The Changeling of Fenlen Forest

by Katherine Magyarody

  “Are they going to the forest?” I asked suddenly.

  “No, silly,” Telka said, now wiggling to be set down. “They’re going to the Alvina.” I knelt and she released her arms from my neck. She sat down on the floor, then lay down to look up at the tree’s canopy above us.

  I had no idea of what to do, so I lay down beside her. I stared up at the overlapping green of the leaves. Patches of bright sky winked at us as the wind ran through the branches and disturbed the leaves. Then I turned my head to look at Telka. To my surprise, she was no longer staring up, but had her small hands over her eyes.

  I rolled onto my stomach. “Telka, what is it? Are you all right?”

  She pressed her hands closer to her face. “No! It’s not fair. What…what if they see her? And I won’t!” She lifted her hands from her face and slapped them down on the floorboards on either side of her. To my surprise, she was glaring at me. “Do you think they’ll see her?”

  Her…she must mean Bettina. “Telka, I don’t know. I don’t even know what your grandmother is doing all the way out here.”

  Telka pulled herself to her feet and walked over to where I sat. She threw her head back as if to see whether I was lying. “Don’t you know?”

  I shook my head.

  “The Alvina live in a deep, deep cave and if you go there when you’re old, you’ll be young and live forever and be happy.”

  “So, your grandmother is going to stay with the Alvina?”

  She nodded. “The Alvina gives the family good luck, too. If you go to them. It’s old magic.”

  Magic. Torun had told me that there was no human magic. But here, Telka was telling me another story. I desperately wanted to follow them, to see what they saw.

  I glanced at Telka. I couldn’t leave her by herself. She’d have to come with me. She would probably follow me if I tried to leave her behind anyway. “Telka, you have to promise me you’ll be very good and very quiet,” I said.

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “I am very quiet.”

  I got my pack and we climbed down into the yard. As we passed the feast table, Telka deftly took two, thick-crusted meat and cheese pastries and rearranged the rest on the plate to make their absence invisible. Being the youngest of a large family, it seemed, was teaching her a certain slyness. She held them out to me and I put them in my pack.

  I gave her a piggyback ride down and across the river and as we scrambled up the other side, I thought I saw a white glimmer to the southwest. Sida? This would be a bad, bad time for her to show herself, with all the villagers around. No, I heard drumming. It was Sarai, her tassels flying behind her as she ran. Her face was pinched with not crying.

  Telka and I crouched down behind a boulder. I put my hand on the little purse full of silver and gold at my side so its clinking would not attract attention. We had missed whatever had happened. And now there was no way for us to go back inside without being seen.

  Behind Sarai, the rest of the party walked slowly, singing a bittersweet tune as they picked their way across the river. The grandmother was not with them. A slight ribbon of rotten smell unwound from their path. They had come from the cave.

  I waited until their singing faded into the trees.

  “Let’s go see the cave,” Telka said. To stand, I put one hand in the scrub and was surprised to find the uksarv horn I had thrown away some days before. My fingers curled around it, and before Telka could see it, I put it into my pack. Tomorrow, I’d take it deep into the forest, where neither Pa nor Telka would find it.

  Telka climbed onto my back and we set off toward Torun’s boulder, with its leering, hungry mouth. Don’t go south, he had said.

  With hesitating steps, I passed the rock where I had met Torun, where I had frightened Bettina. I followed the path. At the fork I knew so well, I stopped and looked south. I breathed in deep and felt that tang of sulphur on the air. The air in my mouth tasted like rotting things. I ran from boulder to boulder, marking the leering faces. My heart began beating faster as I jogged a little further. There, on the right, another boulder, another face. Above me, the ravine was becoming rockier, more severe. I began to run. Telka’s arms were tight around my shoulders. I turned the corner where the cliff jutted out. As I walked closer, the rock face receded. There I saw the scooped-out eyes, the bitten-off nose, the gaping mouth of the cave with its warm, fetid breath.

  The air was thick in my lungs. I squinted into the cave’s mouth, but saw nothing of Velni-Ani, not even a flash of a shawl fringe. You’ll be young and live forever, Telka had said. They give the family good luck. A grandmother too weak to cross the river. One less mouth to feed. That was good luck to a struggling family.

  Telka coughed, and I was struck with the monumental stupidity of coming here with her.

  I backed away from the cave’s mouth, away from the streaks of discoloured stone. I turned and stumbled to the foot of the clearing and then out of sight of the cave, where a slight breeze brought fresh air.

  I put Telka down and she leaned her head against the shade-cool rock. I sat beside her and put my arm around her.

  “Are you all right, Telka?”

  She nodded, but her voice was shaky when she spoke. “We missed it,” she said. “We didn’t see anything.” I took the meat pie from my bag and split it between us. Perhaps eating would make her feel better. It would give me time to think about what to say.

  There is no human magic, Torun said. He had told me that he had once almost taken the path here, that he had once almost become lost. But Sarai and Melina spoke as if magic existed. I looked down the path towards the black maw of the cave.

  Did they believe it? Sarai and Melina, Heino, Rina, Velni-Ani? And yet, why would you need to ceremonially drink a dizzying amount of brandy to cross over? Or did they just need a story to explain despair, exhaustion, hunger. No, the grandmother had gone knowingly to her death. But Bettina? Why had she chosen to do it, when she had her family, when she had her plans, when she had Torun to help her?

  “Sarai will be so mad,” Telka said after she finished eating. “I wasn’t supposed to see. I was supposed to stay upstairs.”

  There was a sigh. Not mine. I looked up and saw Sida looking down at us. Her horn was the length of my hand now and she had filled out, growing broad in the chest and legs. She was beautiful and strong.

  With big eyes, Telka held out her grubby hands to Sida. Sida smelled them and snuffled at Telka’s hair. Telka laughed, forgetting her sorrow in a moment.

  I was grateful for the distraction and got up. “Telka, this is Sida, my uksarv.”

  “I knew it,” Telka said, following me.

  Sida suffered herself to be petted for a bit and then trotted in front of us. She stopped in front of Torun’s rock, where I had seen Bettina. And again, the stillness gathered in her muscles. We drew near.

  “What’s she doing?”

  “Wait and see…”

  I held my hand beside Sida, felt the moments build up beside her like a pile of feathers or layers of thinly stretched pastry dough. As I watched the moments blur around us, I knelt and picked up a stick and laid it through the gap.

  For a flickering moment, we saw Bettina lounging on the boulder, leaning on her elbows and smiling with her face to the sun. She was at peace and happy. She was also younger than the last time I had seen her by some years. Her limbs were shorter, her curves were less pronounced, but to Telka it made no difference.

  Bettina opened her eyes and looked straight at us. Her eyes widened. She sat up and smiled. Her smile was like the breath of spring. Like she knew the secrets of the world and they were worth knowing.

  Sida shifted and stepped into another moment, the late summer day we had left.

  My hand was still on the stick, and I felt the weight of the dense, thick layers of time. “That’s…that’s where she is?” Telka asked me. She put her hand in mine and squee
zed my fingers.

  “Yes,” I said. “I think.” She was there—in that moment, in the past.

  “Good.”

  Sida looked at me with a long, considered glance. She had done this twice, twice shown me this place and Bettina in it. There was something about it that bothered her, I thought. Something that didn’t fit. Something that had to do with Bettina, and with me.

  Sida tossed up her chin and led us back north, closer to the place I crossed the river. I carried Telka across. When we reached the bank, I turned to check on Sida. She had disappeared again. No matter, I thought. I had a way back.

  “I’m hungry,” Telka said.

  “Go through the hedge on the other side,” I said. “Say you were hiding behind the henhouse.”

  She giggled at this naughtiness and scampered off.

  Telka’s adventure was over, I thought, but not mine.

  Perhaps I could find Bettina again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Into the Woods

  I ran back to the rock where we had seen Bettina but found that the stick I had left in the portal had snapped in half with the weight of time. I would have to find Sida again before I could get to Bettina.

  I pushed myself up the switchbacks towards Fenlen Forest. When I reached the top of the ridge, I did not pause to give my blood. I did not think about the path I took, and my strides were certain. I sought to forget myself in action, but instead my thoughts crowded in on me. The evening air was cool against my face and I realized that summer would be turning into fall. Not soon, but it would inevitably come. Then winter, and with it, the anniversary of Bettina’s disappearance. I wondered how they would commemorate it, whether there would be cups of brandy to fill and empty or songs to sing. Or if I could find her, as it seemed Sida wanted me to do…what then?

  And perhaps because I had so completely forgotten my desire to go home, it happened.

  I stumbled to a halt. That tree…It was a large birch that had been rubbed pink over successive generations of unicorns rubbing off their horn velvet. The hairs on my arms prickled. I knew I had found my old trail, that I had connected my two worlds. The tree was on the path I had been creating from Melina’s house. Yet it was not far from Ma’s clearing. I could walk home with my eyes nearly closed. Either home. The shock made my skin tingle as the world reoriented itself. I suddenly saw myself from two overlapping directions.

  I was standing east, heading west. I could run back to Ma now. I could be there in two days. I would salve her bitterness with the knowledge that I had not abandoned her. I could have my routine of living my solitary life, grooming unicorns and jogging down the old paths on the hunt for alicorn. Or perhaps I would help my mother leave the log house and find a new life for herself elsewhere. One she had chosen.

  I could walk away without finding out what had happened to Bettina. Without making sure that Telka got home without any trouble. Without saying goodbye to Torun.

  I could go home, but not yet. I had work to do.

  I turned back.

  Retracing my steps, I made my way to where Torun and I had helped the doe deliver her fawn. The herd was on the move but couldn’t have gone far. I saw the flattened circles of grass and whorls of disturbed loam where fawns had curled up and slept. I followed them north until I spotted Sida, her silver-grey coat standing out against the fading light. She was near the back of the herd, with the specked doe and her fawn.

  They must have smelled the villagers at the base of the escarpment and decided it was unsafe to stay close to the edge.

  The matriarch tried to nudge them into hurrying, but the fawn limped and was taking shallow, panting breaths. The doe gave a small kick, warning the matriarch not to push them. She led her fawn under the low-hanging branches of a pine tree and settled down there with her legs tucked under her. The fawn followed suit. When they lay still, they were almost invisible amongst the dead needles.

  The matriarch paced worriedly in front of the pine tree. Sida came to her and mimicked her movements. The matriarch stopped and Sida stopped as well. The matriarch stepped close to her and leaned over to nip gently at Sida’s mane, a sign of recognition. She stepped aside and herded the rest of the does and fawns away, leaving Sida to guard the speckled doe’s hiding place.

  I let the herd retreat through the trees before I approached Sida.

  “I need your help,” I said. “I need you to help get to Bettina.”

  Whether or not Sida understood my words, she understood my tone, the anxious tang in my sweat, the tension in my shoulders. But she flared her nostrils and stepped backwards. She wasn’t going anywhere until the speckled doe and fawn were ready.

  “Well, I suppose I’m not going anywhere either.” I sat down by her feet and ate the cheese pie that was in my pack.

  Underneath the tree, the fawn had fallen asleep. They wouldn’t be moving until daybreak. Unless I left for Melina’s house now, I realized, I would be here all night. If the family hadn’t realized I had snuck away, they would now. Or Telka would have told. My stomach gave a swoop. What would they think, to find me gone?

  I kissed Sida on her broad cheek and hurried back to the escarpment. I looked down over the valley. There was a bonfire burning in front of the family enclosure and I could see the black silhouette of people standing around it. The wind brought snatches of song to me and the smell of woodsmoke.

  But closer by, beneath me on the path, I saw a flicker of something between the trees. Torchlight. Oh no. They had realized I was gone and had come looking for me. And then I saw who it was. Heino, carrying a bundle with him in one arm and a torch in the other. I gasped, and he looked up. His small teeth glinted. I backtracked, but not quickly enough.

  Heino caught sight of me and called out. “Holding out on us, are you? Well, I don’t need you.”

  He dropped his bundle, which unfolded itself with a little whimper. Telka. Heino leaned over, seized one of her upper arms and pulled her up.

  A surge of hate and fear weakened my knees as I remembered Julian looming over me all those years ago. I needed to save Telka, but in order to do so, I needed to be sly.

  Heino took large strides for a man of his height. Telka stumbled forward. She couldn’t see anything. The flame of the torch stopped her eyes from adjusting to the night.

  I drew back into the shadows and heard a nicker. Stupidly, I had led them right to Sida.

  I ducked down behind a tree. Heino moved his torch from right to left. He couldn’t see me. I couldn’t risk calling to Telka. Not yet. I slipped from tree to tree parallel to them as they walked forward.

  A branch snapped under my feet and Heino chuckled. “I know you’re there.” They were too close to the speckled doe and her fawn. But Heino was blind to what lay outside his golden sphere of torchlight. He stepped right past the pine tree under which the doe was hidden.

  A few more steps and he would pass by them completely. He would never know they were there. But he paused.

  It was too close. Sida couldn’t risk the danger to the doe and fawn. She stamped her feet in the darkness.

  Heino turned away from the pine tree and took a few steps forward.

  “Telka!” I shouted.

  “It’s you!” She stretched her short arms out towards me.

  “I’m coming!”

  I snatched her up and ran out of the circle of torchlight. I crouched down under the pine with her. A grunt told me that the doe was there, awake, alert, but maintaining her stillness.

  But Heino didn’t care that Telka had disappeared. He saw what he had come for.

  “Sida! Get back!” I called.

  But Sida danced forward, stamping her hooves. Her horn was not long enough to look threatening, but long enough to be dangerous.

  As she approached, Heino swiped in front of himself with the torch. The air filled with the smell of singed hair. Sida reared bac
k with a shriek of fury. The skin on her right shoulder was red and raw.

  “Come at me, you stupid beast.”

  She limped forward with her horn down.

  In the dark, the cry of another uksarv cut through the still of the night. Not the matriarch, I thought. She wouldn’t jeopardize the herd’s safety.

  The barrel-chested buck, the one who had stolen the speckled doe, had come to steal his prize away and now saw her threatened by a stranger. He stood beside Sida. His horn glinted dangerously in the torchlight. Though he was in danger, Heino’s mouth twisted into a grin. I could see his thoughts clearly. The buck’s horn was worth three times Sida’s. The buck was the one he wanted.

  Heino fumbled in his belt for a knife. It fell and he knelt to pick it up. That was his mistake. Sida and the buck charged at him. The torch went flying from his hand and rolled across the ground, setting alight the dry pine needles. I ran towards the torch and picked it up, stamping at the tiny flames on the ground with bare feet now thick-soled from my forest ramblings. Behind me, there was a scuffle as Heino started to run.

  There was a scream and a thud.

  Then the heavy breathing of the buck and Sida. And silence.

  I turned and raised the torch.

  “Telka?”

  “I’m here,” she said, crawling out from under the tree.

  She shook the branches as she came and a high bleat told me that she had woken up the fawn. Telka ran towards me and I hugged her to my side.

  At the sound of the fawn, Sida and the buck emerged from the shadows. They were equals in strength and in their determination to protect.

  Telka gasped at the sight of them. The buck bobbed his head at her, but he did not seem to think she was dangerous. Instead, he ducked his head under the branches to look at the fawn, who emerged looking a little sleepy, but fresh and alert. The doe followed her fawn and guided it in the direction the herd had gone. The buck turned back to Sida, who was limping. He touched his horn against her burned shoulder, place by place. She stood patiently while he worked.