The Changeling Child, page 6
Saga widened her eyes, looking impressed. ‘Good! Just be careful, okay?’
Alfred clutched the little water-sprite figurine in his pocket. ‘You too.’
Saga snorted. ‘As if anything could happen here…’ She gave him a quick hug and turned back down the path, before he closed the remaining distance to Amanita.
‘I am glad you came… Nemo,’ Amanita said, using the name Saga had chosen for him. She placed a cool hand on his shoulder. Her bracelet, a snake in perpetual motion around her wrist, brushed against his neck. ‘Do not give your true name away to anyone you meet in our realm.’
‘Of course not,’ he said, a little surprised that she wanted to protect him in this way. ‘What should I call you?’
She stared at him with an odd glint in her eyes. ‘Amanita. For now.’ Then she walked around him, creating a faerie ring. After stepping into the ring of toadstools herself, she crossed her arms and took hold of his hands with hers.
‘Dance with me!’ She began twirling them like in a playground game.
At first, Alfred was worried he’d stumble, but soon it was as if his feet didn’t even touch the ground. Air whooshed around him. Amanita blurred. He didn’t notice when they left the real world.
As their twirling slowed, damp mildewy air invaded his nostrils.
‘Welcome home,’ Amanita said, and let go of his hands.
To his surprise, they were indoors, yet still surrounded by trees. Alfred steadied himself against one of them. It was as cold and hard as marble. Weak light shone through a window nearby.
‘Are these petrified?’ He’d seen fossilized trees in a museum with Dad. He felt the bark ridges that could be millions of years old. ‘Or sculpted?’ he muttered, without receiving an answer, on his way to the window opening.
Through it, far below, the forest’s tree crowns resembled rolling hills. Eerie music played somewhere above. He had to be inside the faerie fortress.
Behind the petrified trees, ornate carvings of climbing plants and more trees covered every inch of the walls. Except in one corner of the room. That corner was a dark emptiness, void of even air, it seemed. Alfred recognized the desolation.
‘I see you have noticed the damage,’ Amanita said.
He nodded. This must be where one of the story poles stood on the ancient extinct volcano. He’d have to tell Saga. Surreptitiously, he glanced down at his wristwatch. It was still ticking, the second hand jumping ahead. Somehow, an hour had already passed since he showed it to Saga.
‘Come and meet the other demi-fae.’ Amanita strode through a gap between tree branches.
Alfred stiffened. He hadn’t counted on meeting others so soon. After brushing a hand through his unruly hair, he followed.
The room they entered was unharmed by desolation. It was also enormous. Boughs from a gigantic petrified tree stretched out above his head. Hammocks hung between them. Some swayed, with a hand or a foot visible from below. A low hum of chatter floated down from above.
After a loud shush and a whispered ‘Amanita’, the room fell silent. A dozen or so heads popped out of the hammocks.
Quickly, Alfred lowered his gaze and fixed it on three pairs of legs and bare feet that dangled close to the ground.
‘As you have no doubt noticed, humans are once again causing damage to our realm,’ Amanita said. ‘Their new plans for what they call the Faerie Hill will result in widespread destruction and make our home inhabitable. So they must be stopped.’
Alfred sensed several pairs of eyes boring into him. Perhaps they thought he was the human they had to stop.
‘We have two possibilities—either we stop their plans or we stop the humans themselves—and we will prepare for both. For you, the focus will be on learning the skills necessary for the second option, because this time we will be fighting back.’
Alfred’s head swivelled to Amanita. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Was she really training the demi-fae to battle humans?
‘Farriel will be your guide.’ Amanita touched his shoulder, saying, ‘This is Nemo. He is here to help. Although he has grown up among humans, he is one of you. Viola, Uniko, Outis, take him under your wings and into your cluster.’ She turned and strode away.
‘Wait!’ Alfred called before she left the room. There was a collective intake of breath behind him.
‘Yes?’ She paused in the door opening.
‘What about…’ Alfred was aware of the complete absence of sound in the room. Everyone was waiting for him to speak. He swallowed. ‘What about finding a peaceful solution? I thought that was why I’m here.’
‘By all means, let me know if you find a satisfactory way to resolve the problem.’
Speechless, Alfred stared after the high faerie as she sauntered out of sight.
‘Hi, Nemo!’ A high-pitched voice called. A girl and two boys came closer. They were barefoot and wore something that looked like green tracksuits.
‘You can call me Viola.’ The girl had dark-brown skin and huge shining violet eyes. ‘Because of my eyes.’ She smiled so widely, Alfred could see her many pointed teeth. There were definitely more than thirty-two. Her arms opened in a welcoming gesture, displaying hands with sharp claws.
The next person to speak was short and a little chubby, but he had the same translucent skin and black eyes as Amanita. He also had one small white horn sticking out of his forehead, like a unicorn. Alfred tried not to stare. ‘And me, Uniko,’ he said in a musical voice.
‘Outis,’ the boy behind them muttered. When he pushed his tousled hair aside, the brown eyes that met Alfred’s glared. At first glance, Alfred couldn’t see any non-human features. Not until Outis turned around, and Alfred saw his wings. They were tawny and feathered and lay flat against his back, reaching down to his knees.
While they’d been talking, the rest of the demi-fae had climbed down from their hammocks in the tree and were filing past, a few of them calling ‘Hi’ in passing. Alfred caught glimpses of horns and floor-length hair and glittering skin. None of them looked human.
‘It must’ve been amazing to travel with Amanita!’ Viola said. Reverently, she took one of Alfred’s hands, turned it over and touched his palm with the soft tips below her claws. ‘Did she hold your hand?’
When he nodded, she took it in hers—her skin was warm—and led him to a hammock near a window.
‘This is yours,’ she said.
‘Er…’ Alfred wanted to explain that he wouldn’t be staying the night, but he didn’t get the chance.
‘Change your clothes—hurry—or we’ll be late for Farriel. I won’t look.’
Alfred reached for the shirt that hung from the hammock. The green fabric was velvet soft, like moss. When he put it on, it welded itself to his body and felt like a second skin. Only the leathery straps on the shoulders hung loose.
‘I think I’ll just keep these on.’ Alfred patted his light, quick-drying trousers and checked that the zippered pocket with the little water sprite was closed. ‘And my shoes.’
Uniko turned to survey him. ‘Then you don’t look like us, but if you’re sure…’
The room had emptied. Outis was also gone.
‘Don’t mind him,’ Uniko said, as if he could read Alfred’s mind. ‘Outis likes humans even less than we do, and you do look awfully human.’
‘Come!’ Viola took his hand again and pulled him out of the room.
The corridor they ran along was like an endless trellis tunnel, overgrown with grey, carved plants. Their roots snaked across the floor, making the ground uneven and perilous for Alfred. He almost stumbled when a long, carved face stuck out its forked tongue. The faerie queen’s spies were everywhere. Even inside the fortress.
Uniko galloped ahead. Both he and Viola looked like green gazelles. Alfred almost wished he’d changed his trousers so he didn’t look out of place. Here, among the demi-fae, he’d expected to fit in. But of course, unlike them, he also still needed his shoes.
As they ran, he wondered what Saga would say if she knew he wasn’t focused on finding a way to stop the mayor, but instead was about to learn faerie tricks to fight humans.
11
SAGA
The Kidnapped Baby
From her hiding place in a sycamore climbing tree, Saga saw Amanita and Alfred swirl and vanish. She’d expected Amanita to take him to Faerie through the sinkhole. Somehow it would have seemed safer if he’d followed a route they’d already explored. She climbed down and ran to the ring of toadstools.
How was she supposed to just go home and read through old news on her computer? What if Alfred needed her help?
Without thinking further, she took a big step over the white-speckled red mushrooms. Saga started twirling inside the ring. Faster and faster she spun until the trees around her blurred together and she became dizzy.
Nothing happened.
She stumbled towards the nearest tree and leant against it until the world stopped spinning. As her vision settled, Mr Tumbleweed jumped into view.
‘Somebody is trying something that will never work.’
‘Can you take me to Faerie?’
He shook his head so violently his wooden neck creaked. ‘That is one thing this one body can never do. Too many nasty nobodies in that place.’
If Mr Tumbleweed still wanted to protect her against faeries, then she supposed it would go against his ingrained instructions to take her to a place full of the creatures. But how could she become the David Attenborough of the faerie world, if she wasn’t even allowed to observe them?
She’d accidentally trodden on two of the toadstools, and now she kicked one of the others away.
‘So I’m just supposed to go home? Because Ms high-and-mighty-faerie doesn’t want to let any ordinary humans into the realm.’ She kicked at another toadstool, making sure the faerie ring was thoroughly broken. ‘I’ll show her that ordinary humans can be useful,’ she muttered, as she stomped back along the path.
Before heading home, she walked to Anna’s cottage. ‘Wait here,’ she said, although she couldn’t see Mr Tumbleweed.
She glanced at the wood-carved figures on her way past the cottage to the shed, where she pushed the bolts aside. She didn’t enter. Unbolting the shed was purely a fallback they had agreed on. If, for some reason, Amanita didn’t want to bring Alfred back at the end of the day—and there was a high likelihood that the faerie had somehow tricked him—Alfred might be able to escape through the spring and end up here. The second fallback involved rope and the big sinkhole, and probably a lot of worry and grief with her parents.
When she came home to the farm, the front door was wide open. Saga had hoped everyone would be out of the house. Mum’s car was missing and so was the tractor, and she knew the girls were at playdates. That left Oliver.
She sneaked between the buildings, so she wouldn’t have to cross the farmyard. The geese were pecking at fallen conkers in its centre. After creeping along the wall to the front door, Rufus met her with a wagging tail. She ruffled his ears and he nuzzled against her without making a sound. In fact, both she and Mr Tumbleweed made it all the way upstairs and to her own door without being discovered. Then Oliver came out of his room.
‘Where did you come from?’ he asked. ‘Why are you sneaking around?’
‘I’m not. Mind your own business,’ she muttered, trying to close her door.
Oliver blocked it with a foot. ‘Where’s Alfred?’
‘At his granny’s.’ Saga pushed at the door with her shoulder. ‘Get out of my room.’
Oliver pushed back. ‘You’re lying. I can tell you’re lying. Did you have a row or something?’
Mr Tumbleweed, for once helpful, jumped up and grazed Oliver’s wrist with his stick hand.
‘Eww. That disgusting toad.’ Oliver stepped back.
Saga shut the door and locked it. ‘Thanks,’ she whispered to the tree sprite.
‘Whatever.’ Oliver banged a fist against the door before she heard him walk away.
As she fired up her computer, an email pinged. It was from her uncle. Alfred had taken photos of the billboard with his phone, and she’d sent them to her uncle last night, calling for a meeting in the nature group they were both part of as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, although her uncle was shocked at the extent of everything beyond the first phase of the development, he didn’t think protesting against the project was urgent. The group’s resources were spread thin, and they had to maintain their current focus on the bird sanctuary by the lake, he wrote. The first phase, which included the picnic tables and toilet facilities, were to be expected with the opening of the cavern, and they had plenty of time to protest against the buildings at the viewpoint and on the cone hill. Obviously, he didn’t know about the faeries.
Saga sighed. Of course, the sanctuary was important, and she was proud of the work they’d been doing. But she wasn’t going to give up. She would find a way to get that countess on her side. Impatient for action, she wanted to go straight to the castle, but perhaps a little background information might come in handy.
A quick search brought up links to articles about the kidnapping. None of them, including the ones she’d seen before, mentioned who the baby’s parents were. It was only when she added the countess’s name—Leonora von Longstone—that she found an article with further details about the kidnapping.
The unnamed Longstone baby had been twenty-six days old when he was abducted. The boy had been sleeping in his cot in a tower bedroom the night he vanished. It was the housekeeper who, upon entering the room in the morning, had found the cot empty.
One article speculated about whether the unknown-to-the-public father could’ve taken his son, as Alfred had suggested. It made her wonder if the father might have been someone local. But no matter how she searched, she didn’t find his name.
Saga clicked through to another speculative article. Its writer linked the disappearance of Alfred’s mother to the missing baby. It wasn’t a giant leap—the two events were mere days apart and had happened in the same area. But the piece was poorly researched, because it surmised that the midwife had mistakenly exchanged the babies. Saga knew that Alfred had been born in the cottage, with zero chance of muddling him up with anyone. And obviously she knew her mother was the midwife in question. She decided to keep that theory from both Alfred and her mum.
She slumped with her head in her hands. She had nothing. Nothing that might help persuade the countess against the mayor’s project. And nothing to indicate that the boy had been taken by the faeries.
At the thought of faeries, she wondered where Alfred was and what he was doing. He was definitely not reading old newspapers. She looked out of her window. The weather was too nice to be sitting inside.
‘Wake up. We’re going out,’ she said, grabbing a stack of nature group flyers.
She ran past Oliver’s open door, ignoring his calls after her. A moment later, she was on her bicycle, with Mr Tumbleweed swinging his twig legs from her basket.
It was time to take a closer look at the castle and that countess.
12
ALFRED
Glamour Hide-and-Seek
By the time Viola and Uniko stopped running, Alfred had decided that learning how the faeries intended to fight humans was not a waste of time. He’d pay attention and get to know the others. If they accepted him as one of them, it would be easier to work together and find a solution.
They stepped out onto an open terrace, sheltered on three sides by the steep walls of the faerie fortress. Along the walls, petrified trees, overgrown with poison-ivy-like creepers and other plants, formed a colonnade. Above, the two moons illuminated the empty terrace.
‘Try not to look directly at her,’ Viola whispered, as he followed her towards the balustrade on the fourth, open side of the terrace.
‘Who?’ Alfred whispered back.
‘Farriel.’ Viola let go of his hand and left his side.
Alfred couldn’t see anyone, but through the pillars of the balustrade he glimpsed the treetops.
‘Welcome, Nemo,’ a dreamy, disembodied voice said nearby. A scatter of leaves spun, as the air moved with the swish of an invisible skirt.
‘Hello… Farriel?’ Alfred peered from side to side, unsure where to look.
‘I’ve heard you are gifted in the art of concealment,’ Farriel continued. ‘Self-taught, I believe.’ The dreaminess faded a bit when she raised her voice, and said, ‘And you all know that mastering concealment glamour is crucial when you leave our realm.’
Muttered agreement sounded around him, though he couldn’t see any of the others.
‘Why would we ever leave?’ someone said.
Farriel didn’t answer. The dreaminess returned to her voice. ‘How are your revelation skills? Can you detect glamour? See through a disguise? Unveil, unmask, uncover that which hides its true identity?’
‘Er… no, I don’t think I can,’ Alfred said quietly, still trying to discover the source of Farriel’s voice. She must be tall, because the sound came from above his head.
Someone behind him sniggered.
‘Then I shall teach you.’
‘To see past all glamour?’
‘Someday, perhaps, when the saplings in the woods crest the current tree crowns, you may,’ she answered. Without warning, her invisible hands turned Alfred around. ‘For now, let me see how many of the others you can find.’
The terrace seemed as empty as before. At first, it was like wearing a blindfold. He could see the carved stone and the plants, but none of the demi-fae. He wanted to disappear instead of revealing the others, and he had to fight hard against the urge to merge with the background. This ability to become almost invisible must be what Farriel said was his gift. It must be what the others were doing now. He didn’t know how to see through glamour, but to detect the others he knew he’d have to find things that were out of place.
Standing with his back against the balustrade, he scanned the overgrown terrace. There was a faint shadow on the ground next to him. Someone was crouching on the top rail. Someone with wings. He swirled round.
