Page 1 of The Changeling

Part I

Birch, white lady of the woods herald of new beginnings darkness and brightness spinning summer comes, winter withstood

I

Witchling

They will cut your heart from your body and bury it in secret, I told my queen.

She did not believe me, and so fled her homeland towards betrayal, imprisonment and, I knew, death. I had seen the shadow of the executioner’s axe.

Seeing was my curse. I could not summon it. I could not stop it. The Sight chose what I saw, and when.

Seeing had not saved my mam or my great-aunt. Seeing could not save my queen or my sister. Sometimes I wished I could gouge out my own eyes, as if that could stop me seeing.

It was cold in the cave where we hid. A spiteful wind rustled the pile of bracken and heather where Sorcha crouched, her plaid wrapped about her face. I knelt on the earthen floor, cradling a cup made from folded birch bark. I had no other vessel. All of our crockery had been smashed the day they came for my mam.

‘Drink up, hinny,’ I crooned, as if my twin was a child and not almost twenty-one years old. ‘Just a wee sip. For me?’

Sorcha turned her head away. She ate so rarely now, I feared she would starve to death. She did not speak either, except to whimper ‘Ma, Ma, Ma’, over and over again. She had been bewitched, I was sure of it, but I did not know how to break the spell.

My dog Carlin lifted her head and growled. A twig cracked outside. I dropped the bark cup, broth spilling over the ground, and drew my knife. ‘Who goes there?’ I cried.

‘Caiti, it’s me, Beatrix,’ a girl whispered. ‘Please, I mean you no harm.’

‘What are you doing here? How did you find us?’

‘I’ve been searching for you for days. Then a huge flock of ravens exploded into the sky above the Knock, as if something had disturbed them. I rode this way and found a path I’d never seen before. I followed it, and it led me here.’

Shivers prickled my skin.

An unkindness of ravens, an unknown path. Eldritch powers were at work here.

‘Have you come to take us in?’ My throat was so dry with fear, I could scarcely speak. ‘Will you burn us like you burned my mam?’

‘I mean you no harm. It was a dreadful thing, what happened to your mother. Father tried to stop them, I swear he did. But there were too many of them. They had their orders from the Regent himself!’

‘Och aye! What the Regent orders must be done, no questions asked,’ I said with bitter irony.

‘That’s not fair, you know the Regent rules all now. Please, Caiti. Robbie needs you. He lies in his bed as if he was dead, and naught we do can rouse him.’

I could not speak, nor move.

‘Let me in, Caiti, it’s freezing out here!’

‘Robbie? What … what’s wrong with him?’

‘I cannot wake him! Will you not come? Nobody else can help. Please!’

I untied the hide curtain I had fixed over the cave mouth. Sleet blew in. The clouds were so heavy, the afternoon felt like twilight. Beatrix came in tentatively, her face white and frightened.

‘Tell me about Robbie! What do you mean, he lies as if dead?’

Beatrix twisted her hands together. ‘What I said. Naught we do rouses him. Yet every morning the soles of his boots are worn out, as if he had run to Edinburgh and back.’

My breath caught. ‘His boots? Worn out?’

She nodded. I hugged myself, cold to the core.