Lady Changeling

by Ken Altabef

  The modest little chapel had only six hardwood pews. It was just large enough to accommodate the manor house’s staff so they didn’t have to travel all the way into town on Sundays. A stunted transept bulged from either side, cluttered with idols and votive candles. The tiny altar was framed by a semicircular apse that laid claim to only one round stained-glass window. The building boasted so few embellishments that, viewed from outside, it resembled a big white barn more than anything else. Its main distinguishing feature was the bell tower which squatted atop the building like a gigantic spider. The massive iron bell hadn’t rung since the Purge, when it had sung long and loud, gleefully tolling the deaths of faeries.

  During her ten years on the estate Theodora had spent very little time in this place. Most Sundays, the Lord and Lady took mass in the big church in Graystown. Theodora had listened to the weekly sermons with studied poise. The faery folk held to no organized religion aside from their communion with the woodland animals and plants. Theodora firmly believed that all living things were connected, but if there was some great hallowed spirit presiding over them it had not made itself known to her. And it certainly did not reside in the High Church in Graystown.

  She attended services with her husband and observed the many rituals without really believing any of it. And in that particular dishonesty she was certainly no different than most everyone else. Eric would never give voice to such qualms, but she knew he felt the same way. At least on any day that wasn’t a Sunday.

  “Is it there?” she asked her ‘cousin’.

  “It won’t be there,” chided Meadowlark. He stood beside her, still wrapped in his hunchbacked disguise of Finnegan Stump. “T’were we standing this close to it, we’d feel it, love. We’d feel it.”

  ”You don’t know that for sure. If that were true, it couldn’t be hidden anywhere in the main house either. I would know. It would have to be someplace on the estate I don’t ever go.”

  “Or perhaps someplace where you might often have felt ill? Like in the bedroom?”

  “Stop it.”

  Meadowlark rolled his eyes. “The things you’ve had to subject yourself to. The horrors. Ooooh, I shudder to think.”

  With the sound of tearing wood, the two faery men ripped the altar from its base. They proceeded to smash it to pieces, which seemed completely unnecessary.

  Theodora looked away. She remembered her wedding ceremony, which had been held in this modest chapel rather than the big church in town. Eric had wanted it that way. A small unpretentious ceremony, attended only by close family and friends. The place had been filled floor to ceiling with flowers. It had been absolutely lovely, the decorations, the words of father Everson, the smiling well-wishers and distant relatives of the Grayson family who had traveled far to attend. None of Theodora’s friends had been there of course. Her ‘family’ had staunchly boycotted the affair. It was all part of the game. Stump’s blatant disapproval had served to make Eric want the marriage all the more. As if he needed any such encouragement.

  Theodora had walked down the aisle all on her own. She’d had no bridesmaids beside her and no peal of wedding bells to mark the event; the death knell of the big iron bell of the chapel seemed starkly inappropriate to the occasion and remained thankfully silent. No one to ‘give her away.’ But none of that mattered. In fact, she’d been glad to stand at the altar by herself, without any other faeries to spoil the moment for her. Faeries didn’t value weddings or marriages. She doubted any of them, including Moon Dancer, could possibly understand how she’d felt that day. Her marriage to Eric had come to mean quite a lot to her. It was a beautiful occasion, marking the start of their life together and celebrating their love.

  Oh, but now it had come to this. Faeries were practically tearing the chapel down! The irony was not lost on her.

  Her jug-eared ‘cousin’ finished prying open a small oblong box he’d found hidden beneath the altar. He looked up at her with his goofy face nodding gleefully, his huge ears wagging.

  “You’ve got it?” she asked.

  “It’s not here. But I did find two shillings and sixpence, though.”

  He rubbed the coins together with a grating sound. Theodora was not amused.

  “We shan’t find it,” insisted Meadowlark, “because it’s not here.”

  “Stop saying that.”

  “Fie! Tear down the whole place entire if you feel you must—”

  “What goes on here?”

  A short, squat man burst onto the scene. His pockmarked face wore a stern look. His head was small and round, balding on top where his thin gray hair was brushed back to the nape of his neck. He wore a black, double-breasted cassock cinched around his prodigious waist by a thin leather belt. This was Godfrey James, the vicar presiding over the Grayson chapel.

  Theodora took a deep breath. She’d been able to keep the house men from meddling in her search by assigning them busywork tasks around the estate, but she had no such power over this cleric.

  “What are you doing?” he asked again, this time giving one of the faery men a hearty shove that pushed him a step back from the ruin of the altar. “What’s this all about?”

  “I’m sorry, Father,” Theodora said. “It’s Griffin’s lens. It used to be kept here.”

  “The lens? But that was many years ago. It was taken away during the time of the Creeping Rot. By Hake Grayson, I think.”

  “But where is it now?”

  He replied angrily. “I don’t know.”

  “Where have we heard that before?” Meadowlark mused. “These people all say the same thing. It’s downright boring.”

  Vicar James regarded Stump with a skeptical eye. “What a strange little man,” he said impolitely. “I’ve never seen you here before, sir, nor in Graystown either. To what church do you belong?”

  “I’m protestant,” said Meadowlark, “as in I protest the whole damn thing.”

  “Well, I protest...” sputtered the vicar angrily. “I protest, sir. You can’t come here, into the Lord’s house, however so humble, and …and… whatever are you doing?”

  “We’re looking for the lens,” said Theodora. “We need it.”

  “What for?”

  “Well, we need it to fight the faeries with. You see there are faeries on the estate.”

  The vicar glanced suspiciously at both Finnegan Stump and the red-haired, jug-eared buffoon standing next to him. “Who are these people? Why did you bring them here?”

  “These are my family,” continued Theodora. “They’ve come… they’ve come back—the faeries, I mean. We’re all in danger. And Lord Eric is suffering from the Rot…”

  “Terrible news,” said the vicar. “Terrible news. But with all due respect, my lady, that’s no reason to go destroying the chapel.”

  Theodora realized she should have had a better story prepared. She couldn’t come up an explanation that made any sort of sense. “We need the lens.”

  “I tell you it’s not here.”

  “I said exactly the same,” said Meadowlark.

  Theodora thought just the opposite. The way the vicar was acting, so protective and against the grain, so intent on shooing them away, made it seem this was the perfect hiding place.

  “It must be here,” she insisted. “Somewhere. I’m sorry, but we can’t stop looking just now. We have to find it.”

  “You will stop!” roared the cleric as if the strength of the Almighty was flowing in his veins.

  “We can’t.”

  She nodded to the two ‘cousins’ and they began to tear their way through one of the transepts, scattering votive candles across the floor.

  “I will not allow this!” roared the vicar.

  Meadowlark stepped into the breach. He grabbed the vicar’s arms and held them from behind. To facilitate his grip, he released his glamour of Stump and resumed his normal appearance—tall, lanky and green-skinned. A mischievous smile crossed his lips.

  “Don’t!” warned Theodora. “Nobody else gets hurt. I
won’t stand for it.” She was thinking of Fitzroy March. There was no helping what had already been done, but no reason to see this poor man suffer a broken neck either.

  “I do believe I have this dance reserved,” Meadowlark said to the vicar. He then began waltzing him about the room, despite the man’s flatfooted resistance.

  It’s a good thing Redthorne isn’t here, she thought. She’d have killed him already.

  Redthorne made her way slowly down the earthy corridor. It was completely dark in the underground tunnel, but she had no need for a torch. Like most faeries she had excellent night vision.

  She was not afraid, yet still this place gave her a bad feeling. It wasn’t the row of crypts with their moldy inhabitants that lined the path, nor the grim monuments to the deceased which gazed dead-eyed from the walls. They were just silly human things. Their stony faces would have looked despairingly down at anyone who passed this way, not just an intruding faery.

  Ahh, she realized. It was the smell of the place. The dank earthy smell was the thing that bothered her most of all. She just didn’t like to be underground, the way the faeries had been forced to live for so many years.

  She’d been born after the Purge, so she’d never known the delights of the Fen or the meadow. Her entire life had been lived in underground mounds and barrows, places not so different than this, living in secret, hiding from the blades of her oppressors. She should have been perfectly at home here among all the dead bones and worms, but she felt nothing except bitterness and resentment.

  Redthorne jammed her crowbar into the seal of the next stone coffin in the line. The inscription on the lid read: Jocelyn Grayson. Eric Grayson’s dear departed mother. A suitable hiding place for the lens, she decided, if ever there was one. She leaned down on the bar and pried the coffin top from its moorings. She shifted it just enough to push the slab of heavy granite aside. Her muscles straining, Redthorne groaned and then screamed as she sent the stone lid toppling from the casket. It fell to the ground, cracking under its own weight. To her surprise her scream did not echo throughout the crypt. The sound was completely absorbed into the packed dirt walls like so many others before it.

  Redthorne had never before seen the body of anyone who had died of the Creeping Gray Rot. The thing in the casket hardly resembled a human being at all. It was more like a mushroom or malignant tuber that might grow in the ground, lumpy and gray. The face looked like a stone statue left out in the wind and rain for a few thousand years, its features worn down by time and bad weather. There was a woman’s face there somewhere, she supposed. The body was dressed in an elegant gown of black and red felt with gold trimmings. The arms that protruded from the fashionable sleeves were stumps of gray rot without any fingers. It was a hideous sight. Redthorne smiled. A fate well-deserved, she thought.

  She proceeded to the next casket. The cover had a carving in the stone, an exquisite rendition of the reserved and stately face of Lord Henry Grayson. A bouquet of white roses had been placed on the carven image’s chest, but the flowers had long since withered away into a sprinkling of white dust.

  Redthorne set herself against the lid and shoved it halfway open. The smell of embalming fluid pricked her nose. Inside she found another lumpy gray corpse, this one dressed in a fine suit. A white ceramic mask had been placed over the face. She couldn’t resist. She pulled the mask away to reveal a monstrously deformed face so shriveled and papery it resembled a hornet’s nest.

  When a search of the casket did not turn up the miraculous lens, Redthorne gave the box an angry shove that sent the entire thing tumbling over. The casket bumped the one next to it. Both Jocelyn and Henry Grayson spilled from their eternal resting places to fall together into a moldy heap on the earthen floor. Redthorne stepped on the ceramic mask as she walked on, crunching it beneath her boot heel.

  A low archway led into the next section of the crypt. Now she was getting somewhere. This room was designated for one coffin only, an impressive affair laid out in the center of the crypt. The dark mahogany coffin was covered with elegant carvings. Hunting parties chasing down wild stag and boar, the grim faces of ancestors long dead, and scenes of martial prowess from great wars of the past. Redthorne thought it all rather pompous for a man who had professed to being a Puritan when he’d been alive.

  Set into semicircular niches all along the far wall were trophies of his grandest kills. Neatly arranged above the casket were sets of curved goat-like spiral horns such as male faeries grew in their old age. Ripped from their dead skulls, no doubt. So many of her kin, representing the wisdom of age and the rich past history of the faery folk. All murdered.

  Yes, this was the final resting place of Griffin Grayson. And she could already feel it, there in the box. A dread feeling that went all the way to her bones. She had found it. Griffin had refused to give it up, not even after death. The Silvered Lens!

  She struck off a corner of the wood and stuck the point of her crowbar into the breech. The wooden cover was not nearly as heavy as those of the stone coffins. She had no trouble raising the lid and sweeping it aside. The weirdly uncomfortable feeling in her gut intensified as she leaned over the coffin to inspect its grim contents. Griffin had been ripped apart by dogs and Redthorne pitied the poor country undertaker to whom fell the dubious honor of reassembling the parts into something resembling a man. Bits and pieces could be stuffed at random into the fine clothing but reconstructing the face had been a chore well beyond the embalmer’s limited skill. What was left was little more than a skull layered with gobs of dried putty. The nose had caved in, the glass eyes had rolled from their sockets leaving them empty and dark. Only the teeth remained intact, locked in a solemn death’s-head grin.

  She didn’t care about the body. Where was the lens? It must be here. It must.

  She felt a prickly tremor of grim realization. Damn it all, the sick feeling she’d experienced had been caused by the many sprigs of St. John’s wort that practically filled the casket. The herbs had been sealed in this sepulcher for more than thirty years but had not wilted. How was that possible?

  Redthorne snapped her head back at the poisonous stench. She almost gave in to a powerful urge to turn and run. But there, resting amid a fluff of wort on the center of the corpse’s chest, was a glint of glass. The lens. She reached forward and brushed the sprigs away. Their touch scorched her fingers raw as she uncovered the glass. It was an oblong globe, like one half of an ornate hourglass, and sealed within it was a dark powder or fluid. Was this the fabled lens?

  She lifted it up, but as soon as she touched it her hand grew numb and heavy. The glass globe was filled with iron tar. A trap.

  She let go and the globe dropped from her senseless fingers. As the amulet bounced on the dead man’s chest something else came up. Icy fingers wrapped themselves around her wrist. She could see nothing. Nothing.

  But she knew. It was Griffin Grayson’s hand.

  He pulled her toward him, toward the globe. She resisted as best she could, but already felt herself growing weak. The wort. Too much, too close. She mustered all her strength to counter the grip of the ghostly hand. She must pull away.

  And then…

  Ka-thoom!

  The sound of the iron bell shattered her concentration and broke her will. And now it was too late. The trap had been sprung. Griffin’s ghostly hand pulled her into the glass sphere. She plunged into the sticky black pool of iron tar. The bell continued tolling, its sound sucking her deeper into the tar. She was pulled to the waist. Ka-thoom. Then down to the chest. She struggled as hard as she could but the power of the amulet was incredible, the black tar sapped all of her strength and the sound of the bell sucked her further down with each stroke.

  Ka-thoom!

  Ka-thoom!

  Meadowlark cast his ersatz dance partner aside. The vicar fell to his knees.

  The sudden tolling of the iron bell had surprised them all. Theodora had not heard its deep, dolorous sound for twenty years. She’d hoped never to hear it ag
ain. The ringing of the bell cut right through her skull, bringing to mind all the suffering and misery the faeries had suffered at the hands of men.

  “Who’s doing that?” she asked the vicar as he scrambled back to his feet.

  “I’m the only one here,” he said.

  “Then who is ringing that bell?”

  “No one.”

  Ka-thoom! Each time it seemed louder than the last. The faeries clapped their hands to their ears.

  Theodora turned toward Meadowlark. “Well? Go up there and check on it!”

  Meadowlark lost no time. His tall lanky form climbed right up the side of the chapel wall, finding handholds where none could be expected to exist. Like a spider he rounded the archway and skittered across the ceiling to the large round opening that marked the base of the bell tower.

  Ka-thoom! It rang again, the loudest blast of iron thunder yet. Theodora thought for certain Meadowlark would come crashing down, knocked senseless by the sound, but somehow he held on.

  The vicar watched Meadowlark’s remarkable feat of climbing with wide, horrified eyes. “You, you, you’re faeries. You’re the invaders.”

  Theodora ignored him. She felt so sick she sank to her knees.

  Meadowlark’s face peered around the circular edge of the opening. “There’s no one here.”

  “Cut it down!” Theodora yelled. “Cut it down!”

  She stepped toward the side of the chapel, pulling the vicar along just in time. The heavy iron bell came crashing down, taking broken spars of wood and half the ceiling with it. The remains of the altar and the apse below were smashed flat. The rose window exploded, sending stained glass spewing out into the night. It littered the lawn, twinkling in the gloom in red and yellow and blue.

  “Sacrilege,” hissed the priest. “God have mercy on your souls, if you have them. Surely you are the foulest of his dark creations…”