The Changeling, by Tracy Lynn
It was a perfect beginning of a trip to the marshes of Mordor, the enchanted peak, the deserted castle at the end of time.
Not to Thanksgiving at the Logan’s.
The sky was a pilled grey-white which could easily be described as an old blanket or any one of a number of overused metaphors, but to Chevy’s discerning and exhausted eye looked most like the cloudily iridescent nacre on the inside of an oyster. Pearly, but not in a wealthy way. More like an oil slick.
The sun was pushed down to the horizon by the weight of these endless November clouds. The sun was pale yellow and shed feeble light from behind the black tree trunks, as if it was the solstice in some way more interesting country and time.
Chevy had the earphones shoved into her ears as far as possible, switching itchily between a more upbeat playlist and something that fit with the awful late fall day. In a stack next to her were Celtic Fairy Tales, an untranslated version of The Mabinogion, and Teach Yourself Welsh in 21 Days. They were all untouched because of the low four-thirty light and her forgetting to bring a flashlight, like she did on driving trips when she was little.
Normally her worshipped/hated older brother was in the back seat with her, annoying her, arguing with their parents, or telling her just how bad her tatste in music was. But he was still at college, hosting a Thanksgiving Feast for the kids who couldn’t afford a trip home.
Selfish bastard.
And so here she was, by herself, nothing to do but squint at her reflection in the window. If she looked just right, the white earphones became decorations in long braided hair, her large eyebrows became sexily exotic, and her modern clothes faded into the background. She twitched her nose, trying to look more British than Germanic.
“Babies are really quite fun at that age,” her mom said, apropos of nothing. Maybe Mom-Sense somehow told her how annoyed Chevy was just then to not to have anyone even close to her own age to hang out with - or studiously ignore. “Not quite two, no real tantrums yet, very loving… I’m sure Otis would love to have a big sister to hang out with. You’ll have a great time.”
“And I’m sure Mrs. Logan will love to have me babysit so you can all go out Saturday night,” Chevy muttered.
The little Subaru, Quando M’en Vo blaring merrily from its speakers, pulled into the long, newly repaved driveway of a still new-looking, giant home. It resembled a tan and blue Barbie Dreamhouse; all trim neatly in place, all of the inbetween bits, windowpanes and doorframes, a bright chromy gold.
Fake gas lanterns lined the drive and came on automatically when the car grew near.
“Frack,” Chevy muttered once, closing her eyes. She unbuttoned her seatbelt.
Kasper Logan was already in the open door, waving. He was in shorts and a polo despite the 30 degree weather, waving piglet-sized arms at them.
“He is,” Chevy reminded herself to tell her brother later. “Bigger than last year.”
“Kas!” Chevy’s dad shouted eagerly. He and Ms. Wentworth, almost twins in their gore-tex jackets and long, matching homemade scarves, began scrambling in the back for bundles. There were gifts and flowers and nuts and side dishes to be brought in, ingredients for more side dishes to be put away.
Chevy got out, hoisting her messenger bag and a tote full of apples over her shoulder. For just a moment, the cold air slapped her face and the fresh scent of woods, and wet, and ice filled her nose. Her shoulders relaxed.
And then she turned to walk up the path and saw the two - two - giant SUVs parked in the garage.
She shook her head and went in.
Mrs. Logan was reclined like a model against the island in her newly redone kitchen, a glass of white wine lightly twirling in her fingers. Her eyebrows were arched a little, as if to say, gosh I’m tired.
“Kammy,” Chevy’s mom said, going over and giving her a big hug, despite the wine glass. Kaspar was slapping Chevy’s dad on the back.
But Chevy’s eyes were fixed on the baby.
It sat in a high chair off to one side of the island. It was hunched over some sort of food item like a squirrel and had the unhealthy greenish tinge of a…well, either a very sick baby or a very sick frog. It was skinny except for a weird little pot belly and thin lips were pulled back from tiny baby pointed teeth.
Chevy looked at her mom; looked for guidance in baby normality.
Her mom was staring at the baby too, over Mrs. Logan’s shoulder, eyes wide with surprise. And horror.
“Oh, and there’s Otis!” she said, putting delight into her voice. Her face and body were immediately suffused with love and affection, and even Chevy had to strain to hear any falseness.
Later they were all having - an admittedly incredible - dinner of homemade ossa bucco and papparedelle putanesca, and Chevy still couldn’t take her eyes off the baby.
She had unpacked in the cold, ‘third’ guest room (the master guest room was inhabited by her parents and the second one was being redone), duly talked about applying to The College with Kaspar and her dad, and now picked at her meat, the whole while with thoughts focused on the baby.
The baby occasionally focused on her, too.
Weird, piercing hazel eyes.
Right now it was happily chewing on a bone.
“He loves it,” Mrs. Logan said. “The doctor says it’s good for his teeth.”
“Oh, I miss having a baby around,” Ms. Wentworth said mistily, running a hand through her short, silver hair.
“No, not this again,” Mr. Wentworth said, laughing.
Chevy got a text from her brother.
?
She typed back:
Huger.
Then she added:
Otis is…ugly.
Her perfectly good, do-gooder brother responded:
All babies are ugly.
She tried not to snort, and wished she could show it to her parents.
“Aiiieeeeee,” Otis screeched suddenly, looking up at everyone.
Everyone looked back.
It picked up the bone and threw it, knocking Mr. Logan’s glass of Cabernet onto the floor in an astounding, glittering fountain of glass and bloody-looking liquid.
Kaspar sighed.
“We’re thinking about getting occupational therapy for him,” he said, beginning to pick up the biggest bits of glass with a napkin.
After a long, awkward evening - and some hellacious screaming; Mrs. Logan said they were trying to ‘Ferberize’ the baby, whatever that meant; it seemed to involve leaving it alone in a dark room while they drank more wine - Chevy was worried she would make it through all of To Love-Ru on her brother’s PSP before they went home. For some reason, the assembled adults thought a sullen teenager playing videogames was somehow more acceptable than a quiet teenager reading an interesting book.
When it was time to sleep Chevy went into the Master Guest Room to kiss her parents goodnight. Her mom was already sitting up in bed like it was her own home, reading The New Yorker, and her dad was probably flossing somewhere. They could have been anywhere, on an alien ship, and it wouldn’t have mattered as long as there were good magazines and cinnamon-minto.
“Um, so Otis…” Chevy began.
Her mother flipped a page hard. “All babies develop at different rates. All babies are different.” Almost like she was expecting the question, and had been preparing to berate Chevy for any prejudice, conclusion, or negative subjective observation.
“Um, ok,” Chevy said, scratching her fingers through her long dark hair. Her face and head got itchy, the way it always did when she came up against a wall with her parents. “Good night.”
It took her a while to get to sleep in the cold darkness - if you could afford a McMansion, couldn’t you afford to heat it properly? - and the smell was too modern and wet for her to pretend she was in a castle, or some other childish dream that helped her fall asleep.
When she snuck out of bed, head too full of thoughts to let her rest, Chevy discovered that her father wasn’t flossing. Instead he was engaged in a routine he would mock to anyone else, but embraced with the passion of a long-deprived man whenever he was with Kaspar. The two men had retreated to Mr. Logan’s ‘playroom,’ which, to his credit, was not decorated with unused expensive power tools or other man toys. It was strictly old school decadent: overstuffed armchairs, a walk-in humidor and small wine cave, a ventilating system, and a truly indulgent speaker system. The Dave Brubeck Quartet was put on and expensive Cuban cigars were lit; Kaspar poured him and his guest a snifter of something thick, slow-moving and amber colored. Mr. Wentworth sat back in a leather chair, stuck his feet up on an ottoman and sighed like this was what he deserved, a rare and extremely guilty pleasure.
After a few supremely boring moments of staying perfectly still and watching her dad and his friend puff and sip, finally Chevy was rewarded by her dad saying what was on everyone’s mind.
“So…Otis…” he began reluctantly.
“They don’t know,” Kaspar admitted immediately, as if he was waiting for it all along. He blew a truly Gandalf-impressive smoke ring. “Spectrum disorder… Asperger’s… It’s all been dismissed. Something a little more complicated. Oppositional defiant disorder… ADHD with a big dose of frustration thrown in… Bipolar disorder… Conduct Disorder, but he’s a little young for that… Oh, we’re doing everything. Throwing money at it. Poor little guy,” Kaspar took another deep puff. “We knew he was going to be super smart and special. You know, with these genes.”
“Of course,” Mr. Wentworth said with a gentle smile.
“So, of course a little weirdness is going to come with it.”
“Like your own penchant for skinny brunettes. With mustaches.”
“Hey, hey now,” Kaspar said, but with a wide grin, glad that the touchy-feelie part was over. “Sonya had a great rack. Remember? All it took was a little nair…”
Chevy crept away, uninterested in male pattern bonding. Did they really think that Asperger’s caused green skin? It was time to do some reading, and find an internet source.
The first time she was left alone with Otis was late the next morning.
Kaspar and her dad went out back to pretend to chop wood, and her mom went with Mrs. Logan to pretend to be interested in more house renovations. She was left in the kitchen with Otis, who seemed to be perpetually exiled to his high chair.
“So…” Chevy began, unsure where to begin. Unsure how ridiculous she sounded. “Do they realize you’re a changeling?”
Otis cracked up.
"NO! Can you believe it?!” he hissed. “I replaced their son over a year and a half ago and they never suspected a thing!”
Chevy wrinkled her heavy brow, thinking. Really, it might not be possible to find two more self-involved ‘parents’ than the Logans. With her clubs and renovations and charity balls and his - whatever it was he did in finance that kept him globetrotting but strangely provincial two hundred days out of the year… Well, the real Otis would probably have been consigned to a high chair most of the day anyway.
Otis stretched in a horribly adult way, cracking his elbows and fingers.
“It’s nice having someone real to talk to,” he said conversationally. And then he threw all of his animal crackers onto the floor with a violent sweep.
They had, Chevy noticed, been mutilated in particularly detailed ways.
Her mind raced. She tried to breath evenly. Her wildest - and, let’s face it, steamiest - fantasies were the only place so far where the Fair Folk turned out to be real, and she got to meet one.
The situation was a little unreal.
“What… Uh… Where is the baby?” she finally managed to ask.
“In the loving hands of Ghena, Seventh Cousin of Atta, two-hundred and thirteenth in line to succession of the throne,” the changeling recited, bored. “Minor royalty. No one important.”
“She couldn’t…uh…have a baby?”
“None of those royal twits can,” the changeling snorted. “Inbred feebs. Not a problem in my family. I have a hundred brothers! And some sisters, the ones who didn’t get eaten, at least.”
Chevy repressed a shudder.
The changeling suddenly made a coughing, dying, choking sound. With deadly accuracy he spewed a stream of toxic white-green spittle just an inch from Chevy’s nose, hitting the wall right next to her.
Mrs. Logan and Chevy’s mom, coming into the room, started at the scene.
“Oh. My.” Chevy’s mom said. “He’s got a little upset tummy.”
“He didn’t start getting colic until he was one.” Mrs. Logan said, getting a paper towel, tearing her eyes off the unlikely colored sputum running down the wall.
Chevy cast an appraising look at the baby, but he was fixated on mutilating animal crackers again. There was no way of telling if it was a warning to her, or a distraction for the moms.
Thursday afternoon, when the two women were making Thanksgiving Dinner and the two men were making a big show of bringing in wood, Chevy sort of offered to look after Otis, in the den. She didn’t exactly volunteer, that would have been too obvious.
“Is the…uh…real baby being taken good care of?” she asked as Otis carefully dismembered each one of his dolls, Diego playing garishly and loudly on the tv.
“Ghena wanted a brat. She got one. I guess she’s taking care of it,” he shrugged, then farted loudly to emphasize his lack of caring.
Stories varied on what elf queens did with their newly acquired charges. Sometimes they grew bored with them. Sometimes they raised them to be cold, lonely outcasts who could never rejoin the world of normal humans. Sometimes the fey parents turned them over to other, even less friendly creatures to finish rearing them.
Actually, according to folklore, once you guessed what a changeling was, he was supposed to disappear and bring the other baby back. This one didn’t seem to care. Or maybe it knew times had changed, and no one would believe a crazy teenager.
He saw the worry on her face and laughed, a horrible, evil snarl. Babies were burned in the night to that kind of laughter.
Chevy glanced up at the TV, a little scared and out of ideas. “Can we watch Law & Order instead?”
“Please,” the changeling said, with the most enthusiasm she had heard yet. And while his interest in the more morbid scenes was disgusting, at least he was quiet.
On Friday she bundled herself and Otis up and plopped him in a shiny new Red Flyer wagon that had been more or less unused since the summer.
“We’re going for a walk,” Chevy announced. Otis only blew out his diaper twice in protest.
“I’m so glad you’re taking such an interest in the little guy!” her mom said brightly, visions of grandkids dancing in her head.
“Yes, it’s quite lovely,” said Mrs. Logan. Not suspiciously, not exactly, but there were bags under her eyes and a haunted look on her face. Thanksgiving hadn’t been a total disaster, but Chevy and her dad seemed to be the only ones able to happily stuff their faces while the changeling had screamed and thrown creamed onions.
(And what was probably a piece of his own poo, although by tacit agreement no one admitted aloud to what it was. “Burnt chestnut. Gross,” Kaspar had said, and everyone immediately concurred.)
Chevy set out, pulling the wagon over frozen, bumpy terrain. It would have been far more epic and romantic had it been a sled or a sleigh and there was snow. And easier, too. Each hummock pushed up by the frost was just another stump for the wheels to catch on.
And yet the strange thing was not pretending that she was on an epic quest to save something from someone in the land of the sidhe. The strange thing was that Chevy, her long hair in a ponytail, the Hello Kitty hat pushed down over her ears and long romantic white scarf thrown around her shoulders, was doing precisely that, straining against the wagon and the cold, teeth gritted, scanning the terrain.
Pulling an oddly complacent changeling behind her.
He knew something was up.
Occasionally he would reach down and grab a stick or an acorn off the ground in a move far too graceful for a toddler. He would sit crunching on it quietly while Chevy paused before this or that tree evaluating it. Finally she found an appropriately old-looking hawthorn. She snapped off a switch and started walking again.
“I guess you’re looking for a hill, huh? To open up? To get to the Fairy Kingdom?” the changeling said, making conversation. “Be nice to get home again.”
Chevy didn’t say anything, enjoying being the silent, fey-like one for a change.
Finally they came to a charming little rise covered in dead grass and brown nettles. A perfect toddler’s sledding hill, come the winter.
Otis carefully got down out of the wagon.
Chevy carefully pondered the hill.
“At least I get enough to eat here,” the changeling said, casually. “Those idiots don’t know enough not to give a baby meat on the bone. I get all the marrow. To myself. Morons.”
Chevy looked at the changeling.
He was ugly. Green and hunched over, nose constantly running. Nose too sharp. Eyes weird and piercing, but at the same time soulless, with no reflections in them. Nasty, tiny little baby hands with fingers too skinny and nails too sharp.
He was ridiculous in the bright red snowsuit with the bunny ears.
Chevy looked back at the hill.
Was she really prepared to march into a fairy kingdom that, let’s be honest, she knew nothing about? If travel books on Florence didn’t mention almost getting killed in tiny back streets by fast cars driven by maniacs, what did the loose collection of apocrypha, myths and legends about the Good Folk leave out? She wasn’t good at riddles. She had never held a sword. She was just a stupid modern human girl with a dead twig in her hand.
Did she really care that much about the Logan’s baby, one she had never met? She didn’t even particularly like the Logans.
Defeated, she gestured for Otis to get back in the wagon.
“Good idea,” he said, almost eagerly. “You didn’t even wait for a new moon. No counting on what sort of trouble you’d get into. Try again later.”
“If you behave during dinner tonight,” Chevy said, “and sort of act like a normal baby, when I babysit you tomorrow night I’ll give you the entire turkey carcass and then tell them it was me.”
Otis’ eyes went bright with an unholy fire.
He kept his word. More or less. At least there was no pooing at the table.
Maybe he overdid it a little; the adults watched with horror when Otis neatly folded his napkin back into a swan shape after delicately wiping his lips.
Chevy just rolled her eyes.
As predicted, Saturday night the Logans desperately wanted to go out. Chevy protested just enough to get a twenty out of it. Anything less would have raised suspicions.
She and the changeling watched The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. But although their silence seemed companionable, Chevy was torn.
There was something sort of ancient about sitting in the large, dark living room with the giant undecorated Christmas tree. And even though it was a gas fire, the tall yellow flames flickered mystically in the dark. For all of his rudeness, apparently the changeling had sensitive ears, so the volume on the tv was low.
Chevy cupped an eggshell in her hand, one she had snuck from breakfast. The only guaranteed way to rid of a changeling, it seemed, was to boil water in one, over an open fire. The changeling would remark on how weird it was - or something - and then disappear back to its place under ground, returning the original baby to its rightful owners.
Otis picked his teeth happily with thin turkey bones, then chomped down on them, grinding through the hard matter with unhuman back teeth. Chevy thought about the sort of life, the sort of childhood which caused a creature to be so hungry.
But she also couldn’t stop thinking about the real baby Otis. He could be miserable, afraid, alone, starving…
Something must have shown on her face: a furrowed brow, an irritable scratching at her hair.
The changeling paused his chewing to eye her for a moment.
“Look at the fire through my eyes, human girl,” he said softly.
“What?” Chevy asked, surprised and suspicious.
“You want to see your precious human baby, look,” he commanded, sounding a bit more like his usual snarky self.
Wondering if this was a good idea, and casting her mind through all of the legends she had read to see if there was anything about this sort of thing, Chevy reluctantly did as she was told.
Although they showed nothing else, the thing’s eyes did reflect the fire.
Only it was the wrong one.
The flames in his eyes were redder, their tips dancing more. Almost like they were alive: mad little sprites. Behind, or through the fire, on the other side of the hearth, was a scene almost out of a painting. A throng of elven handmaidens stood in attendance, gossiping, holding little diamond-colored ewers of liquid, tending the fire, fluffing pillows and folding soft cloths.
In the middle of their beautiful, whirling activity was a center of perfect calm. A woman clad all in white with a brown wooden circlet on her brow sat on a stool. In her arms was the real Otis, pink-cheeked and healthy, sleeping peacefully. Ghena’s large brown eyes barely blinked, as if she didn’t dare look away from the baby for a moment, a small smile of perfect happiness on her lips. She leaned over and kissed him gently on the forehead, adjusted his blanket, and rocked him.
Chevy tore her own eyes away.
“How do I know what you’re showing me is real?” she demanded, more confused than ever.
“Apparently you people have forgotten a lot about us,” Otis said, strangely unoffended. “It’s as real as this tasty bird I’m finishing. I swear by my liegeance to the Unseelie Court.”
Chevy rubbed her forehead and forced herself to watch the simple madness of a chainsaw wielding psychokiller.
As she lay in bed that night, thinking furiously, Chevy thought she heard singing; a solitary female voice murmuring something low and comforting, in words she didn’t understand. A lullaby that came on a wisp of a breeze from somewhere warm.
Comforted, she drifted off.
By Sunday morning even Chevy’s mom was having done with the Logans. She sat at the table, gripping a cup of coffee and trying not to show it, while Kammy prattled on about things. Chevy tried not to laugh. She was showing Otis a cat’s cradle, which he found fascinating. None of the adults noticed the preternaturally skilled toddler make the deft movements that completed each string picture.
“And of course there’s Northwards Academy’s infant and toddler division, but we’re not sure - they’re actually a little crunchy. Deerfield has a Montessori and Worcester has a Waldorf… Their interview process is a little complicated, but I’ve broken it all down into a spreadsheet, which school requires what where…
“Um,” Mrs. Wentworth said. She gave Chevy a rare helpless look. There was no way a baby like Otis would ‘interview’ well. Even assuming he made whatever IQ minimums the schools required. Chevy imagined the changeling taking a tinker toy and jamming into another baby’s eye as a proctor watched.
And then she realized something. No matter what happened, no matter what stunts he pulled - up to and including torturing and eating small animals, probably - the Logans would defend Otis to the last: arguing, bribing, suing and forcing their son’s way into the upper echelons of society. Private boarding school (strict, probably) to feeder high school (with enough other troubled rich freaks for him to pass unnoticed) to Ivy League of some sort, to… Currency trader. Investment banker. C.E.O. Whatever. The changeling wasn’t stupid, just feral and brutish. He could very well grow up into some awful sort of adult human-like thing, passing as a man with tendencies that could be laughed at as American Psycho-ish.
And at least he got enough to eat here.
As the two families said goodbye and embraced each other, Chevy approached the changeling.
“You’re not going to hug me,” he said, panicked into speaking aloud.
“No,” Chevy said with a wry smile. “I’m giving you an early Christmas present. As I understand it, you may not even remember me…or the discussions we’ve had…next year. If you stay, you’ll become sort-of human. Have a good life.”
She put out a hand and shook his awful, tiny elven one.
Otis looked up at her in surprise. “Really? You’re not going to pull the old switcheroo?”
Chevy shrugged.
It was complicated, the mess of thoughts that whirred around her head and heart. Ghena obviously loved Otis. And Kaspar and Kammy didn’t even notice their own son was replaced…But they sort of loved him too, in their own shallow and screwed-up sort of way.
“Hm. Well, I’ll be,” Otis said. “No, I won’t remember you next year. Probably. Happy Saturnalia or whatever it is you guys do now.”
And he settled back, almost comfortably, into his high chair, tucking into a giant turkey leg like it was a security blanket.
And the Wentworths drove home and Chevy leaned against the window, looking up at the bright winter constellations,.
So? Her brother texted. How was it?
Chevy thought for a moment.
It was actually pretty great.
:)
-END-