The Changeling of Fenlen Forest

by Katherine Magyarody

  Telka nudged me with her heels and I made a neighing sound like a horse. She laughed, pulling on the neck of my shirt with one hand. She wanted to go out of the little confine of the yard, and so did I. Telka pointed me towards the narrow, crooked gap in the hedge and we were free in the great world.

  The rain had beat away the chill of winter, and the tall grass leading down to the swollen river smelled green and new. I couldn’t set out and find Sida with Telka wrapped around me, but looking out across the river helped me think about how I might try next.

  From up the hill, we heard the distant sound of bells and the bleating of sheep on the move.

  “Torun!” Telka said, kicking my thighs.

  I looked up. He was busy minding the flock, and I could inspect him without catching his gaze. Though lean, he was not as tall as I remembered, but he seemed more solid with his face and clothing speckled with mud. His movements were easy and loose as he jostled and was jostled by the sheep. His eyes were narrow shadows that contrasted with his sunlit hair, the strong lines of his cheeks and nose and chin. Looking at him, I felt the knot of unease loosen slightly in my chest. He looked at peace.

  Until he saw me.

  Telka shrieked his name again. “Torun! Hin-ye!”

  “Where you take Telka?” he called, a note of panic in his voice.

  Telka laughed and shouted something. I started walking up the hill towards him. When I was three steps away, he paused midstride. One of his dogs—they were both grey with fur that curled like the sheep’s—ran up to him, curious at the change in pace. Torun crouched down to ruffle the animal’s head before whistling an order. The dog wheeled around the edge of the herd, but Torun stayed there a moment longer before straightening and meeting my gaze.

  I stopped where I was. I felt my face grow hot, felt the hair on my arms prickle.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Hello, Torun.” Run, my skin said. No, my feet replied, stay.

  Torun’s half-smile suggested that he sensed my embarrassment and shared it.

  “You missed home?” I asked, all too aware of Telka watching us.

  He didn’t answer for a moment. “Some sheep…how do you say …utta…woman-sheep?”

  I dredged my memory for the word. “Ewe?”

  “Some of my…ewes…will have lambs…voon. Now that the rain ended, it is more safe here.”

  Telka, gripping my waist with her legs, stretched her arms out to him, a gesture leftover from babyhood. He stepped close to me, and his hands brushed my shoulder as he lifted her from my back. We were both careful not to acknowledge the touch by any glance or shift in our bodies. He balanced her on his right hip, and she looked up at him in admiration. He kissed the top of her head “Until the ewes and voon are strong, it is practice for Maro and Dan.”

  “Voon?” Telka cried, now struggling to get down from her perch. He set her down and she began squelching through the mud, passing her hands over the sheep and looking for the heavily pregnant ewes. “Voon?”

  “Telka, ti mi voon vog,” he called to her. She grinned at him with a streaky, muddy face. So much for keeping Telka clean. But now that she wasn’t in my arms and Torun was watching her, perhaps this was the moment.

  “Torun?” I began, and he looked up at me sharply. His eyes were a dark brown, the colour of rich loam.

  “Torun, I…” How did you explain that your rebellious unicorn fawn was lost, probably wounded, perhaps caught in some other moment of time altogether? It sounded so unreal…

  “Torun! Telka! Lizbet!” It was Sarai, calling from the portico. Although the timbre of her voice was brighter than her mother’s, she had already developed a tone of command. I didn’t need to understand her words to know that Telka was in trouble for being dirty and I for letting her run in the mud.

  Torun called back to her and began herding the sheep down to the hedge.

  “You will not be in so much trouble,” he said. The left edge of his mouth lifted fractionally. “I explain you to Sarai.”

  “That’s very brave of you.”

  He nodded. “Yes,” he said, walking ahead of me to grab Telka’s hand and lead the flock.

  I smiled at his willingness to admit that a person needed bravery to face Sarai. A week with her had taught me that she was the true taskmaster of the weaving operation. If Melina’s belts were more intricate, it was only because she had more experience. But where Melina had ample patience, Sarai had none. Sarai respected skill and nothing else.

  As we chased the last sheep through the hedge, I saw that I was not the only one anxious to leave the house. Up on the portico, Pa was packing up his wife’s and daughters’ woolen wares. He was heading out on a trading trip, it seemed. Fine, I thought. My life wouldn’t be that different without him. It wasn’t as if I would miss any soul-searching conversations.

  As he rolled the materials, Sarai stood above him with her arms crossed, unfolding them every few seconds to count off on her fingers before refolding them in a show of firmness. Fixing prices, I guessed.

  As I passed through the hedge, Maro and Dan were scrambling down the ladder to meet the flock. Torun grinned easily as he met the children. He joked with Maro and gave Dan a piggyback ride. Sarai hung back, too old for roughhousing, young enough to pout with jealousy. She glared at me as I climbed the ladder.

  I smiled and nodded at her. At this moment, I did not need to please her. Then I pulled myself up and addressed my father.

  “Can I write a letter to Ma?” I asked.

  “With what, child?” my father said.

  “I’ll write to her, and you’ll send it on at the next town. You’ll have to give me a quill and pen.”

  “No. I don’t have any.”

  “What do you mean?” I thought of my mother’s meticulous business ledgers and her diary of experiments. “How else do you do your business?”

  He lifted his arm and pointed to what seemed like a half-finished bracelet of different coloured threads. “With this. I keep track of sales and things. Your mother was the one who could write, not me.”

  “But…” But Ma would be due home soon. What would Mrs. Helder tell her? Where would Ma go to look for me? And then I remembered. Even if I wrote a letter and Pa sent it, I had no way of knowing that Ma would receive it. Perhaps she had come home years ago. Perhaps she had already died and turned into grave dirt.

  My father saw the flush on my face and put a hand on my shoulder. “I will see what I can do, Elizabeth. Leave it to me.”

  How could I trust my first betrayer? With the river rushing at my back, I had no other choice.

  By noon, he had walked away from us into the eastern forest, whistling his favourite song. His family had changed, his business had changed, but he remained disconcertingly the same.

  In his absence, his family seemed to stretch and shift. Sarai was the undisputed mistress of the loom, and Melina and Torun ran the farm. After Melina had me change into a shift and skirt, we sorted the twenty pregnant ewes out of the flock and led them into what I understood to be the lambing pen. Then we sat in the hay and listened to Torun’s explanations as he inspected each of his “women-sheep,” silently waiting for the lambs to come.

  In the late afternoon, Melina summoned me and Sarai to help prepare the evening meal. We brought everything—the plates, spoons and stew—down so that we could eat with him. We sat with him late into the night, them conversing in hushed voices, me listening hard for any words I understood.

  Right as Melina announced that it was time for bed, Torun announced that he had carved them something special over the week. He teased them, reaching into his bag and then refusing to reveal it.

  “Zasto Torun!” Telka shrieked before we hushed her. Bad Torun, I understood. For example, Telka had taught me that my carding and spinning and weaving was very, very zasto. Zastola, in fact.

  Torun
laughed and slowly drew forth a small wooden figure. My gasp matched those of the children and Torun glanced at me, still smiling. The carving had delicate cloven hooves, grooves to indicate the downy fur, a delicate, spiralling horn.

  “Uksarv,” Telka said. Unicorn.

  “She’s perfect,” I said.

  “Almost,” he said. “I made the…” with his finger he drew a horn in front of his head, “longer, so the children would understand.”

  “Yes,” I said. I wanted desperately to stay with him when the others went. I wanted to settle into the hay and ask him how and when and perhaps even why he had seen a unicorn. It had to be Sida, I thought. It must be.

  I held his gaze, hoping that he might read in my face the longing and determination to see what he had seen.

  Before he could nod or make any gesture of recognition, Telka bowled into him, giving him a hug. She did not like us talking mysteries in front of her. He looked away, his cheeks pink.

  There was a moment of quiet, and then Melina and Sarai began bustling. Sarai stacked the dishes into buckets for Maro and Dan to wash. Melina handed Telka into my arms. She placed a firm hand on the centre of my back to direct me towards the house and up the ladder.

  I paused on the portico. I had planned on running straight back down to talk to Torun. Melina had become used to me sitting out in the evening. But not today. “Ni,” she said, with rare sternness.

  I wasn’t sure whether she was curtailing my freedom because of Pa’s absence or Torun’s presence. Instead of sending me to bed, she sat me down by a handloom and tapped the belt I had been working on. Over the past week, she had insisted that I unpick my belt pattern on the handloom three times. Now she wanted me to finish it and watched me as the others washed their faces and went to bed. The pattern was not a unicorn, as I would have liked. It was horizontal stripes of red and white, the simplest of designs.

  Dan was snoring when Melina gave a nod of approval and produced her pocketknife to cut the ends. I knotted the threads together, three to a bunch. She tapped my shoulder to make me stand and wrapped it twice around my waist before tying it off. She stepped back and sighed. I had a belt tied around my waist and she had done her duty.

  “Naisik,” she said, cupping my face with her hand.

  Another one of my few words. By making my own belt, I was no longer an unformed child.

  I was a girl.

  And, secretly, I was a girl who was going to find Sida.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Overgrowth

  I went to bed, but I did not fall fully asleep. I drifted in and out of dreams that smelled like an autumn wind. When everyone else was asleep, I crept out into the main room in my shift and jacket. If I did not want Melina to know I was sneaking out, I had to keep my other clothing clean.

  The moon was bright above the hedges. When I crept down the ladder, I found that while the hot sun dried the mud, the night air cooled it, made it moist. Around the yard, the sheep slept in huddled white lumps. The lambs and ewes were in their pen; Torun would be dozing there with Maro and Dan.

  I wouldn’t go far, I promised myself as I took a few steps forward. I just wanted to see the sky when I was not penned in by trees.

  Beyond the hedge, the stretch of the heavens took my breath away. The stars lay thick and luminous against the dark. On the first nights I had been here, the clouds had blocked the sky. To go out would have been dangerous, especially in the shadows of the forest trees. But in the open, I could see the faint glow of the river, the silhouette of the forest, the tilt of the mountain on my right…and…there.

  A shape that seemed to hold her own dim light, long legged, but still short bodied.

  “Sida?”

  She was a good distance from me, but if I stepped carefully and swiftly…

  “Sida!”

  She whickered, danced closer to me. Only a bit farther…

  I tripped on a branch and fell face first into the dewy grass. As I picked myself up onto my hands and knees, I felt her hot breath in my hair. I knelt and looked up at the greyish blur that was her face. “I missed you,” I said, touching her downy cheek. She snuffled at me while I stood and ran my hands down her neck and shoulder. My hand caught a groove, and my fingers felt hot and damp. Sida stepped quickly sideways. I had touched a deep scratch or a cut.

  “Who’s done this to you?” I said, though she could not answer. Staying outside alone now seemed stupid, unwise.

  I thought of the safety of the hedge, where the sheep slept. I slipped my arm under her neck and entwined my fingers in her short mane.

  “Come on, girl, let’s get you somewhere safe.” I stepped forward and gave the gentlest tug.

  Sida whinnied and pulled back violently. I tripped backwards and fell hard on my seat.

  I stood up and started running after her, but she swiftly disappeared into the dark of the forest. Only a fool would go there at night, without anything to light the path. I was left with a handful of short hairs from her mane, tinged with blood from her cut. I wiped my hands on the grass and rolled the hairs together into a wad, pocketing them.

  Somehow, perhaps, they would lead me to her again.

  With tears in my eyes, I made my way back to the hedge.

  In the closer dark of home territory, I saw a small burst of sparks. Someone had stirred the fire outside the lambing pen. The flame flared up, and the red glow lit up the face of the person blowing it to life.

  “Torun!” I said, walking forward carefully, eagerly. He would understand.

  There was a thud, of someone falling backwards in surprise.

  “Ki-yen?” he whispered hoarsely. Who’s there? Of course, with his face to the fire, he would be blind to the sight of me coming through the dark.

  “Torun, it’s me!”

  The fire flared higher now, and the light caught my hands and warmed my face as I climbed over the fence and into the lambing pen. In the flickering light, I could see Maro and Dan curled up like snails in their shells, fast asleep in the far corner of the shed.

  “What…what are you doing outside? Now?” Torun’s eyes were overshadowed by his brow and his mouth was strained. His tension was like that of a horse sensing a coming storm.

  I paused, leaned my back against the rails of the fence. I had wanted to tell him about seeing Sida, but my sheer relief, my hope, my disappointment and my worry all paled against his fear. This was the second time he had called to me, thinking I was Bettina. Had he seen her on other dark nights like this? I shivered.

  “I’m sorry…can I come a little closer to the fire?”

  He looked at me a moment, exhaled in a slow, contemplative manner. He wasn’t sure about me, I saw, but he still shifted a little to the right and extended his left arm as a gesture for me to come nearer. He then set his arm down to prop himself up more surely.

  “I wanted to look around at night,” I said as I came over. “And then I saw you…” When I sat, I had intended to leave some space between us, but the shadows were tricky and I landed snug against him, thigh to thigh. His shoulder touched the right edge of my back. I looked over to apologize and found our noses almost touching. I was so close I could tell he had been chewing spruce resin after the evening meal.

  We fit together, and in the dark, this frightened us both. I slid away.

  “I think I saw…ah, um…outside, by the river,” I managed.

  “You were outside?” Torun repeated, his voice hoarse.

  “I…” I balked at telling the truth about Sida. It wasn’t the right time. Torun was already scared, and if I told him I was with a unicorn, it might confirm his suspicions about me. “It’s not fair,” I burst out. “This is not fair! I am not supposed to be here! It’s all wrong!” I had told a sort of truth, but in saying it aloud, I thought I might still sound suspicious.

  Torun gave an odd, tense smile. “Do you miss home?�
� he asked.

  It seemed an obvious question, but I did not know how to answer it. I wanted to be with Ma, before Julian’s and Victor’s last visit. “I wish I could go back,” I said.

  “Even with your father living here?”

  “Pa?” The surprised tone of my voice was louder than I had wanted. I swallowed. “He left us. After seeing him again, I wonder why Melina would want him.”

  “Your father, Melina, they have a business as well as a family. No wool, your father starves. No selling…well, we cannot live on mutton alone. He is kind to the children. And Sarai, she is one he respects.”

  This was the most I had heard in my own language for what felt like years. He seemed to have thought the words many times. I realized that Torun did not trust Pa. I was surprised by a rush of fellow feeling.

  “And you?”

  Torun said nothing.

  “Then why do you stay around? Why can’t you sell the wool?”

  “Who would watch the sheep? When I went to trade…” He paused. Bettina had tended the flock, Pa had said. “They are my blood. They have no one in the family who cares as much. I am here for them, for her.”

  For her. I shivered. “You’re trapped?”

  “No.” His answer was firm. “I am not. It is my choice.” He chewed on his thoughts a little. “We were going to marry. It was our plan. Go away to a new village. Start a home. And then Melina and the children could come and join us. Or the children.”

  “Whose plan was it?”

  “Bettina. She saw early how the world worked. She was…” He tapped his temple with a finger. “She was keen.”

  “Couldn’t you do it now?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not close enough blood to have Sarai come and live with me. She’s almost old enough to be married. People would talk.”

  “I like Bettina,” I decided. Bettina had thought things through, I realized.

  “I like Bettina also. She was my friend.”

  What happened to her? I wanted to ask. But after Pa’s evasions, I felt reluctant to pry. I knew both too much and too little.