Lady Changeling

by Ken Altabef

  And he had not much farther to go. Eric could make out a change in the lighting up ahead. An irregular patch of darkness that was not quite as dark as the inky blackness inside the tunnel. A patch of night sky.

  That was a relief. He’d been worried he would find the beach-side opening of the tunnel closed up. He vaguely remembered putting a padlock on that door some years ago.

  He worked his way up the final incline to find the trap door smashed from the inside, the padlock gone.

  Smashed from the inside? How odd.

  The night air was cool and bracing and smelled of the sea. The tunnel opened up into a little stillwater cove along the shore. Nestled inconspicuously among the rocks were the remains of a ruined dock and a few ancient pylons that had once been an ocean break.

  Now he only had to run. He set off across the beach. Before long he started to worry that the house dogs might follow. He didn’t hear any barking as of yet but Griffin’s demise still haunted his nightmares. He stepped a short way into the surf and ran along like that for a few minutes, then realized it was foolish to try and set the dogs off the trail. They had nowhere else to follow except up the coast and he was losing valuable time sloshing through the cold, ankle-deep water.

  He went back to the sand and ran as fast as his tired legs would allow. The fresh air did wonders for him, dispelling the lingering effects of the alchemist’s potion. Eric saw no more of the flashing faery lights. His only concern was running as far and as fast as he could, and he lost himself in the rhythmic pumping of his legs against the sandy beach.

  All he could think about was vengeance. Vengeance for Fitzroy March and the two other men who’d been killed. He didn’t even know their names. Killed by faeries just like years ago, during the Purge. Well, if they wanted to bring back the old feud, he would be more than happy to oblige them. He would bring back a new Purge that would make old Griffin proud. If it was Griffin’s lens they were after he would see that they’d get it, just not quite the way they wanted. If only he knew where it was! Hake had hidden it somewhere before he died. If he could find that lens, he would use it. He would burn them with it. Burn them all.

  He pictured Finnegan Stump’s face as he activated the weapon, shooting the ruby beam of light from the lens directly at his misshapen head. He imagined that grotesque sneering face as it dissolved into a puddle of melted flesh. Yes, he could do that. He wanted to. And the redheaded girl in the holding cell. That faery assassin. What was her name? Redthorne? Slim, good-looking, arrogant. The one who’d killed Fitzroy. What had Theodora said? March had been just a plaything to her. Yes, he could easily imagine subjecting her to the burning power of Griffin’s lens. He would reduce her to a pile of smoldering ash. And Theodora?

  Eric stumbled in his charge along the beach, his legs suddenly heavy as lead. He realized he hadn’t eaten all day. Dark purple blotches intruded on his vision now. Lightheaded, he forced himself onward. He must keep going. His only objective was to survive.

  And Theodora? Eric could imagine killing Stump and Redthorne but not Theodora. No, he couldn’t imagine that. He wouldn’t do that. He hated her for what she’d done. He wasn’t fooled by her attempts at apology, nor that improvised wedding scene. At least he had finally seen her true self revealed, green skinned but still beautiful. He had found his truth.

  Could he still love her? After all this? He considered the opposite question—could such a love be snuffed out in just one day? Not possible. He was confusing love with hatred. His head swimming, aching. Yes, he could gladly burn Finnegan Stump’s face off. But as for Theodora, no, he could never do that.

  Eric stumbled again and before he knew what had happened found himself face down in the sand. Exhausted, he couldn’t raise himself again to his feet. He needed some rest, some sleep. In the morning his head might have cleared. He would think of a plan to fight them, a way to rescue his children. He would do that tomorrow. For now, he needed only a few hours of sleep.

  Something kicked him hard in the ribs.

  “Well now, just look what I’ve found adrift on the shore.”

  Eric rolled over. The tip of a sharply pointed spear wavered in front of his neck. The figure standing above him was shrouded in the night dark but the wild-haired silhouette was unmistakable. It was Draven Ketch.

  “Oh, fuck!” Eric groaned.

  The pirate cocked his head, apparently considering this as a suggestion. “I might do. Later. If the mood strikes. But I’m going to have to kill you first.”

  Chapter 35

  Amalric stared at the sky full of stars. The real sky.

  He forced his eyes to remain open until they burned hot and raw. He did not dare blink.

  He’d set up his telescope on top of the hill behind the guest cottage at the far end of the property. No Lady Theodora to barge in giving orders. No Trask here to interfere. Just the real sky.

  And the stars. So many stars on this perfect, clear night. Staring up at them made him a bit dizzy, but that might just as well be an aftereffect of the mind-link drug he’d used on Eric Grayson. The intense headache had subsided but he still felt some of the effects, the flashes of green light which was not faery light at all, he knew, just afterimages bedeviling the back of his eyeballs. The interrogation had turned out to be an unbearable waste of time and energy, time he would have better spent with the telescope doing the real work.

  What had they found out? Nothing. No lens. No weapon. Though it had been worth half a laugh to see the haughty Lady Theodora frustrated. She was wrong about the whole thing anyway. Faery superstition. The thing in the sky wasn’t a monster. They don’t know. They’ve no idea what it really is. No one could possibly know, except for me. Just me.

  Amalric pressed his eye to the scope. He couldn’t wait any longer. He had to see her.

  Lord Grayson’s preoccupation with family had set him off as well. Thinking. Thinking of his own mother. Why had she left him? There must have been a reason she’d abandoned him to this cold, hard world. In a way, he thought, she’d planted him like a seed. Left him to grow in the fertile soil of the streets of Milan the way little shoots of clover grow in any tiny patch of dirt they find between the paving stones. They struggle to come up, they yearn for the light. Now he’d grown, he’d blossomed into a flower. And she would come back for him. She would claim her ugly little seedling once more. Soon. Oh, it couldn’t be soon enough.

  He studied Orion’s belt, but it was difficult to see the telltale red flash because there were still flashes of purple dancing before his eyes. Had he taken too much of the drug? Only a little was needed to create the psychic connection necessary for the interrogation. Why did he feel so dizzy and lightheaded still?

  The stars swirled in a gentle circular arc. His head throbbed. His mother must come. He was certain of it. And more than that. She must surely bring him the answer. Of course! She will give him the Elixir Vitae. The Philosophic Mercury, the Universal Medicine, the secret to eternal life. He’d been looking in the wrong place. He’d been wasting his time with earthbound experiments, searching for the answer in the essences of base metals. The answer must be in the sky, the stars. She must have it. She must know all the secrets.

  But, no, what was he thinking? He pulled back from the telescope. It couldn’t really be his mother in the sky. That was only silly superstition of another sort, a childish, maudlin yearning every bit as ridiculous as Theodora’s otherworldly monster.

  His mother was dead. She must be dead. When he’d last seen her, a dirty whore passed out in the gutter, so thin and emaciated, half starved to death, coughing up blood into a perfumed handkerchief… when he’d last seen her…

  The sky looked completely different without the telescope, the stars so bleak and dreary, static and still. He could hardly bear the sight of it. This was the ordinary workaday world, bitter and cold. Lifeless. No magic at all. But which one was reality and which illusion? Something was up there. It was! He had seen it.

  He peered through the telescop
e again. And sure enough something was happening. The stars were moving sideways. They had begun racing across the sky, combining together into a new shape, a vaguely human silhouette that pulsed with blinding light. The glare intensified Amalric’s headache until he thought his skull might burst. But he refused to look away. He was witnessing a rare miracle. A metamorphosis.

  His mother was no longer a human woman, any more than he was still a pathetic orphan boy. Their earthly lives had all been a part of an illusion, a glamour. A cocoon. His mother was inside that starry cocoon. She was waiting for him to release her.

  She spoke: “Open.”

  Amalric gasped, his eye glued to the optic. He couldn’t look away, despite the pain. The light so bright as it pulsed and burned. His mind racing, his hands shaking.

  “How?” he rasped. “How do I open?”

  She didn’t answer. Perhaps she couldn’t answer. Perhaps she wouldn’t answer, preferring to test his mettle. He should be smart enough to figure things out on his own. Yes, he would open, whatever that meant, if only he knew how. Open the cocoon? Open the door?

  Open a door in the sky. It was impossible. What was he thinking? He was only a little boy, lost and alone on the street, running, hiding, searching for a helpful hand, a kind face, any small mercy he could find.

  “Call my name.”

  So that was it. Oh, so simple. He should have known, he would have known if it weren’t for this damned headache. Never matter. He could do this.

  “Carmella de Francavalla,” he said proudly.

  “Idiot!”

  The single word knocked him to his knees and left him gasping for breath. He went blind for a moment. What had he done wrong?

  “Mother?”

  “You fool! My name!”

  There was no hope. He didn’t know any other name. He could hardly see anything now at all. He could hardly think. In another moment he was sure all reason would be stolen from him, that he’d be driven insane just like that miserable pirate. The pirate! That was the answer. The name he sought had already been found, like a precious gem lying in wait for him in the garbage heap of that madman’s mind. If nothing else he had learned the name.

  What was it? What was that name?

  “Agaranath-Shem!” he cried out with the last of his strength. “Agaranath-Shem!”

  A jolt of unholy energy raced through his entire body, tingling every nerve ending all the way down to fingers and toes. Look, he thought, I’ve just discovered electricity! It comes from the sky! Won’t that insufferable profligate Benjamin Franklin be surprised? This is just the beginning. All the secrets will soon be mine!

  Amalric felt a surge of adrenaline. This was not science. It was magic. He’d fought this battle all his life—with test tubes and beakers and theorems and experiments. All that time he had merely been denying the obvious. The universe was not ruled by physical properties and laws of matter. The universe was ruled by magic, a wondrous bounty, flowing freely like a silver waterfall from the sky. Mother’s milk from the stars. What a fool he’d been. Immortality beckoned. What did it matter the source, so long as he should live forever? His mother had granted him power, a gift, a small sample dose of the Elixir Vitae. This was his cosmic inheritance and with its power he could do anything.

  He saw a razor-edged gap opening in the sky. The stars, clawing their way through, filling the sky, raining down in a torrent of white-hot destruction, the weight of infinity pressing down, its fingers curling round to smother the entire earth.

  Amalric jumped back from the telescope, nearly knocking it over. He was surprised to find that the sky above him was unchanged. His mother had not come. Not yet. What he had witnessed was only a foretelling, a vision of what would happen in just a few days’ time now that he’d opened the gate.

  But for now he must be patient. Patient! How could he possibly wait?

  He bent his eye to the optic once more but the magnificent light show had disappeared, leaving the sky once again bleak and barren.

  Mother was gone.

  Mother?

  Abandoned again!

  Why? Why did it always end the same?

  Amalric slammed the telescope from its stand. It hit the ground with a sickening tinkle. Broken! It didn’t matter. He didn’t need it any more. He’d done what had to be done. She would be back. He was certain of that. In the meantime he had her gift. She hadn’t abandoned him. He could feel her changing him. His skin, crawling with newfound life and vitality, now showed a greenish tint in the moonlight.

  “I’ve done it!” he proclaimed proudly.

  “Done what?”

  Amalric turned to find Trask standing behind him. That meddlesome fool. But it didn’t matter. Trask was too late to stop him now. “I’ve done it! I’ve opened the sky!”

  Trask turned his gaze skyward just in time to catch a series of shooting stars chasing each other down from the dome.

  “You fool!” said Trask. “What have you done?”

  “She’s coming back. Don’t worry. She hasn’t left me. Not really. You’ll see.”

  Amalric held up his hand. Tiny green shoots had emerged from his fingertips. He stared at the tendrils in awe as they wriggled forth, probing their new environment.

  “What’s wrong with your face?” Trask asked.

  “What?” Amalric pressed his fingers to newly raised cheekbones, discovered high, pointed ears. He felt different. He was different. The old legends were true, in a way. His mother had visited this place before, ages ago, and those she touched had become the faeries. This too, was his inheritance.

  Trask stepped forward, roughly seizing the high collar of Amalric’s waistcoat.

  “Don’t hit me,” Amalric said. He hated the way his voice sounded. So weak and high-pitched now as if he were once again the pathetic child he’d once been, begging for mercy that rarely was granted. Helpless child. “Don’t hit me. My mother won’t like that.”

  Trask hauled off and punched him in the face.

  Amalric toppled backward, his legs caught up in the mess that remained of the telescope and its tripod stand.

  “What good is it?” Amalric pouted. “What’s the use of hitting me? Will it close the door?

  Trask looked upward again. “What door?”

  “The door in the sky.”

  Amalric swept his foot sideways, knocking Trask’s support out from under him. As Trask toppled to the ground Amalric jumped up. His heart was pounding. He felt the blood, that sweet green sap, rushing through his veins and arteries. He turned and ran, the sap singing through his body as he disappeared into the woods.

  Chapter 36

  “Freedom!”

  Meadowlark lifted the latch from the chicken coop. He laughed, shooing the birds out into the night air. “Come on, my friends, come on!”

  At first the birds didn’t know what to do; they fluttered this way and that.

  “Come on!”

  He released the latches on two more coops. The chickens began to emerge in a steady stream.

  “At last you are free! No shackles bind you, no net ensnares you. And what is freedom, if not an open license to dance, to flutter, to stretch your wings.” He encouraged his little friends to flounce here and there with the toe of his boot. Several chose instinctively to peck at it.

  “Yes, peck. Peck! Give me the freedom to peck! That’s all I ask.”

  He glanced up and down the length of the Grayson dairy farm, checking to see if perchance anyone else had heard the commotion. No such drama. A quiet night and all asleep. Except for the farmer’s son, who lay bound and struggling at his feet.

  “Not for you,” he said, offering the boy a stiff kick in the ribs. “Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves. That’s what I say. Ho!”

  Meadowlark resumed prancing among the birds as they strutted and jumped from place to place, clucking madly, shedding fluffy white feathers into the air. “Birds aren’t meant for cages. Your eggs should be your own. Not the Graysons! Opp
ressors! Brace your wings and fly. You must—awwkk!”

  A yellow hen flung herself at his face. Stepping backward, he tripped over the prone figure of the farmer’s son and went down, straight backward into the dirt. The back of his head struck a flat stone marking the corner of the path.

  “Ow!” he said, not bothering to get up. The world spinning round and round before his eyes. The night sky, the stars, had become a whirling vortex of light, a cyclone of heavenly movement that looked sort of like a tunnel. A channel through the stars. Where does it lead? Does it bleed? He heard a tremendous tearing sound, like the bowels of the earth shifting, or two planets colliding.

  “What light breaks…” he asked, unable to complete the sentence. An incredible buzzing filled his ears, scrambling all thought. Slowly, the sound formed itself into something resembling words.

  “Lament! Foolishness argues against presumption, stripping the body of the leviathan, beheaded, and sets it free.”

  “Freeedom!” Meadowlark screeched. “Yes!”

  The chickens ran all round the yard, clucking madly with their newfound freedom.

  “Lament! The black and hooded head, so intense and all afire, as a storm rages at sea, this frigate earth ballasted with the bones of millions of the drowned…”

  “Sing to me!”

  “Roots to branches, from branch to branch, and back again. Across the tractless wastes of terra obscura. Laugh, my children, laugh and play. The dance is done, the curtain is ripped away.”

  “I understand!” he shouted, rolling through a mound of spilled chickenfeed. “I do understand. The tides, the seasons, always in motion. The winds blowing. The birds. In transformation, the worm becomes a butterfly.” Meadowlark flapped his elbows like wings and laughed at the wonder of it all. “The power of change! That will be me. Beneath the stilled river’s dark surface, stars roam idly by. Across heavens fertile and ripe, to futures futile and trite. But not for me! Not for me!”