought about it. One way or another, at the end of this, one human boy would leave the forest, and one goblin would stay behind. They would have the final terrible answer to their terrible question.

  Cole was picking his way around the back of the cottage now.

  “Be careful!” Tinn called. Cole waved him away as he slipped around the corner.

  “Do you feel like a goblin?” Fable asked.

  Tinn swallowed. “Sometimes, I guess? Why are you asking me about this?”

  “Sometimes how?”

  “I don’t know! Just, sometimes—I just worry, I guess. I worry that I’m not my own person.”

  “Then whose person are you?”

  “It’s hard to explain. Everyone else seems to know what they want and what will make them happy all the time—but I have no idea. Ordinary people get offered choices and they just pick one without needing to see what somebody else picked. I never know what I want. Cole makes choices all the time. Stupid choices, fun choices.” He kicked at the moss. “I never imagined going out into the Wild Wood, but you know what? None of it scares me half as much as just being alone in a room all by myself.”