The Last Changeling

by Chelsea Pitcher

  “He doesn’t want me there.”

  “It’s not that. He’s just worried—”

  “Look, Mom, I really can’t do this right now.” I threw my towel around my waist, holding tightly to the ends. “I’ve got a lot of homework to do. And some of the guys are going to call later, to talk about, uh … soccer techniques.”

  Sure. Because that ever happens.

  But she didn’t know that. And my comment seemed to have the desired effect. I could hear the smile in her voice when she said, “You’re making a lot of friends, aren’t you?”

  “Yup. Tons,” I lied. “I think it’s been really good for me to be part of a team.”

  “That’s good. Great. Well, listen, why don’t we talk later … ”

  “Sure,” I said, pulling back the curtain. I had this big, fake grin plastered on my face. “But don’t worry, okay? I’m feeling a lot better. You don’t have to worry about me.”

  “Good.” She exhaled, the lines softening on her face. “Maybe tonight, you can come by—”

  “Mom, I really need to get to work.” I ushered her out of the bathroom, glancing quickly over at the window.

  I saw nothing.

  “Those teachers are really working you hard,” she said as I stubbed my toe on my desk chair. The pain was sharp and immediate.

  Mother f—

  I closed my eyes and saw Lora’s body, lifeless and bloody, lying on the ground beneath the window.

  I closed my eyes and saw Aaron.

  Maybe I did need therapy.

  “It’s the end of the year,” I said, shaking as Mom stepped through my door. “Things’ll calm down soon.”

  Now she wouldn’t look me in the eye. It was like she was holding something back. But I couldn’t worry about it because I was so close to being free from her. “Listen,” I said, easing the door closed inch by inch. “I really am fine. I promise.”

  Some lies are necessary.

  Mom smiled. I smiled back and shut the door, locking it.

  Then I bolted over to the window.

  “Please be all right,” I whispered. I couldn’t yell, because Mom might hear me, but I couldn’t bring myself to look down either. If Lora was dead, there was nothing I could do about it.

  My eyes started to stray down, without my permission.

  But I couldn’t do it, wouldn’t do it, couldn’t do it.

  “Lora,” I hissed, terrified my mom would come out of the garage and see her clinging to the ledge.

  Sure, that’s why I’m terrified.

  “It’s all clear,” I said into the empty air, my eyes straying to the base of the garage. I saw cement and the manicured edge of the grass.

  No blood.

  No bones bent.

  A rustling sound caught my attention. I turned to the left, relief flooding my body as Lora’s face appeared around the backside of the garage. She was following the little ledge, impossibly light and fast, like a walker on a tightrope. I wanted to close my eyes until she reached me, but I couldn’t afford the possibility of her slipping just as she came into my grasp.

  When she finally reached the window, she practically fell into my arms. Or maybe I was reaching for her. Then I was pulling her through the frame, whispering god knows what to who knows what god.

  What I know is this: Lora climbed onto the bed just as my mom stepped out of the garage. I closed the heavy blue curtains, blocking us in. Still, long after I’d whispered “Please never do that again,” and Lora said “I promise,” I knelt there, hands clutching her arms, thankful beyond words that she was alive.

  5

  ElorA

  Once the madness had died down, Taylor spent the afternoon convincing me to stay another night. His argument hinged on the fact that his mother surely wouldn’t visit again for another few weeks, as was her schedule. He made grand promises about stopping by the house every day, if necessary, to make sure she wasn’t tempted, and ended the entire speech by gifting me two cell phones.

  Quite convincing.

  Still, the thing that swayed me had nothing to do with his bargaining, and everything to do with the way he’d looked at me when I’d climbed back into his room. His hands had been shaking and his eyes were alight with fear. He’d been terrified. No human on earth could have faked that level of concern.

  So I decided to give him one more chance.

  After that, Taylor explained how to operate my cell phones, and together we “surfed the web” for articles on transfer students. It quickly became clear that I would need to provide the high school with some kind of record, regardless of whether I had actually ever been to school. Taylor felt the best course of action was to purchase a fake transcript, but I had a feeling I could create one myself.

  “How hard would it be to make these?” I asked.

  “It wouldn’t be easy. You see how perfect it looks?” He pointed to the place where tiny letters were arranged in lines. “It’s not watermarked or anything, but I’d still be nervous trying.”

  “I bet I could do it.”

  “Really?” A slow smile spread across his face, born of mischief. “What program would you use?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I guess I would ask my friend Taylor for a recommendation.” The moment I said it, my heart squeezed. Never in all my life had I considered calling a human a friend. But I wouldn’t have said it if I hadn’t meant it.

  I couldn’t have.

  He stared at me with bright eyes. “Excel,” he said after a moment.

  “I’ll try.”

  He laughed, taking control of the mouse. “I have a feeling it comes naturally.” He clicked twice. “Here. Use this program. The grid will help you line up everything perfectly.”

  “I will do my best,” I said, feeling antsy. Even with the program, I’d have better luck glamouring my own transcript. But to do that, I’d have to get him out of the room.

  “Are you hungry?” I asked tentatively. I had heard, somewhere, that humans ate constantly.

  “I could eat.”

  “It’s not too much trouble?”

  “No, it’s not too much trouble to expect to eat.” His smile was sheepish. “I should have offered.”

  “We’ve been busy.”

  “I’ll go look for something. Any dietary restrictions I should know about?”

  “You mean, for instance, my body can’t process meat?”

  “Sure. Anything like that.”

  “My body can’t process meat.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. It sounds strange, doesn’t it?” Humans tore down rainforests just to make grazing ground for cattle—how could they understand that too much iron was poison in my veins?

  But Taylor just smiled, a lopsided grin that made me want to dance a jig. “It’s not strange at all. Last summer I worked at a fast food place. Ever since, I haven’t been able to eat red meat without feeling sick.”

  I fought to contain my relief. “Spinach isn’t great, either.”

  “Tell me about it. I’ll see what I can find.”

  The moment he was gone, I set to work glamouring the most realistic high school transcript I could. I had to use the Internet search engine to understand the meaning behind the letter grades, and then I had to exercise restraint in choosing my own. When Taylor returned nearly twenty minutes later, I was reclining in the desk chair and admiring my work.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, holding two plates in his hand as he shut the door. “My mom caught me and wanted me to eat dinner with them. We got into this whole big thing—here.” He held out a plate. From what I could tell, the plate held potato mash and corn.

  “I thought it was customary to dine with one’s family,” I said.

  “Not necessarily.” His tone had a defensive edge. “She goes to bed early, because she teaches, and my dad has
a lot of late meetings.”

  “Meetings for what?”

  “Oh, right.” Taylor tapped his fingers on the desk as if bored. “He’s a low-level employee at Benson and Wallowitz. It’s the city’s leading accounting firm.”

  “That’s interesting.”

  “Not really. He wanted to be a marine biologist.”

  “To study the creatures of the sea?”

  “Yep.”

  “Fascinating. What happened?”

  “I did.” Taylor laughed, picking up the glamoured transcript. “You made this with Excel?”

  “I’m a fast learner.”

  He touched the page gingerly before handing it back to me. “This is really your first time using a computer?”

  “I told you it was.”

  “Amazing. Oh.” He reached into his pocket, pulling out something sharp and shiny. “I almost forgot.”

  Oh, Darkness.

  The fork glinted in the light, its tines taunting me. My thoughts began to race. My gloves were on the other side of the room. I couldn’t very well use wind to lift the utensil in front of Taylor. And then there was the little issue of putting iron in my mouth.

  Then again, many metals used by humans did not contain iron. But was it worth the risk? And the burn?

  “Taylor,” I said, my voice small and defeated.

  “What did I do?” He studied the fork for an answer. “Is it dirty?”

  “No, it’s fine, it’s just … I can’t really use certain metals,” I explained, searching for words and failing. Would something so small be the thing to expose me? “I’m just—”

  “Allergic?”

  “Allergic.” I repeated the word, hoping he would take it as agreement.

  “What about plastic?” He slid the fork back into his pocket. He wasn’t mocking me or trying to make me feel foolish.

  What game is this?

  “That would be lovely,” I said. A crow cried outside the window, and I glanced at the cell phones on the bed. “Take your time.”

  After he left to fetch the new utensil, I tore a corner off a small piece of paper and wrote the words Green, begin. Red, end. I wanted the instructions to be simple, and vague in their origins, in case the phone fell into the wrong hands. That way the interceptor would have no cause to believe it came from a faerie. I slipped the paper and one cell phone into the bag the phones had come in.

  Moving to the window, I let out a squawk, calling to the crow who lived in the tree. The bird left her post, gliding down to the windowsill.

  I held out the little blue bag.

  The crow fluffed her feathers, cawing pleasantly, and I whispered softly in an old fey dialect that animals could understand. “Take this to the marshes below the Dark Forest, to a marsh sprite by the name of Illya. Her wings are green and veined as leaves; her amphibian frame, spotted with black. You will know her by her eyes, cerulean around a golden iris. Unusual among her kind.”

  The bird dipped her head and took the bag in her beak.

  “Thank you, friend.” Stroking her feathers with one hand, I dropped a glamour over the bag to help it blend with the approaching dusk. The crow nodded once and, rising from her perch, disappeared into the sky.

  6

  TayloR

  I was walking back from the pantry when I saw it. A flash of black streaked across the sky. Without even thinking, I hurried across the living room and peered out through the curtains.

  This is what I saw:

  On the garage, the window above my bed was open, and Lora was leaning out. Her long hair spilled over the sill, red on white. For a second I thought she was going to climb out again, in spite of the fact that she’d just promised she wouldn’t. But then something stranger happened: the flash of black turned out to be a crow, and once it settled onto the windowsill, Lora started talking to it.

  Um. What the hell?

  I mean, okay, she was raised in the country, so talking to horses wouldn’t have been that bad. But crows? That was a little too Demented-Disney-Princess for me. Still, long shadows draped across the windowsill, making it hard to see clearly. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure what was happening.

  I needed to get a better look.

  I ran to the door. If I could get outside without Lora noticing, I could sneak across the yard and hide behind the tree. And yes, I knew I was snooping, and maybe it was an invasion of her privacy, but all of this was happening in my room, and it was too weird to ignore.

  One. Two. Three. I forced myself to count down as I turned the knob. My chest was aching and I had this terrible feeling that everything was about to change. For a minute, the world was too quiet as I peered out through the opening, and I thought Lora had spotted me. But no one called down from the window. No one looked down.

  No one was sitting there.

  When I got outside, both Lora and the crow were gone.

  7

  ElorA

  Taylor had been asleep for several hours when my telephone started to vibrate. Luckily, his snoring was loud enough to muffle the sound of me sneaking from the room. The world was quiet as I slipped out the door of the garage, too wary to risk late-night flight, and raced across the grass to the yard’s only tree. Halfway up the trunk, I pushed the little green button on the telephone.

  I pressed the phone against my ear, worried beyond rationality that my endeavor had failed, and when I heard the voice of my longtime friend I nearly sobbed with joy.

  “What happens when the light touches darkness?” Illya whispered.

  “The fractured fragments of Faerie become whole.” I drew a shroud of mist around my body. Twirling my fingers in the air, I worked to muffle the sound of my voice. Across the yard, the house was dark, but I could not help but watch the curtains for signs of life. There was, of course, the chance that Taylor would awaken and look out his own window, but we would cross that bridge if we came to it.

  “It’s you!” Illya breathed. In my mind, I could see the marsh sprite struggling to levitate a telephone as big as she was. “I was afraid it would be not you.”

  “I’ve hoarded this little gadget like a relic of old,” I replied, running my hand over the phone as if I could reach Illya’s webbed fingers. “I am happy to see my endeavor was a success.”

  “It might not have been, if your messenger had not led me to the border of the wasteland. It seems the magic of humans is limited to their world.”

  “I am sorry for your troubles,” I said, a shiver tickling my spine at the thought of mortal magic. “Now, tell me what has befallen the Court since my departure.”

  “The servants are acting on your orders, behaving as if nothing is amiss. Some of them are better than others,” Illya huffed. “But those who remain loyal to the crown are oblivious. They’re too busy caring for the Queen.”

  I narrowed my eyes, planting my feet against a branch. “What ails the Queen?”

  “Her only daughter has disappeared from her court,” Illya shrieked. “Her beloved heir—”

  “Symbol,” I corrected. “And I hardly thought she would notice. Is she being terrible to you?”

  “You know the Dark Queen. Any dissatisfaction, and she lashes out.”

  “I am sorry for that.”

  “Don’t be. It has strengthened our resolve to be free. Lady,” Illya’s voice dropped away, as if she had turned her head to search for spies, “your followers are disquieted by your departure. They fear you have abandoned us.”

  “I told them I was going on a quest. That should be enough for them.”

  “You forget your origins—”

  “I never forget.” I clenched the phone tightly in my hand. “I can never forget.”

  Illya softened her tone. “It was difficult enough for them to trust the daughter of the Dark Court. The daughter of the Queen. And now, when you have finally gained
their allegiance—”

  “By working ceaselessly and tirelessly to unite servants from all corners of the Court—”

  “You leave us with barely an explanation. How can you expect none to question your loyalties? If they knew you’d even set foot in the wasteland … ”

  “They will know what they need to know, and so will you.”

  “Lady—”

  “Peace, sweetness,” I said, wary of my regal mannerisms returning. “They’ve trusted me this long. Can you not convince them to trust me a little longer?”

  Illya’s breath beat against the phone like wings. “I miss you,” she said finally.

  “Don’t,” I replied, a response born of nobility. All that power. No love. “You know how to contact me if anything goes awry.”

  “It won’t,” Illya said, and the clarity of her small voice was surprising. “Everything is going to happen the way you have planned. The Court will fall and we will be free.”

  “Then you understand why you must do as I ask. No matter what the Queen or her hideous courtiers do, you must not succumb to their cruelty. Be brave, Illya, for all of us.”

  “I will,” she promised, pausing a minute. I knew what she was going to ask before she gave life to the words. “Read me the riddle?”

  “It isn’t safe. Anyone could be listening.”

  “Oh, who would be listening there? Even the Seelie fey are forbidden from entering the wasteland. I could help you decipher it.”

  I sighed. Who could argue with that voice? Scanning the darkness for any possible spies, I pulled the curling leaf from the pouch I’d strung around my neck. The Bright Queen’s writing glowed softly against the green:

  “Bane of the darkness, perfect for light,

  Steal him away in the dead of the night.

  Bind him with blood, this young leader of men,

  And bring him to Court before Light’s hallowed reign.”

  “Light’s hallowed reign,” Illya hissed as I curled the leaf back into its hiding place. “But that’s—”

  “Beltane, I know. Three weeks away.”