Changeling

by Delia Sherman

  Hooraw (Origin Unknown): Doesn’t appear on any of the lists of traditional Folk, but from what Astris says, I’m guessing it’s a big bird with extremely sloppy nesting habits.

  Howlaa (Isle of Man): A weather spirit. Invisible and very loud.

  Hu hsien (China): Fox spirits. Like the kitsune of Japan, they can look like foxes or beautiful girls, but they’re much nicer. Because they’re the patrons of civil servants, they often work as secretaries in Madison Avenue and Wall Street.

  Incubus (Europe): A kind of demon who likes mortal women. The original boyfriend from Hell. Literally. Do not go out with an incubus, no matter how cute he is or how well he plays the guitar.

  Iolanthe (Fictional Character): The heroine of Iolanthe, an operetta by the mortals Gilbert and Sullivan. Teaches dancing in Central Park. (See peri)

  Kappa (Japan): Demon with webbed fingers, a head that is open at the top like a bowl, and really good manners. Hobbies are karate, wrestling, and drowning humans. If you meet a kappa, remember to bow. When it bows back, its strength pours out of its head.

  Kazna peri (Russia): Demon from the steppes. It’s gray, with a nose out to there. It cooks its treasure over a blue fire from around the Spring Equinox to the Summer Solstice, and if you catch it, you get the treasure.

  Kelpie (Scotland): A water spirit who can shape shift between horse and man shape. Either way, he likes to drown people.

  Kid-napper (New York Between): An operative of the New York Bureau of Changeling Affairs. Any supernatural that likes stealing mortal children can become a Kid-napper, but pixies seem to be best at it.

  Kitsune (Japan): Sometimes a fox; sometimes a foxy girl. Kitsune like mortal men. Sometimes they marry one and settle down in New York Outside, but it usually doesn’t work out well. The name means “fox maiden.”

  Kobolds (Germany): Small and pointy-headed, like brownies. Miners and metalworkers, they live in the Financial Maze, in the Betweenways, and Grand Central Station.

  Kraken (Scandinavia): A very, very big sea monster with lots of tentacles, like a giant squid. It’s really a deep-sea creature and has no business in New York Harbor, but I’m guessing that even the Mermaid Queen would think twice about telling it to leave.

  Lamia (Greece): Half woman, half snake. She’s got a short fuse and a big appetite for mortal men and lost children. You don’t want to meet her on a dark night.

  Leprechaun (Ireland): Little guy, maybe ankle height. Favorite colors: green and gold. Occupation: shoemaking. Hobbies: hoarding gold and drinking beer. If you can catch one and hold on to him, he has to give you all his gold. Hard to catch.

  Leshii (Russia): Forest spirit, shapeshifter, trickster. Some of his shapes are wolf, old man, and dog. He can be helpful if he’s in the mood, but he’s got a strange sense of humor. When he plays hide-and-seek, he cheats. He’s supposed to have a wife called Lesovikha, but I’ve never seen her.

  Li (China): A fire spirit who will help you organize your daily life.

  Mélusine (France): Her top half is woman, her bottom half is snake. Not easy to get along with because of a messy romance in France that no one will tell me about.

  Moss women (Germany): Wood nymphs, guardian spirits in a small way. They’ll grant you a wish if you’re sad enough.

  Nixies (Germany): Water nymphs. Like most water spirits, they have a thing about drowning people, so you have to be a little careful when you go swimming with them. But they like changelings and have always been very kind to me.

  Nymphs (Everywhere): Nature spirits. Really beautiful girls. They live everywhere nature is found. They can be silly or kind or mischievous, but you can always distract them with presents or treats.

  Peg Powler (England): A bogeywoman. If the Lady let her, she’d eat any mortal kid who came near her. As it is, she likes to make them slip and get wet and muddy and scared. A good reason to stay away from boggy places.

  Peris (Fictional Characters): Originally, peri was the name of a tiny, winged, female fairy in Persia, but that was so long ago that the last one disappeared long before America was even discovered. New York peris are mostly cast members from the comic opera Iolanthe by Gilbert and Sullivan, have English accents, and sing and dance a lot.

  Piskie/Pixie (Cornwall): A wingless fairy, about knee height. Pixies like playing tricks. They steal things from mortals, including children. Their favorite color is green.

  Pooka (Ireland): A shapeshifter and trickster whose main party trick in the Old Country was turning into a shaggy pony and getting kids to ride on him and throwing them off cliffs. He can also turn into a black dog, a black goat, and a man. My fairy godfather.

  Puck (England): Puck’s kind of complicated. On the one hand, he’s a traditional hobgoblin. On the other hand, he’s one of the Shakespeare fairies. He likes playing tricks and getting people into trouble, but he can be a good friend if he’s in the mood. (See hobgoblin; Shakespeare fairies)

  Red Cap (Holland): A household spirit who always wears a red baseball cap and does his best to help poor people pay their heating bills. There’s another, English, Red Cap who rides with the Wild Hunt and is pretty much what you’d expect: bloodthirsty, nasty, and very toothy. His cap is dyed red with blood. (See Wild Hunt)

  Selkie (Ireland): A man on the land; a seal in the sea. Very strong, very handsome, very gentle—for Folk.

  Shakespeare fairy (Literary Character): Moth, Peaseblossom, Cobweb, and Puck appear in the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Mr. William Shakespeare and in the Shakespeare Garden in Central Park. They’re tiny, they have wings, and they spend most of their time decorating flowers and gathering dewdrops and nuts and things for their queen, Titania. They also sing and dance a lot.

  Shinseën (China): Fairies who can look like little old men with long beards or beautiful girls. For some reason, in New York Between, they prefer the little-old-man look.

  Sidhe (Ireland): Kind of like mortals, only lots more beautiful. Famous for red hair, violent tempers, and tragic love affairs. They live in the City, and cross over Outside a lot. (Pronounced “shee.”)

  Succubus (Greece): Girl incubus. A super high-maintenance girlfriend. They only go out with mortals, and the mortals are always really, really, really sorry.

  Supernatural (New York Between): General term for anything that lives in New York Between that isn’t mortal.

  Swan maidens (Northern Europe): Swans who are girls; girls who are swans. Take your pick. If you can hide their feather cloaks, they have to marry you. My advice? Don’t bother. They have bad tempers and they bite.

  Tanuki (Japan): Shapeshifter. Sometimes he’s a little fat man; mostly he’s a badger. He’s always a trickster, with a very basic sense of humor and a weakness for rice wine.

  Tech Folk/Machine Folk (Cyberspace): Geeks, nerds, bugs, gremlins, spam, worms, hackers, Tech dwarves, and computer wizards. Practically the newest Folk around—except for the gremlins and Tech dwarves, who have been around ever since machines were invented, under one name or another. Bugs, gremlins, worms, and spam are the bad guys. Computer wizards, geeks, nerds, and Tech dwarves are the good guys. Hackers are kind of like tricksters—they’ll do whatever amuses them most. Tech Folk come from all over the world and hang out in Cyberspace until they’re summoned through a computer.

  Tengu (Japan): Sometimes he’s a crow, sometimes he’s a man, sometimes he’s a little of each. He’s also a bogeyman and a trickster. He particularly hates politicians and members of the clergy and is very sensitive about the length of his nose.

  Theatre Folk (New York Between): Hoofers dance. Chorus lines sing and dance, mostly at the same time. Gaffers (and their assistants, called best boys) are in charge of lighting. Managers run the theatres. Scalpers (almost all of them ghouls) trade tickets to popular shows for an arm and a leg. Most actors are vampires, but fairies, elves, and other supernaturals sometimes act, too.

  Trolls (Scandinavia): Big, ugly, hairy, and bad-tempered. They like treasure and solitude and biting people’s heads off. The
y turn to stone in the sun.

  Undines (Germany): Water spirits, shapeshifters, unreliable, but not actively out to drown you. They can turn into snakes or fish, but mostly they don’t bother.

  Vampires (Europe): Bloodsuckers. Formerly mortal, now undead. Since they’re allergic to fairies, they don’t usually bite changelings, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. They can’t stand the smell of garlic.

  Veela (Eastern Europe): Nature spirits, guardians of wood and stream and tree. Independent, mischievous, beautiful, not all that interested in talking to mortal girls. They’re wonderful dancers, though, and the squirrels like them.

  Vodyanoi (Russia): Water spirits, shapeshifters. Part of the “lure you into the water and drown you horribly” crowd. When they look like mortals, it’s mostly old men with green beards or fur or scales. They can also look like big fish or frogs.

  Wall Street Folk (New York Between): More of a job description than a species of Folk, since almost any kind of supernatural can be infected by gold fever if it hangs out on Wall Street long enough. Folk who are predators turn into brokers. Tricksters and gamblers turn into investors. And that’s all I know, even after Fleet explained it all to me.

  Water Rat (Literary Character): From The Wind in the Willows, by the mortal author Kenneth Grahame. He’s very English. Personally, I think he’s sweet on Astris.

  Werebears (Scandinavia): Shapeshifters who can look like men or bears. In the Old Country, they were mighty warriors. Here, they’re mostly into sports.

  Wild Hunt (Northern Europe): Traditionally, a host of evil spirits who hunt the souls of the damned on stormy nights. In New York Between, it’s more of a mob made up of all the nasty Folk who like fresh meat and scaring people out of their wits.

  Will-o’-the-Wisps (England): Nature spirits who look like little lights. They enjoy leading travelers astray. Similar spirits appear everywhere in the world under different names.

  Wyrm (Scandinavia): A kind of dragon, wingless, snake-like, nasty-tempered, greedy. Not all that powerful, which is why the Dragon lets wyrms hang around Wall Street.

  Wyvern (Europe): A kind of fabulous monster. Body of a snake, head of a dragon, wings of a bat, legs of a bird. It likes fighting better than gold, which makes it an excellent security guard.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Every writer writes to please herself. But a writer who publishes had better please her audience as well, or else what’s the point?

  I am very grateful to all the people who have been this story’s earliest audience. The Genrettes (Laurie R. Marks, Rosemary Kirstein, and Didi Stewart) encouraged me through the difficult early drafts and kept me focused on bringing my beloved New York alive to people who don’t live there. The Massachusetts All-Stars (Kelly Link, Gavin Grant, Holly Black, Cassandra Claire, Sarah Smith, and Ellen Kushner) supplied lively critical discussion, useful comments, and some very cool doodles in the margins of the manuscript. Keri MacNair supplied research materials. Helen Pilinovsky and Veronica Schanoes cast a professional eye over my folklore. Mimi Panitch, Deb Manning, Patrick O’Connor, Eve Sweetser, Els Kushner, Tess Baker, Shweta Narayan, and Nathaniel Smith caught inconsistencies, queried motivations, and asked interesting and useful questions. Davey Snyder gave me insights into the speech patterns of Executive Assistants and Dragons. Ellen Klages not only read the manuscript five times (or was it six?), but had something intelligent and kind to say every time. Sara Berg gave me an invaluable education on Asperger’s Syndrome and a copy of Dawn Prince-Hughes’s wonderful Songs of the Gorilla Nation. Holly Black rallied around with moral support, advice, and some very shrewd suggestions during the difficult final draft.

  I also want to thank my younger readers: Maya and Rafaela Carlyle-Swedberg, Chiara Azzaretti, and most of all, Liran Bromberg, who honestly, yet kindly, told me what they thought of Neef and her adventures, and the places where things got confusing.

  Special thanks to Christopher Schelling, my agent, for taking care of the business end so I don’t have to worry about it and being a good friend and perceptive reader as well. And thanks to Sharyn November, whose editorial style is a fine, rich mixture of enthusiastic encouragement and incisive, detailed criticism. Nobody could ask for a better, more attentive editor.

  Thank you to Eleanor and Leigh Hoagland and Kelly Link and Gavin Grant, who let me retreat to their houses in the country at the two points when I needed it the most.

  And finally, my love and most profound thanks to Ellen Kushner, who named the Eloise Award for Naughty Children, liked Honey when no one else quite understood why she was there (including me), walked all over the North Woods with me looking for the Blockhouse, which wasn’t at all where I thought it was, and got us safely home again.

  DELIA SHERMAN was born in Tokyo, Japan, and raised in New York City, where she now lives. She is the author of numerous short stories, including three set in a magical New York: “CATNYP” (The Faery Reel), “Cotillion” (Firebirds), and “Grand Central Park” (The Green Man). Her novels include Through a Brazen Mirror, The Porcelain Dove (winner of the Mythopoeic Award), and The Freedom Maze. With fellow fantasist Ellen Kushner, she is coauthor of a short story and a novel, both called “The Fall of the Kings.” She is also coeditor, with Terri Windling, of The Essential Bordertown. She prefers cafés to home for writing, and traveling to staying put.

  Her Web site is www.deliasherman.com.