The Last Changeling

by Chelsea Pitcher

  One more minute.

  I did a flip in mid-air. My stomach dropped, unable to catch up to my body. I laughed, feeling reckless and free. There was a part of me that knew I was risking too much, knew I needed to lower myself from the sky. But my happiness in that moment kept me in flight.

  Until Taylor screamed.

  The fearful sound echoed throughout the sky. I could scarcely think. I dare say I forgot how to breathe. And though it seemed highly illogical, my instinct told me to lower myself back to the ledge of the garage.

  What will he do to me? What will they all do?

  I was terrified.

  Yet the strangest thing happened when I lowered myself to that little ledge. No raging mortal awaited me there. No torches, no knives. No guns to tear my wings to shreds. I peered inside the window, my stomach aching with nerves. Still, silence. A simple glance to the left showed what my heart dared not hope.

  Taylor lay sleeping.

  Had I imagined the scream? Or had someone else spotted me in the sky? I’d been certain, at the time, that the scream was his. But how could I be sure? Here in the mortal world, men of a certain age might all sound alike.

  Squeezing back through the window, I moved quietly into the bathroom to dry my skin and clear my mind. Clothing formed pyramids on the floor, accompanied by the occasional towel, but I passed them by. Drawing upon my waning strength, I drew quick circles above my head until the room was spinning with warm air. I tucked my wings against my back and set to work buttoning the nightdress. I hated the confinement, the feeling of being held down in my own skin. But what choice did I have, here?

  Now my clothing was dry. My desire for flight was temporarily sated. Yet I did not leave the room immediately. Instead I walked across the tiles, feeling their strangeness with my feet, and touched the glass of the mirror.

  Reflections hold a deep fascination for the fey. Often we steal glances at the surfaces of lakes, just to see if our reflections will do something silly without our bodies’ permission. But staring into this looking glass, at the two-dimensional, trapped version of myself, all I could see was the lie.

  For a moment I let the glamour slip, freeing the glow that lived within. Dark symbols flashed and faded beneath my skin. My hair curled over my arms like tongues of flame. But I did not let out my wings, now that I had tucked them away.

  I did not want to see them.

  When I was a child, many in the Court mused that the Queen had mutilated my wings as some form of punishment. Indeed, they appeared to have been sliced along their thickest curves. But no such punishment ever occurred; I was born with the abnormality.

  At least here, I could pretend I was normal.

  I reapplied the glamour slowly, watching my reflection as it changed. Smaller eyes, smaller mouth. Everything proportioned and uninteresting. A little knob rested on the side of the mirror, and I opened it to find a cabinet built into the wall. I was pleased to learn that humans had secret compartments just like faeries did, even if they were quite easy to find. Armed with this new discovery, I continued to poke around the room. I pulled back a curtain hiding a long, white basin and picked up a bottle, turning it over in my hands. It slipped.

  The bottle crashed against the basin and slid toward the drain. I placed my hands over my ears, as if that might somehow drown out the noise.

  It didn’t.

  There came a tentative knocking on the door.

  I opened my mouth, but only the tiniest sound escaped.

  Taylor knocked again. At least, I thought it was Taylor. Considering my limited knowledge of the human world, it could have been anybody.

  “Lora?”

  It was Taylor. That should have put me at ease. But upon hearing his voice, my heart began clattering around the way it had when I’d been in flight. I felt nervous, joyful, and panicky.

  “It’s me,” I said through the door, though, upon immediate consideration, this seemed an improper response.

  “Are you okay?” His voice was soft, muffled by fatigue.

  What could I say? I felt, in that moment, a great many things, but “okay” was not among them.

  I opened the door.

  Taylor stared through the darkness. “Were you in there without the light on?”

  Yes, but it’s not a problem, as I can see in the dark.

  “I didn’t want to wake you,” I said.

  “What were you doing?”

  Again, I searched for an acceptable answer, all the while growing more anxious. In the end, it was a tiny tuft of hair that saved me, sticking up from the top of Taylor’s head. It was not the sight of it that disarmed me, but rather the fact that he regarded me with the utmost sincerity while, unbeknownst to him, that tuft rebelled.

  “I’m just trying to get used to”—I gestured grandly—“this.”

  He took a step toward me, his mouth contorting in a yawn. He looked like a roaring lion. “Is there anything I can do?”

  He wasn’t looking at me. I got the distinct impression he didn’t want to, though I could not guess at his reasons. Even more interesting was the fact that my heart had resumed its pounding the moment he’d come nearer.

  “I don’t know that there’s anything anyone can do,” I said, shifting my gaze to the floor. I couldn’t stop noticing the emptiness of the room: the floor devoid of soil and insects, the ceiling of neither sky nor trees. My whole life, I’d lived with the possibility of losing these things, yet it was an entirely different thing to actually be without them. To miss them. “Back home, things are just … different.”

  “They must be.” He looked at me then, his eyes kelpie green in the darkness. “You said you live out in the country?”

  “Far from here.”

  “I used to want to live outside the city.” He lingered in the doorway. “Have dogs and horses. Climb trees.”

  I smiled faintly, and it seemed to encourage him.

  He placed his hand on the doorframe. “I drew up these plans for a city in the trees. It was basically a bunch of tree houses with bridges connecting them, but … ” He paused, and in spite of his smile, there was an edge to his tone. “I was convinced it could happen, if we just moved out of the city. My brother, Aaron, and I—” He stopped, busying himself with a fraying corner of the door. “We thought we could make it happen.”

  “You have a brother?” I asked.

  Taylor stepped past me toward the sink. He turned on the water, running his hands under the stream. “He’s not here anymore.”

  “Oh.”

  Back home, much had been said about the disconnected nature of human families. Now I had the chance to learn about it firsthand. But the scowl on Taylor’s face, reflected in the mirror above the sink, told me I daren’t ask him now.

  I stepped up behind him.

  For a moment, he was too busy touching the water to notice me. It seemed to put him in a kind of trance, and he closed his eyes, feeling.

  When he opened them, his scowl had lessened. “I would go into the bathroom and pretend I was running my hands through a stream,” he said, turning off the faucet and shaking droplets onto my arm. Before I could respond, he was walking out of the room.

  I followed.

  “I would stand at my desk, or my dresser, and pretend I was touching tree trunks.” He ran his fingers over the surface of his desk. “Sometimes I could even convince myself I was feeling that buzz, that energy you get from touching trees.”

  I stepped up beside him, in a trance of my own, and touched the desk. The wood was smooth, glossed over with a substance I did not recognize, but the pattern could still be seen.

  I closed my eyes.

  When Taylor’s arm bumped against mine, I nearly opened my wings. The energy I had been hoping to find in the desk emanated from his skin. For an instant, I couldn’t breathe.

  Then, just as sudd
enly, my wings settled against my back and my breathing returned to normal. I was simply on edge, I assured myself, lifting my hand from the desk. He’d caught me off guard.

  I looked up to see him staring.

  “I don’t know if that helps,” he said, sitting on the edge of his bed, “but it used to make me feel better whenever I felt trapped. It helped me to think that the things you find out there”—he gestured toward the window—“are in here too. Just in different forms.”

  I sat beside him. “Taylor.”

  He turned to me, and the look on his face said he would grant me three wishes.

  “Words fall short,” I said. Ignoring the fire burning in my chest, I placed my hand over his. “But, yes. That helps.”

  4

  TayloR

  If Saturday was weird, Sunday was royally messed up. I woke up at dawn and snuck off to the cemetery, just like usual. After that, I stopped off at the mall to pick up two disposable cell phones, because, you know, covert ops were a part of my life now. Things didn’t really go wrong until after I got home.

  It was close to ten-thirty, and Princess Sleeps-A-Lot was still in bed. No biggie, I thought, I’ll just program her phones before she wakes up. Everything will be great!

  Oh, the lies we tell ourselves. I’d barely emptied the blue plastic bag when the knock came at my door. The knock of horror. The knock of death.

  “Taylor? Honey, are you in there?”

  No, worse. The knock of my mother.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” I whispered under my breath, because moms are more scared of swear words than they are of video games where you get points for killing prostitutes. My gaze shifted to the bed, where Lora-the-possible-teen-prostitute lay sleeping. She looked so innocent, curled up into a ball. I thought I would do anything to protect her.

  “Taylor?”

  “Just a second!” I yelled as Mom jiggled the handle. Thank God I’d remembered to lock my door. Now I just had to remember to think. I sprinted across the room and knelt beside the bed. The blankets were all tangled up around Lora’s legs and some of them had dirt streaked across them, which was strange. I didn’t remember her being covered in dirt when I’d brought her home. Then again, it had been dark and I’d been in a daze.

  I was in a daze now. “Code red. Code red,” I whispered, though it probably sounded like gibberish to her. But she must’ve understood, because her eyes popped open and she sat up.

  “What happened?” she asked. Her cheeks were red, like she’d been sitting in front of a fire, and her hair was everywhere, and how does she look this good when she’s just woken up? Nothing about the morning felt fair.

  Nothing about the morning felt right.

  But now I had her full attention, and the handle of my door had stopped jiggling. For one perfect moment we just stared into each other’s eyes.

  “My mother,” I mouthed, “is at the door. I’m so sorry.”

  Without a word, Lora slid the blankets off her legs and climbed out of bed. She pointed to the bathroom, tilting her head to the side, but I shook my head.

  “She goes in there sometimes,” I said. “She pretends that she’s looking for clothes, but really she’s just snooping. I do my own laundry—”

  Lora frowned, and I realized I was rambling. Who cared why my mom went into my bathroom? I needed to get Lora out of here. But how? It’s not like she could go out the window.

  I swallowed, unprepared for the heaviness in my chest. Meanwhile, Mom was knocking again, and Lora was looking at me with those big, frightened eyes.

  Okay, I can do this.

  I bolted to the bathroom. I was leaping over mountains of clothes, evading tall moms in a single bound. Kneeling next to the shower, I twisted the knob that was notorious for spitting out freezing-cold water. Still, I whispered, “Warm up, warm up, warm up,” because sometimes, when you really want something, it just happens, right?

  Icy spray assaulted my face. My lungs constricted and certain parts of me probably turned blue, but I didn’t pull my head away until it was soaked. Reaching blindly across the tub, I added a little shampoo to the mix, because authenticity is important when tricking your parents. Then, with the door only partially closed, I stripped. I took off everything except my boxers, and once I had a towel around me, I took those off too. I couldn’t risk the towel falling and my mom realizing this had all been a scam.

  Of course, if the towel fell off now, my mom would see me naked, and that was just as horrifying. So basically, I couldn’t risk the towel falling down, period. Holding on to the ends with one hand, I clutched it tightly to my waist and hurried back into the bedroom.

  Lora was standing by the window, her hand on the half-open sill.

  I shook my head. There was no way I was letting her climb onto that ledge and risk falling to her death. Sure, we were only two stories up, but if she tripped and fell headfirst, that wouldn’t make a difference. Then she’d be lying there, in a pool of her own blood, silent as a stone, and—

  Stop.

  I held Lora’s gaze, pointed toward the bathroom, and made a motion like I was opening a shower curtain.

  She nodded.

  Then, with a heavy heart and a sudsy head, I turned to face the door. Using my free hand, I undid the lock, yanking the door open with more force than intended.

  “What?” I said in my best bored-but-irritated voice.

  “I … ” Mom stared at me, in all my half-nakedness with suds on my head, and heaved a gigantic sigh. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry.” She brushed past me into the room. She was wearing this flowery blue shirt you’d expect to see on a Sunday school teacher, with TV-commercial khakis, and her silver-streaked hair was pulled back in a braid. “I thought something was wrong.”

  “I was just about to rinse,” I said.

  She nodded, looking around real causal-like, but her nostrils were flared like she could smell the deception. She was dangerously close to noticing the dirt on my sheets.

  “Mom. I’m getting shampoo in my eyes,” I lied.

  Her gaze snapped back to me. “I only need a minute,” she said, searching my face for wayward suds. “I received a call from—”

  “Ow—fuck!” I squeezed my eyes shut.

  “Taylor Christopher Ald—”

  “What? It hurts.” I wiped at my brow, which only managed to spread the shampoo around. “I have to rinse now.”

  I turned before she could say anything else. I’d almost made it to the bathroom when I realized she was following me. Which meant I had to stand there, with shampoo actually in my eye at this point, or get into the shower with Lora and take off my towel so Mom wouldn’t think something was up.

  Um. Seriously?

  I started to panic. It’s the only explanation for what happened next. I stumbled to the sink, splashing water into my eye to try to cool the burn. It helped until my mother said, “What are you doing?”

  “You said you wanted to talk.”

  “But … ” She pointed to the shower, and the water that must’ve been pretty hot, because the bathroom was filling up with steam. For a second, I wondered if Lora was standing in there in the scalding hot water because she didn’t know how to cool it down.

  Okay, no one was that clueless. Right?

  Still, a terrible feeling settled into my chest. I needed to get in the shower, even if it meant humiliating myself in the process. Lora could actually be hurting herself for me, and my mother was pretty close to calling me on my bullshit anyway. As stealthily as I could, I slipped through the crack between the shower curtain and the wall, prepared to bare all.

  What would she think when she looked at me? Would she be horrified, thinking I was going to hurt her?

  Would she laugh?

  My hands shook as I struggled to open the towel. With shampoo dripping down my face, it took longer than it should have for me to realize
what was wrong with this picture.

  The shower was empty.

  I mean, I was in it, but Lora wasn’t.

  She was gone.

  Outside.

  Gone.

  The truth hit me like a fist to my gut. Why would Lora go stand in the shower and risk getting caught when she could just go out the window instead? My heart thudded as I reached into the scalding water and turned the knob to the right. I jerked it too hard, and the water came out too cold, but I didn’t care. It actually helped to numb my fear as I rinsed out my hair, panicking all the while.

  Had she run away? Would I never see her again?

  Or worse, had she …

  “Honey, I got a call from Hal Munskin,” Mom said, breaking into my thoughts. “The guidance counselor—”

  “What?” The heat of shame prickled over my skin, making me dizzy. I turned the water to freezing. “Hackneyed Hal called—”

  “Mr. Munskin, Taylor, and he said you’ve stopped going to your sessions—”

  “I don’t need to talk to him.”

  “You need to talk to somebody. It hasn’t been that long since—”

  “I know how long it’s been,” I spat, fury bleeding into my voice. It was bad enough that she’d pawned me off on a counselor instead of talking to me herself. But a high school guidance counselor? “His job is to help people with their college essays. He’s not equipped to deal with … ”

  Loss?

  Grief?

  Crippling guilt?

  “Anything real,” I finished, twisting the shower off. For a minute I just stood there, shivering in the cold. I knew I needed to get Mom out of there, but I couldn’t move.

  “Sweetie, I just need to know you’re all right. At least if you lived in the house, I’d be able to see for myself … ”

  Oh. So that’s what this was about. “I can’t move back in,” I said, so softly I didn’t think she’d hear me.

  But she did. Super-sonic mom hearing, I guess. “You say that, but your father’s been talking—”