Page 22 of The Changeling

‘I … I couldna tell you the truth. How could I? Who told you?’

‘My real mother.’

‘Are you hurt? Did she harm you? What did she say?’

‘She said she was the queen of the Shee and that I was her heir.

She said I was no’ of your kind, and that all you had ever told me was lies. She said I was to be the instrument of her revenge.’

‘Oh, blessed Lady! Caiti, I am so sorry.’

‘That is no’ my true name.’ My voice was icy. ‘I ken my true name now.’

‘You mustna listen to her! She is wicked, ungodly! Please …’

‘But she is the one who told me the truth, no’ you. Why should I listen to aught you say when you have lied to me every day of my life?’

‘You have to let me explain. You’ll understand once I tell you.’ She wrapped her plaid about me. ‘But let me get you warm first. You’re shaking all over.’

She led me downstairs, stoking up the fire and lighting a candle, hanging the kettle from its hook over the fire, making me a hot brew from herbs and honey. It was as if she was trying to remind me of all the years she had cared for me, as if that would somehow make the story she told me easier to bear. At last she sat and, twisting her blue charm-stone on its red cord, told me the truth about my birth.

On All Hallows’ Eve, fourteen years earlier, Mam had gone into labour in the early hours of the night. After great toil, she had given birth to her daughter just as the sun’s first rays began to warm the frost-embittered fields. Sorcha, she was to be called, for it meant brightness. Nan had left them tucked up in bed together while she went out into the forest to forage. Mam had fed her bairn, then drifted off to sleep. Much later, a sound woke her. The day had passed. Dusk was closing in, and the fire had sunk low. Mam wondered where Nan could be.

Then the sound came again. The thin, high wailing of a newborn baby. At first Mam had thought it was Sorcha, but her daughter slept peacefully beside her. The baby screamed on. Mam got out of bed and went down the spiral staircase, holding on tightly to the rope for she was unsteady on her feet still. She opened the front door. It was the gloaming hour, when the earth was dark but air and water still glimmered with faint light. Mist drifted in from the river. She listened intently. The baby bawled somewhere nearby. So Mam went out into the garden, searching everywhere, growing ever colder and ever more baffled. She thought of her own wee bairn, left alone in the house, and she turned back. Now it seemed as if the screaming came from inside. Mam hurried back in through the open door and up the stairs. She rushed to pick up her baby, only to find me instead.

‘You were a wee scrap of a thing,’ Mam told me. ‘But your lungs were good and strong!’

‘Where was Sorcha?’ I asked.

‘She was gone. Vanished away. At once I knew it was the faeries who had taken her. I shouldna have left her.’

‘How could you tell we’d been switched?’ I demanded, frowning.

Mam looked at me in wonderment. ‘You were no’ one bit alike! Sorcha was as plump as a partridge, with the sweetest little tuft of fair hair …’

‘While I was crookit.’

Mam went to hug me, and I recoiled. ‘You were small,’ she conceded, ‘but the dearest wee thing, Caiti! Such thick dark hair and such tiny hands, reaching out to me so desperately. I picked you up and wrapped you in my plaid, for you were cold as ice, you poor wee lambkin, and so hungry and scared. I held you in my arms and I rushed out into the night, calling for Sorcha and calling for Nan, who should have been home long since, and weeping so hard I could scarcely keep my feet. Och aye, that was a terrible hour!’

At last Mam had gone inside and put a lantern in every window in the hope Nan would see the light and find her way home. She sat by the fire and fed me, for I was starving, and then she warmed a basin of water and washed me, for I was still covered with the scum of birth.

‘I was left dirty and hungry? My real mother didna even feed me?’

Mam hesitated. ‘Maybe she couldna. Maybe that was why she left you.’

‘Was anything left with me? A keepsake of some kind?’ I had heard of abandoned babies being left at churches with some kind of token, so that one day they could find their mothers again. A coin clipped in half, perhaps, or a locket.

Mam rose and went to a box on the mantelpiece where she kept her treasures. She rummaged about, withdrawing at last a coil of limp string. ‘Your birth cord had been tied with this,’ she said apologetically. ‘Nan thinks it is made of nettles.’

I stared at it. I do not know what I had expected. A faery crown perhaps, or some kind of magical talisman. Mam was holding the string out to me, and so I took it. It was ash-grey and rough, something only the poorest peasant would make and use.

Mam went on with her story, as I sat and crushed the string in my hands. Nan had come home at last, cold and footsore. She had been lost in the mist, and was sure it had been summoned by some kind of witchery, for familiar paths had led to unfamiliar places, and she had heard Mam’s voice calling her, and a baby crying, even though she was miles from home. A terrible fear had woken in her, and she had drawn a circle about herself with her hazel staff and crouched within it till at last the mist had sunk away, and she could see the stars and the silhouetted shape of the dark hills, and navigate home once more.

Nan had known at once that I was a changeling child, and that their own sweet babe had been stolen. She had taken me from Mam’s breast, unwrapped me and laid me on the fire shovel and held me above the flames, saying loudly, ‘We’ll throw the imp on the fire if you dinna give us back our babe!’

‘Nan was going to throw me into the fire?’

‘No’ truly,’ Mam said hurriedly. ‘It was a ruse, a threat. And it worked. The faery queen came running through the open door, and she carried Sorcha in her hands and thrust her back at me, and begged me no’ to hurt you.’