A Psychic with Catitude

by P. D. Workman

  Close up, she saw the baby’s face for the first time. She still couldn’t tell whether it was an actual baby or an exquisitely well-made doll. The baby didn’t stir, and Reg couldn’t discern any rise and fall of the bundle of blankets with its breath.

  “What’s your baby’s name?”

  There was stunned silence from Callie’s parents. Mrs. Papillon looked at Reg, searching her face. Then she looked across the room at her husband. His back was to her, but it was clear from his rigid stance that he was just as bowled over as she was.

  “There is no baby,” Mrs. Papillon finally said.

  “Is it a doll, then? I don’t understand.”

  Mrs. Papillon looked down at the sleeping infant in her arms. “It is… a shadow. Not a real child. Yet I am burdened with it until Calliopia returns to us.”

  “A changeling?” Reg asked.

  Frown lines creased Mrs. Papillon’s forehead briefly. She gave a hesitant nod. “Humans have their own names for things,” she said. “I don’t always know your words.”

  Jessup’s eyes were alert, working the angles. “Can you reveal it to me, please?”

  Mrs. Papillon looked reluctant to do so. She didn’t make any special motion or whisper an incantation that Reg heard, but Jessup’s eyes suddenly riveted on the infant. She also approached Mrs. Papillon to look down at the baby’s face.

  “It looks so real,” she said. “It would have fooled me.”

  “I would not be fooled.”

  “Was this shadow left when Calliopia was taken?”

  Mrs. Papillon looked at her husband. He nodded. She sighed and also nodded her agreement. “The shadow was in Callie’s bed, where she should have been.”

  “But I thought a changeling was supposed to look like the child that was stolen to fool the family,” Reg said. “It doesn’t make any sense to leave a baby in place of a teenager.”

  Neither parent supplied an explanation.

  “Doesn’t the presence of a changeling tell you that Calliopia was stolen by other fairies?” Jessup asked.

  “She was not stolen by other fairies,” Mr. Papillon snapped. He took a moment to smooth the tops of each pot of dirt. “Fairies do not steal from fairies.”

  “Apparently they do. Unless you have a more logical explanation for the presence of the shadow child.”

  Mrs. Papillon shifted the baby from one side to the other. As she did so, Reg caught a wave of deep pain and exhaustion from her. Reg put her hand on the back of the chair to steady herself, just about knocked off her feet by the sensation.

  “You said that the baby is a burden until Calliopia returns. What did you mean?” Reg asked.

  “I am responsible to care for it until Calliopia comes back. She would not be able to return if the shadow that took her place was harmed or removed.”

  “And how do you take care of a shadow? Just like a real baby? Feed it, change it, rock it to sleep…?”

  “Oh, no!” Mrs. Papillon objected. “You must not feed a shadow. If you do, it becomes yours permanently. Your child can never be returned to you.”

  “That’s in line with the fairy tales I’ve heard,” Jessup confirmed.

  “But it won’t starve if you don’t feed it? Because it’s not a real baby?” Reg couldn’t believe that the pink-faced baby in Mrs. Papillon’s arms was not a real child. It certainly didn’t look like a robot or automaton. Its mouth opened a little when Mrs. Papillon moved it, and it smacked its lips in its sleep.

  Mrs. Papillon nodded. “If you don’t feed it, it will not develop like a child. But they do continue to get heavier.” She made a slight movement toward Reg. “Would you like to hold it?”

  Curious about it, Reg nodded and reached for the baby. She slid her hands under it to pick it up, but she found the baby to be a dead weight. Not just the ten pounds she expected, but too heavy for her to even pick it up. She stepped back and looked at Jessup, stunned. Jessup gave it a try herself. She raised the baby only an inch or so out of Mrs. Papillon’s arms and then lowered it again.

  “How could it be so heavy? And how can you keep holding it and carrying it around?”

  Reg felt another rush of weariness from Mrs. Papillon, and this time understood it. Carrying around a hundred-pound dead weight for several days would have been more than any human could handle. It was taxing even to a fairy.

  “If I want to get Callie back… I must. I must hold it and not let it go, for as long as it takes.”

  And judging by how tired she was already, Mrs. Papillon wasn’t going to last much longer. They were all silent, considering the consequences.

  “Have you found anything out?” Mrs. Papillon asked. “What have you found out about my Calliopia?”

  Mr. Papillon laid down his trowel and turned to look at Jessup for her response.

  “The best we can tell right now, it looks like the pixies were involved,” Jessup said slowly. “But this changeling throws a slightly different complexion on the matter.”

  “It changes nothing,” Mr. Papillon asserted.

  “But changelings are something that fairies employ, not pixies. I’ve never heard of pixies swapping a changeling for a baby. Or an older child.”

  “There are many things you’ve never heard.”

  “That’s true. Have you… heard anything from the pixies? Have they sent a ransom note? A threat? If you knew all along that this was perpetrated by the pixies, why didn’t you tell us that?”

  “We could say nothing,” Mrs. Papillon said, her voice tired and far away. “It would damage our chances of getting her back.”

  “So you just sit back and wait for us to figure out it was the pixies, knowing it the whole time.”

  They said nothing.

  “So, how do you get your baby back?” Jessup asked. “I seem to remember boiling water in an eggshell, making it laugh, or injuring it somehow… obviously we can’t do that.”

  “None of that will work. If it did, we wouldn’t have had to involve anyone else. We could simply have done so ourselves.”

  “Then how?”

  “You must find Calliopia and bring her back here.”

  ⋆ Chapter Twenty-Two ⋆

  T

  he pixies aren’t going to just give her to us because we ask,” Reg said, as Jessup drove her home.

  “Obviously not,” Jessup agreed.

  “And with that rabbit’s warren down there, I don’t know how we could find her to get her out. Even if we didn’t have to worry about being attacked by pixies.” Reg paused, thinking about it. “What exactly will pixies do to you, anyway? I mean, do they turn you into toads, or kill you, or what? I know they can hypnotize you, or whatever they do with their eyes, but then what…?”

  “There isn’t a lot of information about that.” Jessup pressed her lips together, thinking about it. “They’re very reclusive. They don’t mix much with humans or other races. It’s only the last hundred or so years that we’ve had any kind of dialogue. Folk tales mostly have them luring humans underground, never to be heard from again. There are tales of parties and gruesome deaths, but mostly, being lost, squeezed, or buried underground.”

  “But they haven’t done that to Calliopia. They’re just holding her. Why haven’t they done anything to her or asked for some kind of ransom? If they’re that reclusive, why would they go to the fairies and steal her in the first place? Nothing adds up.”

  “We’re still missing something. There’s some key piece of information we haven’t fit into place. Until we get it…”

  “How long can Calliopia survive? They say you can’t go without water for more than three days. In my dream, she hadn’t had any food or drink since they took her. It’s pretty damp down there, so she won’t dehydrate as fast as she would in the sun, but sooner or later…”

  “Fairy physiology is different than human physiology. I don’t know what their physical needs are. I’m almost as worried about her mother as her. Carrying that changeling around or worrying about Calliopia—or bot
h—are causing noticeable changes. Fairies are normally a very hardy folk. But emotional distress can kill them.”

  Reg’s mind went to Calliopia, shut up in that cold, dark room. If emotional distress could kill fairies, then what effect would that environment have on her?

  “Can you feel her?” Jessup asked, her mind obviously going down the same path as Reg’s. “Is she still okay?”

  Reg closed her eyes and reached out her mind to Callie. She repeated the girl’s name in her mind. She pictured the place that Calliopia had been the last time Reg had seen her, checking to see if she were still there.

  She could see Callie in her mind, lying listlessly on the bed, staring into the darkness. Like with her parents, her emotions were more difficult for Reg to read than human emotions, but Calliopia’s were pretty raw after being stuck there for so long, and Reg could feel her singular yearning to go home.

  Reg wiped her hand across her eyes. “She’s still there. Still alive.”

  They drove for a while in silence.

  “You must come from a very strong family,” Jessup observed. “As far as their psychic potential, I mean. You’ve only been here for a little while, and still have so much to learn, but your abilities blow me away. Do you know how few psychics can actually do that? Reach out to contact someone they’ve never met before and have impressions that clear? It’s practically unheard of. The reason you hear about psychics who are so vague and seem to be fishing for answers isn’t because they are all fakes… it’s because the answers are not clear, even for those who are legitimate.”

  Reg sucked in a breath and held it for a minute. Jessup shot a glance in her direction.

  “Your parents? Were they psychic?”

  “No.”

  “No? Nothing at all? Are you sure they didn’t just mask it? A lot of people get beaten down for using their powers so much as children that they completely repress them as adults.”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “Grandparents? Extended family? Maternal grandmothers in particular—”

  “Detective Jessup,” Reg cut her off, putting a snap into her voice that she would never have used on a police officer normally.

  Jessup stopped talking.

  “In case you didn’t know, I grew up in foster care. I don’t have any family. I never knew any grandparents and barely knew my own mother. The only reason I know what I do about her is that she kept talking to me after she died. Otherwise, I’d have no memory of her.”

  “Oh. Sheesh, I’m sorry, Reg. That was classless. I guess I knew from your record that you ran into trouble because you didn’t have a stable home. It completely slipped my mind.”

  Reg shrugged, looking out the window and trying not to show Jessup any emotion. Her hand was throbbing again, and she pressed her thumb to it, hoping it would settle down.

  “But that means you really don’t know what powers you might have gotten from your family,” Jessup pointed out. “You don’t know anything about them.”

  Reg didn’t answer. She’d said all she was going to say about the matter. Jessup could believe it or not believe it as she chose. Reg would have known if her mother had been psychic. And her mother would have told her if anyone else in her family was. She would have been proud of the fact.

  Of course, she had no idea about her father and his side of the family. She wasn’t sure her mother even knew his identity.

  “Is that the only way to get powers? They’re always inherited?”

  “No.” Jessup seemed happy to steer the conversation back to more comfortable ground. “There are other ways. Some can be bestowed on you by someone who has them, like a gift. And there are parasites like Corvin, who take powers from someone or something else. Um… legendary objects that bestow powers, gifts by angels or fairies, being hit by lightning…”

  Reg was fascinated. “Wow. Fairies can give powers?”

  “Absolutely. Obviously, you got protection from the microscopic bit of fairy blood that contaminated your wound. That’s just the tiniest fraction of what they possess. When they steal a human child, they actually turn it into a fairy with their magic. It is completely transformed from human to fairy.”

  “Instantly?”

  “No, no.” Jessup shook her head. “It’s a transformation that takes place over years. Don’t ask me to explain scientifically how it works, whether the body actually replaces human DNA with fairy DNA or what. I imagine if they tried to do it in an instant, they would kill the child.”

  “How do they do it?”

  “Part of it is eating fairy food. I imagine there are many spells and enchantments that are involved, built up over the years, until the kidnapped child is completely transformed.”

  They reached the house, and both got out, Jessup walking Reg back to the cottage.

  “What about other races?” Reg asked. “Could they transform other kinds of beings into fairies as well?”

  “I imagine so, though I’ve never heard of it. I imagine some would be even easier than humans to transform, races that are already magical or long-lived.”

  “Like pixies?”

  Jessup nodded as Reg turned the key in the lock. “Like pixies,” she agreed.

  They looked at one another, and as their eyes met, all of the pieces started to click into place.

  ⋆ Chapter Twenty-Three ⋆

  S

  he’s taller than Ruan, but she has the same eyes,” Reg said.

  “She has that same muddy brown hair. Not curly, but that could have changed.”

  “When I told Ruan that kidnapping was wrong, he agreed with me.”

  “Because she was stolen from the pixies,” Jessup finished. “She was taken away from them as a baby.”

  “Calliopia’s mother said that if they didn’t feed the changeling, it wouldn’t develop, but it would get heavier.”

  “And the changeling was at least a hundred pounds. The weight of a teenager.”

  They walked into the cottage, both of them blind to their surroundings, sorting out all of the details that had appeared random before and now all fit together into a story.

  “If the pixies knew enough about changelings not to feed it, why didn’t they do any of the things they needed to do to force the fairies to swap back?” Reg asked.

  “I’m not sure. Mrs. Papillon said that none of those things would work, so maybe they only work if it was a human who was stolen. With the pixies being magical, maybe they were barred from the usual methods.”

  Reg put the kettle on and prepared the tea things automatically, her brain far from what she was doing.

  “Do you think Demelza was Calliopia’s mother?”

  “I don’t know. That would be my first guess. But I don’t know. It’s going to take some investigating to get down to the truth.” Jessup rolled her eyes. “More pixie interrogations. Oh, joy!”

  “She didn’t look like a woman who has been carrying a changeling around for sixteen years. Do you think the rules are different for every race? Maybe pixies don’t have to hold on to the changeling.”

  “It’s possible. But pixies are incredibly strong. They always make me think of ants carrying ten times their own body weight. Pixies don’t use beasts of burden. Any hauling or building they do, it’s pixie muscle. They carry rocks and beams on their backs that we would use cranes and trucks for.”

  “Then why now?”

  The kettle started to whistle and Reg poured the water into the teapot. Her right hand hurt too much, so she handled it awkwardly with her left. Jessup didn’t appear to notice as she took the tea tray over to the coffee table and set it down.

  “Why now what?” she prompted.

  Reg sat down slowly, feeling her brows knit. “Why did they swap the changeling and Calliopia now? They didn’t do it when she was younger, but then they do it when she’s a teenager? Almost grown up?”

  Jessup took a sip of tea, thinking about it. “I wonder. Maybe she was stolen from somewhere far away and they didn’t know where she was
physically located. They didn’t find her until now?”

  “Yeah. Maybe. Brannock and Demelza didn’t have accents, but then, they aren’t necessarily even Calliopia’s parents.”

  Starlight rubbed against Reg’s ankles. She looked down at him. “Oh, hi, fur face. How are you?”

  He sat back and meowed at her. Reg scratched his ears with her left hand. He rubbed against her for a minute, then flopped over on his side, offering his soft belly. Reg stroked and scratched it. He only put up with it for a few minutes, then scrambled to his feet. He put his front paws up on Reg’s knees and she sat back to make space for him to jump up into her lap.

  Starlight purred and rubbed against her chin. He nuzzled Reg’s left hand, and turned around on her lap, nudging her right shoulder and arm. Reg eventually gave in and stroked his ears with the fingertips of her right hand. He smelled her fingers and pushed his nose into her palm. Reg winced and let him smell it, realizing he wasn’t going to be satisfied until he had fully investigated.

  “Reg, are you okay?”

  Reg looked at her injured hand. The bandage that had been so clean and crisp that morning was soaked with blood. She sighed. “I just need a new bandage.”

  “We need to get Letticia to look at it again.”

  “No, it just needs a new dressing. She left more of the yarrow in the fridge, I’ll just put more on. It’s not going to heal in a few hours. It just needs another application.”

  “Let me help.”

  Reg went to the kitchen to get the mushed yarrow out of the fridge, and Jessup helped to remove the old bandage, clean the cut, apply the poultice, and redress it.

  “So what does this mean for Calliopia?” Reg asked, smoothing the bandage with her thumb.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The police are investigating Calliopia being kidnapped from the Papillons. But if the Papillons kidnapped her from the pixies, then you can’t take her from the pixies and give her back to the Papillons.”

  Jessup stared at Reg for a minute, thinking it through. “Well… I don’t know. The first thing we have to do is actually find Calliopia. She’s a missing person. That’s job one. Then… we’ll have to unwind the whole story… if she was stolen from the pixies, then I guess that’s where she’ll go.”