Adult Changeling (Chapters)

Prologue

The wind wailed through the trees with the sound of grief and loss. It was not like grief and loss, it was the screams of mortals who had lost their bargains with the faerie. A pair of riders drove their horses with inhuman speed through the blackened, winter-touched trees.

One of them was astride an ugly brown pony. Despite its lumpy face and patchy coat, the pony was by far the better looking of the two. The rider was gnarled even for a goblin; and where her gray skin wasn’t scaley, it was perpetually damp.

The other rode a steed of smoke and shadow, its hooves sparking green flame on every rock they trod. He was tall and lean, dressed in flowing greens. His eyes were gold and slitted like a cat’s, but they needed no light to reflect, they shone all on their own. The hands that gripped the shadow steed’s reins were eagle talons, adorned on every digit with rings of heavy silver inset with gemstones.

They were armed, of course. It had been a long time since mortals had discovered iron. They had become downright infatuated with it. Though an individual human was no worry for a Lord of Faerie, as a people they were no longer playthings.

Ehadenther snorted and spurred his shadow steed viciously. It was ridiculous that a Lord such as himself was traveling through the Wailing Woods at all. That he had to dirty himself by entering the human realm. It would be a century before the drab mundanity of their world properly washed off.

He glared at the bundle tied to the back of the goblin’s pony. A dog-headed faerie was secured there, motionless in her enchanted sleep. All this trouble, because his Master of The Horn had insulted Her Majesty. The Horn Master was a broken thing now, his wooly dog’s body split across three panes of glass in the Queen’s court. That was a small revenge by faerie standards, however. Now Horn Master’s daughter was banished to the mortal world.

Ehadenther did not see why he had to attend to such a distasteful task himself. He had argued his case long in court, stalled with every trick he knew. The Queen of Glass would not be moved by pleading, favors, or even logic. Even now Ehadenther wished he hadn’t lowered himself to use something as human as rhetoric, but he’d been desperate.

In the end she had laid a Geas on him. A mystic binding, chaining him to the task like he was a common pixie. Rage boiled in Ehadenther again, spilling out of his fanged mouth in a wolf’s howl. The sound chilled the very wind, silencing the screaming of the trees for a time.

“We’re almost there, My Lord.” Said Wunk. “The locket is shining brightly now.”

Ehadenther curled his lip at the goblin. “I loathe the quest we are on, but even more I cannot understand why the Queen cares WHICH human we exchange. What does it matter what mud-footed monkey we bring back to faerie?”

“I’m sure I don’t understand the Queen’s motives.” Wunk said, in her insolent way that made it clear she was politely lying. “There was something about a human that embarrassed the Princess when she went to walk the human world by moonlight.”

“And what business had the Princess in the mortal world?” Snapped Ehadenther.

“A Princess will do as she will.” Wunk said with a shrug. “I’m sure I can’t fathom the motives of such a…”

“Silence goblin!” Ehadenther growled. “Enough of your false prattle. Be useful, find us an Old Road, if we are so close.”

Wunk bowed her head and spurred the pony. Despite its stumpy, graceless body, the pony was a fae steed. It could run as fast as a dream, with the speed of a lie and twice as fast as truth. The two faerie burst into the mortal world through a crack in a lightning-riven tree. Their steeds thundered across gravel and tar, toward a dismal human dwelling.

A spiked fence barred the way. It was short and painted white, but it reeked of the iron nails that had been used to fasten it together. The horses balked, slowing their charge. A barked word of command from Ehadenther forced their mounts to leap the fence. They landed on short, manicured grass and came to an uneasy stop.

This was the house with the human the Queen had marked. Ehadenther didn’t need the Queen’s locket, he could feel the Geas tightening around his neck. He could take no step away from the human hovel until he had his prize.

The house was a simple box, but like the fence it was riddled with iron. Wunk was already overwhelmed. The cobbled together bits of shadow that goblins wore in a mockery of proper clothing, had frayed into whisps of night wind. It was not an improvement.

Still enraged, Ehadenther harnessed that anger, drawing down the power of the moonlight. He whispered dark words into the house’s windows, words that would drag the mortals within into nightmares. They would not be released from their fell dreams until the sun dispelled the shadows into which Ehadenther had spoken.

Satisfied that the mortals would be unable to wield their iron against him, Ehadenther looked for an entrance. In their arrogance, the humans had fashioned a door out of clear glass. Though he was not in his liege’s good graces, he was still of Her court. Ehadenther commanded the glass to stand aside, in Ixinavori’s name. Obedient to the monarch of all glass, the pane blew away like mist.

“Come, Wunk.” Ehadenther said. “Let us be done with this.”

The house was quite clean for a human dwelling, carpeted in plush fibers. Paintings of incredible detail hung upon the wall, encased in more glass. They did not appear to be storing livestock inside for warmth. Indeed, the house was warm without any apparent fire.

Despite the modest size of the dwelling, the humans who lived here were clearly royalty. He would die before admitting it, but Ehadenther was glad his human target was a worthy one, at least.

The target was slumbering in an opulent, though small bedroom. Perhaps this was a holiday home for the humans. It didn’t matter. Ehadenther had no interest in human trinkets, no matter how precisely they had been crafted. He had a Geas to complete.

The child they’d come to collect was curled under blankets of fibers so fine that Ehadenther wondered if magic had been involved in their creation. At the least, the Horn Master’s daughter would sleep in a bed that matched her station.

“Are you sure this is the child?” Wunk asked, stupidly.

“Of course it is. Look at your locket, it is burning like a coal.” Ehadenther said. He left unsaid that his Geas was driving into him like a root through stone at the sight of its target.

“It’s just that she seems quite large, My Lord. She would be twice as tall as I, if she were awake and standing.” Wunk persisted.

The impertinence of the goblin took Ehadenther’s breath away. Were he not bound by magic, he would have taken great pleasure in hurling Wunk into whatever miasmatic hole had spawned her.

“What of it? The human child is large, you say? It does not matter.” Ehadenther said. “This is the child we were sent to collect. No doubt this is some species of human that has large children. Do you have a better explanation, oh wise goblin?”

“N-no, my lord. I only want to make sure that we collect the correct human.”

“You have your answer. Change the Hound Master’s daughter to match this one’s shape, give her its instincts, and let us be gone.”

Wunk got to work, ripping the locket in two with her brute goblin strength. Each half of the chain spun itself into a new loop. One half-locket went about Roan’s neck, still bundled in her father’s cloak. The other Wunk wrestled around the human’s oafish head.

It was the first time Ehadenther had seen the changeling magic work, the first time he’d been debased to such a task. It was strange to see Roan twist and swell out of her faerie shape to match the brutish clod in the bed. They must be identical, of course.

Wunk took a hair, some spit, and a drop of blood from the human and sealed it in glass to Roan’s locket. From Roan’s ears she spun a song that the faerie girl’s mother had sung to her. With deft, knobby fingers, the goblin sealed that song in glass on the human’s locket.

“It’s done, My Lord.” Wunk said.

“Then pick up the human and take it back to your pony.”

“Ah, My Lord, I would. It is just that the human is much larger than I expected.”

“Wunk.” Ehadenther said softly, fixing his lambent eyes on the goblin. “Have you ever seen me hunt?”

“N-no, My Lord. But I know that you are the greatest of the Queen’s Hunters, our Master of the Hunt. My Lord.” Wunk bowed her shoulders, shrinking down well below her two and a half feet of height.

“Perhaps you shall. It would please me, Wunk, to see you run before my hounds. To hear your screams of terror as you threw yourself into bramble and thorn to flee – all the time knowing that you could not escape.”

“I think I can manage the human, My Lord. Shall I move her now?”

“That would be best, for your sake.”

It took an agonizingly long time for the goblin to handle the hefty human child. They were away in the moonlight, back to the Wailing Woods in a flash. It was still too slow for Ehadenther. He stank of dust, of tar, of mud, and strange human alchemies.

Faster. Ehadenther demanded of his steed. Faster. Outpace the lighting, trod upon the wind. Give me the speed of an oath’s binding.

Dream and nightmare tumbled about them in an incomprehensible kaleidoscope as the horses galloped flat out. As fast as a thought or a heartbreak, they came to the sharp and brilliant spires of the Court of Glass.