The Changeling's Journey

by Christine Spoors

  She reached my side of the table and I couldn’t help but smile at her presence. When she didn’t lift her head to look at me or even acknowledge me, I felt my smile fade. The same Nieve who had kissed me until my lips tingled and I felt lightheaded now wouldn’t even look in my direction.

  “Nieve,” I said, trying to catch her attention, but she simply slipped past me and headed back towards the door. I jumped out of my seat and rushed after her.

  “Freya, return to your seat.” I heard father shout from the table but I ignored him.

  I grabbed onto her wrist to stop her moving any further away from me. When I tried to pull her back towards me she resisted, which made my eyes sting and a feeling of rejection settle heavily in my stomach.

  “Nieve I’m sorry.” I mumbled, panicked by the way she ignored me. Desperate to make her forgive me and see that this wasn’t my fault.

  “Freya if you don’t get back here right now you will be sorry,” I heard father shouting furiously and the sound of mother talking frantically, trying to soothe him.

  I tugged on her arm again. “It wasn’t me. Nieve, please.”

  Nieve winced as my voice cracked and turned to me. What I saw when she lifted her head made me gasp.

  Her beautiful face was injured. It was clear that someone had struck her hard as her cheekbone on one side displayed a dark, but fading, bruise.

  “What happened?” I asked at once feeling panicked and frantic, my father’s angry shouts only adding to my anxiety.

  “I must return to my work Princess.” Nieve said emotionlessly, her eyes darting to the scene behind me.

  I slid my hand down until I was holding her hand, in the hope that she would trust me enough to let me help her. I wouldn’t have let her go, needing to find out what happened and make sure she was safe, but father’s hand latched onto my upper arm and harshly pulled me away. In my shock at his sudden violence, I lost my grip on her hand.

  “How dare you disobey me,” father spat, shaking me roughly.

  “Get off me.” I cried, uselessly trying to pry his tight bruising fingers from my arm.

  When it was clear that wouldn’t work, I used what little strength I had to push his chest, making him to let go. It worked for a moment and I turned in time to see that Nieve was almost at the door and about to leave me again. Before I could even take a step towards her, father turned my roughly by the shoulder and struck me hard across the face.

  I froze, dazed by the force of his strike and stunned by the blossoming pain developing across my cheek and mouth. I couldn’t remember ever being hit in my life. No one would dare harm the Princess, not even whilst playing. I had never felt anything like this before.

  I lifted a shaking hand to my face and winced when I touched my now sore lip. I felt warm wetness on my fingertips and when I looked, I could see bright red blood which made my stomach churn and my legs feel week.

  I was used to the sight of blood, having seen it every moon ever since I was a young teenager, but this was different. This made my head spin with disgust and fear.

  Father seemed momentarily just as stunned by what happened but he quickly recovered, reigniting his anger. He grabbed my wrist and roughly pulled me back to my seat. He pushed my dazed form down into the chair before pushing it in tight, so I was trapped between it and the table.

  “This is what happens when you disobey me,” he hissed as he took his own seat. “You will not talk to that human again. Do you hear me?” he demanded.

  I nodded absentmindedly, my mind whirling in horror at the revelation that someone was hurting Nieve and possibly had been all week whilst she had been away from my protection.

  The thought of my own blood made everything worse. I could feel it trickling slowly down my chin but was unable to make a move to stop it or wipe it away. I flinched when a slice of the sweet bread was jammed roughly into my hand.

  “Eat. This is a family meal,” father said, sounding pleasant again as if his only daughter wasn’t sitting bleeding on one side of him and his wife stifling sobs on the other.

  As if I was a wooden puppet with someone controlling my strings, I chewed the bread. I silently went through the motions of eating. My only thought was that the sweetness of the bread mixed oddly with the tangy metallic taste of my blood.

  Mother never did mention what happened that evening at dinner and I didn’t blame her. Father became more and more temperamental as time wore on. I felt as if I was walking on eggshells whenever I had the misfortune of being near him.

  Mae sighed unhappily at the sight of me when the guard brought me back to the room after the meal was over. I wandered over to my bed and lay down feeling exhausted from the evening’s events. The throbbing on my face was more noticeable when I was lying down and I felt my eyes burn with tears again.

  “You’re alright lass,” Mae said, sitting down beside me and rubbing my back gently.

  I rubbed at my eyes feeling foolish, I had thought she was still at the door with the guard. Princesses should never cry. Father always said that, but recently crying seemed to be my main hobby.

  Mae didn’t laugh at me or tell me to get a grip, even though there were thousands of people out there with bigger problems than my own. She just sat with me, rubbing my back soothingly until I felt better. It occurred to me that this was something my mother should be doing and I desperately hoped that father would never take Mae away from me as well.

  “Let’s get you into bed,” Mae said after a while, gently pulling me up and directing me over to the wardrobe so she could help me change into a nightgown.

  She frowned at the dark, finger shaped bruises on my upper arm but made no comment. As she carefully took the plaits out of my hair, I felt hopeless, but she chattered away about her day anyway. Once I was ready, she directed me back over to my bed and tucked me in like she used to when I was a child.

  I flinched as a cold wet cloth wiped my tears away and washed the dried blood from around my lip and chin. The water stung my cut lip but it soothed me to know the blood was gone.

  Mae said that by the time I woke in the morning the cut would barely be visible as it was already starting to heal a little. That was one good thing about being a fairy, quick healing.

  With a final goodnight and a soft kiss on my forehead Mae blew out the candles and left me. I thanked the Others that I was tired and quickly fell into a blissfully dreamless sleep.

  W hen we woke up the next morning my legs ached and there was no way I could have forgotten about yesterday. The journey from Wallace’s village to this village beside the loch was the furthest I had ever walked in my life.

  “I can’t believe we made it.” I said, voicing my thoughts to Glen who burst out laughing beside me.

  “Bloody glad we did Morven. I considered leaving you behind and just running for the village when that rain started,” he teased.

  “I considered just lying down and waiting to drown,” I said, throwing my arms out as if I had dropped dead in the middle of the road.

  “Well, thank the Others we made it and didn’t decide to abandon each other to the elements.”

  The inn was by far the nicest place we had stayed on our travels so far. The straw bed was bigger than the previous one and so Glen and I had more room to stretch out whilst we slept. The room was warm and cosy as there was a fireplace and, for a few coins, we were even able to have water heated so that we could wash. I was glad to finally wash away the dirt and dust from our travels. My hair had become a disgusting matted mess and I was overjoyed to have it untangled and clean.

  Another coin saw our clothes bundled away by a girl who worked in the inn, she promised to have them returned to us by tonight. Thankfully we had some spare, albeit less warm, clothes with us in our bags so I didn’t have to see Glen’s naked body for too long. We were both comfortable around each other but it’s difficult not to stare at the parts of your friend you don’t normally see.

  We didn’t do very much with our first day in the village, wa
nting to rest and recover from our near-death experience in the rain.

  The next day, Glen and I were both feeling refreshed and after a quick breakfast we decided to head out and explore. It wasn’t raining anymore but the streets were still muddy and so we had to be careful not to fall and ruin our newly washed clothes. This village was a lot larger than our own and it felt like a whole new world.

  They had markets like ours, but with vastly different items on sale. They sold multiple kinds of strange looking fish that I wouldn’t even know how to eat, there were people selling jewellery made of little pearls from the loch and stalls filled with all sorts of equipment for boats and fishing.

  Even the accents of the people here were different from ours, despite it only being a few days away from our village.

  We saw sellers from the village which lay at the foot of the Fairy Hills, to the east of the loch. You could tell who had travelled from there as they were paler than us from further south and they all wore furs from huge monstrous looking beasts. I desperately hoped those beasts could only be found high in the mountains and that Glen and I would never be unfortunate enough to encounter them.

  Our day was much the same as our time in the town, without the added excitement of the royal family and a wise old woman who was probably a witch.

  We wandered down to the loch where we saw rows of wooden boats tied with thick rope to huge wooden pegs hammered down into the stony shore.

  There were many people, who I assumed were sailors, wandering around shouting instructions at each other whilst they unloaded and loaded the boats. It was fascinating to watch and we spent most of our afternoon sitting looking out across the water. We could see boats in the distance heading north to the most northerly human town as well as east.

  “Scary, isn’t it? The way the boats just float on top of all that water.” Glen frowned.

  “A wee bit. Bonnie says boats hardly ever sink, unless there is a storm,” I attempted to be reassuring.

  “We better hope the Others don’t send another storm after us then,” Glen smirked, only half joking.

  The village was a windy place, because it was so close to the water Glen explained, so before it became too dark we decided to find somewhere to have a hot meal before we slept. We also needed to find a boat to take us across the loch.

  We wandered along the shore as the sun began to set until we came to a wooden path that stretched out over the water, leading into a round building supported by wooden poles. It was as if the building was floating, with only the little wooden poles to support it and stop it tumbling down into the water.

  “Here?” I said eyeing it warily. Glen nodded but made no move to step onto the unstable looking path.

  We could hear voices inside the strange building but that did nothing to inspire confidence in us. What if the added weight of Glen and I sent us all crashing down into the water? A group came up behind us and we awkwardly moved out of the way to let them past. They strode out into the building, seemingly unbothered by the danger

  One of them, a tall man with dark hair tied low behind his head paused to look at us.

  “You two alright?” he asked with a friendly smile.

  “Yeah just... thinking...” I answered lamely.

  “The crannog isn’t about to collapse, if you’re worried about that,” he said with a knowing grin.

  “Isn’t right to float a building like that,” Glen said gesturing towards the building like it was the most horrifying thing he had ever seen.

  “I’ve lived here all my life and the crannog has been on those wooden poles since long before I was born. It will be fine. Come on,” he said before confidently wandering in.

  I grabbed Glen by the hand and pulled him onto the wooden path alongside me. It was disconcerting to see the waves crashing around the poles through the gaps between the wooden planks. Instead I tried to keep my eyes on the back of the helpful, and not unattractive, man.

  We made it into the building, which had a good thick floor so it was easy to forget that we were out over the loch. We bought a strange, thick fishy soup for a coin and some ale as that was all they had to drink. Large tables were scattered around the central hearth and surprisingly, I could see there was a second floor to this strange building.

  “This will definitely make an interesting story,” I said to Glen with a laugh.

  The soup was the most disgusting thing I had ever tasted and even Glen, who could eat just about anything, had to chug down multiple cups of ale to remove the taste.

  Whilst Glen was purchasing more drink to chase away the horrid fish flavour, the man from earlier dropped down into the chair beside me.

  “Glad to see you were brave enough to make it inside,” he smiled.

  “Glad to be warm, although I could have happily lived my whole life without tasting that,” I said gesturing towards the bowl.

  He burst out laughing. “I won’t tell my Aunt what you think of her cooking.”

  “Oh no, I’m sorry!” I hurried to apologise, feeling my cheeks burning with embarrassment.

  “Don’t worry about it. Not a lot of fish where you’re from I take it?” he asked, looking genuinely interested.

  “We live in a farming village a few days south of the town.” I explained and before I could catch myself, ended up explaining all about our livestock and farms.

  “Sounds great, not a fish in sight,” he grinned. “My name is Finnian by the way.”

  “Morven.” I said simply which made him laugh again.

  “Pleasure to meet you Morven, your ginger friend over there seems to have been distracted so how about I get you another drink?” he offered, gesturing over to where Glen was talking to a man with hair almost as ginger and vibrant as his own.

  “Yes please,” I said, glaring at Glen who didn’t seem at all phased and waved heartily back at me from across the room looking very pleased with himself.

  Whilst I sat there alone at the table I really started to feel the effects of the hurried drinking from earlier. It had been worth it though; the fishy taste was only just lingering. When Finnian returned, I was patting my tingling face with my equally tingling hands.

  “My face feels tingly.” I explained as I accepted the cup from him.

  “Maybe not a good plan to drink too much more then, eh?” Finnian said, pulling his chair up closer to my own.

  He was a very large man, I couldn’t help but note, with well-defined muscles on his arms and chest, from working on the boats his whole life I assumed.

  Markings on his arm caught my eye and before I could think about what ma or Granny Athol would say about me stroking the arm of a stranger, I had done it.

  Finnian rolled up the sleeve on his shirt to reveal a tattoo which ran from his shoulder all the way down to his wrist. It showed symbols, like the ones on the fairy stone back home, and it was as if they flowed along his arm as he moved.

  “It’s beautiful.” I gasped, mesmerised.

  “Glad you like it, it was bloody painful,” he said patiently, letting me stare at his arm.

  “It’s like the fairy stone in our village.”

  He nodded. “The fairy symbols are spread all over the land. We all see the same ones and it doesn’t matter where you go, you’ll find them everywhere. Or so I am told.”

  “We are planning to travel north into the fairy kingdoms.” I admitted, for some reason eager to hear his opinion on our adventure.

  “To explore?”

  I hesitated, unsure if I wanted to tell him my secret. I really felt I could trust Finnian despite only just meeting him, although that could have been due to the drink.

  “I am a changeling.” I blurted out before I lost my nerve. “We want to go north to see if we can learn why they keep stealing our children.”

  Finnian was silent and I couldn’t bring myself to look at him and see his reaction. He startled me when he lifted me, as if I weighed nothing, onto his lap and wrapped his arms around me.

  “That’s a bl
oody brave thing to do,” he whispered as he hugged me close. “You go and you find those answers for us all.” He said, nodding to himself. Clearly also feeling the effects of the drink.

  I wondered if he had a changeling in his family and remembered Wallace saying that the further north you travelled, the more changelings you would meet. Instead I wondered how many people in his family were changelings, and how many of them survived.

  I didn’t voice these thoughts as even my drunk mind knew it would ruin this moment we were sharing. I was strangely comfortable in the arms of a man I had only just met, and I was quite content to stay there.

  Glen screaming my name woke me from my sleep with a start and I leapt out of the bed to help him with whatever was wrong, only to find him sitting at the small table in our room laughing.

  “What?” I whined, lifting my hands to shield my eyes. My head felt as if there were wee folk stamping around and crushing my insides.

  “Little too much to drink last night Morven?” Glen teased.

  “You drank as well,” I accused, not liking my inability to remember much past Finnian holding me in his arms in the crannog.

  “I am not a skinny wee changeling though. I’m a big strong man who can handle his drink.”

  It was my turn to laugh. “You wish.”

  I hurriedly dressed as the cold started to give me goose bumps, every movement made my head pound and my vision swim. Once I was dressed I threw myself back down on the bed with a groan.

  “I’ll never be well again,” I complained, feeling sorry for myself. Suddenly very homesick for my ma who could cure anything, or at the very least give you sympathy until it went away.

  Glen pushed a cup of water into one hand and some bread into the other as he always did when anyone had drunk too much. I would bet coin that bread did absolutely nothing to help, but I accepted them gratefully anyway.

  He explained that the night before he had been speaking to that man, Raibert was his name, but made sure to keep an eye on me as we were both drunk. He had thought that perhaps I would spend the night with Finnian but even whilst drunk, I wasn’t prepared to take that risk.