Kheelan stole the key from the drunken, snoring Finvorra and opened the book.
From the Perpetual Annals of the Daoine-sith, Book of Records…Kheelan scanned the index: Royal Court of the Seelie, Tribes and Chieftains of the Unseelie, Sidhe Shapeshifters, Pixies, Merfolk, Gnomes, Elves, Brownies, Fae animals, MacLeods of Dunvegan and other Half-Fae, Tacharan.
Tacharan, aka Changelings, his heart pounded, remembering the cruel fairy taunts of his childhood. Despite his eagerness to read, Kheelan noted that his kind was listed even below the fairy animal classification. The arrogance.
He read on.
Changelings: Human children normally borrowed (hah! the little liars, they were stolen) at birth or up until age four, placed into service as deemed appropriate for the purpose of essential tasks related to either manual labor, (slavery was more like it) collection of information in tribal feuds (spy work), procreation (replenish the gene pool), or any other use to ensure the prosperity and perpetuation of the Daoine-sith.
He skimmed over much of what he already knew – switching of humans with rejected fairy children determined to be strange or marked in some way . . . practice began only after the first thousand years of recorded Fae history . . . escaping detection during the borrowing or switching . . . enchantment spells to bind humans . . . role of The Guardians . . . At last he came to an alphabetized listing of human children by birth year.
Kheelan stole a cautious glance at Finvorra and raked him over from head to toe in disgust. His hair lay in greasy clumps, drool ran down a corner of his chin, his tee shirt sported spaghetti stains, he sported grayish boxer briefs, and had long hairy legs that attached to tiny feet with twisted, malformed toes.
Kheelan went back to the book. He knew his real date of birth, he’d overheard a former guardian, Oonagh, discuss it with her Fae companions late one evening when they presumed him asleep.
There it was.
November 22, 1989, 7:59 P.M., Kyle Jeffries, born to Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Jeffries, Northport, Alabama. Swapped at three years of age by Spriggans, Unseelie Court, and replaced by similar-aged Fae child, for failure to shimmer and adapt to elemental forces. Human purchased from Spriggans. Transaction completed with no difficulties: human family, changeling and Fae child thriving and unsuspecting at last census report, January 2012.
Kheelan’s chest constricted and his heart hammered so loud he was sure Finvorra had to hear, although another quick glance showed he had not. Kheelan gripped the book as if to choke the life out of it. The lies. This lie was the one to end all lies. He shut his eyes and heard the voice of Annwynn, one of his earliest, and kindest, guardians when he asked her pointed questions.
“Why am I so different? Why do I have this ugly, large body? All the other kids make fun of me.”
“Don’t ye worry about it poppet,” her voice was smooth as water over rock. “You were chosen to live with our glorious race and it is your duty and pleasure to serve us. If you had stayed with your human—she shuddered delicately at the word—parents, you would not even be alive. They died in a car accident mere days after we, in our kind mercy and foreknowledge, brought you here to live in our world.”
All these years. All these lonely, backbreaking, outcast years his real parents were out there, alive, and they didn’t have a clue their biological child had been stolen.
“I’ll find you,” he whispered. “When all this is over, when I’m truly free, I’ll find you.”
But now was a time for planning escape. Kheelan located the Book of Fairy Lore he’d skimmed earlier. The myth of The One, the Halfling, was somewhere in the thick tome. He’d only started looking through this book a few weeks ago. When he first discovered it, the words would shimmer and disappear from the page when he tried to read it. On a hunch, he had produced one of his hagstones and discovered that by peering through the center hole, the words would float on the luminescent lavender pages, one line at a time, completely legible.
He cracked open the book, his muscles straining as the book resisted his efforts. The scent of damp earth and bluebells floated up from the text. Even with the hagstone, reading was difficult. The ancient words were penned with ink from plant dyes, now so faded that some pages were entirely undecipherable. Not only that, the fairies used ornate calligraphy and covered every margin with paintings of curling vines and flowers. The manuscript’s pages were iridescent from flakes of crushed gemstones and abalone shell.