Changeling Page 8

  “Heard who?” breathed Fable.

  “Mom,” said Cole.

  “The queen,” said Tinn at the same moment.

  The twins stared at each other.

  “The queen?” said Cole. “You think?”

  Tinn nodded, soberly. “And I think she’s angry.”

  “What queen?” Fable asked, her voice still a murmur.

  “The queen,” Tinn said. “The Queen of the Deep Dark, Witch of the Wild Wood, Mother of Monsters. You really never heard the stories growing up?”

  Fable shrugged and shook her head.

  “How do you know it was her?” said Cole.

  Tinn pursed his lips. “Just a feeling, I guess.”

  “How do you even know there is a witch in the Wild Wood?” said Fable, crinkling her nose. “You guys keep talking about her, but I’ve lived here my whole life and I’ve never met some evil queen who eats people and bites crops.”

  “Blights crops.”

  “She sounds made up. I don’t think she exists.”

  The queen did exist. She was more real, more powerful, and more dangerous than the twins had ever dared to daydream. Of their motley party, in fact, only one of them truly fathomed the sheer force of nature that was the Witch of the Wild Wood, and that was Candlebeard.

  Candlebeard had heard her, too. He did not offer the children his opinion about the witch, however. He did not tell the children, for instance, that his people had their own stories about the witch. He did not tell them that their title for the witch was neither Queen nor Mother of anything, but something much stronger that had no translation in any human tongue. Candlebeard did not tell the children that the witch chilled him to his very core. Most of all, he did not tell them that his fear of the witch was the reason he was now running away without them, abandoning the children, helpless and unescorted, in the middle of the misty, murky Oddmire.

  “Hey!” yelled Cole. The others turned in time to see the trembling hinkypunk racing off into the mist. “Wait! Come back!”

  Cole and Tinn and Fable managed to follow for half a dozen sodden steps before Candlebeard’s path became indiscernible. The glow of his candle bobbed farther and farther away until it faded off into the haze completely, and the surface of the mire refused to surrender any more signs of his passing.

  “Wait!” Cole wailed once more. “Come back!”

  Candlebeard had vanished. Cole put one foot forward and dipped it into the swamp. His searching boot found nothing solid beneath the surface. He tried again to the left and right, but the swamp held fast to its secrets.

  Cole looked as if he wanted to cry.

  “This is farther than I’ve ever gotten before,” said Fable quietly.

  “It’s as far as any of us is going to get,” said Tinn.

  There the children stayed, rooted to their submerged steps for several long moments. Or minutes. Or possibly hours. It was impossible to tell in the mists of the Oddmire.

  A very clever, scientifically minded man with a lot of shiny telescoping instruments and a tweed coat with elbow patches had once tried to document the phenomenon of the Oddmire, long before the boys were born. His goal had been to determine if the Madness of the Mire actually warped the passage of time or simply the perceptions of the traveler. His results were inconclusive, however, owing to the fact that he was not found until three weeks later, wandering through the cornfields of a town fifty miles to the south, quite naked and mumbling about squirrels. His shiny instruments were found two months after that on the roof of a cowshed, missing several important parts.

  The children remained rooted to the swampy steps until their legs ached. At last, Cole took a deep breath. He was preparing to swim across the mire toward the nearest shore. At least, he was preparing to swim across the mire toward what he guessed might be the nearest shore. In truth, he had no idea in which direction the nearest shore might lie, but doing nothing was not something Cole had ever been very good at.

  Before he could plunge in, a sound echoed across the fetid muck. It was a creaking, groaning sound, accompanied by the splash of something moving through the water. A low wave, scarcely more than a ripple, washed over their feet. Tinn straightened. “What was that?” he said.

  The mist ahead of them parted as though cut by an enormous knife, each side peeling away to form a valley of visibility.

  “Oh,” said Fable. “Oh, dang.”

  “What?” said Cole. “What’s happening?”

  “Trouble,” Fable whispered.

  The twins stared at the corridor of clarity in bewilderment as drab, grimy roots bubbled to the surface of the Oddmire. The slimy stalks knit themselves together, forming a narrow path all the way to the shore—which, Cole and Tinn could finally see, lay not thirty feet away.

  The glistening gray roots drew to a stop directly in front of Fable. “Big, big trouble.” She winced, sighed, and put a foot gingerly out onto the braided platform. It held her weight. Step by grudging step, she crossed the swamp for the shore. “Come on, guys.”

  Cole was the first to follow, hoping nobody noticed that the shoreline was exactly opposite the direction he had been preparing to swim. The passageway beneath his feet was slick and uneven, and it bobbed up and down with each step, as if the whole swamp was breathing. The motion made Cole’s stomach turn, but the bridge held firm. Tinn brought up the rear. Glancing back, he saw the roots behind him sinking into the mire from whence they came, and he quickened his pace.

  When they were nearly to the shore, Cole spotted a figure at last. At first he mistook it for a man, big and burly and covered in woolly, matted furs. As he stepped closer, leaving behind the heady fog of the mire at last, his eyes found focus and he stopped dead.

  Tinn drew up beside him. “No way.”

  The bear was exactly as enormous as the boys remembered it. Its teeth were long and its eyes piercing. It stood on its hind feet, towering over them, as steam rose in thick clouds from its flanks into the chilly air—an effect that only served to make the monster even more unnaturally frightening. The bear sneered.

  “Seriously?” Tinn said. “Are you still following us? We didn’t even do anything to your cub!”

  Fable began to cross the grass toward the beast.

  “Whoa! What are you doing?” said Cole, but the girl continued forward. The bear dropped down as she approached. And then the animal did something neither boy would ever be able to properly describe. There was something of a rearing-up motion—or maybe it was a sort of swooping motion—definitely a tossing-back motion, and the figure standing before them was suddenly not a bear at all.

  A hood of thick, dark fur rested on the woman’s shoulders. The bearskin cloak continued to billow hot steam. The woman’s eyes remained piercing. Cole could not stop himself from wondering if her teeth were just as sharp as the bear’s.

  “You—you’re her. You’re the Witch of the Wood, aren’t you?” Tinn managed.

  Fable glanced at him, startled, and then back to the woman.

  “If you like,” said the witch.

  “The Queen of the Deep Dark,” croaked Cole.

  “I’ve always rather liked that one.” The witch smiled.

  “Wait, you’re the ‘Mother of Monsters’ they’ve been talking about?” Fable asked the woman.

  “I suppose—but isn’t every mother? Have you met children?”

  “And you’re also . . . a bear?” said Tinn.

  “I am as my forest needs me to be.”

  “Are you a person that turns into a bear,” Cole asked, “or a bear that turns into a person?”

  The queen narrowed her eyes at him. “That depends,” she said, “on how you define a person.”

  “Can you be other things?” asked Tinn. “You’re bigger as a bear. Could you be smaller? Like a ladybug or something?”

  “So that two crafty young boys could catch me and put me in a bottle, I suppose?” said the queen, one eyebrow arching up. “And not let me out unless I promise to grant them wishes
and let them go free?”

  “What? No,” said Tinn. “I wasn’t thinking anything like that.”

  “A shame.” She shrugged. “It would have been quite clever of you.”

  “We haven’t got any bottles, anyhow,” said Cole. “I had a dish towel, but I dropped it when—well, when we met you, I guess. Oh, and we really didn’t do anything to that cub, by the way, I promise!”

  “Except rescue it,” added Tinn, “from the mire.”

  The witch smirked. “You three have been having quite the adventure all across my forest, haven’t you?” she said icily. “But, like all adventures must, yours has now come to an end.”

  “No,” said Fable.

  The witch turned very slowly to face her. Her brow rose a fraction as she fixed the trembling girl with an iron gaze. “No?”

  “We’re on a quest,” Fable squeaked. “It’s important.”

  “It is,” said Cole. “We need to cross the Deep Dark together.”

  The witch’s eyes flashed to him.

  “Please,” said Tinn.

  For just a moment, the queen’s resolve seemed to soften ever so slightly.

  Fable seized the moment. “They need to,” she pressed. “And I’m helping them. See, it’s like this: one of these boys isn’t a boy at all, he’s a changeling, and he needs to find the goblins before—”

  “What naughty little children need to do,” the queen said, cutting her off sharply, her moment of softness whipping away like a snuffed candle, “is to stop talking back!” She waved her hand, and Tinn and Cole felt the air around them grow heavier and heavier, pressing down like a thick, leaden blanket. Tinn’s vision dimmed. His knees gave out and he collapsed to the forest floor. Cole took half a step toward him before the trees swam around him and the forest darkened.

  The last thing the boys could hear before they lost consciousness completely was the sound of measured footsteps and Fable’s timid voice.

  “I’m sorry,” she whimpered.

  “Big,” replied the witch, “big trouble.”

  TWENTY

  Kull crested the hill and immediately dropped to his belly against the prickly grass. Annie lowered her head and caught up with him in a crouch.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  “Otch, stay down,” he hissed. “That’s the queenie up ahead.”

  “Queenie? What are you talking—” And then Annie saw. She stood up.

  “Ya daft womern. I said down!” rasped Kull.

  Annie did not get down. In the clearing ahead, a strange woman stood over her boys. The woman wore a cloak of thick, dark furs. Beside her cowered a child Annie did not recognize, a girl, agitated and disheveled, with wild curly hair. She couldn’t make out their words, but her twins were speaking to the woman.

  “Those are my boys,” Annie breathed.

  Now the queen was saying something to the children, but Annie still could not hear any voices from atop the craggy hill. Abruptly, the woman waved her hand, the air rippled, and Tinn and Cole crumpled to the sodden ground.

  “Those are my boys,” Annie repeated numbly. She started forward.

  Kull pulled at the hem of her skirt, shaking his head, his eyes nervous and pleading. Annie hardly noticed him.

  Down in the clearing, the queen had turned her attention to the remaining child. The girl looked about the same age as Annie’s boys. The horrible woman spoke again and pointed a finger squarely at the girl’s chest. The girl spun away, but before her back was to the queen she had already begun to change. She trembled and doubled over, and then the girl was not a girl at all. She had become an animal, covered in rich, dark fur just like the woman’s cloak.

  Annie blanched. Was that poor, frightened child fated to become the wicked woman’s next garment? A matching shawl, perhaps? The queen turned her attention back to the motionless twins.

  Annie Burton’s fists clenched, her teeth ground, her legs pumped, and the craggy hillside swept beneath her.

  “Those,” she growled loudly, “are my boys!”

  The queen looked up. She blinked. The Queen of the Deep Dark, Witch of the Wild Wood, Mother of Monsters—was not expecting Annie Burton.

  Candlebeard crouched low behind a prickly bush. He chewed on the ends of his mustache as his stomach twisted and tightened. He should not have come back. He should have left long ago—should have run far away with the rest of the hinkypunks and never come back to this terrible forest at all. But it was too late for that.

  At the queen’s will, the boys had collapsed to the ground not twenty feet from where Candlebeard was hiding. He cringed. The witch looked away, raising her hand to point at the little forest girl. “Big, big trouble,” she said. There was a whimper and a muffled pop and then Candlebeard could not see the girl anymore. He could smell the witchy magic in the air—earthen and very human, but sharp with the power of the otherworld, too.

  The boys lay lifeless between Candlebeard and the witch. No, not lifeless. He could see their chests rise and fall with shallow breaths. A nervous idea began to pace back and forth in Candlebeard’s mind. He shook his head to dislodge it, but the idea continued to march unbidden through his thoughts.

  The witch turned back to the boys, and Candlebeard saw her face clearly for the first time. He held his breath. He had never been so close to the witch before—and he could only hope that she did not see him. He held his hands in front of his candle, willing his own flame to dim. The witch looked about thirty years old, or possibly sixty-five? Not a day over ninety—Candlebeard had never been particularly good at judging ages, especially those of short-lived humans who couldn’t be bothered to grow proper beards. The woman was pretty enough, he supposed, as humans go. She had hard features and dark, smoky hair, but her expression was cold and forbidding.

  Her icy gaze rose a fraction to pierce the gloom of the forest, and Candlebeard’s heart dropped. Had she heard him? Could she hear his heart pounding even now? See his flame flickering?

  And then, abruptly, she turned away again. Candlebeard breathed. On the opposite side of the clearing, a human woman was running down the hill toward them. She ran clumsily, not minding her step, her eyes fixed on the queen. The queen cocked her head at the woman’s approach. Intrigued, the queen stepped toward her—away from the boys, and away from Candlebeard.

  Every inch of Candlebeard’s body shuddered. He could have been with his people right now, he thought miserably. He could have been far away from this terrible forest, never looking back. He had missed his chance back then. He would not miss it now. The nervous idea that had been pacing back and forth in his mind saw its opportunity and clambered hastily down into his feet. Candlebeard took a deep breath and crept out from behind the prickly bush.

  Kull could only watch, mortified. Annie Burton did not fall down the hill, exactly. She stumbled, yes, tripping on several rocks and viny plants, but she did not fall. Gravity was no match for Annie Burton’s fury, and she would not give it the satisfaction of halting her approach.

  Above her, Kull clawed at his own cheeks in indecision. There was no reason to join her in her madness. What was she thinking? And what was to be gained? It wasn’t as though the woman had more on the line than Kull. The whole of the goblin horde would wither and die if that changeling never made it through the forest. This was about so much more than two stupid children.

  Kull let his hands drop to his sides.

  But it was about two stupid children, as well. They were the two stupid children Kull had watched over for almost thirteen years. They were the stupid children he had protected, weaving goblin charms to keep their rickety tree fort from collapsing, to keep the wolves that wandered the edge of the woods from prowling too close, to keep the dam upstream from cracking—it was a human-built dam, shoddy even by their standards, and should have burst and flooded the town a decade ago. Kull had made the repairs himself. He had watched out for those stupid children. They were his stupid children. At least, one of them was his.

  Kull st
eeled himself. He drew himself up to his full four feet and seven inches and climbed over the ledge after Annie Burton.

  The queen took slow, measured steps to meet the intruders at the foot of the hill. She suppressed a smile.

  Directly in front of her, the furious human, Annie Burton, planted her feet on solid ground at last, her teeth clenched and her fists balled. The little goblin halted and steeled himself several feet behind, looking as resolute as he could, the precious thing.

  “Those are my boys,” Annie growled.

  “I heard you the first time,” the queen replied lazily. “And you are wrong.”

  Annie breathed through her teeth. She looked as if she might throw herself at the witch at any moment.

  “One of the boys is yours,” the queen continued. “Just one. Isn’t that right? The other—” She eyed Kull. “Well, I assume you had something to do with that, didn’t you, little thief?”

  Kull blanched.

  “A changeling. It has been a long time. But you came back for it, didn’t you—came back for your lost wayward monster?” She pursed her lips, considering. “How unlike a goblin. If I thought it possible for one of your kind to care about a child’s life, I might be deceived into believing that he meant something to you.”

  “Means everythin’,” Kull croaked.

  “I find that very hard to believe, thief. Unless—I suppose you have something to gain from the poor creature’s return?”

  Kull did not answer.

  “Quite a lot to gain?”

  Kull’s eyes fell.

  “That does explain it. Small wonder that they were fleeing into my forest rather than back to the likes of you. You know, I think they might prefer life in the Wild Wood, don’t you?”

  “No. I won’t let you turn my boys into animals,” Annie Burton said. “You can’t have them.”

  The queen let a smile spread freely across her face now, equal parts amused and impressed. “So bold,” she said. “My dear, sweet, stupid woman, you really believe you have a say in this, don’t you?”