Changeling by Victoria Mendoza

changeLing

By: Victoria Mendoza

No one truly knows when a changeling has entered their lives. Not until it is too late, and the blood tithe has been paid. These things never do turn out neatly. Folks know this like they know how a storm blows. Most times, someone ends up bartering a wayward creature they’ve raised from the crib away for someone a bit more human. The Fair Folk chatter and call this the “human condition”—the yearning for something that looks like you, the revulsion and reverence for things that don’t. Such is the case with a girl named Mara.

The thing most folk don’t know about the circumstances of a changeling is that the changeling often times turns out more mundane than the child the Fair Ones spirited away on a cloud of dew and dream smoke. Mara was a muddy child, oftentimes traipsing about in the bog behind Mama’s backyard. It wasn’t until she grew into her buck teeth and her gangly arms that whispers started following her and the forest started sticking to her. Her mama tried to ignore the signs—as all mamas do—but when Mara grew into her gifts, there wasn’t much hiding her heritage.

Nothing much changes when one of the mundane folk find a Fair One in their midst. There’s always the anger and misplaced betrayal. Most mamas—no matter how many scraped knees kissed nor nighttime hugs given—most mamas look to the changeling with a kind of broken sneer. Like the changeling was the one to personally spirit the mortal babe to the realm of the Fair Folk and settle into the newly vacant crib. They’ll turn on the changeling quick enough, sometimes after a month’s time or, in Mara’s case, a mere week’s worth of bottled feelings.

Mara, as all changelings do, never truly knew what had changed between her mama and her. Just that she woke up in a ring of salt, an iron cleaver pressed against the paper skin of her throat and her mama’s hand gripping the handle.

The dangerous thing about changelings, the thing all mortals find out only when it is much too late, is that their gifts are never wielded with the fine control of a Kindly One that has grown surrounded by magic. For changelings, their gifts are often unruly things, wielded with the finesse of a newborn. So, when Mara’s mama had reached her wit’s limit and tried to bring the cleaver down on poor Mara’s throat, well. A changeling can gain entrance to the halls of the Fey with a payment of blood. It was just a simple trick for Mara—the forest’s creatures had always liked her, anyways. It was nothing at all to call up the snake. It was even less of an ordeal to command the willow tree to shoot a branch through her mama’s heart.