But since he’d asked, I figured I ought to tell him something.
“It started a long time ago, when humans had more advanced medical care and schools than we did,” I explained. “Our infant mortality rate was terrible. Babies weren’t surviving, and when they did, they weren’t thriving. We needed to do something, but we didn’t want to give up our ways completely and join the human race.
“We decided to use changelings,” I went on. “We’d take a human baby, leave a Kanin baby in its place, and then we’d drop the human baby at an orphanage.”
Other tribes brought that human baby back to the village, believing it gave them a bargaining chip with their host families if the changeling decided not to return. But that rarely happened, and we thought the insurance policy—raising a human child with intimate knowledge of our society—cost more than it was worth, so we left the human babies among other humans.
“Our babies would grow up healthy and strong, and when they were old enough, they’d come back home,” I said.
“So you guys still have crappy hospitals and schools?” Linus asked.
“They’re not the best,” I admitted. “But that’s not all of it.”
“What’s the rest?”
I sighed but didn’t answer right away. The truth was, the main reason we still practiced changelings was money.
The Kanin lived in small compounds, as far removed from human civilization as we could manage. To maintain our lifestyle, to live closer to the land and avoid the scramble of the humans’ lives with their daily commutes and their credit card debt, their pandering politicians and their wars, we refused to live among them.
We could be self-sustaining without living with the humans, but truth be told, we did love our luxuries. The only reason we ever came in contact with humans was because we wanted their trinkets. Kanin, like all trolls, have an almost insatiable lust for jewels.
Even Linus, who otherwise seemed to be an average teenage boy, had on a large class ring with a gaudy ruby, a silver thumb ring, a leather bracelet, and a chain bracelet. The only human man I’d ever seen adorn himself with as much jewelry and accessories as a troll was Johnny Depp, and based on his looks, I’d grown to suspect that he might actually be Trylle.
That’s where changelings came in. We’d place the Kanin babies with some of the wealthiest families we could find. Not quite royalty or celebrity status, but enough to be sure they’d leave hefty trust funds for their children.
When they were old enough to be collected, trackers like myself would go retrieve them. We’d earn their trust, explain to them who they were, then get them to access and drain their bank accounts. They’d return to the Kanin community, infusing our society with a much-needed surge in funds.
So in the end, what it all came down to was tradition and greed, and when I looked over at the hopeful expression on Linus’s face, I just didn’t have it in me to tell him. Our world still had so much beauty and greatness, and I wanted Linus to see that before showing him its darkest flaw.
“Your parents will explain it to you when you get back,” I said instead.
Linus fell silent after that, but I didn’t even bother trying to sleep. When the train pulled into the station, I slipped my heavy winter boots back on. I hated wearing them, but it was better than losing my toes to frostbite. I bundled up in my jacket and hat, then instructed Linus to do the same.
I grabbed my oversized backpack and slung it over my shoulders. One good thing about being a tracker was that I’d been trained to pack concisely. On a trip I expected to last three or four weeks, I managed to get everything I needed into one bag.
As soon as we stepped off the train and the icy wind hit us, Linus gasped.
“How is it so cold here?” Linus pulled a scarf up over his face. “It’s April. Shouldn’t it be all spring and flowers?”
“Flowers don’t come for another couple months,” I told him as I led him away from the train platform to where I had left the silver Land Rover LR4 parked.
Fortunately, it hadn’t snowed since I’d been gone. Sometimes when I came back, the SUV was buried underneath snow. I tossed my bag in the back, then hopped in the driver’s seat. Linus got in quickly, shivering as I started the SUV.
“I don’t know how much I’ll enjoy living here,” Linus said between chattering teeth.
“You get used to it.” I pointed to the digital temperature monitor in the dash. “It’s just below freezing today. That’s actually pretty warm for this time of year.”
Once the vehicle had warmed up enough, I put it in drive and pulled out on the road, heading south along the Hudson Bay. It was almost an hour to Doldastam from the train station, but Linus didn’t say much. He was too focused on watching the scenery. Everything was still covered in snow, and most of it was unsullied, so it all appeared pure and white.
“Why are the trees like that?” Linus asked, pointing at the only vegetation that grew in the winter.
Tall evergreens dotted the landscape, and all of them were tilted slightly toward the east, with all their branches growing out on only one side. To people who hadn’t seen it before, it did look a bit strange.
“It’s called the Krummholz effect,” I explained. “The strong wind comes from the northwest, making it hard for branches and trees to grow against it, so they all end up bending away from it.”
As we got closer to Doldastam, the foliage grew thicker. The road narrowed, becoming a thin path that was barely wide enough for the Land Rover. If another car came toward us, we’d have to squeeze off the road between the trees.
The trees around the road seemed to be reaching for us, bent and hunched over, their long branches extending out toward the path. They had long viny branches, like weeping willows, but they were darker green and thicker than any willow I’d seen. These were actually hybrids, grown only by the Kanin people. They were made to help conceal the road to the kingdom, so humans would be less likely to stumble across us.
But no other car came. The empty road was normal. Other than trackers, no one really left the city.
The wall wasn’t visible until we were almost upon Doldastam, thanks to all the trees hiding it. It was twenty feet tall, built out of stone by Kanin over two centuries ago, but it held up stunningly well.
The wrought-iron gate in front of the road was open, and I waved at the guard who manned the gate as we drove past. The guard recognized me, so he smiled and waved me on.
Linus leaned forward, staring up through the windshield. Small cottages lined the narrow roads as we weaved our way through town, hidden among bushes as much as they could be, but Linus wasn’t paying attention to them.
It was the large palace looming over everything at the other end of town that had caught his attention. The gray stone made it look like a castle, though it lacked any towers. It was a massive rectangle, covered in glittering windows.
I drove through the center of town, and when I reached the south side of Doldastam, where the palace towered above us, I slowed down so Linus could get a better look. But then I kept going, stopping two houses away, in front of a slightly smaller but still majestic stone house. This one had a pitched roof, so it resembled a mansion much more than it did a castle.
“This is it?” Linus asked, but he didn’t look any less impressed by his smaller home than he did by the castle.
“Yep. This is where you live.”
“Wow.” He shook his head, sounding completely awed. “This really is like a fairy tale.”