Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Emily Wilde, #1)(23)

A distant part of me was struck by how much he reminded me of Bambleby. Though they looked nothing alike, there was a kinship that I could not put my finger on, which was perhaps more absence than feature, a lack of something coarse and mundane that characterizes all mortals.

My stomach twisted at the realization that this creature was the first of the courtly fae I had ever questioned. I was uncertain if the feeling was excitement or terror.

“You tricked me,” the changeling said crossly.

“You have it backwards,” I said, adjusting the sleeves of my coat. I had turned it inside out before entering the house, enabling me to see through any illusion the faerie chose to show me. “I merely sidestepped your own attempt at trickery. Would your true mother be pleased to know how you welcome a guest?”

“Go away.” He was angry, and not just at my evasion of his enchantment. He had not liked me mentioning his faerie dam.

“I am going to ask you a few questions,” I said. “I would recommend ready answers. I am aware of the cruelty you are inflicting upon your foster parents, and it has not inclined me to be generous with you.”

Another blast of winter wind greeted this statement. The beams rattled in the ceiling.

“Are you happy to be the cause of suffering?”

“I don’t care,” the child snapped. For he was a child, for all his power, and he glared at me with a child’s stubbornness. “I don’t want to be here. I want my forest. I want my family.”

“And what has become of your family, that they should send you to live among mortals?” I was particularly interested in the answer to this question, for most of what we know of changelings is guesswork. It is the habit of courtly fae to leave changelings in the hands of mortal parents for a period of months or years, and then swap them again without ceremony (if the changeling has not died in the interim, which is not uncommon), but no one knows precisely why they engage in this behaviour. The leading theory suggests a motive of idle amusement.

The changeling’s lovely face twisted. He leaned forward. “If you do not go away, I will fill Mord’s thoughts with such horrors that he will wish he was dead. I will give Aslaug dreams of burning and rending and the screams of everyone she cares for echoing in the night.”

A shudder ran through me, but I maintained my bland demeanour. Wordlessly, I withdrew the handful of salt and began scattering it about the room.

“What’s that?” he said, interest replacing fury in the space of a breath. He pinched some between his fingers, smelled it. “Salt? Why are you doing that?”

I stopped, silently cursing. Salt binds faeries, but perhaps in Ljosland it works only on the common fae, or not at all. I withdrew the iron nail.

“You can’t kill me,” he said.

“No,” I agreed. To kill a changeling is to kill the child it has replaced. They are always bound together by a powerful enchantment that neither time nor distance can dispel. “I can hurt you, though.”

I gave Shadow a signal, and he snapped at the child’s foot, distracting him. I thrust the nail into the changeling’s chest.

Almost into his chest. The faerie moved, and the nail ended up in his side. The screams that followed were worse than those before, like winter given voice. The faerie seemed to dissolve, becoming a creature of shadow and frost, with eyes that shone like the blue heart of a flame. It is thought that all courtly fae are like this underneath; their humanlike forms are only a guise they assume. While killing them is a tricky business, a wound wrought with metal may force them into their weaker, insubstantial selves.

I knew all this, but only as theory. Seeing the faerie’s true face, for all my determination, froze me entirely. It was a moment before I regained my senses.

As the faerie continued to wail, I withdrew his coat from my pack. “I shall give you this if you answer me.” I was pleased that, while my hand shook, my voice did not.

“Give!” the changeling shrieked. He was cowering in the corner. He could still have hurt me, I think, but was too upset to think of it. Of course, if he had, I could have withheld the coat.

The Folk are bound by many ancient laws, some of which give mortals a great deal of power over their well-being. Mortal gifts strengthen faeries, be they food or jewels, but clothes have a particular power, in that they help the Folk bind themselves to the mortal world, and, in the case of the courtly fae, their mortal guises.

“I have your attention then,” I said, as the changeling’s shrieks diminished to sobs. “Let us start with your parents.”



* * *



—

In the end, the faerie told me little. He would only moan about his forest and his beloved willow tree, and the many paths the Folk built underground and through the deep snows, lit somehow with moonlight. This was all interesting enough, but quickly grew tiresome; by the end of an hour I knew the number of the willow’s branches and how many stars the faerie could see from his window, but little else. It was a myopic view of the courtly fae, filtered through the eyes of a self-absorbed child, and thus not particularly helpful.

Either the changeling did not know or he could not remember why he had been brought to Hrafnsvik, though he did believe that he would be taken away again, and swore a great many dire revenges upon me when this occurred. Once I had tired of his moaning, I handed him his coat. He drew this around his body and huddled in the corner, shuddering, as slowly he gained weight and substance again.