Changeling

A Willerby Story

…

The characters in this story can also be found - amongst other stories - in:

Jack’s Pool.

The Big Top.

Tigist and the Wolf.

Folded In.

Ghosts Everywhere.

…

Sally saw the bedside clock said seven and screamed.

“What?” Dan asked her, blurry and muffled from beneath the tangled sheets.

“The baby, Dan! Check on Sammy!”

Dan looked at the clock, jumped out of bed and ran naked down the corridor to his son’s room.

Sally tumbled after him, her breath short and ragged.

“Oh, thank god, he’s fine,” Dan said a moment later, cradling the eighteen-month-old in his arms.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, he’s fine. Look.”

Dan handed the baby to his wife, who looked into his wide blue eyes and burst into tears.

“I thought he was dead,” she said. “I really thought he was dead.”

Dan found he could not stop shaking.

“Me too,” he said, with a laugh that was really a choke. “I thought I was going to find..”

Sally swallowed a final huge sob in a deep breath.

“Don’t, Dan.” She said, “I can’t bear it.”

…

They had breakfast in the garden. Croissants and coffee in the spring sunshine, the baby on a crochet blanket under the white blossom of their cherry tree.

“He’s never slept through before.” Sally said.

“First time for everything,” said Dan. “Who knows? Maybe we’re turning a corner.”

“Maybe,” said Sally, shrugging. “We’re due a break.”

Dan looked down at the baby.

“Is he trying to sit up?”

Sally peered down too.

“It looks like it.” She reached down, took a tiny hand and pulled gently. The baby rocked easily up onto its bottom and gurgled happily.

“Well, wow.” Dan said. “And there’s another milestone.”

Sally laughed with delight the looked more closely and frowned.

“There’s something different about him. Do his eyes look the same to you?”

Dan scooped the child up.

“I think so?” He said. “They’re the same colour, right?”

Sally shook her head. “Yes, but no. There’s something different, I’m sure.”

Dan looked again. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe they’re a bit lighter? Does eye colour change that suddenly?”

Sally shook her head. “I wouldn’t have thought so. Let’s have a look in the book.”

Dan started to get up. “I’ll go get it now.”

Sally almost let him go but then changed her mind,

“Sit down. It can wait for a bit longer. We’ve both slept properly for the first time in goodness knows how long. Let’s enjoy the morning for a bit longer.”

Dan settled back down, gratefully, for it had been a very tough year.

Hospitals that were always too bright and too hot. Painful tests that made all three of them cry, doctors telling them the news was bad with the lesson it wasn’t bad at all, just different, not yet learned.

A year of so little sleep that both Dan and Sally felt disassociated from themselves, every waking moment unreal, each night never-ending and full of fear of the dawn tumbling towards them.

But there was wellspring of deep, ancient love too.

Years later, when things were more settled and they’d come to happy terms with their different lives, the three of them went to a bonfire night fireworks display in Beckworth park that was washed out by torrential rain.

Most of the crowd abandoned ship as it fell, melting home or to the pub but Dan had brought a huge umbrella he’d been given at a corporate golf day, so they hunkered under it and toughed it out.

Sally was struck by a massive Roman Cande spitting defiance at the stormy night, and how much that felt like her love for Sammy in the darkest times when the jaws of life felt like they were closing on her.

The nights she and Dan had spent after Sammy was finally asleep came back to her, the violent reality of it all rushing at her so strongly it made her gasp, the fear and love wrapped up all together, the bad-drunk singing and dancing in the kitchen, their stand against the horror, their two fingers at the abyss.

But this insight was only to come later.

In the middle of it all they were just exhausted.

…

Over the next week the baby made remarkable progress.

Sitting up became crawling and then, a week to the day it had slept all the way through for the first time, to Dan and Sally’s astonishment the baby took its first tottering steps.

By the afternoon it was walking confidently between the two couches in the lounge, and by the evening doing laps around them.

Then – after eating with gusto – the baby fell into a deep sleep and had to be carried to its cot.

After their own dinner, Dan and Sally sat at the kitchen table and talked over their dirty plates.

“I’m going to make an appointment with endocrine.” Sally said. “I’ve looked online and been on the forums and this just doesn’t happen like this for kids like Sammy.”

“It’s like a miracle.” Dan said.

Sally pursed her lips. “His eyes. That’s the bit that bothers me most.”

…

The doctor thought they were fussing and while he did agree to see them, with nothing actually wrong they weren’t offered an appointment for six weeks.

“They all develop differently,” the doctor said on the phone, in the soothing tones of a man so used to placating and mollifying anxious parents he was unable to recognise his own condescension. “There’s no rule book. It sounds like he’s doing well. Enjoy it!”

“It’s not about enjoying it,” Sally said. “He’s different – it doesn’t happen this way. Have you looked at case studies of other children with his condition? Has this happened before? It’s worrying us.”

“Well don’t worry,” the doctor said, breezily ignoring her questions. “Get out in the fresh air. Take him to places. Enjoy the spring. Doctor’s orders.”

“Doctor’s orders?” Dan said after Sally hung up. “What a prick.”

Sally frowned but then laughed, resolving to be more positive. “Yes, but the forecast for the weekend is glorious, so we may as well do as he says.”

…

They tried to enjoy it, but it was an unsettling two days.

The toddler – now undoubtedly more than a baby – slept through both Friday and Saturday night, waking well rested and good humoured each morning, so different to his usual colicky screaming and the sobbing fits that lasted for hours it felt eerie.

Sally did not sleep well.

She was uneasy and on Sunday night, unable to adjust to unbroken sleep after so long without it, she lay awake in the dark wondering why she was finding herself so uncomfortable around her own son.

The child, breathing easily in his cot had made more progress over the weekend than he had in months before it. At the park on Saturday morning, he’d looked straight at her and said “mama.”

Sally knew this should have been a moment to treasure, that the first words she’d waited so long for should have made her feel something good, but instead she felt – if anything – irritated, finding an entitled, almost proprietorial tone in just that one word.

At lunch, a shared ploughman’s in a close by farm kitchen, he’d eaten whole mouthfuls of cheese and even half a pickled onion, all at once completely uninterested in formula and breastmilk.

Sally should have been pleased but felt rejected instead.

By Sunday morning the child was walking confidently, eating anything solid he was offered and, along with “mama”, was saying daddy, more, yes and no.

It was all happening too fast.

She rolled over to listen to her husband’s breathing. It was regular, but shallow. Then he rolled over too.

“Dan? Are you awake?”

He sat up in bed.

“Yeah,” he said. “I can’t get down.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“Sammy,” said Dan.

“Me too.”

“What are you thinking about Sammy?” Sally asked.

“That he doesn’t seem like our son. Does that make me terrible?”

“Only if it makes me terrible too,” said Sally. “I’m thinking that too.”

They got up and went to Sammy’s room to look at the child, peaceful and still, lit softly by the fairy lights Dan had woven between the bars of the cot so that when he woke crying in the night, he wouldn’t be alone in the dark before they could reach him.

“Does he look the same to you?” Sally whispered.

“Yes,” Dan whispered back. “But he feels different.”

The next moring they picked at their tea and toast quietly and spoke in whispers, scared the child in the cot upstairs might hear them.

“Should we call the doctors again?” Dan asked.

Sally shook her head. “What would be the point? If we said any more than we have already they’ll think we’ve gone insane. They’ll probably call social services. And I don’t think this is anything any doctor could do anything about.”

“What do you think is going on?”

“Something strange.”

“We should ask David and Mauve over.” Dan said. “They’ll know something about this.”

“I think so too,” said Sally. “Soon. Today.”

“It’s nearly eight – I could go over now if you want to get Sammy up?”

Sally looked up at the ceiling and shuddered.

“I’ll go to David and Mauve,” she said. “Can you him while I’m gone?”

Dan looked at his wife, her face creased and worried in the morning sun streaming golden through the patio window.

“Alright,” he said.

Sally met his eyes and nodded. “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll be back soon.”

…

Mauve gave a quick, short scream when she saw the child sitting confidently in the highchair at the kitchen island, grabbing at marmite toast, more upright and stronger than Sammy had ever managed.

“Where’s Sammy?” She said, whirling around.

“I knew there was something wrong with him,” Sally said from behind the older woman, feeling a complicated rush of fear and vindication.

“Wrong with him?” Said Mauve. “Nothing, but he aint a boy and and he aint Sammy.”

…

“You can’t blame yourself,” said Mauve, later, outside on one of the patio chairs, after Dan and Sally had calmed enough to listen to her properly. “When they do this, they cast a spell on the parents so to you the baby looks mostly the same. If they didn’t, it would never work.”

Dan put his coffee cup to his lips then put it down on the table without taking even a sip.

“Who would do this? Goblins?”

David shook his head.

“They’d only ever take a baby if they needed to protect it. They got a knack for finding kids like that. There are old stories they took some orphans during the Black Death, brought ‘em up boggart and happy enough for that. More recently there’s talk they took adopted an evacuee who lost both parents in the Coventry Blitz the same night the old cathedral burned. Hard to be sure. To goblins once you’re adopted, you’re one of them. They forget where their foundlings come from. They don’t think it important.”

“Sammy wasn’t in any danger,” said Sally, crying a little at the thought anyone could ever think he would be. “Not from us.”

“Right,” said Mauve. “He aint no little lost foundling in need of a home. This aint that. He aint been taken by goblins, you can be sure of that.”

“Who then?” Dan asked.

Mauve pursed her lips and looked over at her husband who was picking at his hands.

“The High,” David said. “It’ll be the High that’s taken him. Swapped him for one of theirs. They do that sometimes as part of their festivals.”

“The High?” Said Dan. “Who are they?”

“We did tell you before, yonks ago though and just a mention of them so not surprised you forgot. They don’t come round here often now, thank goodness.”

“I hate we still call ‘em that,” Mauve said. “Makes them sound like they’re better than the rest of us and they aint. They’re arrogant, wicked things.”

“What are they?” Sally asked.

David looked up and shrugged. “They got lots of names Fairies is one. Or the Fae if you’re going to be posh about it. Elves. The one I think fits best I read in a book about what they’re called in some overseas place. Says there they call ‘em Grotesques. I like that because it fits the way they think they’re all special and beautiful and, I don’t know, well-fashioned when the truth is to anyone with any sense, they’re - I don’t know..”

“Extravagant,” Mauve interjected.

David paused to think for a moment. Then he nodded. “Yes, that’s right. Extravagance disgused as elegance. That’s what grotesque is right enough.”

“Why would they take Sammy?” Dan asked.

Mauve got to her feet. “It’s a thing they do. Could be for any number of reasons, few of which we’d understand, fewer still I give a shit about. It’s not important now. We need to get him back soon as we can. We need to go now.”

Dan and Sally got up too.

“How? Asked Sally.

“Just follow me for now,” Mauve said, already walking back to the house. “We’ll swing by ours and then take the road.”

“The baby?” Dan asked.

Mauve stopped. “We’ll have to bring it,” she said over her shoulder. “It’s just a mite and it can’t help its people. Aint done nothing wrong. Don’t know what they’ll do with it mind. Cross that bridge when we get to it. One step at a time. We get Sammy first, everything else after that.”

…

“Are we sure this is the best way?” David said, looking up the iron ladder going up into the gloom of the church tower. “Not the old road? The path up to the fort?”

Mauve nodded. “This way is more direct,” she said, “and it brings us out right by their court. It’s better if they don’t have too much warning.”

She stepped forward and put her hands to the rungs. “I’ll go first. Then Dan with the baby, then Sally, then David. All you got to do is keep going up. It’ll be much longer than you’d expect so don’t fuss about that. Just keep climbing. If you need a break shout out, but remember the quicker we go, the better our chances of getting Sammy back.”

“The better our chances?” Sally gasped. “Does that mean you think we might not?”

Mauve turned round, troubled. “I shouldn’t have put it that way but – look - there’s no sense in worrying about that now. We don’t go fast we got no chance. We go fast we have one.”

The first part of the climb led to a small, dark opening and into a cobwebbed wooden floored and panelled room used to store the church’s seasonal decorations.

The four of them, the happily gurgling baby in a rucksack baby carrier on Dan’s back, picked their way through plastic crates of Christmas wreaths and baubles and fluffy Easter chicks to the opposite wall, where another ladder led to a closed trapdoor in the ceiling.

“This is the big climb,” said Mauve over her shoulder as she pushed it open. “And it’s dark. Just keep going up, one step at a time, and ignore anything you hear or think you hear.”

They went up and up, far, far further than the height of the old tower and afterwards Dan and Sally could never agree how long their journey had gone on for, although both were so worried neither felt they could trust their memories.

Dan thought they were in the deep dark much longer than Sally did but he had the extra weight of the baby which might have accounted for at least some of the difference.

But, just as likely – they later agreed – was time as well as distance was warped in the crossing of the boundary between the worlds.

Several times – again exactly how many they couldn’t agree on – there were senses of great space around them and at others a feeling of confinement.

Sometimes the rungs of the ladder were uncomfortably cold and at others it hummed under their hands and grew warm enough to make their palms sweat.

There were breezes and gusts as they passed openings they could feel but not see, and in the movement of air they heard, or at least thought they heard, the whisper of leaves in wind, the murmur of waves, the high cry of something that sounded like faraway gulls.

Once, abruptly, from nowhere a sudden cackle of wild, crazed laughter that broke into deep, throaty sobs.

“Ignore that and keep climbing,” Mauve shouted.

After a couple or perhaps more hours in the deep, the black around them became less dark and the air lost its smell of cold stone, warming, taking on an earthy, rich scent laced with a heavy perfume of manure and blossom.

The baby, sleeping or awake and silent up to then, began to stir, stretching and squirming, its strong fingers grasping and tugging gently at Dan’s hair.

“Dan,” Sally said from just behind him. “The baby – it’s bigger and its glowing.”

“Right enough it is,” said David, behind her. “It’s back where it came from. The spell they put on it won’t hold now there’s no need for it.”

“I can see their stars,” Mauve called. “We’ll be there in a moment.”

The final yards of the climb took them to a circular hole, glowing blue above them.

“Wait a moment,” said Mauve, hauling herself up through the opening. “You can come up,” she called a second after that. “There’s nobody here.”

A moment later they were all out and standing by a stone well in the middle of a flat, well-trimmed lawn in a small clearing in a close-packed forest beneath an indigo sky studded with red, green and gold stars, shimmering, winking and flaring as if behind a great curtain of shifting, restless heat.

“I hate it here,” said Mauve, flatly.

“Not guarded tonight at least,” David said. “Must be a party night. Wonder why they ever bother to be honest. What have the High to fear?”

“Nothing now,” said Mauve, “but there must have once been things they were scared of, and they do like to play at their traditions and rituals although I’m sure they don’t remember the meaning of any of them.”

She turned to Dan and Sally.

“It’s just a short walk. We can rest for a moment, but we shouldn’t stay long. There are things in the forest we don’t want to notice us.”

She settled herself on the edge of the well and took some bread buns and chocolate bars from her bag.

“Eat these,” she said, passing them round. “It’s been a long trip, and we’ll need to keep up our strength for this last bit. We can’t eat anything here.”

The baby on Dan’s back was wriggling again.

“It doesn’t look anything at all like Sammy,” Sally said as she picked it out of the backpack. “Now I can see it properly.”

The changeling kicked in her arms. She put it down and it stood up straight and looked around. It took one of the chocolate bars and then a couple of uncertain steps towards the only opening in the forest, a dark hole with a loamy path behind it. It didn’t go far before it stepped back towards the adults, the golden glow around it pulsing faintly as it breathed.

Mauve sighed.

“Poor lost thing,” she said, dusting her hands free of crumbs on her trousers. “Just a kitten without its mother. Can’t t help what it is.” She shook her head, clearing the distracting thought. “Don’t matter for now. You ready? We need to move.”

…

The path between the trees was narrow and winding, overhung in places by foliage that rustled gently in the still air.

In the gaps in the canopy the colours in the sky moved and shifted, weaving tapestries of light in the same green, gold and red as the stars.

Everything was red, gold and green - the bark of the trees rust, the branches gilded, the fine veined leaves twisting emeralds in the gloaming.

It was beautiful, but overbearing and intrusive too– like a florist window stocked with just one showy variety of hothouse rose – stunning at first, but then cloying and overwhelming as all subtly and nuance was drowned in the overbright fanfare.

“This place is a migraine waiting to happen,” Mauve muttered, as she led the way.

Ahead of them, faint at first, they heard music.

Snatches of some songs they recognised and some songs they didn’t played carelessly for a minute or so before the musician grew bored and moved on to another tune.

“And that drives me spare and all,” said Mauve, shaking her head, jabbing at where the music was coming from up ahead. “And that’s the High all in a nutshell. Everything in the moment, no sense of why anything worth anything needs commitment, everything a show, nothing ever finished.”

The snatches of music grew louder as the group grew closer and then they were on the edge of a clearing much bigger than the one they’d climbed up to.

And there they found the Court of the High – a smattering of brightly coloured ragged tents clustered around a larger striped pavilion from which the snatches of music were coming.

A tall, thin man-shaped thing in a long white robe, pulsing between soft pink and red pulled himself up from where he’d been sitting alone and cross legged by a flickering green campfire and gave a theatrical, sarcastic bow.

“Have you been invited?” He said from beneath a Roman cavalryman’s fine-wrought helmet, worn carelessly at an angle, the leather chinstraps unfastened below his sharp, pale jaw.

“Were you invited when you took our baby?” Mauve snapped at him.

The thing gave them a smile that was more a leer.

“Ah,” he said. “You must be here to thank us for our gift.” He looked down at the elven changeling. “Such a pretty, clever child. He’ll be loved in your world wherever he goes- he’ll make you so rich, so famous. Don’t let it ever be said the High don’t give charity to the unfortunate.”

“Charity?” Mauve said, the anger rising in her. She chose her next words carefully. “It doesn’t matter. We don’t want your charity. It aint welcome. “We want the human boy back.”

The tall figure’s eyes widened in surprise.

“The unmade child? But why? For what purpose? What good will it ever do?”

“He’s ours,” Sally said, stepping forward. “And we love him.”

“But how?” The thing said, with apparent genuine curiosity.

Mauve put a hand on Sally’s arm. “There’s no point trying to explain to it,” she said. “It can’t understand.”

She turned back to the elf.

“Just give him back,” she said. “And we’ll leave you alone to whatever this is.”

The figure said nothing for a moment, then shrugged.

“Come with me,” it said, then turned and walked lightly towards the striped pavilion, seemingly indifferent to whether the humans and the changeling were following.

…

In the half-light of candles, torches and LED camping lanterns, twenty or so of the High lolled on deckchairs strewn haphazardly over the dark grass underneath the bright, tattered canvas.

They stopped playing as the humans entered.

Some were in evening dress, some were in rags. One was in a suit of rusting chain mail and one, twirling to music only she could here, was in a dirty wedding dress with a long train.

Two in black tailored SS uniforms stood either side of a wooden dais on which sat a male figure in a golden throne, smoking a cigar and wearing a safari suit and pith helmet.

“You missed the party,” said the figure in the safari suit, sounding hungover and bored. “You should have been here hours ago if you wanted to come to the party.”

It turned to the guard.

“Why have you brought them?”, it said. “I’m tired. You should have known I’m tired.”

“They say they want the useless baby back.”

The safari-suited king pulled itself upright looked at them with something like interest.

“Why? What would you do with it? Perhaps people will pay to see it? Perhaps you have shows for this sort of thing? The one we have given you is much better.” It waved at them with a long-fingered hand. “No matter. I don’t care. Go away.”

“Very happily.” David said, evenly. “Give us the boy back and we’ll be on our way.”

The thing in the throne sighed.

“We don’t have it. What would we do with it? What would anyone do with a half-made thing like that? Take our gift to you, learn to be grateful and just go.”

“Where is he then?” Dan said, raising his voice, almost shouting.

The King winced.

“Tell him to lower his voice,” he said to Mauve. “Or I’ll kill him.”

“And if you do that, I’ll kill you,” Mauve replied. “I might be able to and even if I can’t, I can hurt you trying. Or you just tell us where the boy is and there doesn’t need to be any fuss at all.”

The King of the High flopped back in his chair, his pith helmet flopping over his bright eyes. “Fine. We never took it out of your world. Why would we? We left it by the old door. Now just go.”

Mauve’s lips became a thin, hard line.

“You abandoned it?”

“Who cares? Why would anyone care?”

Mauve turned to say something to Dan and Sally, but they were both already gone, running as fast as they could back the way they’d come.

“Take the gift with you,” the King called as David and Mauve whirled after them. “We don’t want it. It stinks of you.”

David shot the King of the High a furious look as stooped to scoop up the elven baby.

“More mess you leave for someone else,” he said.

The King waved at him. “Bye now,” he said, then slumped back into his throne.

…

“Dan! Sally!” Mauve called after them as they raced back to the well in the clearing. “Stop! Stop! Just for a moment, we need to talk.”

For a moment they ignored her.

“Sammy aint that way!” Mauve shouted.

They stopped just before the path through the forest, the younger two breathing hard, the older couple breathing harder.

“They left him!” Sally shouted between gasps that were also sobs. “All alone, they left him - like he didn’t matter at all.”

“They did,” said Mauve, “and I think that’s good news. Listen. They left him in our world by the old door – that’s the path that goes up to the old tower where the runners go most mornings. If he’d been left there, he’d have been found – everyone in Willerby knows him – he’d have been given back to you. If he’s not there then someone else took him and I think I know who.

“Ah,” said David, as he put the changeling child down. “That road doesn’t just go here – it goes to other lands too. I think someone else took him. People he’ll be safe with. We’ll go quickly because telling you aint the same as you seein’, but I think things are going to turn out right.”

…

Mauve returned Sammy in the early hours of the morning, wrapped in a tartan blanket.

He was fast asleep.

When Sally took him, he woke, stirred in her arms and began to cry, his face bright red, screwing his hands into balls as he arched against a colic only he understood.

Sally cried too and so did Dan.

“Our baby,” Sally said to him again and again. “Our baby.”

…

“They took other child?” David asked Mauve later as they sat by the Aga in their kitchen, both feeling old and tired.

Mauve nodded.

“They did. I knew they would.”

“A child of the High brought up goblin. You ever heard of that before?”

Mauve shook her head. “No and we’ll keep an eye out on how that turns out, but this is for the best. You know, they didn’t hesitate. I told them the human child had a family, but this one didn’t.”

“What did the queen say?”

Mauve took a sip of tea.

“Not much,” she said. “But it was nice. She said ‘all child need family. He got family now. Goblin child.’”

…

The End.