The Last Changeling

by Chelsea Pitcher

  “I’m not telling anybody. People would just laugh at me. They’re already laughing at me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Kylie swallowed, finally turning away from the mirror. When her gaze settled on me, I got chills. “It’s not what you think. He wasn’t going to—” She started combing her hair with her fingers, moving so jerkily it must have caused her more pain than comfort. “He just wanted to take a picture of me.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s this rumor going around. People say I have both boy and girl parts. You know, because I like both? This morning, in English, I heard people saying he was going to take off my clothes and take a picture … to prove … ” She crumpled against the sink, covering her face. “Why would he do that to me? What did I do to deserve this?”

  “You didn’t do anything.” I knelt beside her. “It doesn’t have anything to do with you, trust me.”

  “Of course it does! All my life, people have wanted to hurt me.”

  Cruelty seeks to conquer sweetness. Always. It is the way of things.

  But I didn’t tell her that. I touched her hair softly, whispering, “It’s okay. You’re okay now.”

  The words, meant to soothe, only made her cry harder.

  “All right,” I said, my veins filling with cold possibilities. “Maybe you’re not. But you will be.”

  –––––

  “Damn it.” Taylor slammed his fist against the doorframe. “Damn it, damn it.”

  “Taylor.” I reached for his hand.

  He stepped out of my reach. “This is my fault,” he said, rubbing his knuckles. Trying not to wince.

  “How is it your fault?” I asked.

  “I knew Brad had access to drugs—his mom’s a professional pill popper.” Taylor slumped down on the edge of his bed. “I can’t believe he’d do this. We have to tell someone.”

  “And betray Kylie’s confidence?”

  His head snapped up. “You just told me.”

  “I knew you would keep it a secret. Won’t you?”

  Taylor sighed. “Of course. But I can’t just let him get away with it. What about next time, when his parents don’t come home early? Who knows what else he’s done to … fuck.”

  I sat beside him, placing my hand on his knee. I did it to comfort him, maybe to bend him to my will. There was absolutely no reason to touch him other than that. And as my fingers spread over his knee, a rush of warmth most certainly did not shoot through my gut and go traveling down to the depths of me.

  “There are other ways of dealing with such things,” I said, taking my hand away. Still, that spreading warmth remained.

  “What do you mean?” His gaze had traveled to the place where my hand had been, as if willing it to return.

  I denied him. “I’ve begun to formulate a plan. A rough plan, which needs some smoothing out.”

  “What is it?” he asked, turning his green eyes on me. Green like emeralds. Green like glistening leaves.

  Green like the Seelie Queen’s.

  I’d seen her only once, but I remembered.

  “The basic idea is to lure Brad on a date—”

  “You’re going to actually go out with him?” he snapped.

  “I’m going to give him a taste of his own medicine.”

  “What, drug him? And … strip him?”

  My lips curled at the idea. “I’m going to scare him.”

  “No. No way. It’s too dangerous.”

  “I was raised amongst danger. This is nothing, compared to—”

  “No.” Taylor shook his head. “He could hurt you.”

  “I could hurt him.”

  For a moment he just looked at me. He did not appear surprised. “Are you going to hurt him?”

  “I might.” Already I could taste vengeance on my lips. Better to focus on tasting vengeance than tasting the boy in front of me …

  Elora!

  “Does that bother you?” I asked, swallowing my inappropriate thoughts. Burying them deep inside of me.

  “Yes. No.” Taylor shook his head, lying back on the bed. “I want to hurt him, too. But—”

  “You would rather I not dirty my hands.”

  He closed his eyes. “Yes.”

  I leaned over him, my shadow swallowing his light. “My hands are not as clean as you think. I am not some pure, bright angel.”

  “Good.” He rose on his elbows to meet me. His eyes were close, and his lips. I felt the greatest thrill when he said, “Neither am I.”

  –––––

  That night, I made a mistake. I thought Taylor was sleeping when he wasn’t. And carefully, ever so quietly, under the covers, I sent a text message to Brad Dickson.

  “Are you up?” my message asked.

  “In more ways than one,” Brad replied.

  I rolled my eyes. But I sent another message: “Look out the window. Don’t you love meteor showers? I’ve heard it said that iron was brought to earth by crashing meteors.”

  Brad’s reply, “WTF?”, did not faze me. I had a task to complete. And no matter what happened, I would complete it.

  I climbed onto my knees. Outside, the world was beautiful and dark. It almost seemed a shame to light up the sky. But I focused my attention on a patch above the city, and after several seconds, dozens of bright, glittering stars streaked the sky.

  At least, they appeared to.

  “What are you doing?”

  I gasped, and froze. If I remain very still . . .

  “Lora? Are you taking off? Because the stairs would probably be the better way to go.” Taylor’s tone was light, but I heard the fear beneath it, the joke that was not really a joke.

  “I was … looking,” I said, slinking back onto the bed. Every inch of my body was tensed. I told myself he couldn’t have seen my illusion.

  “Was that lightning?” he asked.

  “Could have been. Let’s get some sleep.” I didn’t mean it. I wanted to stay up all night telling stories. Either that or plotting our revenge.

  My head had just touched the pillow when he said, “Lora?”

  “Yes?”

  “Where was the Dark Court, physically?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, your story seems like it takes place in the real world. But in the real world, where could it be?”

  I had to be careful with my answer. I couldn’t lie—of course I couldn’t. But there was a danger in making the story too real.

  I treaded carefully. “It is not as simple as that. The human and the faerie worlds … they are touching, but they are not the same. In essence, Faerie is the place where the physical and the spiritual worlds meet. One cannot simply walk there, unless one knows the way.”

  “But if one did know the way,” Taylor asked, mimicking my speech patterns, “where would one walk?”

  I laughed, unable to resist his persistence. “One might seek out an entrance in the parts of the earth that are prone to periods of extended darkness.”

  “Any reason you’re being so vague?”

  “It allows the story to maintain a sense of mystery. Besides … ” I searched his face in the darkness. “If I tell you its exact location, are you going to go looking for it?”

  “If you want me to.” He kept his voice casual, but there was something behind it I couldn’t place. Hunger, maybe.

  Or desire.

  He doesn’t know.

  “Would you want me to go looking for it?” he asked.

  He can’t know.

  “It wouldn’t be very safe,” I said.

  “Because of the courts’ rivalry?”

  Now that the conversation was approaching reality, I couldn’t say too much. If he understood a hint of the truth behind the story, I’d have to stop telling it completely. />
  But I promised it to him.

  “Are you looking for a fight, Taylor?”

  “Not with you.”

  “That isn’t what I meant.”

  “I know.” He was looking at me with those piercing eyes, asking silent permission to join me on the bed.

  I lowered my gaze.

  “I’m just trying to understand the courts,” he said after a minute. “Why would they go to war if they didn’t have to?”

  “Why does anybody?” I asked. I felt a dull ache in my abdomen, born of the fear that I would not be sleeping next to him tonight.

  “Well, here in the real world, we have leaders who send us off to fight. Generally when they want some commodity.”

  “The real world,” I said softly. I could show him things about the real world that would make his heart want to crawl out of his chest.

  “If you really think about it, not much has changed since the Middle Ages. We’re just pawns,” he added, still watching me.

  “As were the faeries.” I tried to lower my gaze again, but I couldn’t. “Taylor … ”

  “Yes?” Just like that, he was crawling toward me.

  “I … ” The words died on my lips as he rose to his knees, hovering at the edge of the bed. Our faces had rarely been so close.

  “You sick of me?” he asked.

  He was testing me. Perhaps the entire universe was testing me. All I had to do was say yes and I would pass the test.

  “Not a bit,” I said.

  “Do you want me to go away?” His voice was soft. I could almost feel his breath.

  “I want you to stay.”

  I made room for him and he climbed up beside me. This time, we lay face to face. In spite of the danger, our hands found their way to each other, and I did not fight it.

  I’m the one that did it.

  “What now?” he said, his face mere inches from mine. We were sharing the same pillow. His thumb slid over my fingers, sending currents of heat shooting through me. My heart felt safe, as if cradled.

  “Do you want to know more about the courts?” I asked.

  His eyes bore into me when he said, “Whatever you want.”

  “I want to fulfill my promise to you.”

  “Then do it.”

  “All right,” I said, trying to keep the tremble from my voice. If I just stuck to my story, I would not have to speak of impossible things. Of desire I could not have imagined before.

  Of longing.

  “The faeries of both courts were like pawns, as I said. The queens were the ones who so desperately wanted to go to war. But those queens employed different tactics to keep their followers loyal.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, the Bright Queen wore the guise of the nurturer. She was already known as the greatest healer in Faerie. She would not use force to govern her people, not if she didn’t have to. Instead she used distraction, keeping them constantly entertained. She held festivals for the full moon, rituals for the new moon, dances for autumn and spring, galas for summer and winter. They drank berry wine, oak-aged wine, grape wine, petal wine, and they ate until their bellies stretched the bindings of their elaborate garb. They were much too drunk, dizzy, and filled up with inconsequential things to realize they were merely the Queen’s puppets on strings.”

  Taylor made a soft sound when I untangled my fingers from his, but I did not take the hand away. Instead, I trailed my fingers over his, returning the favor. I thought it might calm me down to be in control of the movement.

  It didn’t.

  “The Dark Lady, on the other hand, controlled her court by keeping her followers fighting amongst themselves. She separated them into courtiers and servants, and encouraged her courtiers to treat each group of servants differently, to instill jealousy between them. Thus the satyrs fought with the nymphs, the pixies distrusted the sprites, and each servant was so busy fighting another, they didn’t realize the Queen was abusing them all.”

  “And that worked?” Taylor asked, studying my face. It was funny, the subtle differences between us. The intensity of his touch forced my eyes to close, but his gaze never left me.

  “It always works, for a time,” I said, drawing my hand away. Trying to calm the storm raging inside me. But he chased after me, tickling my fingers. “Look at your own history,” I said. “I mean, human history.”

  “I’ve been doing that a lot lately.”

  “Then you know what follows tyranny.”

  “Revolution.”

  “Clever boy,” I said, leaning into him. “As time passed, and war loomed on the horizon, the servants of the Dark Court began to question the mutual hatred. They would look across the mountain at their neighbors and wonder how the feud had begun. Even the Queen’s daughter, who was granted any luxury she might desire, longed for the warmth of friendship and connection. Perched in one of her favorite trees, or wandering along the rocky mountainside, she watched the servants brawling, their misery apparent in their eyes. Her heart ached for them, and for the life all the faeries might know if they could overcome this segregation.”

  “Hmmm,” Taylor said softly, closing his eyes. The clock on his desk read two thirty-five, and I knew we should sleep. But I would finish this part of my story, and if I fell asleep by his side, well … it couldn’t be helped.

  Exhaustion was setting in.

  I rested my head on his shoulder. “Then it became clear: if the inhabitants of the Dark Court were to survive throughout the ages, and save the planet they depended on for their lives, all members of the Court would have to reunite. And in order to do this, in order to bring together the broken fragments of Faerie without sacrificing innumerable lives, these disillusioned creatures needed a leader who could take down the Unseelie Court from the inside.”

  Me.

  14

  TayloR

  I sat alone in the basement classroom, obsessing over Lora’s story. I couldn’t get it out of my head. At first I’d thought she was just an amazing storyteller, drawing on childhood fables to help me sleep. Then I’d started to suspect the story was her religion. Now I understood it was an allegory for her life. She was the princess in the story. Her mother, represented by Virayla, was the leader of the cult she’d left behind. And Naeve was someone her mother had seduced. Maybe molested. My skin crawled at the possibilities.

  Worse still was the thought of what Naeve had done to Lora throughout her life. The torment of the princess was clearly symbolic of things too terrible to say. How could I live with myself, knowing that people like Naeve were out there? How could I pass Brad in the hallway without ripping out his throat?

  I had to do something. I had to . . .

  Kylie burst into the room, followed by Keegan and Lora. “I don’t believe this,” she howled, punching a desk. “Ow!”

  I jumped up, ready for a fight. “What happened? Are you okay?”

  “Careful,” Lora warned, as more people arrived for the meeting.

  The Merry-Straight Alliance was slowly growing. I noticed two girls I hadn’t seen before. One had flame-red hair, almost the exact shade of Lora’s. The other’s hair was strawberry blond. I could tell by their matching blue eyes that they were sisters. The younger of the two, probably a freshman, caught my eye as she passed. She smiled.

  Part of Lora’s fan club, I thought as the sisters sat down. I was pretty certain the school had more redheads now than it had two weeks ago. Still, no one could quite match Lora’s shade. She was one of a kind.

  “Let me see your hand.” Lora was kneeling in front of Kylie, her black lace dress brushing the ground. Kylie held out her hand for inspection. The pocket of her sweatshirt opened, revealing something small and gold.

  A lighter?

  I narrowed my eyes.

  Lora clasped Kylie’s fingers and closed her eyes. For a minut
e, it looked like she was drawing out Kylie’s pain. I wished I had that kind of power. I wanted to pull Lora into my arms and take all of her pain into me. But this desire had complications. What if the closeness reminded her of bad things?

  “What happened?” she asked Kylie, smiling briefly at me.

  “They’re trying to ban same-sex couples from prom.” Kylie pulled her fingers from Lora’s grasp. “This is so unfair!”

  “What’s fair?” Keegan sat on top of a desk. “They shove us in this dungeon and keep us out of the public eye. Big surprise.”

  “It isn’t right,” Kylie insisted. From the look on her face, it was clear she was contemplating sacrificing the knuckles on her other hand.

  “Why do they even care?” I drew a frowning face on my desk and then erased it, wary the graffiti might somehow be tracked back to me. Then, irritated with myself for being so paranoid, I drew it again, darker this time. “Shouldn’t they focus on more important things?”

  “Like pregnant fourteen-year-olds?” Kylie suggested.

  The redheads giggled.

  “Oh, no.” Keegan scoffed, holding a hand over his mouth. “Two boys dancing is way more horrifying than dumpster babies.”

  Kylie shook her head. “Three girls dropped out of school this year after getting pregnant, but me taking a girl to the freaking prom is the problem. I can’t stand this.”

  “Wait a second,” I said, the wheels already turning in my head. I couldn’t imagine someone wanting to punish Kylie for taking a date to the prom. She was, hands down, the nicest person I knew. “Who made this decision? Unity or the School Board?”

  “Unity,” Kylie replied without hesitation. “Straight from Principal Jade’s mouth. She’s trying to keep it quiet because she’s up for review next year.”

  “Inside job.” Keegan frowned. “Wait—how do you know this?”

  “I … heard,” she said, keeping her eyes on me.

  “So why don’t we tell the School Board?” I asked.

  “Then we’d be royally fucked,” Keegan answered. “Look at what happened in Tennessee.”

  “And Ohio,” Kylie added.

  “Mississippi,” said one of the redheads.

  “All right.” I held up my hands. “We take it up with Jade. What’s happened so far?”