A Changelings Tale - 1. A Changelings Tale

To be honest, my name isn’t really pronounceable in your language. It will be easier to call me by my job, Changeling. I am special even among my own kind. You see I can truly be anyone I wish to become, maybe even more than the person was originally.

My powers are unique. Unlike the few of my kind who change, I do not need to study every little detail about who I am to become. I only need a name, an image, or better yet a memory and I am that person. I will know every detail of their life in the instant I become them. Every love, like, dislike, hate, dream, lie, and all the things they keep hidden from the world around them. I become them in every single cell of my being, even if they are no longer of this world.

I can see the disbelief in your eyes. Sit back then and let me pay for your time with a coin from my realm, a story. I'm giving you a rare gift indeed, for I plan to give you the truth about myself, and afterwards we will see if this story balances the scales between us.

***

For the moment I was Bobby Danann. Bobby had been the love of Christine Danann’s life and the two of them had loved, fought, had children, and shared a life together for over fifty years. I had been on my way to the forest to rest when her seductive memories called to me. I’m of Faerie; we are always drawn to the strongest lives, loves, beliefs, and the most powerful humans.

Christine might have been in her seventies but she had the presence of someone a quarter of her age. Her love for her departed husband was so strong, and the memories of their life together surrounded her like the air she breathed. There was simply one thing she still wished, three years after her husband Bobby had died of a heart attack cutting the lawn. She simply wanted to sit and tell him that she loved him. They had had a fight and he had gone out to cut the lawn. There was still a part of her that made her feel it was her fault he had died. She forgot he was the one who had started it, never mind that he had gone out to keep from saying the wrong thing and hurting her.

I rarely give someone what they want, but even the Fair Folk can be moved to aid people and not require an exchange for what we offer. I wouldn’t give her the chance to sit with me, but I would offer her a final comfort from Bobby. His favorite outfit flowed around me, his scent overtook my own, and his soft brown eyes covered my own kaleidoscope gaze. She walked slowly down the street getting her daily exercise, maybe not with the same speed she once kept, but she still did it every day. Her beauty was still there, like a rose bush that grew more gnarled but the roses bloomed more sweetly each year.

I waited till I saw a crowd of people that would be passing her for a while, and then I made my move. I slipped up beside Christine and offered her my arm. She looked at me, and then really noticed me, and while most would probably have fainted or screamed, Christine didn’t. Instead she took my arm, smiled gently, and kept pace.

“Hi Bunny.”

“Hi my Irish Rose.” I looked at her and let a smile play at the corners of my mouth as I swam in the memories and life of Bobby. I could feel what he had and know how he would react, for that is my gift.

“You know that joke is old.” There were the crinkles near her eyes from the little winks she always sent Bobby while teasing him. She was still a striking woman, no matter what her age might have been.

“No it isn’t, Chrissy. If it was, we would be too.”

I heard her chuckle as she clung a bit tighter to my arm.

“Still the same old charmer.”

“Well, you are still my love so why wouldn’t I be charming.”

I watched as she wiped a tear from her eye and tried to keep me from seeing it.

“I only have a few moments left with you, love. I just wanted you to know it wasn’t your fault. You know I have my own stubborn pride and the fight was my fault.” I felt her shake beside me, but if I was going to give her this moment I couldn’t stop part way. “Why do you think I went outside? It was to keep me from shooting my damn mouth off at you!”

I could see the surprise as she heard the words. There was a look of shock and then she smiled. I could see she understood and the part of her soul that she punished daily, thinking it had been her fault, was finally forgiven. She leaned over and kissed my check.

“Bobby my darling, just wait for me. I am not ready to join you just yet.”

“Now that is my girl. You keep living every day like you always have. Just don’t blame yourself.”

She turned from me to wipe her face and I side stepped into the crowd passing by. As she turned to look for Bobby Danann she only saw a group of teenagers, a business man, and little girl running freely toward the woods. She smiled and moved off toward home feeling better than she had in years. Her Bobby had seen her and allowed her to forgive herself. It was a rare gift indeed.

However I was now the little girl running toward the woods. I’d borrowed Amelia from the mind of one of the passer-bys. She was young, spirited, and loved to play in the outdoors, which was fine with me. She would get me to the woods.

We are always looking for woods. It is the passport between our world and yours. I rarely returned to my realm, but I constantly went to the woods just to renew myself. Once it had been easy to find the woods. There were vast forests across Europe, Asia, small ones in Africa, massive ones across North and South America. We could travel freely from our world to yours and then pop up wherever we wished. The forests are shrinking daily and the travel from one world to the other gets harder daily.

I might have actually gone home for a change. After all, after a couple of hundred years, you humans do get a little boring. Maybe some time back in the Faerie Court would do me good. Give me a chance to indulge in some new tricks, learn what the others have been up to, and maybe find myself a playmate while I was home. However, that is when I heard a blood curdling scream from little Mike Grands and was drawn to discover more about him. His house was on the edge of the woods and in his scream was a call to his mother. I might not have known much about him immediately, but I will grant him one thing; the little boy had a healthy set of lungs.

With Mike it wasn’t a case of being strong. He was barely five and he was usually more interested in playing with his trucks than anything else. However, he held the strongest belief that his mother, Wendy, was a super hero. Considering the house was presently on fire and he was trapped far from any help, his cries of terror were also pleas that his mother fly to him and save him. As I focused on Wendy, in some respects he was right. She’d survived a terrible wreck that had robbed her of her husband, Thomas. She carried the scars on her legs of the months of therapy, surgeries, and the leg braces she had worn. After two years she was able to walk and she supported the two of them. She was never one to leave things to chance. She had left her neighbor, Mrs. Kaplan, watching Mike while she walked two blocks to the store to get some essentials while Mike had been taking his nap.

Old Mrs. Kaplan had snuck outside to have a cigarette, figuring no one would be the wiser. Unfortunately for her, she had a stroke while puffing away in the back yard. Her hand loosened the grip on the cigarette, dropping it into the box of paper for recycling and suddenly the whole side of Wendy Grands’ house went up in flames. Mike had woken up as the curtains had blown outside through the open window and caught flame. The fire was now burning through his room and he was rightly terrified.

Normally in such a situation I am not one to involve myself. I’m usually the one to cause small mayhem or trouble, but I never am usually moved to help. I must be getting soft in my old age, first helping Christine and now Mike, this was not my normal day. I mean I have become the bully who tosses the food in the cafeteria to start a food fight, or become the popular girl who is seen suddenly coming on to the one boy in school no one will go near. In earlier times I kept telling people the world was flat and even once convinced a young French Prince that if he ever slept with a woman in a sexual way he would never wake up in the morning. I laughed when he married a pretty young woman named Marie, but it was well known that he never bedded his wife.

So here was young Mike Grands screaming his head off as fire licked the walls of his house. I could sense that his mother had just begun to head home, but wouldn’t be there soon enough. Mrs. Kaplan, believe it or not, might have started the fire but when she collapsed it was into a puddle that soaked her clothes more or less protecting her for the moment. That just left Mike with sure belief that his mother would come flying through the sky and save him like the cartoons he watched on his favorite show.

That is the one thing I can do that no other changeling can, I can take whatever skills my subject has and make them mine, whether it is nursing or a mechanic, teaching or speaking, I acquire their abilities. Mike believed with every fiber of his being that his mother could fly and she was strong, very strong. Like a moth is attracted to a flame, I was attracted to his belief. I let his thoughts and beliefs surround me and to a greater extent made his beliefs a reality. I suddenly knew about the ice cream Wendy liked to keep hidden in the back of the freezer as her special treat, the number of stitches she was given when they sewed up her leg, and the joy she had felt the moment she was told she had delivered a perfectly healthy son. Overlaying that reality was also Mike’s beliefs in his mother, and those I used to my full advantage.

I will admit, as a member of Faerie I rarely get to use my full strength, speed, or abilities. You have to stay to what is the day to normal settings of a human being. If you saw someone running at eighty miles an hour without breaking a sweat, you know you would want them checked out to see if they were like that old television show about the bionic people. So considering I don’t ever plan to be cut up, I play it safe, or at least I usually do.

As a mother there is one directive that seems to be paramount most of the time. Protect and care for your offspring. I’d forgotten what it was like to have that brought forth in my psyche. I ran like the wind toward Mike. He stood, framed by the second story window at the front of the house, screaming in terror for his mother. The left side and back were nearly swallowed in flames. Even a block away the flames were now noticeable and the neighbors had begun to call the fire department. Mr. Gregory Kaplan came out of his home and spotted his mother lying on the ground in the Grands’ backyard. As he ran toward her, he grabbed his cell phone and called the local ambulance.

I hit the pavement in front of the house and looked up. Mike was plastered near the front window still screaming as he watched the flames climb toward him across the second floor. I knew there was no way for me to go in the front and reach him in time. I did what I had to do, and I ran toward the front corner and jumped. The air caught me, and between Mike’s beliefs and my strength I grabbed hold of the second floor window frame. I pulled myself up and into the room only to see Mike curled up as the flames were barely inches from his little body.

“Momma!”

His cry pierced my heart and I raced to his side. I grabbed him close to me and rushed back to the window. There was an ambulance already racing down the street and you could hear the sounds of the fire trucks close behind.

“Shh. Hold tight to me, Mike. Everything is going to be alright." I tried to comfort the frightened child in my arms. I spoke softly, rubbing his back as I searched for a safe way to get him down. "I need you to listen to me. Momma is going to get you out of here.”

Mike clung to me like a second skin. Terror had him trying to burrow into me. I could see Wendy drop the bags of food and begin to run toward the house. It is scary when you are someone alive for you know what they know as they know it, and I was seeing this fire from her and my perspectives, the growing fear that something would happen to the terrified child presently in my arms. The fireman stopped Wendy and for a few moments no one could see both of us. I grabbed Mike tightly and climbed out onto the frame.

“Lady, you have a kid. Don’t jump. Give us a few minutes and we will have a ladder or something for you.”

I could see the young ambulance worker watching me while his partner ran toward the back yard with a sort of rolling table for Mrs. Kaplan. I could feel the heat begin to lick my back and knew there was no more time.

“Hold tight baby,” I whispered to Mike as I leaned forward and bent my knees to take the impact.

If I had really been Wendy with all the surgeries she had undergone, my legs would have shattered beyond repair, but I had Mike’s belief and my own Faerie blood to keep me truly safe. I wrapped my arms around Mike and jumped as the flames began to lick the window frame. I barely hit the ground and the ambulance worker was rushing to my side.

“My God! You are lucky you didn’t break your neck jumping from that height. Are you alright?”

I needed to get out of there as I am sure you can understand. I could feel Wendy’s growing panic as she convinced the fireman to let her get closer to the house so she could look for Mrs. Kaplan and her son. I was lucky in that I had something to distract the ambulance driver and keep his attention off me for a moment or two. Wendy couldn’t come face to face with herself in front of witnesses. That would be very bad for me.

“Never mind me, check out my son.” I waved the driver toward Mike as he grasped my neck, burying his face into my breasts. “He was in the house, breathing that smoke. I want to know my son is alright!”

“Lady, just stay right there. Don’t move.”

I watched as he went to walk away from me.

“Take him to the ambulance now and make sure he is okay.”

Reluctantly he took Mike from my arms. Mike was so scared that just being moved off of me was a project. It was hard to get him to release his arms from my neck and let the man carry him to the ambulance. I wish I could say I stayed to see what happened but as soon as they moved to the back of the ambulance, the wind shifted and the smoke blew across where I sat. I let my mind wander to find a strong image in one of the neighbor’s minds and let myself shift. When the ambulance driver came to look for Wendy he found her coming from the opposite direction.

“How the hell did you get over there? I have been looking for you. Your son is alright, but let’s get a look at you. How did you manage to survive the jump from that onto hard concrete and not kill yourself?”

As I walked away quickly in the form of Andrew Ten, a child from down the block who was presently visiting his grandmother a town away. I could hear Wendy arguing with the driver, her voice demanding as I scurried away and back toward the woods.

“What the hell are you talking about? Where is my son? I never jumped from any heights at all? I’m telling you that it wasn’t me. Where is Mike? Is he okay?”

I couldn’t help but chuckle as I knew the trouble that rescue was going to cause. Oh, some days it is just so much fun to be me. The stories would soon be going around of the woman who was shopping and rescuing her son at the same time. Mike would swear his mother held him and saved him, yet she would know she was rushing home with groceries and couldn’t have done it. Ah the paradox of it all.

***

So that is two stories you have heard. Did you enjoy them? Oh, you thank me for them. So I guess the scales weren’t balanced. You owe me something. In case you never learned it, when you thank a member of Faerie for something it shows how you are indebted to them. So, I guess I will have to decide how you shall repay me. No, a story of yours won’t do.

First, just so you know, not all Fair Folk are actually harmed or trapped by iron. Although I have to admit I nearly tripped over the horseshoes and quickly found the nails you thought you were hiding to keep me in or was it out. Very creative, but I’m a changeling so they have no affect on me.

Secondly, names have power. I never did give you my name; however you did graciously supply me with yours. I really must say your name is something rare and somewhat foreign to me.

Finally, I gave you something of mine. I gave you the truth about me, so much so that you even thanked me for it. Thinking about it I think it is only fair you give me something of yours. I don’t need years from your life, your greatest triumph, or even you serving me. I think I’ll take the memories of our meeting instead. Oh don’t worry; I do plan to leave you with one thing. I will leave you with the clear image of me kissing that one person you never wanted to know you liked so much. Of course I will look, smell, and act exactly like you so have fun explaining how that incredible kiss couldn’t have come from you. I think it is only fair for trying so hard to catch a Faerie that a Faerie catches you off guard instead.