The Changeling
Page 1
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Book One
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Book Two
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
About the Book
‘I am here for your little girl,’ said the woman. A banshee. A woman of the fairy hills.
Aoife knows something is wrong when she spots a small child alone, out on the heather. A child no one else can see.
After that, everything changes.
Her parents make a strange confession.
They believe their human child was stolen by the fairies, and that Aoife is the changeling left behind in her place.
Shocked by their story, Aoife turns to quiet mysterious Shay. Together, they embark on a dangerous journey which overturns everything they thought they knew about fairies.
A story dedicated to Alana Quinn
9th March 2001 –
6th July 2005
BOOK ONE
PROLOGUE
THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO,
IN THE WEST OF IRELAND . . .
He was a handsome boy of seventeen when he chanced on her, washing her red-gold hair in the soft water of a pool surrounded by hawthorns. She looked up at him and smiled as she wrung the water from her hair – and that was the end of everything for him. He forgot his mother, his father, his brothers and sisters, his duties as a young warrior of the Fianna. And when the girl slipped feet first into the pool, he threw aside his cloak and sword and followed her.
At first the water only came to his knees, but very soon it was up to his waist and then to his shoulders. It was as cold as ice. The hawthorn blossoms floating on the surface gave off a sweet, dizzying scent. The girl smiled back at him, her red-gold hair floating out around her on the surface of the water. He held out his hand but she took another step further into the pool and the freezing water closed over her head. And, a moment later, over his.
Wahu: Greeting used in the west of Ireland,
possibly derived from the Irish Ádh-thu
(luck be with you).
CHAPTER ONE
Aoife was texting while picking her bike out of the flowerbed, when the phone slipped from her grip, skittered across the dry-stone garden wall and disappeared. She climbed after it into the field behind the house and poked around in the nettles with a stick, finding first the main part of the phone, and then the casing off the back. It was while she was trying to get at the battery without being stung that she found the tiny heart locket half buried in the earth.
She fixed her phone, then rubbed the heart clean. The dirt was hard to shift, as if the locket had been lost for a long time. Scraping with her thumbnail, she found that the gold underneath was engraved: Eva. Interesting. Aoife was ‘Eva’ on her birth certificate, although everyone, including her parents, called her by the softer version of the name. She flicked the heart open and found two portraits – one of her parents looking ridiculously young and the other of a pink-faced baby. Even more interesting. Her parents had lost all their photos in the move from Dublin, so this was the first time she had ever seen a picture of herself under the age of four – there had been no Facebook then, keeping its eternal record.
She tried the locket on. She had a slender neck, but the fine gold chain was meant for a little girl and she could only just fasten the clasp. As it clicked into place, an image sprang into her mind – two little girls with glittering wings, wandering hand in hand through the long grass of this field. Herself and Carla, years ago, playing at ‘follow the fairy road’. She turned to see if the ‘road’ was still there, and it was – a narrow stripe of paler green that ran straight from where she was standing, up the steep slope, then over the high bank at the top of the field. A badger run, perhaps, or the sign of a stream hidden underground? As little girls, they had never made it over that thorny bank. Now Aoife was filled with a desire she had long forgotten: to see if the road continued on through the next field, and if so, where did it—
Her phone beeped. Then beeped again and again – incoming texts, stacked up while she was hunting for the battery. All from Carla:
orange too tight
Im so fat
where are u
u there?
help
WHERE ARE U
Aoife texted:
not fat wear the orange, dropped fone, ON WAY 20 mins
Carla texted:
HURRYUP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Aoife scrambled back over the wall into her garden, ran the bike down the side of the small house and out of the front gate, threw her leg over the crossbar and set the stopwatch on her Nokia. Her record to Carla’s: nine minutes, thirteen seconds. She hit START and shot down the narrow flowery lane. The potholes had got deeper in the last two weeks of solid rain, and she was forced to swerve or risk her wheels. Two kilometres on, she came up behind Declan Sweeney’s tractor and had to wait for him to turn left onto the Clonbarra road before herself heading right for Kilduff. She picked up speed, past the garage, the empty estate, left at the shop. A steep sweaty climb in the sun, standing on the pedals, up past the GAA pitch where a game of Gaelic football was in noisy progress, past the builder’s huge three-storey house, the secondary school, then downhill all the way to the Heffernans’, skittering to a halt outside the yellow dormer. She dropped her bike on the step, checked her time – nine minutes, fourteen seconds – ‘Aargh!’ – took the stairs three at a time into Carla’s room and collapsed, panting, full-length on the bed. ‘What are you on about? That dress is pure gorgeous on you.’
Carla was contorting herself in front of her wardrobe mirror, judging herself from every angle in the close-fitting orange dress. ‘It’s not. I’m a pig. Nothing fits me any more. I wish I was beautiful like you.’
‘Don’t talk crap. You’re gorgeous, everyone says it.’
‘Ha ha. Sinead admired my curves?’
‘Carl, she’s just jealous of your boobs. And that dress is perfect for showing them off.’
For a moment Carla brightened – ‘You really think?’ – then she checked the mirror again and her freckled face fell. ‘No. My arse is way too—’ A faint beep, and she stopped to scrabble through a pile of clothes like a dog after a rat, emerging triumphant with her phone. Then panicked. ‘Jessica says what are we wearing to the cinema? What will I tell her?’
‘Snapchat her what you’ve got on, ’cos that’s what you’re going in.’
Aoife’s phone also vibrated. It was Killian, asking was she going on Sinead’s birthday trip – like he’d ‘forgotten’ the whole class was invited.
‘Aren’t you going to answer that?’
‘Vodafone top-up reminder.’
She never lied to Carla, but Killian Doherty, with his ridiculously pretty looks, was Carla’s
crush. Not only Carla’s, unfortunately. Half the girls in their year – and the years above and below – had already gone out with him, yet every time he dumped the latest one (by text) Carla prayed (literally, in church, to God) that it would be her turn next. Which was why Aoife had also lied – or at least, not told – about the builder’s son trying to chat her up at last month’s Easter disco. (She had ignored him then, the same way she’d pretty much ignored his texts ever since, but still he failed to get the hint. Did he imagine she was shy around him like the other girls still waiting their turn? Good joke. Maybe he was one of those boys who was only interested in what he couldn’t get.) ‘Come on, Carla, let me do your face, I’ll make you irresistible.’
‘Some chance of that.’
‘Will you stop. Sit over in front of the mirror and do your foundation while I stick on some decent music.’ Aoife knocked off One Direction, scrolled through Carla’s iPod for Lana Del Rey, and stuck it back in the dock. Born to Die. One day she hoped to write a song like that. She’d written hundreds already, but none she felt were any good; maybe a few that were passable. She chose a white eye-liner. ‘Tilt your head back. Keep your eyes open.’
Carla said, straining not to blink: ‘I’m loving the necklace. Is it new?’
‘No . . .’ Aoife drew the point of the pencil along the inner edge of Carla’s eye. ‘I found it in Declan Sweeney’s field, the one behind our house. I must have lost it years ago. I don’t even remember owning it.’
‘Then how do you know it’s yours?’
‘It has my name on it – I’ll show you in a sec. Don’t blink! Mam and Dad’s picture is in it and me as a baby.’ She glanced towards the window, towards the distant mountains, hazy in the summer heat. ‘Do you remember the fairy road?’
‘Do I or what! All that sheep shite and thistles!’
‘Ah, it was fun!’
‘I’ll never forget that time you got nearly to the top of the bank and I had to run back for your mam, I was so sure you’d get into the next field and be trampled by a bull, and she went pure mental—’
‘Anyway. Do you remember me wearing this locket ever?’
Carla sighed, and tilted her head back again. ‘No. Is it in any of the early photos?’
A hundred Blu-tacked memories of their childhood selves gazed down on them from all four walls. As Aoife worked on Carla’s face, she kept pausing to look around but she couldn’t see the necklace anywhere, though she did spot the fairy wings. As a little girl, she had been a lot smaller than Carla and appeared to have been in a constant state of surprise – her blue-green eyes wide open, her short red hair a tangled mess. Later, the wings had become school uniforms, and by the time they had donned huge amounts of make-up and started pouting at their own camera phones, Aoife was the taller of the two by several centimetres. She fired the blusher and mascara back into the drawer.
‘Now – you’re lovely. Just let me get changed, I won’t be a sec.’ She stripped off her trackies and T-shirt, and took her favourite dress out of Carla’s wardrobe – a pale green A-line. She pulled it over her head, slipped on her navy Converse, fixed her hair – now very long and a deep red-gold – into a ponytail, grabbed one of Carla’s many shoulder bags for her phone and purse, then checked herself in the mirror. ‘Aaargh! Way too short! What else have you got?’
‘No point – all my dresses will be like that on you now. Like on me they’re too tight. At least you’ve got taller. I’ve just grown out.’
‘You have not. I’ll change back into my trackies.’
‘You will not! Your legs are amazing: let everyone see them. Sinead will be sick – serve her right.’
‘Nice of her to bring us all to the cinema, though.’
‘Whatever. Don’t take off that dress.’
Downstairs in the kitchen, Carla’s mother, Dianne, was putting ten euros into a birthday card for Sinead. ‘I hope ten’s enough – I don’t have a twenty.’
Zoe, Carla’s four-year-old sister, plump with light brown hair and freckles (the image of Carla in the early photos), looked round from the television. ‘Can I come?’
Carla ignored her. ‘Ten’s plenty, Mam: no one puts twenty in the cards any more, no one has the money.’
Dianne Heffernan sighed. ‘I suppose. It seems so little.’
Aoife said, ‘No, Carla’s right, everyone gives a tenner now . . . Oh, for—’
Carla said, ‘’S up?’
‘Left my card at home.’ All she had in her purse was one euro twenty.
Dianne offered, ‘You want to add your name to Carla’s?’
‘No, you’re grand. I’ll give it her in school on Monday.’
Zoe said again, louder: ‘Can I come?’
Aoife smiled at her. ‘I’ll bring you back something.’
‘Chocolate chip ice cream?’
‘No, it’ll only melt. I’ll get you a bar.’
Even though Carla’s house was only half a kilometre from the town, the journey back to Kilduff took over ten minutes. Carla’s bike was rusted, and stuck in a low gear. The green dress kept riding up, and Aoife kept having to pause to tug it down, worried her pants were on show to passing drivers – it was true what Carla said: nothing fitted them any more. The day was getting hotter, and flies bombed them every time they stopped. Finally they crested the hill and cruised down past the school, a long white one-storey building with high glittering windows, then the field of cows. As they passed the builder’s wrought-iron double gates, Killian Doherty swung out on a clean, mean, electric-blue racing bike and overtook them in a spurt of gravel; a great pumping of legs and narrow arms. He shouted over his shoulder as he raced ahead of them: ‘Love your dress!’
Carla wobbled. ‘Did he mean me or you?’
‘You – he was looking at you.’
‘Oh God . . . Are my boobs falling out?’
‘Course not – don’t mind him, he’s an eejit.’
‘Don’t mind him? You think he was being sarcastic?’
‘No!’
‘Maybe you were right, maybe it is OK to have big boobs.’
‘Trust me, I’m right.’ Aoife pedalled on at Carla’s side, except where the potholes were too deep to allow it.
There was a bevy of lads piling out of the GAA clubhouse, still pink from running non-stop for seventy minutes, though their short haircuts were spiky from cold showers. A couple of them were in Aoife’s school. She slowed as she overtook them. ‘Hey, Ciaran, how’d it go?’
‘Crushed them in the last minute – they were one point ahead, eleven–twelve to them, but then we scored a goal.’
‘Who got the goal?’
‘That lad from your year. Shay Foley. He’s pure fast. Burned them off. Zinger of a goal. He’ll be scouted for Mayo when he’s sixteen, I’d say.’ He nodded ahead, to where a tall, black-haired, sun-browned boy walked on alone, long-legged in faded jeans, his Gaelic football kit slung over one shoulder.
‘Really? I didn’t know he was that good.’ The sight of Shay Foley walking by himself vaguely annoyed her. Anyone else would have been in the thick of it, celebrating, but he was such a typical lad from back the bog: silent as the mountains he lived among; utterly unconcerned with social goings on. He’d turned up at Kilduff Secondary only last September, after his school in the Gaeltacht got shut down. In three terms, Aoife had never heard him say one word except in answer to a direct question from a teacher.
As they cycled past him, Carla called out: ‘Well done! Coming to the cinema?’
Shay glanced at her, and kept on walking.
‘I’ll get him to talk to me one day,’ said Carla.
‘Good luck with that. Why bother? He’s pure anti-social.’
‘Gorgeous looking, though. You know both his parents are dead?’
‘Seriously?’ Now Aoife felt bad for having bitched about him. She glanced over her shoulder; he had turned into the path behind the shop, taking the short cut to the square. ‘You never told me that.’
‘Sorry
– only found out last week. It was my granddad’s birthday and we were putting flowers on his grave, and my nan pointed out the Foley grave behind. Both in the same year, when Shay was five.’
‘Oh God . . . Car crash?’
‘Don’t think so. Nan said the mam died in an accident all right, but his dad died later of something fatal.’
‘Bad. Does he live with his grandparents or something?’
‘No – still on the parents’ farm. He has a much older brother. Come into the shop – I’m busting for a Coke, you can share it.’
‘Sure, I need to get that bar for Zoe.’
There was a queue for the till and the twenty-seater from the community centre had its engine running when they came out. Sinead was sitting near the front with Lois; she rolled her pale green eyes when Aoife apologized for forgetting the card. ‘Sure, if you’re that skint, don’t worry about it . . .’
‘I’m not. I have it at home, I’ll give it you Monday.’
‘Like I said, don’t worry about it. Find a seat. There aren’t any left together. Pity you didn’t get here sooner.’
Lois grinned fakely at Aoife, all apple-red cheeks and frizzy black hair. Aoife grinned hugely back again. After the school talent show, Lois had accused Aoife of being an attention-seeking anorexic who wrote crap songs. Lois was a lot more direct in her insults than Sinead.
Annoyingly, Sinead was telling the truth – there were only two seats left: one across the aisle beside Killian, and the other near the back beside . . . For a moment Aoife was so surprised she just stood staring blankly up the coach. Then someone tugged at her dress and the blond, silver-eyed builder’s son was smiling up at her, patting the seat beside him.
She kicked him lightly in the leg. ‘Come on, gorgeous, move your arse up there next to Shay Foley. Me and Carla want to sit together.’
He scowled, making a big show of rubbing his shin. ‘I wasn’t asking you, Ginger. I was saving this seat for the girl in the sexy orange dress.’ He tossed his floppy hair, and turned his boy-band smile on Carla.
‘Oh . . .’ And Carla spectacularly disintegrated before Aoife’s eyes, grinning like a psycho, soft brown hair standing out like an electric charge had been shot through it.