The Changeling of Fenlen Forest

by Katherine Magyarody

  “I can stay. I don’t dance,” I said. “I like sheep.”

  “Maybe you’ve never danced with the right person,” Torun said lightly. And then he gave something that tried to be a wink but was more an exaggerated blink. I snorted.

  “Torun, heirre.” Melina called him away. “Lizbet…” with a jerk of her chin, she gestured towards the door. There was no way I was being left unsupervised.

  When we reached the village, Torun drifted away to the bachelor house where the unmarried men were mourning the departure of Rina’s groom. We had come a day early to help Rina in her preparations. But Rina was not arrayed as I thought a bride-to-be should be. When we came into the house, Rina sat in a corner facing the wall, wearing a ragged old shift. She did not turn around when we entered and neither Sarai nor Melina nor Telka looked her way. I tried to greet her, but Sarai tugged me away.

  “No,” she said. “Not yet.”

  I felt a prickle of uncertainty but was distracted by Velni-Ani’s wrinkled scowling.

  “Your ufoli husband is here, Melina,” she said to her daughter, sending us out as soon as we had set down our bundles. “Make sure you’re back for sunset.”

  Pa was at the clearing, where the tables for the wedding were being erected. He was proudly hawking the last of his wares, items that were less intricate than the ones Melina had brought before. To my surprise, people looked over the cloth and even bought a few pieces. When he saw us, however, he let the buyer take his last tablecloth without haggling.

  He knelt down and spread his arms for Telka to run into. “Telka-Voon!” He peppered the top of her head with kisses and lifted her up. His love for her seemed genuine, perhaps because she was too young to be saddled with expectations. Sarai’s mouth was a firm line; she wanted to know how the business went.

  “Your cloths sold well. Heino has taken orders in advance. He’s around here somewhere. But Sarai, I couldn’t do it without you. So, guess who will be the handsomest girl?” He put a hand in the pouch that hung from his belt and pulled out a necklace of red, translucent beads. Sarai’s characteristic stiffness unbent into a smile as she fastened the glossy strand around her neck. Grudgingly, I wondered if they might be of amber, or even garnet.

  Melina walked toward him with slow dignity and Pa set Telka down to embrace his wife and kiss her. She whispered in his ear and he nodded. His eyes flicked towards me.

  I crossed my arms, unwilling to be bribed.

  “Elizabeth.” He smiled and offered me nothing.

  “Pa. Did you get to send word to Ma?”

  His eyebrows lifted and his mouth sagged open slightly.

  “You forgot.”

  “I didn’t know how, ducky. No one I talked to has even heard of Gersa.” He kissed the side of Melina’s face again. I felt a sting in my nose, but I did not cry. If I was to return to Ma, it would be entirely through my own pains.

  With a sigh, I consigned myself to a day of being overtly ignored and secretly examined. Torun was nowhere I could go, so I found Telka and played at being frogs on the portico, shouting “Gorongos! Gorongos—HUP!” and leaping until Velni-Ani stumped out to kiss her granddaughter and glare at me.

  “I’ve lived too long,” she said, “if I’ve lived to see an Alvinaisik passing as human.”

  Telka looked at me askance at hearing me called an Alvinaisik, an Alvina girl.

  “I’m not an Alvinaisik,” I retorted. “I’m an ufoli sheled!”

  Velni-Ani gave a dry bark of laughter and pointed at Telka with her cane. “Put her to bed, Alvinaisik. If you want to be human, learn that you can’t sass your elders.”

  “Are you an Alvinaisik?” Telka asked.

  “No. Just your sister.”

  Velni-Ani shook her head. “Come on. We’re about to get started.”

  As the sun began to set, the women and marriageable girls of the village gathered at the base of Rina’s house. As they waited for Rina to emerge, they sang a song—first together and then in overlapping groups—until I, too, knew the words:

  I’ll walk away, away on the long road,

  Make myself a coat from the dust of the long road.

  From my sorrow and my shame, I will spin the thread,

  Sew on buttons made of all, all the tears I’ve shed.

  Blow away the dust, good wind, blow away the dust,

  With my heart’s old sorrow, take it to the dusk.

  I felt I knew the tune from somewhere, and with a jolt, I recognized the tune as the song the lamb-girl had sung when I was very small. The melody was lovely, but I thought the words were far too sad, too eerie for a wedding. But no one else seemed to think so. In fact, the song seemed to fit their strange behaviour.

  Rina stood up from her corner and Melina threw a blanket over her. I wondered aloud how she was going to make it down the steps all smothered up, but no one seemed willing to answer my questions. As the crowd moved along down the road, I noticed that Sarai had an additional shift flung around her neck like a scarf and that other women brought spare articles of clothing. A white-shawled widow pushed a wheelbarrow that carried something bulky that was, like Rina, smothered in blankets.

  We walked out past the orchard beside a stream. The women and girls formed circle and Rina stood at the centre. From outside the circle, the widow and another older woman unwrapped the shape in the wheelbarrow.

  It was a tall bundle of branches and sticks with twiggy arms protruding from the sides. On the top, someone had pulled a sack and painted a red, budlike mouth and two sooty eyes. Long strands of hay had been stitched to the top in rows. The weight of the hair pulled the face back and the stick-spine poked at the effigy’s baggy throat.

  I looked at Sarai for explanation. “It’s a hekunaisik,” she said. Heku meant wood, I knew. A wooden girl. “The old women made it for Rina. It’s the other bride.”

  “What?”

  “Chut!”

  Rina stood in front of the wooden girl and combed her fingers through her long, wheat-gold hair to catch a few loose strands. She twisted the long threads together. These she wove into the stiff hair of the effigy. Rina cupped her hands in front of her mouth and breathed. Keeping her hands together, she placed them on the rough face and spread out her fingers, as if pressing her spirit into the doll. Last, Rina pulled the shift from her body and, standing naked in the circle of girls and women, pulled it over the stick’s form.

  The two old women still held onto the hekunaisik.

  Sarai stepped forward and gave Rina her own spare shift, though it was short and tight in the shoulders. Another girl gave Rina a skirt. Another provided a belt. The widow holding the hekunaisik untied the white kerchief she wore and tied it around Rina’s hair. Rina stepped back to stand between Melina and her mother.

  “Now Rina is not herself, but all of us,” Sarai whispered.

  The old women turned the hekunaisik from side to side, as if it were alive and looking around. They lifted it and brought it forward, in front of Velni-Ani. One of the women twitched the rough head to one side, as if it were asking a question.

  Velni-Ani said something, using words I did not know. The circle laughed and Rina blushed at her grandmother’s words. The puppeteers made the hekunaisik nod jauntily, and they stumped it to the next married woman. The women egged each other on, shouting out advice. The vocabulary was beyond me, but even Sarai gave a snort of laughter.

  I shivered. Each jerky movement of the stick-bride was a parody of Rina’s mannerisms—her shy, small movements made coquettish and knowing. At the end of the circle, the other women gathered close around Rina and the hekunaisik so that they were indistinguishable in the crowd. When we got back to the house, Rina’s grandmother laid the hekunaisik in Rina’s bed, and Rina slept between me and Sarai on the floor.

  The next morning, the hekunaisik stood propped up in the main room as Rina dressed. Rina’s
long, thick hair was braided with ribbons and Telka braided ribbons into the rough hair of the hekunaisik. Rina wore a simple white shift, a good one today. The women wrapped a skirt around her, one that I recognized as one of Sarai’s designs. Roses and budding thorns alternated against a pink background, bringing out the matching flush in Rina’s cheeks. When I asked Sarai, she shook her head. “Bettina’s,” she said. On the very edge of the skirt, I recognized the faint glimmering thread of a unicorn hair, my good-luck gift to a strange girl from long ago. Not an elf-girl at all, but Bettina.

  I felt slightly sick. So, I had met her.

  I opened my mouth to say something, anything, but Sarai handed me a second skirt of the same pattern for the hekunaisik. Rina tied on two woven belts, one wrapped tight to show her waist, the other loosely knotted around her hips. Telka fastened the effigy’s skirt with a bit of rope.

  When the time came for the ceremony, Velni-Ani gave me the job of holding the hekunaisik as the community gathered in the clearing. I felt a little rush of hope—perhaps this role was a token of her acceptance? But my hope faded quickly. The hekunaisik’s spreading arms made it clumsy and I was at the edge of the bridal group.

  Torun was standing with the other young men and, like them, was wearing a felted jacket instead of his usual vest. It was a fine garment worn for the occasion, but not the weather. When he saw me, he walked straight over. My eyes caught on his simple belt of matching birds. The gleaming thread…Bettina’s handiwork, I thought. But I did not want to mention Bettina right before the ceremony.

  Torun’s face was pink from the heat.

  “How long do I have to hold this?” I tried to make my tone one of jest, but I did not like being singled out with a weird, witchy object like the hekunaisik.

  Torun looked furious. “Who let you touch that thing?” The vehemence of his words surprised me.

  “Velni-Ani. I’m supposed to hold it for…well, I’m not actually sure.”

  He gave an angry grunt. “I can’t believe Melina would let her.”

  He took it from my hands and leaned it against a tree. “It’s an insult to have you associated with it. Usually they just prop it up by the feast table.”

  “Why? Torun, what is a hekunaisik for?”

  “It’s a stupid superstition. At a wedding, if the Alvina try to steal Rina away, they will steal the hekunaisik instead.”

  A sick feeling gathered in my stomach. I looked at the effigy lolling against the tree trunk. It seemed to look back at me. “Sarai said the old women made it for her.”

  Rina’s betrothed, Giron, was gesturing at Torun to come over. “Just…stay away from it. Please?” Torun sighed and stepped away.

  Somewhere, in front of us, someone began to beat a small drum. I wriggled my way through to Sarai and Telka. Stepping out from a cluster of maidens, Rina threw off her enveloping blanket. She and her groom approached each other. I heard the hum of a stringed instrument. I looked behind me for the source of music. The drummer, a scrawny boy Maro’s age, sat with his instrument between his legs, a slender rod in one hand, a stick topped a fist-sized ball in the other. Sitting beside him, an old woman was holding what looked vaguely like a fiddle carved out of a single piece of wood. On the drummer’s other side stood an equally old man with a long reed pipe. The piper made a ward sign when he saw me watching him, so I looked back to the couple.

  Sarai was just stepping back with a cup of sheep’s milk. A bit of white clung to the faint hairs above Rina’s upper lip—I had evidently missed some blessing. The piper, who seemed to have overcome his brush with the ufoli sheled, began to play a shrill, lively tune.

  The groom gave Rina a crown of flowers, a symbol of his prosperity. She undid the looser of the two belts from her hips and tied it around his solid middle.

  Oh, I thought, trying not to look at Torun. That was what giving a belt meant. Oh. And if Bettina had given him his belt, then…

  After the ceremony, I tried not to look for him and he did not seek me out. I understood why he made himself scarce. Women gathered in bunches and cast furtive glances at me, while the men stared before turning away. I could ignore it while we ate roast lamb dressed with yogurt and sage. I could forget while Melina, Sarai and Telka danced with me in a circle as the sun went down. But after I returned from putting Telka to bed in Velni-Ani’s home, I became conscious of my solitude. I was silent while those around me were dancing, singing, feasting, gossiping.

  I heard the roll of Pa’s voice. He was telling a story—probably lying, I thought uncharitably. I found him sitting at a table with a loaf of bread stuffed with jam in one hand and his pipe in the other. I did not like his companion at all. In contrast to Pa’s easy manner, the stranger seemed, well, twitchy. He was of Pa’s height and pale as most Verians. His nose was sharply pointed, his eyes quick, searching. He had a pipe but did not smoke it. He held it before himself and fiddled with it, running his fingers over the stem, along the curve of the bowl, picking at an imagined irregularity of the clay surface. His knee bounced impatiently. The tufts of his fine, thinning hair seemed to be stretching out to possess more than their fair share of space.

  “Ah, Lizbet. Heino, this is my eldest daughter.”

  Heino’s eyes darted from my sunburned nose to the dirt under my fingernails.

  I nodded at Pa’s partner in trade.

  “So.” He turned to Pa, obviously done with me, and lifted his eyebrows in the direction of Velni-Ani, who was eating stewed apples from a pot. “The old woman’s getting tired of life, I hear.”

  I passed them by. It was better to be alone than to be trapped talking to them.

  With the children gone, the dancing had split into pairs. I stood awkwardly in the shadows, just outside the ring of torches bordering the festivities. I watched alone, tapping my feet in an attempt to look like I was just holding back until I learned the steps. I made sure I was on the other side of the clearing from the hekunaisik, which leered at the dancers from the place Torun left it. I was so focused on looking interested that I did not see Torun until he nudged me with his elbow.

  “I’m learning,” I said.

  “I can learn you better,” he said, forgetful for once about his language. I was so relieved of his company that I forgot about the hekunaisik. I decided, also, to ignore what people would say if they saw Torun dancing with me. I was tired of being alone.

  My hands went on his forearms, and his on my shoulder blades. At first it was exhilarating, whipping ourselves around in circles, stopping, stomping and changing direction. The speed with which he spun me thrice and gathered me into his arms only to turn me out again made me laugh. Sweat had turned Torun’s hair a damp brown, and he was grinning widely.

  But the fiddles and drum which sustained us imperceptibly, gradually wound down into a slow, halting rhythm. With the music, the couples left off their wild leaps and settled into closer stances, stepping slowly and near to each other. Near the edge of the dance floor, Torun gathered my arms around his neck and settled his hands around my waist. Step, rock back, step, rock back. Standing so close meant that I could not misstep without crushing Torun’s feet, so I spent a good amount of time watching my feet and counting. I leaned into him so that I could better feel where his body would move and how I should match my movements. But I became aware, bit by bit, that his exhalations had turned heavy.

  Around us, dancers had begun a ululating song about the brevity of spring. In the third verse, there was a line about the faded leaves underfoot and the chill wind of winter. It was then that Torun broke away from me and strode away into the shadows. Having stood so close and become accustomed to the weight and spread of his hands on my waist and to the strange heat that had unfurled through me, I felt bereft.

  I chased after him between the trees, calling his name. He turned, and in the dark, I suppose, it was easier to forget her. He kissed me gently, my first kiss, but the dancing had
put me past gentleness. We swayed as we clung to each other and tasted the salt of each other’s sweat. He kept one hand on my waist while the other supported my head, but I undid a button of his jacket and put a hand inside to feel his heart beat wildly under the damp, hot shirt. He pulled me closer to him. As our lips broke so that we could breathe, I swear I laughed.

  “Lizbet!” Sarai’s voice cut through the sounds of revelry. “Where are you?” It was late and bivin sisters needed minding.

  I pushed Torun away gently, wished him goodnight in his own language and ran off.

  “Wait!” he called after me, but I left him there in the shadows.

  Mine, my body sang. All mine. I forgot the day’s loneliness in the swollen ache of my lips. Velni-Ani’s muttering could not touch me. I smiled at Sarai so broadly that her frown faltered. Perhaps I should not care at all that Pa had not sent his message, I thought.

  “You come with me,” Sarai said, grabbing my hand. “All the women are gathered, so you can’t not be here. It would be bad.”

  In my absence, the composition of the party had changed. Rina and her husband were no longer part of the festivities and most of the men were clustered around the casks of beer and spirit. Sarai led me to where the women had gathered in a circle, holding hands around the fire.

  Rina’s mother and Velni-Ani held the hekunaisik between them. They walked the puppet around the circle as the night before, but now instead of jests and advice, each woman put some sort of curse on its painted face. Some muttered, some spoke loudly.

  “False friend.”

  “Sickness.”

  “Barren womb.”

  “Failed harvest.”

  They stepped past me and turned to Sarai. She looked Velni-Ani in the face, smiled crookedly and said, “Tangled loom.”

  Melina was last. Her words came out at a whisper. “Alvinaisik.”