The Changeling of Fenlen Forest

by Katherine Magyarody

  Someone called back down, and a trapdoor opened in the portico floor. I blinked at the glow of firelight that spilled from the door of the treehouse. A ladder slid down to the ground.

  Putting his palm upwards and bending his fingers towards himself, Torun gestured at me to approach, still speaking his language. I came to the ladder.

  He pointed up. “You go.” As I wearily pulled myself up the rungs, he added, “When he sees you, I wonder what my uncle will say.”

  When I reached the top of the ladder, a woman a few years younger than Ma, as pale and high-cheeked as Torun, was waiting for me with outstretched arms. I began to clamber onto the portico and she impatiently stepped forward, hooked her hands under my armpits and hauled me up through to the threshold. Torun was soon behind me, pulling up the ladder in easy, practised motions and closing the trapdoor. Inside, children’s high voices called to Torun. He held the door open and responded rapidly, reassuringly to the children as the woman led me into the house.

  The inside of the house was bright from a small fire in a domed clay furnace. As the light caught my face, the children’s questioning voices fell silent.

  “Lavog?” Torun said wearily, presenting me to four faces ranging from the beaky proportions of early adolescence to the rounded chin of early childhood. “Bettina, ni Bettina.” The smallest one, a little girl, ran to me, wrapped her fat arms around my legs and burst into tears.

  The woman crouched, put her arms around the little girl’s plump body and gently tried to pry her hands away, crooning “Chuuu, chuuuu. Ni Bettina. Chuuu,” in a voice thick with tears. The child clung harder.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. The harsh tones of my own language sounded louder in the tight space. The small child looked up at me in terror at the sound, released my leg and buried herself in her mother’s embrace. In the moment that her face had been turned to mine, I saw with shock that she was different from the other children. The others were like Torun and the woman. Pale hair, pale angular faces, eyes like narrow triangles. The little one had fat, red cheeks and had thick, curly dark hair. Like mine. She could have been my sister. She took the form she thought you might trust most, I remembered Mrs. Helder saying.

  I looked from the child to the woman to Torun, utterly failing to understand the web of connections. And like my small copy, I was beginning to feel my emotion overwhelm me, like a flood threatening a small island. My fawn, my Sida, was lost. I was lost. I had become a dead girl’s ghost and my mother was far away. I gave a wet sniff. “I’m-m s-sor-ry.”

  Torun and the woman exchanged alarmed glances. She rose with the child balanced on one hip and gathered me to her and, though I was taller than she was, she brought my head to her shoulder. “Chuuu,” she murmured, patting my hair, “Chuuu.”

  Meanwhile, Torun explained further to her and she nodded or shook her head in response. Finally, he paused, and I could almost hear him preparing to bend his tongue to my language.

  “My uncle is in the village. He will return. You will stay.”

  I nodded, but kept my eyes closed and my cheek rested on the woman’s shoulder. She smelled like wood smoke, with a comforting undertone of milk and dirty laundry. But then the door opened, and the trapdoor scraped across the floor. I opened my eyes and straightened.

  “Torun!”

  He froze, perched over the trapdoor. I felt a prickle across my skin as I realized that the entire family was listening. Hearing his name from my throat felt too familiar, too foreign, for them.

  “Where are you going? Don’t you live here?” He was the only one who spoke my tongue, the only one who knew where I had left my trail.

  “No. Too many.” And he swung out without even bothering to use the ladder.

  Without Torun to talk to, I remained silent, reduced to gestures.

  “Melina,” the woman said, pressing her tapered fingers to her chest in a motion identical to Torun’s. She sat me down and fed me smoked mutton stewed with beans. And watched me. Melina’s lips lifted in a bittersweet memory when I unconsciously shared a gesture with her missing daughter or turned down when I tore my bread in a manner learned from my mother.

  In turn, I observed her and her children in their odd home. It was a small room with different nooks and alcoves as the house followed the shape of the wide oak tree. One alcove had a big bed and another a narrow one, both half-hidden by thick curtains. In the largest alcove was a great loom and beside it, two spinning wheels and an assortment of smaller looms that could be held in a woman’s lap. There were sacks of millet and barley meal stored here and there and sausages hanging from the rafters. At least they have sausages, I thought wearily.

  Although the older children remained wary of me, the little one soon forgot my strangeness, especially when Melina pulled out a knee-length white shift for me to change into. All the children were already dressed for bed, but she sent the eldest with the two boys out to wash dishes while I rinsed my face and upper body in a bucket. The youngest child watched me carefully as I changed out of my dirty shirt, breeches and boots and pulled on the shift. Melina gave me a comb and then collected my clothes. When I tried to protest, she pointed her chin towards the child and then to the wide bed. The children all slept in one bed, and I, it seemed, would sleep with them.

  After I had braided my hair, the smallest child, my miniature, came to me. I opened my arms and lifted her up. I had never held a child before, but this one clung to me like bony, dense ivy. With one small hand furled in the shoulder of my shift, she pointed to the rightmost edge. I sat down and pulled us over to the required spot. I felt her small body loosen and mold to mine.

  “Chuuu,” I said, wondering at how easily I was trusted.

  The little child agreed. “Chuuu,” she said, as the other children approached the bed.

  Before they all climbed in, Melina named and kissed them each in turn.

  “Sarai,” was the eldest, a girl of about thirteen with freckles.

  “Maro,” a plump boy of ten-ish whose eyes tilted up at the tips.

  “Dan,” a boy a year or two younger, who shared the curl of his whitish hair with his youngest sibling.

  Last of all, Melina kissed the littlest one on the crown of her brown head. “Telka.” It was a show, I saw, to introduce us. Then she stepped away from the bed and pulled the dark blue curtain closed.

  Although we two were cozy, I was aware of the gap of mattress between me and the next child. The older children whispered to each other in the dark but fell asleep one by one. I had never slept with another human except my mother, much less four strange children. These particular four kicked and mumbled in their sleep and stole the blankets. Telka sprawled across my chest. She twitched and drooled a little. At some point close to dawn, she rolled off me and burrowed into Dan. I drifted into sleep, thinking about my fawn, listening first to Telka’s steady breathing and then to Melina, somewhere beyond the curtain, biting back tears.

  I woke from a dream of someone whistling a song from long ago, one that was made to keep us awake as the pony cart rumbled down the country road. I realized I was sweating from the heat of five bodies in a small space and opened my eyes. Morning light frayed the edges of the curtain. The rumble and the song echoed in my mind as I looked over at Melina’s children. How strange they must find me. How frightening. Had I been one of them, I would not want a ghost in my bed. I crawled out and saw that Melina had laid out a measure of stiff cloth the width of my arm and twice as long. Over the shift she had given me the night before, I wrapped the cloth around my middle like a skirt and, pulling it tight, tucked one end in. I slid past the curtain and into the main room.

  And there he was.

  Full beard. Curly, tousled hair fading from chestnut brown to grey. Round, low cheeks. Carving the peel off an apple into a long, scarlet spiral as he crouched on a stool by the embers of last night’s fire in the small clay furnace. Whistling low, sweet
and true.

  I swallowed and found my voice before he could look up. I crossed my arms and said, “Hello, Pa.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Someone’s Home

  He laughed.

  I might have flinched, but he did not seem to notice. The rumble from my dream still echoed in my ears and I almost missed his first words to me.

  “Gods above, you’ve found me at last!” My father set down the apple and knife, stood up and embraced me. It was a quick, hard squeeze and release. He grabbed my shoulders and looked at me from an arm’s length, giving me a little shake with each sentence. “I can see how poor Torun made the mistake. Melina told me. Damned close resemblance. You’re mine, no mistake, hey little Beth.”

  “No one’s called me Beth for years.” Never, in fact. Had he called me Beth? I could not remember.

  “Of course not. Elizabeth?”

  I nodded. I felt numb, too surprised to feel outrage. All those years, I thought. After all those years pining after his memory, all I had to do was walk in a straight line across the forest.

  “How did you find me? How shall we escape?” He seemed to sag down, tightening his grip on my shoulders. “Take me home to Sylvia!”

  “What?” How could he joke about Ma when she had been through so much?

  He laughed again. “I jest. There is no way of going home. Not for me. Now tell me sweet Elizabeth, how did you find your old Pa?”

  As if I had been searching for him. As if it had been my duty to track him down. And hadn’t I searched and yearned for him? I didn’t know what to feel. “I wasn’t looking for you. I was chasing after one of our animals. But we did wait for you.”

  “What do you mean? You can’t have stayed at that dingy little meadow…” He laughed again. “Did Sylvia go back to her folk?”

  “Victor gave us up long ago.” I fought off a sneer. “We don’t need his charity, anyway.”

  “But what have you lived on?” As if Ma wasn’t wily enough to survive on her own…to call her helpless when he had left. No, Pa did not deserve the truth.

  I thought of Sida and my voice caught. “Herding. Trading from our stock.”

  “Herding? I never could imagine Sylvia herding sheep. That’s how we live here. Finest sheep I’ve ever seen. Wool like silk. Magical. The girls will show you. What do you herd?”

  “Not sheep.” I would not tell him, not after Julian. Unlike Julian, Pa was playful and jolly, but he was too ready to act like he loved me without earning my trust. What I had accepted in little Telka, I felt suspicious of in an adult.

  “What then?” he asked keenly.

  “Horses.” I apologized silently to each of the unicorns. How indignant they would feel to be compared to domesticated animals who ploughed the fields and let brutish men and women ride them!

  He snorted. “Sylvia’s changed then. She never liked our pony.”

  I shrugged. “She has changed.” And my heart gave a twist. What would she be like, had Pa stayed?

  “But not you. You are as sweet as ever.”

  I could not return the compliment because I did not know him. Like Torun, he was wearing a shirt and trousers of fine, undyed white-grey wool. Above that, he wore an open vest that was leather on the outside and fleece on the inside. Underneath the vest, he wore a thick, red-bordered belt woven in a pattern of white rams in a green thicket. He was familiar as my flesh and so strange to my memory in dress and manner. He sensed my reserve and laughed again. Then, he pressed me onto a stool and began to make porridge.

  I picked up the spiralled apple peel and nibbled on the end, thinking. Shocked and hurt as I felt, I couldn’t help but sense that I must be careful in finding out the balance of power between me and him, between him and the others. After all, I only had one Pa, and he had many children. “How will you explain me to Melina?”

  He threw up his hands, a wooden spoon in one of them. “She knows. Saw it as soon as you walked in. You’re a little uncanny, one, and you’re my daughter by another woman, two. You might be innocent in her eyes, but I am not. You’ve caused me an earful, sweet girl.”

  Melina? From what I saw of her the previous night, it must have been a quiet earful. I looked around. “Where is she now?”

  “Leading the sheep out with Torun. To spare him the task of coming here. Don’t be surprised if he’s not eager to see you.”

  He seemed ready to say more but thought better of it. Instead, he ladled out porridge in a bowl for me and handed me a spoon. “Hmmm. Sylvia,” he said meditatively, watching me.

  I ate to avoid talking. I did not wish to speak of Ma to him. When he had known Ma, she had been someone very different from the woman I knew. His Sylvia had run away from a rich home to take up a life of romance and adventure; my Ma kept my life deliberately quiet.

  He chuckled. “She fussed over you so.”

  Did she? I didn’t want to ask. I didn’t trust his memory.

  Pa ladled out porridge for himself and took out a crock of honey. He drizzled some honey into his porridge and put the crock away before coming back to sit with me. I watched him. He was masterful. He did not leave space for a comment he did not want to hear, laughed off what should be barbs. He was absolutely content under my wary gaze. “It’s strange how you are like us both. You and I both show our hearts on our faces.”

  I snorted.

  “But you’re moody like Sylvia.” He made his assertions so bold that they attained the solidity of facts.

  “Bettina?” Telka’s sleepy voice emerged from the bed-nook. My father looked from me over to the curtain with raised brows.

  “Bettina?” Her voice was louder.

  I realized that he was not going to move from his seat. With a sigh, I crossed over and fetched the child from bed. Telka slipped her hand in mine and I led her out. When I sat down, she crawled into my lap and finished my porridge, while her father explained in her language that I was not Bettina, but Elizabeth.

  “Lizbet,” she said, accepting her father’s words without surprise and gestured to me that I ought to wake the others.

  “That was Bettina’s job,” my father said. “But…” he paused, with the barest hint of delicacy, “perhaps I ought to do it, today.” He sauntered over to the curtain and knocked on the lintel. “Sarai, Maro, Dan.” He knocked twice more and flung the curtain open. Maro was already crawling off the foot of the bed and bowled into his—our—father’s middle. My—our—father ruffled his hair. Sarai rolled her eyes and looked over at Dan for solidarity, but Dan had already joined Maro and Pa. With a few short words from our father, the rest of the children understood that I was here to stay. Or at least, by the time they joined me at the table, Maro and Dan had already given me small smiles. Sarai curled her lip at me and then looked significantly at the loom and spinning wheels. No one seemed curious about where I had been found or how I had appeared. Or perhaps my father’s presence was enough to quell their curiosity. Not mine.

  “Wait,” I cut in. “Can’t I go home?” I had eaten my father’s food and slept in his children’s bed, but I did not belong in here when Sida was somewhere out there, ranging through strange hills. I needed to find Sida and get both of us home before Ma returned from her journey. “Ma needs me.” He ought to know that.

  Pa smiled. “Oh, Elizabeth, don’t you want to stay here and get to know your brother and sisters? What about me? I’ve missed you so.”

  Four heads swivelled from me to Pa and back to me. Telka’s small hands pressed into my chest as she looked up at my face. They didn’t know our words, but they sensed the tension between us.

  I breathed in. I couldn’t go home without Sida. Until I found her, I would need a place to stay. “I should find yesterday’s trail, at least…”

  He met my eyes. “But you can’t,” he said with a smile.

  I was not smiling. He had not raised me, and he had no power
to command me. I stood up and set Telka down. I crossed to the door and looked back deliberately.

  “I can do what I want,” I said. But when I flung open the door, I saw that I was trapped. Not just by Pa, but by the turn of the seasons.

  It had not been warm in the home only because of the crowd of human bodies. The rumble from my dream had not begun in my head. Overnight, spring had arrived in a rage. Through the sheets of rain, I could see that the flat riverbed that I had crossed yesterday was roaring with thick, muddy meltwater, quickly dissolving sheets of snow, tangles of branches, a sodden clump that looked like a drowned animal. I thought of Sida and felt a burning in my nose that promised tears. The landscape had been indistinct the night before, but now there was no possible way I could find my trail, let alone get back home. I looked up at the grey skies. They answered with a rolling crackle of thunder.

  “Elizabeth, why don’t you come and sit? Telka wants you.”

  I closed the door and sat down.

  “The flood will last until late spring and it can rain for days,” my father said. “You were lucky to arrive when you did.”

  “But, Ma…”

  “There’s nothing to be done, Elizabeth,” he said, with just a trace of sympathy. He put his hand over mine and I was surprised that it felt warm and reassuring. I looked up at him. “I should have told you about the flooding. Why not take it as a gift? A gift to see another part of the world, to know your brothers’ and sisters’ love.”

  “But what can I do here?”

  He released my hand and flung up his arms, as if in welcome. “What you can do is ladle out the rest of breakfast. Welcome to the family.”

  My mind was still caught on my mother conducting her travel and business as usual, on Mrs. Helder coming to visit and finding the house abandoned. I thought of Sida alone in a strange place. Could she have tried to cross the river? What if the flood caught her? I wouldn’t find her in the treehouse. I needed to find a reason to get out, one that they would accept. “Can I help with the sheep?” I asked.