The Changelings Series, Book 1

by Christina Soontornvat

  “Yes, this is what I was meant to be; this is what I worked so hard for,” Morvanna whispered, mesmerized with her young Likeness.

  Izzy took a step back, holding the witch’s gaze.

  All the ferocity had drained out of Morvanna, replaced with a bone-weariness. She looked down at her wrinkled hand, then back up at her reflection’s young face. “I lost so much time, so many years… They slipped through my fingers like smoke…”

  The sadness in Morvanna’s voice broke Izzy’s concentration. Beneath the young queen’s cold disdain, she felt her own emotions welling up. She tried to tamp them back down, but she couldn’t help it. She felt sorry for the old witch.

  The Likeness wavered. Izzy could feel it like a slight shiver running down her back. Pity was not something the young Morvanna would have felt, not even for her future self. She squared her shoulders and stilled her breath, trying to focus. Izzy knew she had to hold on to her form just a little while longer. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Good Peter creeping across the ballroom toward Selden, where the silver flute lay on the floor near his feet.

  Izzy stepped slowly backward, luring Morvanna along with her, away from Selden and Peter. She backed up until her satin shoes crunched over broken glass and the backs of her knees touched the window ledge behind her. The sunlight streaming in through the open window fell harshly on Morvanna’s face. The old witch leaned so close that Izzy could smell the stench of decay on her breath.

  Peter reached for the flute, but it slipped from his fingers and pinged onto the floor.

  The sound snapped the witch out of her daydream. She looked Izzy up and down, her eyes burning with wild hatred.

  “How dare you!”

  Morvanna raised her hands and lunged at her Likeness’s ivory neck. In an instant, Izzy let the form slip off her like a silk robe. Plain brown hair replaced the fiery red, and all her regal splendor vanished. The cut on her forehead ached as she shrunk down to her normal self. But she was small again, and small was just what she needed to be.

  Quick as a fox, she ducked down below the window ledge. Above her, the witch clawed at her vanishing reflection. Terror spread over Morvanna’s face as she realized her mistake. She pinwheeled her arms to stop herself from plummeting out the open window, but it was too late. As she tumbled over the ledge, she twisted like a cat. At the last minute, she grasped Izzy’s collar, yanking her headfirst out the window behind her.

  Izzy felt a rush of air as she started to fall. Then rough hands grabbed her ankles, and her body jerked to a stop. The collar of her jacket ripped away in the witch’s fingers.

  Morvanna continued falling, down, down, past the high, sheer walls of her castle.

  Izzy swayed by her feet, all the blood rushing to her head. The sky and the ground seemed to switch places. She shut her eyes.

  Above her, she heard a dog barking. A gruff voice said, “Hold on, child, I’ve got you!”

  Izzy opened her eyes and looked down. The witch’s body lay on the stones far below, twisted all wrong.

  Izzy shut her eyes and didn’t dare open them again.

  31

  Tipped Upside Down

  Izzy’s tongue was so dry, she was positive someone had replaced it with a sock. She smacked her lips and slowly opened her eyes. A figure sat beside her bed. The window’s bright light framed her white hair like a halo. When her face first started to come into focus, Izzy shrank back into the pillows. But then the woman smiled kindly, and the fear melted away.

  “M-Marian?” Izzy croaked.

  The old woman helped her sit up a little more. “That’s right, child. But take it easy, take it slow.”

  “Where’s Hen? Is she OK?”

  “Yes, she’s perfectly fine,” said Marian, handing Izzy a glass of water. “Back to her fiery little self.”

  “And Selden? And all the others?”

  “Selden’s pretty battered, but he’s a tough one. He’s already on his feet again. And all the other Changelings are fine too, aside from worrying about you. Everyone wants to see you, but I told them you needed more time to rest.”

  Izzy relaxed a little and took a sip of water. She glanced up at the white stone walls of her room. “Are we still in the castle?”

  “Yes. You’ve been sleeping on and off for almost two days. From what your friends told me, you haven’t been taking very good care of yourselves. Sleeping too little and on the move too much. It’s enough to make anyone exhausted.”

  “I can’t believe you’re really here,” said Izzy. “After those cobwebs at Netherbee Hall, I thought I’d never see you again.”

  The old woman winked. “Marian Malloy getting beat by a bunch of dusty cobwebs? Nonsense.”

  Izzy sat up more. “But what happened? How did you get away?”

  Something scritch-scratched at the door. Marian stood up to answer it. “I think it’s best if I let someone else help me tell that story,” she said, her hand on the doorknob. “Out of everyone who’s wanted to see you, I think he’s the most eager.”

  Marian opened the door, and a bundle of black fur and drool galloped to the bed.

  “Dublin!” cried Izzy.

  Dublin stood up on his hind legs and leaned onto the bed, sniffing and licking Izzy’s face and hands. He would have leapt right into her lap if Marian hadn’t held him down.

  “What in the world are you doing here, Dub?”

  “He showed up at Netherbee just after you left,” said Marian. “Those webs had wrapped themselves so tight around me, I could barely wriggle my fingers. But your dog’s a good listener. I told him to find the bag of herbs I brought and dump it out on the floor.”

  Izzy rubbed him behind his ears. “And he did it? Good boy, Dub!”

  “I needed something that could get rid of those webs,” said Marian. “I remembered a spell from one of my oldest books called, Salt into Sparrows. I didn’t have any salt, but I did have mustard seed. Plenty of it. By the time those sparrows were finished, Netherbee Hall was licked clean. I guess the mustard made them feisty.”

  “And your Root Revive saved all the Changelings. Marian, you can do magic!”

  “I tried for years to learn spells but couldn’t ever get them to work for anything but the garden.” Marian chuckled. “Maybe those gossips in Everton were right, and I do have a little witch in me after all.”

  The word witch made Izzy shiver. “Do you know about Morvanna?” she asked. “I mean, do you know what she looked like?”

  Marian nodded grimly. “Once everything was over, Good Peter let me take a look at her. There’s no mistake. I’m the Changeling who took her place all those years ago.”

  Izzy was struck by how the two women were alike and different at the same time. They had the same face, but Marian looked radiant compared to the old witch. Decades of laughter and sun had given Marian her wrinkles, while Morvanna’s face had been ravaged by years of jealousy and spite.

  “Marian, I thought I saw you in the crowd at the Apple Festival. Was that you?”

  “Yes, we must have just missed each other. After I got out of the Edgewood, I came here to Avhalon to look for you.”

  “You’re lucky the Unglers didn’t find you. Morvanna would have cut out your heart.”

  Marian nodded. “I guess we’re both lucky in that regard.”

  Then Izzy remembered everything—Good Peter’s story, the way it felt to take on Morvanna’s Likeness, and the strange sensation of letting it go again.

  Izzy leaned back into the pillows. “So it’s really true,” she said. “I’m a Changeling.”

  Marian placed her hand over Izzy’s. “All those years, your grandmother and I worked to keep the Piper from taking you. We had no idea he already had.”

  Izzy closed her eyes and shook her head. “All this time, I’ve thought of myself as one thing, and now it turns out I’m not tha
t person. I’m not even a person at all. Back home, I never felt like I fit in. Now I understand why.”

  It was all so confusing. Everything Izzy thought she knew about herself was wrong. Her parents weren’t really her parents. “Izzy” wasn’t even her real name. She held her sore forehead, feeling very much like a snow globe that had been tipped upside down.

  Marian put a papery hand to Izzy’s cheek. “My dear girl, child or Changeling, you have a whole mess of loved ones who care for you. In fact, there’s a couple of them waiting in the next room who will be real mad at me if I don’t let you go and see them. Do you feel up to it?”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Well, up to it or not, you’re going. It won’t do you any good to sit here and mope.”

  Marian helped Izzy get out of bed and get dressed. Her shirt and trousers were clean and mended. Dublin sniffed curiously at her newly polished boots. She stood in front of a tall mirror and brushed out her hair, careful to avoid the tender cut at her hairline. As she brushed her hair away from her ears, she let out a little cry. They were as pointed as Marian’s. If she had any lingering doubts about being a Changeling, there was the proof, staring her right in the face.

  “I don’t know if I can get used to this,” she said, brushing her hair forward again.

  Marian took the brush and used it to push her toward the door.

  Izzy and Dublin walked into an ornate parlor where Dree and Lug sat across from each other at a round table, playing a game on a checkerboard with pieces shaped like owls.

  Dree plunked one of her pieces next to Lug’s and shouted, “Prenso! That’s three in a row for me!” She turned and saw Izzy standing at the door. “Finally. What took you so long to get out of bed? You been fighting witches or something?”

  Lug’s chair clattered to the floor as he jumped up and scooped Izzy into his arms. “We have hardly left this room, waiting for you to wake up!”

  “Easy, there,” said Dree, standing up from her chair. She wore a new lavender dress with a lace hem. “Let’s not crush her ribs before she’s fully recovered.”

  Lug set Izzy back down. She wrapped her arms around his belly, breathing in his wet dog smell. Dublin jumped up and set his forepaws on Lug’s chest, licking his cheeks.

  “Ho, ho, there, friend!” said Lug, scratching his ears. “Izzy, your dog is just delightful. Do you know that when I first met him, I chattered on with him for a full fifteen minutes before I realized he wasn’t one of the other Changelings?”

  “He’s pretty great,” said Izzy, patting Dublin’s back.

  “Keeping pets was one of those human habits I never did understand.” Lug gasped and put his fingers over his mouth. “Oh my goodness, I completely forgot! I got so used to thinking of you as a human that it’s hard to remember you’re not.”

  Izzy sighed. “It’s hard for me to remember too.”

  “We heard all about the Likeness you did of Morvanna,” said Dree. “How’d you come up with something like that on the spot?”

  “The oldest Changeling trick there is,” said a voice behind them. “Isn’t that right, Izzy?”

  They turned to see Selden standing in the doorway. He leaned on a crutch with one arm and held the other in a sling.

  Izzy walked up to him and surveyed the cuts and scratches on his face. After what she’d seen him go through, it was amazing he was even alive. “Gosh, you look terrible. Are you feeling OK?”

  “Me? Oh, sure. I love being bandaged up. Couldn’t you tell?” Selden beamed, and Izzy suspected he really did like having some wounds to show off. He shook his head at her, his brown eyes wide. “I still can’t believe you’re one of us! And this whole time, none of us picked up on it. I guess spending so much time with humans really ruined you.”

  Izzy laughed. Now she knew Selden really did feel all right.

  “That must be why the Unglers chased you when they found us in the Edgewood,” said Dree. “We thought they were smelling us, but they were really smelling you.”

  “Oh, let’s never talk about those nasty things again,” said Lug with a shudder. “They’ve run back to the Norlorn Mountains with all the goblins, and good riddance!” He squeezed Izzy’s shoulder. “Instead, let’s talk about how talented our girl is! Not many Changelings could make a witch go thunderstruck at her own Likeness.”

  “I don’t think I’m talented at all,” said Izzy. “I tried to Change into so many different things, and I couldn’t do it. In the end, I think I just got lucky.”

  “You just need more practice,” said Dree. “You’ll get better with time, especially with all of us to help you.”

  “It’s going to be fantastic!” said Lug. “There’s enough room in this castle for each of us to have our own room. You can have the one next to mine. It’s got a bed, but never mind that. I’ll build you a twig pallet, just like that one you loved back at Yawning Top.”

  The door creaked open, and a shock of auburn hair emerged from behind it. Olligan grinned at them toothily, then called over his shoulder. “Come on in—she’s awake!”

  The fourteen other Changelings skipped and bounded noisily into the parlor. Izzy cried out happily when Tom Diffley came in after them. One by one, they grabbed Izzy’s hands and gave her hugs while Dublin danced in happy circles at their feet. Then they all started talking at once:

  “I knew my Izzy would come up with something clever.”

  “A Changeling who didn’t even know it? I’ve never heard of that before!”

  “That puts our number at eighteen. I think that’s lucky, don’t you?”

  “Is that more than a dozen?”

  Each Changeling’s eager face was fixed on hers, asking a hundred questions and offering advice. She couldn’t get a word in.

  Finally, she shouted, “I’ll do anything you want. Just don’t make me be a goblin or a fat lady!”

  They all burst into laughter. Izzy felt a wonderful warmth, like the sun was shining directly on her cheeks. So this was what it was like to be surrounded with friends. It had never happened to her before, but already she was hooked.

  “Isn’t this lovely?” chortled Lug. “Everyone together, just like it should be. All we need is little Hen, and we’d be a complete party.”

  Izzy stopped laughing. She’d forgotten all about Hen. “Does anyone know where she is?”

  The Changelings murmured to one another, and someone said they’d seen her standing out in the hallway by one of the windows.

  Izzy pulled herself away from the group and hurried to the door. “Sorry, I’ll be right back,” she called over her shoulder. “I just need to talk to my—to Hen—for a minute.”

  Her palms sweated as she walked out into the hall. If all the others knew she was a Changeling, then Hen must have heard about it too. How would Hen take the news that the person she thought was her sister really wasn’t?

  She found Hen sitting in a sunny window seat. Outside the window, the Avhal Mountains looked painted onto the sky, just like an illustration from one of Izzy’s storybooks.

  Hen heard her coming and stood up. She smiled, but it was the forced smile she wore for school pictures. “Hey, Marian told me you were up. Are you feeling better?”

  “Yeah, a lot better. How about you—are you OK?” Izzy put her hand out to touch her sister’s hand, then drew it back down. Hen looked stiff, like maybe she didn’t want to be touched at all.

  “Yeah, I woke up right after—you know, after what happened.”

  “So do you know about everything? About me, I mean.”

  Hen gazed back out the window and said softly, “There was this one time at our old house when we were playing hide-and-seek, and I thought I saw you turn into a fox for just a second. I told myself it was just my imagination, but I guess it really wasn’t.”

  Even though she stood right there, Hen seemed miles away. Izzy wish
ed she would bounce around, or give her that missing-teeth smile, or even get mad and yell at her. Anything would be better than not knowing what she was thinking.

  “Hen, I know all this must be really weird and confusing. I’m confused too.”

  Hen tried to force another smile, but it quickly faded. She looked down at her feet. “I heard the Changelings talking about how they’re going to teach you all this great stuff… And you’ll have a new room… You won’t have to share…” Her words broke into sobs.

  Izzy held her arms out, and her sister fell into them.

  Hen’s little body heaved up and down as she stammered, “I know—you—won’t want to—come back—with me. Not when you—have the chance to—live in Faerie. But if you stay here, you’ll—you’ll forget all about me!”

  Izzy lay her cheek against Hen’s hair. Somehow, through all the washings and travels and the plunge into the Liadan River, her sister still faintly smelled like a mixture of crayon wax and strawberry shampoo.

  And home.

  Izzy shut her eyes. She saw her parents, sitting together on the couch in the den, doing the crossword puzzle from the paper. She could almost smell her mom’s perfume and feel her dad’s scratchy cheek against her own. Izzy thought about the crumpled quilt on her bed, the nubby living room rug under her bare toes, her mom’s overcooked broccoli. Normal, familiar, ordinary. All the things she had wanted to get away from now pulled her home like a current.

  Behind them, the doors of the parlor clicked open. Selden tottered out into the hallway, followed by the other Changelings, Tom, and Marian. Dublin trotted past them and sat down at Izzy’s feet.

  Selden’s eyes went to Hen, then Izzy. “Everything all right?”

  “Everything’s fine.” Izzy took a deep breath. “I think I’ve decided to go back home with Hen.”

  Hen sucked the snot back up into her nostrils. “Wait, what?”

  All the Changelings murmured and whispered among themselves.