Once Rhiannon had gone, I became aware of the fact that Rhys and I were sitting alone in his darkened bedroom. I thought about moving away or something, but I didn’t really have any reason to. The movie was fun, he was foxy, and I enjoyed being with him. It wasn’t too long before his arm “casually” went around my shoulders. I almost laughed at how he did it, reminding me of boys on sitcoms, but I liked the way it felt and I didn’t want to scare him away.
He never made any moves farther than that, and eventually I leaned into him and rested my head on his shoulder.
What most people may not realize is that watching all three extended edition versions of Lord of the Rings in one sitting ends up being over eleven hours of movie viewing. If we had skipped extended, we could’ve cut two hours out of the time, but Rhys claimed it wouldn’t be the same experience. At one in the afternoon on a boring Sunday, that might sound like a genius idea, but by the time midnight rolls around, it’s a different story. The films are still good, but keeping my eyes open became a battle that I eventually lost.
In the morning, there was a commotion going on that I was completely unaware of. Maybe if I hadn’t tried running away once previous, everyone wouldn’t have been so paranoid. But I had, and they were, and when someone checked on my room that morning, they found it empty. This was because I was across the hall, on the couch with Rhys, sound asleep. Finn threw open the door in a panic, and that’s what jolted me awake.
“Oh my gosh!” I exclaimed, jumping up off the couch. I was mid-heart attack from having Finn slam the bedroom door open. “What’s going on? Is everything okay?”
Instead of answering, Finn just stood there, staring at me. Behind me, Rhys was coming awake much slower than I was. I glanced back at him, dressed in a tee shirt and sweats that somehow managed to look good on him, and it dawned on me how this looked to Finn. I was still clothed in my only lazy day comfy clothes, but we had been curled up together. My mind scrambled to think of some kind of excuse, but suddenly, even the innocent truth escaped me.
“She’s in here!” Finn said flatly.
I groaned, realizing it was going to be even worse than if he’d just found me.
Elora appeared in the door, her emerald robe flaring out from behind in her a dramatic billow. She was standing behind Finn, but she somehow managed to eclipse everything else. There were times I had thought she looked unhappy before, but they had nothing on the severe expression she had now. Her scowl was so deep, it looked painful. She’d obviously been roused from her sleep to hunt for me, and her hair was still in a thick braid hanging down her back.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Elora barked. Her voice echoed painfully inside my head, and I had a feeling that she had added some of her psychic voice to make it more intense. Rhys was completely alert now, and he stood sheepishly next to me.
“Sorry. We were just watching movies and fell asleep,” I stumbled through an apology.
“It was my fault. I put the-” Rhys attempted to come to my aid, but Elora cut him off.
“I don’t care what you were doing! Do you have any idea how inappropriate this behavior is?” Her eyes narrowed on Rhys, and he shrunk back even more. “Rhys, you knew this was completely unacceptable. I can’t even begin to imagine what you were thinking, and frankly, I don’t even care!”
She rubbed her temples as if this were giving her a headache, and Finn gave her a concerned look. “I don’t even want to deal you. Get ready for school, and get out of my sight!”
“Yes, ma’am,” Rhys nodded. “Sorry.”
“As for you-” Elora pointed a finger at me but couldn’t find the words to finish. She just looked so disappointed and disgusted with me. “I don’t care how you were raised before you came here, you still know what kind of behavior is ladylike and what isn’t.”
“I wasn’t-” I started, but she held up her hand to silence me.
“But to be honest, Finn, you disappoint me the most.” She had stopped yelling, and when she looked at Finn, she just sounded tired. He dropped his head in shame, and she shook her head. “I can’t believe you allowed this to happen. You are supposed to be educating her in the ways of Trylle and watching her. You know you need to keep your eyes on her at all times.”
“I know. I won’t let it happen again.” Finn bowed apologetically to her.
“I do not want to see any of you for the rest of the day.” She held her hands up, like she was done with the lot of us, and then shook her head and turned out of her room.
“I am so sorry,” Rhys apologized emphatically, his cheeks red with shame, and somehow, that only made him look cuter.
Not that I was really paying attention to how he looked just then. My stomach had twisted in knots, and I was thankful that I hadn’t started to cry. I turned to Rhys to apologize as well, but Finn cut me off.
“You need to get ready for school,” Finn snapped, and he was almost glaring at Rhys. Then he pointed to the hall and turned to me. “You. Out.
Now.”
“Jeez,” I grumbled but did as I was told.
I had to sneak past him on my way out the door, and normally, I loved that but not today. My heart pounded erratically, but none of it was happy. Finn tried to keep his face expressionless, but tension and anger radiated from his body. I slunk across the hall to my room, and Finn barked something at Rhys about behaving himself.
“Where are you going?” Finn demanded when I opened my bedroom door. He had just emerged from Rhys’s room and slammed the door behind him, making me jump.
“To my room?” I pointed at my room and looked confused.
“No. You need to come to my room with me,” Finn said.
“What? Why?” I asked.
A very small part of me felt excited about the prospect of going to his room with him. That sounded like the start of a fantasy I might have, but the way he was looking at me now, I was afraid he might kill me once we were inside the privacy of his room.
“I need to get ready for the day, and I can’t very well let you out of my sight, can I?” Finn had a heavy irritated undercurrent to his words. I just noticed that he was wearing pajama pants and a tee shirt, and his dark hair wasn’t as sleek as it normally was. He had just woken up, too.
“Yeah, sorry.” I nodded meekly and walked with him to his room. He was walking fast and pissed off, and I fell about a step or two behind. “I really am sorry, you know. I didn’t mean to fall asleep there. We were just watching movies, and it got late. If I had known it would be like this, I would’ve made sure to be in my room.”
“You should’ve known, Wendy!” Finn exclaimed, exasperated. “You should know that your actions have consequences and the things you do matter!”
“I am sorry!” I repeated, feeling tears sting the back of my eyes.
“Yesterday was so boring and I just wanted to do something.”
“Wendy!” Finn whirled on me suddenly, startling me so I took a step backwards. My back hit the wall behind me, but he stepped closer to me.
Putting one arm on the side of me, his face was only a few inches from mine, and his dark eyes blazed. Somehow, his voice was calm and even. “You know how it looks when a girl spends the night alone with a boy. I know you understand that. But it is so much worse when a Princess spends the night alone with a mänsklig. It could put everything in jeopardy.”
“I-I don’t know that means,” I fumbled.
Finn stayed there, glaring at me for another painful minute, then sighed and took a step back. He rubbed his eyes and stood in the middle of the hallway. I swallowed back tears and caught my breath. When he looked back at me, his eyes had softened a bit, but he didn’t say anything. He just walked to his room, and uncertainly, I followed after him.
His room was smaller than mine, but a much more comfortable size.
One of his walls was entirely glass, but he had the blinds covering it. His bed was covered in dark blankets, and he had several bookshelves overflowing with books. In one corner, he had a sma
ll desk with a laptop on it. Like me, had an adjoined bathroom. When he went into the bathroom, he left the door open, and I heard the sound of him brushing his teeth. Tentatively, I sat on the edge of his bed and looked around.
“You must stay here a lot,” I commented. I knew that he stayed here on and off, but to have a room this full of his stuff implied a more permanent living situation.
“I live here when I’m not tracking,” Finn replied.
“My mother is quite fond of you,” I mumbled dimly.
“Not right now she’s not.” Finn turned off the water and came out, leaning on the doorframe to his bathroom.
“I am so sorry about that,” I apologized sincerely, but Finn just ran a hand through his hair and looked away from me. “I didn’t…” I trailed off, knowing that my apologies weren’t really good enough this time. “How did you even know I wasn’t in my room?”
“I checked on you,” Finn gave me a look like I was an idiot. “I check on you every morning.”
“You check on me when I’m sleeping?” I gaped at him. “Every morning?” He nodded. “I didn’t know that.”
“Why would you know that? You’re sleeping,” Finn pointed out.
“Well… it just feels weird. Like some kind of invasion of privacy,” I shook my head. I was used to Matt and Maggie checking on me, but it felt strange knowing that Finn would come in and watch me sleep, even if it was only for a second.
“I have to make sure you’re safe and sound. Its part of my job,” Finn said.
“You sound like a broken record sometimes,” I muttered wearily.
“You’re always just doing your job.”
“What else do you want me to say?” Finn countered, looking at me evenly.
I knew exactly what I wanted him to say, but I couldn’t tell him.
Instead I just shook my head and looked away from him. My sweats pants suddenly became very fascinating, and I picked lint off them. Finn kept looking at me, and I expected him to move on to finish getting ready. When he didn’t, I decided that I had to fill the silence with talking.
“What is a mänsklig?” I looked over at Finn, and he exhaled.
“The literal translation for mänsklig is ‘human.’” He tilted his head, resting it against the doorframe, and watched me. “Rhys is human.”
“I don’t understand. Why is he around?” I shook my head.
“Because of you,” Finn said, and that only confused me more. “You’re a changeling, Wendy. You were switched at birth. Meaning that when you took the place of another baby, that baby had to go somewhere else.”
“You mean…” It was incredibly obvious once Finn said it. Rhys had blond hair and blue eyes in a colony of brunettes, and what other purpose would he have here? “Rhys is Michael!” Suddenly, my crush on him felt very dirty. He wasn’t my brother, but he was my brother’s brother, even though Matt wasn’t really my brother. It still felt… not right, somehow.
“Michael?” Finn looked perplexed.
“Yeah, that’s what my mom - Kim, my fake mom - named him. She knew she had a son, and that’s Rhys!” My mind swirled. “But how… how did they do that?”
“We normally do same-sex exchange, a girl for a girl, a boy for a boy,” Finn explained. “Rhiannon is Willa’s mänsklig, for example. Elora had her mind set on the Everly’s. After he was born, she induced labor with you, and using persuasion on the family and hospital staff, she switched you out for him. It takes harder when you do a boy to girl switch, like that. Mothers are more likely to pick up on something being wrong, as was the case with you mother.”
“Wait, wait!” I held up my hands and looked at him. “She knew it was more dangerous? She knew that Kim was more likely to snap because Rhys was a boy? But she did it anyway?”
“Elora believed that the Everly’s would be the best for you,” Finn maintained. “And she wasn’t completely wrong. Even you freely admit that the aunt and the brother were good to you.”
I thought about my mother and how I had always kind of hated her. I thought she had been terrible and cruel, as had everyone else, but she had known that I wasn’t Michael. Kim had just been insanely good mother. She had remembered him, even when she shouldn’t have been able to, and she refused to give up on him. It was really tragic, when I thought about it.
“So that’s why they don’t want me with the mänsklig? Cause its like incest?” I wrinkled my nose at the thought.
“No. He’s not your brother,” Finn emphasized. “Trylle and mänsklig have absolutely no relation. The problem is that they’re human.”
“Are we like… physically incompatible?” I asked carefully.
“No. In fact, many Trylle have left the compound to live with humans, for various reasons, and have normal offspring,” Finn answered. “That’s part of the reason our populations are going down.”
“What happens to Rhys now that I’m back?” I questioned.
“Nothing. He’ll live here for as long as he wants. Leave if he decides to.
Whatever he chooses,” Finn shrugged. “Mänsklig aren’t treated badly here.
They aren’t exactly raised as their children, but they are given everything to keep them happy and content. They have an education at our schools. They even have a small trust set up for them. When they are eighteen, they are free to do as they please.”
“But they’re not equals,” I realized. Elora tended to talk down to everyone, but she was worse with Rhys and Rhiannon. I couldn’t imagine that Willa was much nicer either.
“This is a monarchy. There are no equals.” For an instant, Finn looked almost sad, then he walked over and sat on the bed next to me. “That’s part of what Elora is angry with me for not explaining sooner. There is a distinct hierarchy in how we live.
“In the Trylle community, there are classes. There is royalty, of which you are on the top,” Finn gestured to me. “After Elora, of course. Below that there are the Markis and Marksinna, but they can become Kings and Queens through marriage. Then there is your average Trylle, the common folk if you will. Below that, there are trackers. And at the very bottom, there is mänsklig.”
“What? Why are trackers so low?” I asked incredulously.
“We are Trylle, but we only track. My parents were trackers, and their parents before them, and so on,” Finn explained. “We have no changeling population. Ever. That means that we have no income. We bring nothing into the community. We provide a service for other Trylle, and in return, we are provided a home and food.”
“You’re like an indentured servant?” I gasped.
“Not exactly,” Finn tried to smile, but it looked forced. “Until we retire from tracking, we don’t need to do anything else. Many trackers, such as myself, will work as a guard for some of the families in town. You’ll also notice that all of the service jobs, like the nannies, the teachers, the chefs, the maids, they are almost entirely retired trackers themselves, and they make an hourly wage.
Some are also mänsklig, but they stick around less and less.”
“That’s why you always bow to Elora,” I mused thoughtfully.
“She is the Queen, Wendy. Everyone bows to her,” Finn corrected me.
“Except for you and Rhys, but you’re both rather impossible.” I smirked at that. “You’re actually very fortunate. Elora may seem cold and aloof, but she is a very powerful woman. You will be a very powerful woman. You will be given every opportunity the world has to offer you. I know you can’t see it now, but you will have a very charmed life.”
“You’re right. I cannot see it,” I admitted. “It probably didn’t help that I just got in trouble this morning, and I don’t feel very powerful.” Finn’s lip had a trace of a smile, and I turned to him. “I didn’t do anything with Rhys. You know that, right? Nothing happened.”
Finn stared thoughtfully at the ground. I studied him, trying to catch a glimpse of something, but his face was a mask. Eventually, he nodded. “Yes. I know that.”
“You didn’t this
morning, though, did you?” I asked pointedly.
This time, Finn chose not answer. He stood up and said it was getting late and he needed to shower. He gathered his clothes and went into the bathroom. I thought this might be a good time to explore his room, but I suddenly felt very tired. I had been woken up early and had little sleep, and this morning had been draining. Lying back down, I rolled over and curled up in his blankets. They were soft and smelled just like him, and I easily fell asleep.
17
I would’ve thought I’d been living here long to have seen all the rooms in the house, but I was wrong. There was a whole wing that I had seen nothing of, and Finn still refused to show it to me. When I woke up, Finn directed me to sitting room on the second floor, down the hall from my room. The ceilings were still vaulted and had some kind of mural painted on them, but the furniture looked more like normal people furniture. Finn explained that this had once been Rhys’s playroom, but when he’d outgrown it, they had tried to turn into it an appropriate sitting room for him. Apparently, he rarely used it.
Lying on my back on the couch, I stared up at the ceiling. Finn sat on an overstuffed chair across from me with a book splayed open on his lap. There were stack of texts on the floor next to him, and he was trying to give me a crash course on Trylle history. Unfortunately, despite the fact that we were some type of mythical creatures, Trylle history wasn’t anymore exciting than human history had been.
“What are the roles of the Markis and Marksinna?” Finn quizzed me.
“I don’t know. Nothing,” I replied glibly.
“Wendy, you need to learn this,” Finn sighed. “There will be conversations this weekend, and you need to appear knowledgeable. You can’t just sit back without saying anything anymore.”
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