Changeling Child
Luna sat at the entrance to her cave, her waterfall flowing peacefully before her as she tuned her violin, preparing for another night of performing. It was a lovely evening to fill with music. The stars, peeking through the settling sunset, were twinkling like the eyes of eagerly-grinning children who were anxious to hear her play, and the river was rippling happily over the rocks as though it was warming up its voice to sing along with her violin. Luna stepped through the curtain of water in front of her so she could see the night more clearly. As she looked around, she saw a section of bark on one of the trees begin to shiver.
The bark shivered more and more quickly until a little hole, a shadowy doorway, appeared in it. The hole gradually expanded, and at last, a hand emerged. The hand subtly shook with all the effort its owner was putting forth, its fingers spread as widely as they could be. Finally, the shadowy doorway was big enough for its opener to step through it. Luna's neighbor, Göran, a dwarf, now stood off to her right.
He turned around to face the tree he had come through, holding his outspread hand towards the door in the bark. Slowly, he narrowed the gaps in between his fingers and then gradually curled his hand into a tight fist. As he did this, the doorway in the bark grew smaller and smaller until at last it had closed completely and the tree looked no different than the rest of its companions in the forest.
"Good evening, Göran," Luna said as she finished tuning her violin. "What brings you to the riverbank?"
"I thought you could use an audience other than the trees," the dwarf replied, trying to smile as he spoke.
Göran's voice was always raspy, like the sound of his stone tools scraping against stubbornly-hard earth, but he had sounded even more strained than usual while answering her. What he had attempted to pass off as a smile looked more like a grimace, and Luna noticed that he was massaging the joints of his fingers he had used to open the door in the tree. Their relationship was not unlike the relationship between the two different elements they worked with, earth and water—sometimes when mixed together, they made mud good for strengthening walls, other times they made water soiled by dirt, leaving it unfit to drink. Still, as she watched him trying to subtly soothe his hands, Luna couldn't help but feel sorry for Göran.
"It takes longer for me to part the bark," Luna said with tentative gentleness, "But I don't mind. Simply ask and—"
"I don't need any help, Luna!" Göran snapped.
She pointed the bow of her violin at him.
"You're massaging your fingers again."
Göran abruptly dropped his hands to his sides, trying to act as though they'd been there since he closed the door. He dug a little hole in the soft earth of the riverbank with the toe of his tough leather boot. Luna was unsure of what else to say. Göran was only five hundred years old, but he was aging much more quickly than his father, who lived to be eight hundred and had dexterously dug tunnels right until the end. Luna knew Göran was too proud to admit arthritis was slowing him down or, even more frightening, that the passing of the centuries was beginning to hold significance for him and his kinsmen.
Wanting to fill the night with something other than these troubling thoughts, Luna positioned her violin under her jaw and began to play. It was a merry tune, one she had played at revels many times, and just as the music had set elfin feet moving at those gatherings, now, it made the trees sway with dancing even though there was no wind to help them. That was the sign of a skillful fossegrimen, if he could make the trees dance. Luna prided herself with being able to do this not only because it was difficult to reach that level of musical mastery, but also because she was the only woman of her kind to even pick up a violin much less achieve such perfection with playing it. Usually the women in the life of a fossegrimen were so preoccupied with tending to the hearth and home beneath the river or foraging in the forest for berries to go with the fish that made up almost all their meals that there was little time left for them to do anything else; if one of the women was found to be musically gifted, she was taught to sit beside the fossegrimen and sing along to his playing, but it was unheard of for her to make music on the violin herself.
Luna's father, however, had been different. He had no younger brother or nephew to pass his songs along to, and when his wife finally gave him a child and the babe turned out to be a girl, rather than pass her off to learn the traditional roles expected of her, he decided she would be the one to carry on his music. The tune she was now playing was a bittersweet reminder of him, for it was one of the first pieces her father had ever taught her. Luna's father had died fairly recently—three centuries ago—and she was still greatly grieving the loss.
"They shouldn't have built that dam," she said quietly as the final notes faded. "Don't they remember? A fossegrimen can never leave or lose his waterfall."
"There are few mortals left who do still remember," Göran replied sadly, looking at her from where he sat further down the bank. "Thankfully, the artists and poets still keep us in memory. But their fellow men . . ."
He looked across the river and over the tops of the trees. Off in the distance, towering over the foliage of the forest, three great spires that were simply the topmost part of the building they were connected to haughtily speared upwards towards the sky. Capping each of the spires was the emblem which reminded the humans that one of their own had sacrificed himself on their behalf. The adornments were supposedly shaped like the wood he'd been nailed to.
"Uppsala Cathedral," Göran said with a nod towards the spires, trying to hold back a laugh as if he were in the presence of a child who had done something humorous that they meant to be taken seriously. "What fools the Christ-priests are, telling their flocks we could never exist, or that we were driven out of these woods long ago."
"If it wasn't true before, it is happening now," Luna answered sadly. "Some are leaving for deeper parts of the forest, not so close to the humans."
"We could go as deep into the forest as we like, but they would still follow us. There are human towns and villages now in places we never thought they could survive in. All because of those blasted—"
"Perhaps the stories aren't true. Perhaps it is possible for you to—"
"Why risk it? They're too cold for us, for even the most skilled builders to handle. They don't require magic, or even the skill of the hands using them, just brute force. How could any passion for work come from that? Besides, you've heard the stories, tales of instant frostbite over the entire hand for so much as laying a fingertip on one of those tools. With those things in the mortals' hands, they'll soon tear down everything we hold dear, Luna."
"What a pleasant thought!" Luna said sarcastically.
"So then drown it out with music," Göran grumbled, staring ahead at the river.
Luna shifted her violin awkwardly in her hands, as she wasn't certain if he really wanted to hear her. A moment of silence. Göran glanced in her direction.
"Well? Play something."
Luna placed the bow across the strings and began to play a piece she had composed that sounded even gentler than the river rippling calmly over the rocks. It was a lullaby for the water she held so dear, for the home she hoped would still be there long after she herself was gone.
"Look!"
The strings screeched terribly off-key as Luna's hand fumbled with the bow, startled by Göran's sudden cry. He was pointing across the river, to some distance away on the opposite bank. At first, in the mixing colors of fading daylight and oncoming night, Luna couldn't tell what he was directing her to look at, but then, she saw it. Smoke was rising up rapidly from a clearing in the trees, but not the controlled column that signaled it was rising from a campfire. It was a rapid spreading of smoke that meant the flames were destructively consuming things they shouldn't. Luna felt the familiar sensation of animosity seize her.
Her chest tightened and every other part of her body was overcome with a sudden sense of pressure, assigning the outlet for this energy to her hands and fingers. Being a creature of the water, she despised fire and any sign of it instantly compelled her to extinguish it. She quickly ducked behind the waterfall and put her violin in a safe place in her cave, then reemerged and placed an unsteady foot on the bank.
"I'm going to put it out," she said, speaking more so to reassure herself than tell Göran.
"You'll never reach it in time."
"Yes, I will!" she cried as she struggled to pull her other foot up out of the water and set it firmly on the soil.
She took a few hurried steps forward and stumbled, falling to her hands and knees. Even only a few steps away, she could feel the magnetic pull from behind, begging her to return to the river. She shivered, fighting it as hard as she could, trying to get to her feet.
"Your legs aren't strong enough to travel that far on land!" Göran shouted from the opposite bank. "Leave it! Sometimes, fire must burn, Luna."
"Not as long as I'm here!"
And without another word, she set off in the direction of the smoke.
#
At last, Luna reached the clearing in the woods, and when she did, she discovered that the journey there had been the easy part of the task she had set for herself. Before her, the fire blazed with an appetite that appeared it would never be satisfied. The flames were eagerly eating away at both the trees of the forest and the wooden wagons of the camp that lay within the clearing. Her heart leapt out to the humans as she watched them scurrying about, trying to save what possessions they could and attempting to untie their terrified horses from burning hitching posts.
Through the flames, she could see the wagons were brightly painted with scenes of acrobats, dancers, and wild animals performing tricks.
A traveling circus, Luna realized.
She looked about, wondering how to combat such an enormous blaze while also remaining hidden from the humans' sight. Beside her, there was a large tree that not yet enwrapped in the flames. Luna struggled to pull herself up into the tree, which was harder than simply walking on land. The bark was rough beneath her hands, and the water that flowed from her fingers as she gripped the branches made the tree slippery and even more difficult to climb, but finally, she reached the height she wanted. Spreading out her hands, Luna shot water from her fingertips over the flames, and she was so high up in the tree that the falling water had the appearance of a merciful rain showering down from the sky.
Luna had protected these forests from fires for many years, and the task was so familiar to her she felt she could almost do it in her sleep. It thus didn't take long for the blaze in this clearing to be extinguished, but it took a large amount of energy, and so, once the majority of the flames were gone, Luna sat exhaustedly in the tree for a moment before she climbed down to explore the wreckage. Most of the wooden wagons were now skeletons of their former selves, proudly trying to still stand upright despite being so severely burned. As she softly sprinkled water from her fingers to extinguish any remaining smoldering flames, Luna decided to sift through the ashes to see if any valuables had been left behind.
Whenever she and her ethereal neighbors gathered together for their revels, any trinket that had once belonged to humans fetched a high price amongst the trading circles, for it took either great cunning or diplomacy for one of the "untrustworthy" fair folk to convince a mortal to give them anything of monetary or personal value. Even items that were stolen from a human were held at high value, because venturing to the village or home of any humans was dangerous these days and required much bravery. Looking through the still-warm ashes, Luna was disappointed to see that nothing worth taking remained, and so she started to head back the way she came, for she had a long journey home and must be in the river before sunup stretched across the forest. Behind her, she heard the rustling of something moving, and when this was followed by the creaking crash of one of the burnt wagon frameworks falling to the ground, Luna assumed that was all the sound had been. She was about to leave when she heard a soft groan.
Turning around, carefully making her way across the clearing where the circus encampment had once been, Luna saw a figure lying motionless amidst the ruins of the fallen wagon. As she got closer, she saw the figure was a boy, knocked unconscious by the skeleton of the caravan that had fallen on top of him. The child looked to be about twelve years old, and he was dressed in a small black suit and little black leather gloves. The most curious thing about the boy's appearance, though, was his face—it was hidden by a mask made crudely out of gray cloth. Luna looked about, listening for anyone who might be coming back for the boy, and when it seemed she was the only one around, she gently shook him by the shoulder.
"Child, can you hear me?"
The boy did not respond. Taking off one of his gloves, revealing a thin, almost skeletal-like hand covered by tightly-stretched skin, she held the boy's wrist and felt a pulse fluttering. Gently letting go of his arm, she then reached for the mask which covered his face.
#
Göran had originally thought the distant knocking sound was just his own tools echoing as he packed in the soil to strengthen the section of tunnel wall that had caved in the other day. When he finally finished his work, though, and the knocking not only persisted but pounded more anxiously, he knew it hadn't been an echo. Göran made his way down the earthen hall, climbed up the wooden ladder leaning against the wall, and worked to move aside the heavy rock that covered the entrance to his home. In his younger days, he could do this with ease, but now he had to brace his feet firmly against the rung of the ladder they were standing on and push with all his might to move the boulder out of the way. Finally shoving the stone aside, Göran cautiously peeked his whiskered face out of the hole just enough so he could see what was going on outside.
At first, all he could see was the dark woods ahead, but when he heard someone call his name, he turned his head in the voice's direction. Luna was sitting a few feet from the hole, holding a young boy in her arms.
"I need to use your tunnels," she whispered. "I can't bring him in the way I usually go home. He's unconscious; he might drown."
If she for some reason ventured on land during the night, Luna returned to her dwelling beneath the river by simply walking through the thundering waterfall as if it were a soft curtain of velvet. Göran, who already had a gnarled face like the creatures called gargoyles the mortals carved into their churches, twisted his expression into a suspicious scowl as he looked at Luna. She nervously tucked her silver hair back behind her pointy ears as she waited for his reply.
"He's a mortal, isn't he?" Göran asked and when Luna nodded, he hissed even more fiercely, "What are you doing with a human child? Wasn't putting out the fire enough?"
"He was in the debris of one of the wagons. I think his companions thought him dead when they fled the fire in their camp."
"Your heart will be the death of you, Luna. Did anyone see you?"
"No."
"You took only him?"
"Yes."
"Even that was too much. Go put him back."
"No!"
"Yes! He can't stay."
"Why not?"
"He's too old. Look at him. He must be—eleven, twelve. Usually, only babes are exchanged between us and the humans."
"Oh, nonsense! Plenty of grown ones lose their way in the forest and stumble across us."
"And when their friends find them missing, they come poking about where they shouldn't, looking for them and trampling on precious land we can't afford to be destroyed."
"Göran—"
"A few short centuries ago, this would be of little risk. Not now, in 1842. Uppsala isn't what it once was and neither are its residents."
"But he's not one of them. He was in a traveling camp, a circus of some sort."
"All the more reason to return him. People in towns distrust those traveling to entertain them. No good can come from trading anymore."
"Göran, he was alone," Luna said as she struggled to bring the still-unconscious boy through the hole and down the ladder.
"Someone will find him if they search where the fire was," Göran replied.
He blocked her path, standing his ground and trying to look as intimidating as possible even though the top of his head only came up to her waist and she could have slipped past him at any time. Despite his short stature, the stern look in his eyes was enough to make Luna pause. It was an unwritten and unspoken rule amongst the local fairy folk that, since Göran had been the one who had worked so hard to make the extensive network of tunnels connecting all their dens together, he was the one to decide who and what passed through them. For a moment, Luna had to think of how to persuade him and then, she took off the mask covering the boy's face.
"Look at him."
Even Göran, who had seen many twisted forms in his day, was taken aback by what was revealed to him. The child's yellowish skin was stretched so thinly and tightly over his bones Göran could see every fluttering of the boy's blue veins as they channeled blood through his body. His head was covered by thick locks of raven-dark hair. His eyes were sunken in, and this was apparent even with them closed. But the most striking feature shocked because of its nonexistence—although he had nostrils, the boy had no nose.
After taking a moment to stare at the child, Göran lifted his gaze to Luna.
"Did you veil him?" he asked, for often, when one of the fair folk took a human offspring for their own, during the journey to the child's new home, they created an illusion around the mortal so it would look like one of them.
"No, I didn't," Luna answered. "This is how he is."
"And he was alone?"
"Yes."
There was a pause as Göran kept looking from the boy to Luna.
"Think of what I could do with him, what we all could," she insisted. "Humans are forgetting our arts. They're encroaching on our land. But he could learn among us, and once he goes back—"
"You've seen what they do to their fellow men who are born as he is. They lock them away to be gawked at as if they were living paintings, some odd mistake an artist made—"
"But with our music, our singing, he won't have to be locked up! People would come from all over to hear him! They'd worship him! The mortals go into a trance when they stumble across our revels and hear our music!"
"Those were in the old days, Luna," Göran reminded as he started to turn away and walk down the tunnel. "Take him back."
"You could have him as you apprentice."
Luna spoke the words as though they were wriggling worms on a hook. When Göran's pace slowed, Luna knew she had him. The dwarf was proud of his intricate network of tunnels, but along with his pride, he was also greedy.
"Think of it," Luna continued, "A human with your skills, but with the mortals' tools."
Göran completely stopped in his tracks. At last, perhaps there was promise. The great power the humans held over them, the fact that their iron tools froze the fingers of any member of the fair folk who touched them, could at last be overcome. This child, who had been cast out from amongst his own kind, was now priceless to those who had found him. He could handle iron. He could learn all the mischievous tricks of the fair folk and then return to his own people to proclaim that the elfin beings of the forest were not deceptive demons or simple legends.
"Very well, Luna," Göran said, looking back at her before he moved down the tunnel to open the door leading to the part of the tunnel that opened up to her home behind the waterfall, "Keep him."
As she moved past him, carrying the child in her arms, he tried to hide a hopeful smile.
