He blinked but went to fetch what I had requested. When he returned, I asked him if the small coat I had spied hanging on a hook on the door was his son’s. He nodded.
“Thank you,” I said, and I placed the coat in my backpack. “I’ll return it, I promise.”
I mounted the stairs. Mord drew in a sharp breath. He did not follow me, which was just as well. I would have stopped him.
Shadow padded alongside me as wolves champed at my ankles. I could see the stairs through the illusion, and Shadow could not see the illusion at all—at least, I think he cannot see fae illusions. I suppose it is possible that he sees them but is indifferent.
In the attic I found a little bed and a cosy rug of undyed wool. Upon the bed sat a boy, pale as moonlight on new snow. I stopped short, for the creature was nothing like the changelings I have encountered before—ugly, spindly things to a one, with the brains of animals. The boy’s long hair was bluish and translucent, and upon his skin was a glimmer like frost. He was beautiful, with an uncanny grace, his eyes sharp with intelligence.
A distant part of me was struck by how much he reminded me of Bambleby. Though they looked nothing alike, there was a kinship that I could not put my finger on, which was perhaps more absence than feature, a lack of something coarse and mundane that characterizes all mortals.
My stomach twisted at the realization that this creature was the first of the courtly fae I had ever questioned. I was uncertain if the feeling was excitement or terror.
“You tricked me,” the changeling said crossly.
“You have it backwards,” I said, adjusting the sleeves of my coat. I had turned it inside out before entering the house, enabling me to see through any illusion the faerie chose to show me. “I merely sidestepped your own attempt at trickery. Would your true mother be pleased to know how you welcome a guest?”
“Go away.” He was angry, and not just at my evasion of his enchantment. He had not liked me mentioning his faerie dam.
“I am going to ask you a few questions,” I said. “I would recommend ready answers. I am aware of the cruelty you are inflicting upon your foster parents, and it has not inclined me to be generous with you.”
Another blast of winter wind greeted this statement. The beams rattled in the ceiling.
“Are you happy to be the cause of suffering?”
“I don’t care,” the child snapped. For he was a child, for all his power, and he glared at me with a child’s stubbornness. “I don’t want to be here. I want my forest. I want my family.”
“And what has become of your family, that they should send you to live among mortals?” I was particularly interested in the answer to this question, for most of what we know of changelings is guesswork. It is the habit of courtly fae to leave changelings in the hands of mortal parents for a period of months or years, and then swap them again without ceremony (if the changeling has not died in the interim, which is not uncommon), but no one knows precisely why they engage in this behaviour. The leading theory suggests a motive of idle amusement.
The changeling’s lovely face twisted. He leaned forward. “If you do not go away, I will fill Mord’s thoughts with such horrors that he will wish he was dead. I will give Aslaug dreams of burning and rending and the screams of everyone she cares for echoing in the night.”
A shudder ran through me, but I maintained my bland demeanour. Wordlessly, I withdrew the handful of salt and began scattering it about the room.
“What’s that?” he said, interest replacing fury in the space of a breath. He pinched some between his fingers, smelled it. “Salt? Why are you doing that?”
I stopped, silently cursing. Salt binds faeries, but perhaps in Ljosland it works only on the common fae, or not at all. I withdrew the iron nail.
“You can’t kill me,” he said.
“No,” I agreed. To kill a changeling is to kill the child it has replaced. They are always bound together by a powerful enchantment that neither time nor distance can dispel. “I can hurt you, though.”
I gave Shadow a signal, and he snapped at the child’s foot, distracting him. I thrust the nail into the changeling’s chest.
Almost into his chest. The faerie moved, and the nail ended up in his side. The screams that followed were worse than those before, like winter given voice. The faerie seemed to dissolve, becoming a creature of shadow and frost, with eyes that shone like the blue heart of a flame. It is thought that all courtly fae are like this underneath; their humanlike forms are only a guise they assume. While killing them is a tricky business, a wound wrought with metal may force them into their weaker, insubstantial selves.
I knew all this, but only as theory. Seeing the faerie’s true face, for all my determination, froze me entirely. It was a moment before I regained my senses.
As the faerie continued to wail, I withdrew his coat from my pack. “I shall give you this if you answer me.” I was pleased that, while my hand shook, my voice did not.
“Give!” the changeling shrieked. He was cowering in the corner. He could still have hurt me, I think, but was too upset to think of it. Of course, if he had, I could have withheld the coat.
The Folk are bound by many ancient laws, some of which give mortals a great deal of power over their well-being. Mortal gifts strengthen faeries, be they food or jewels, but clothes have a particular power, in that they help the Folk bind themselves to the mortal world, and, in the case of the courtly fae, their mortal guises.
“I have your attention then,” I said, as the changeling’s shrieks diminished to sobs. “Let us start with your parents.”
* * *
—
In the end, the faerie told me little. He would only moan about his forest and his beloved willow tree, and the many paths the Folk built underground and through the deep snows, lit somehow with moonlight. This was all interesting enough, but quickly grew tiresome; by the end of an hour I knew the number of the willow’s branches and how many stars the faerie could see from his window, but little else. It was a myopic view of the courtly fae, filtered through the eyes of a self-absorbed child, and thus not particularly helpful.
Either the changeling did not know or he could not remember why he had been brought to Hrafnsvik, though he did believe that he would be taken away again, and swore a great many dire revenges upon me when this occurred. Once I had tired of his moaning, I handed him his coat. He drew this around his body and huddled in the corner, shuddering, as slowly he gained weight and substance again.
I did not leave Mord and Aslaug wholly unprotected, of course. I told them about the inside-out trick I had used with my clothing—this would not prevent the visions, of course, but it would lessen their hold over them. Aslaug, returned from her walk, welcomed me with a warmth I did not expect, but she was an unsettling sight—far too thin, her eyes shadowed, and her hair lank. She hummed almost constantly, and at times seemed to become lost in herself, oblivious to conversation until Mord went to her side and squeezed her shoulder. While I am first and foremost a scientist and value my objectivity, I would have helped them if I could. But I saw no way of doing so.
I returned to the cottage to compile my notes. It was empty, though I could see two tiny specks upon a distant mountainside that I recognized by the colour of their cloaks as Lizzie and Henry. I caught the flicker of a spyglass and guessed they were observing the rock formations below. As for Bambleby, I had no idea. Perhaps he had drowned in the spring.
I decided to venture thither myself. I wished to pay my respects to my new friend; one can never predict the effects of being kind to the common fae, and I still hoped to earn his confidences.
The spring was deserted, but I was content to remove my boots and wait. I splashed my face with water, and then, after a quick glance over my shoulder, plunged my head under.
I scrubbed my hair for the first time since arriving in Hrafnsvik, dislodging dirt and leaves that I hadn’t even realized were there. When I finished, I squeezed it out and tied it back up, feeling infinitely better. It was as if I had washed off some of the darkness from the farmhouse.
The afternoon held the sort of borrowed, ephemeral warmth that interrupts the advance of winter sometimes, and I found myself wondering what summer was like in this place. With the sun filtering through the trees, I was feeling quite content. I ate my lunch while I waited, after first restocking the faerie’s candy. He had not liked the caramels one bit, complaining that they stuck in his teeth. The chocolates, though, he had instantly taken to. I would have to write to my brother for more; no doubt sweets at Groa’s shop would cost me their weight in gold.