The Last Changeling (12 page)

SNAIL FIRST SEES THE FAIR

L
ong before the dawn, Huldra, with Og in her arms, climbed into the wagon to sleep the day away.

No one remarked on how low the wagon sank down on its wheels. No one had to. The unicorns strained more than before, but they didn't complain either. They just hunched their shoulders, gave a hough or two, then responded to the light tap of the reins on their hindquarters and pulled the wagon forward without any noticeable lag.

Snail knew that no horse, not even a heavy Unseelie warhorse, could have pulled as well as a unicorn. And the team seemed to move as one—one mind, one will, one great magic-filled muscle.

As the wagon rolled into the dawn, the sun rose over the eastern hills, almost in their eyes.

Once the three dwarfs came out again, they'd totally taken over the handling of the reins, but as always, they were not loathe to share their knowledge.

Though,
Snail thought,
you have to sift through the silliness and the jokes to find it.

When she'd asked how far it was to the fairgrounds, Annar had said, “Fair enough.” And Thridi had added that asking was fair game.

“Speak plain!” Dagmarra said as she pushed past Snail. Taking her place in between the dwarfs, she cuffed both her brothers on the back of the head.

It was not a soft tap and Annar made the sound of a rabbit screaming, then said, “We'll be there by midday.

“It should have been earlier,” Annar added, rubbing his head, all humor gone, “if Dagmarra's girlfriend had been a bit lighter.”

“But she canna be lighter,” retorted Thridi, “for she's a troll and to be in the light would turn her into stone. And stone is not lighter, but heavier.”

That returned Annar to his good humor, and he giggled and slapped his brother's hand. “Good 'un!” he crowed.

Snail groaned. It didn't seem such a good 'un to her.

• • •

T
HE
WAGON
PASSED
through seven small woods where thrushes sang from the trees, a lovely concert that accompanied them for miles.

“The Seven Sisters,” Annar said as they went along the edge of the fifth forest. “There's a story about them, but it's slipped my mind. Something about the Border Lords and marriages and . . .”

Thridi grinned. “Yer mind's always slippery.”

“It's greased with ideas,” Annar replied.

“I think I know that tale,” Dagmarra said. “It doesn't end happily.”

Snail thought,
Stories about the Border Lords seldom do
. Even with the sun warming her face, and all the birds in chorus around the wagon, her mood was grim.

Wood squirrels red as trillium ran across the path and in between the unicorns' legs, never getting trodden upon, which surprised Snail. A lazy green snake fell onto the dwarfs' platform from one of the trees. Annar made a strange sound and drew up his legs, but Thridi picked up the snake, which curled its tail around his wrist until he flicked it into the undergrowth.

Around midmorning Aspen reappeared and climbed back up, squeezing past Dagmarra to sit next to Snail.

She tried a smile on, saying, “Do you have your lines?”

He nodded, answering, “I believe so, such as they are.” He turned to Annar. “How far now?”

Annar grunted, perhaps finally tired enough to subdue his chattiness. “We'll be there by midday.”

They seemed in no hurry, and Snail said something about it, wondering—with war about to break over them like a great wave—why they were trundling along as if they'd all the time in the world.

Dagmarra answered before her brothers could make their jokes. “The beasts will pull all day and all night, but nothing will cause them to run,” she said, “except maybe a hungry lion or troll nipping at their heels!”

“Well, we have one of those at least,” Snail said, but under her breath so no one heard.

• • •

T
HE
ROAD
SEEMED
to go on for so long, and the day was so soft and sunny, that everyone but Annar was dozing on the perch. But after one long, lazy turn, they came over a small hill, and Snail woke with a start because Annar had cried out, “There it is!”

At first all Snail saw were the backs of the unicorns, their muscles bunched and straining, wet with unicorn sweat, which was pink and smelled like roses.

But as they started down, soon enough she could make out a middling town of winding streets and, in the large green meadow on its western flank, a series of stalls under bright canopies with red and gold banners flapping and snapping in a steady lowland breeze.

She tried counting the stalls, stopped at forty.

Dagmarra crowed. “Bogborough. Good town, good day, good market, good crowd. The professor had worried that with the threat of the Border Lords and the Unseelie hordes, people would have stayed at home. Boarding up their windows. Hiding their animals. Carting water from their wells. But maybe they're here to stock up on provisions before any battle.”

“Well, well, well,”
Annar said.

“Indeed, we should do
well
enough,” added Thridi.

“Welcome,” they said together, and giggled.

Dagmarra just gave them a look that seemed a bit disgusted and a bit amused.

“Where do we set up?” asked Aspen, just as if he and Snail weren't planning to run off before the play. Or after it. Or during it. She didn't remember what they'd actually agreed on the timing—or how they were to go.

We're going to have to talk again—and soon,
Snail thought, remembering how swiftly their planning turned into squabbling last night.
Though we're much better at leaving than talking about it.

She understood why Aspen was asking about setting up. Whether they were leaving before, during, or after the play, they both had to act as if running away was the last thing on their minds. They had to make everyone believe that the fair was so enticing that they couldn't wait to help with the show.

Annar pointed to the far left side of the meadow. “There,” he said. “Flat ground, away from the bog and away from the hurly of the stalls but close enough to entice them to our stage.”

“Our
stage
?” Snail asked.

“Just wait,” Thridi answered.

Which of course she had to do.

• • •

A
S
THEY
GOT
closer, everything came into focus as if Snail was now looking through a wizard's scry. The banners were not just red and gold but had the Seelie king's insignia emblazoned on both sides.

“Means they're sanctioned by the throne,” whispered Aspen.

Snail suddenly feared that would also mean there would be the king's guard there to watch over the site. And indeed, just as she had that thought, a small company of soldiers came around a bunch of houses and began to make their way toward the wagon.

“Inside!” Dagmarra said to Snail and Aspen, and without arguing, they scrambled in before they could be seen.

Once hidden, Aspen turned on Snail and hissed, “I told you we should have left before. Now we are surrounded by soldiers.”

She glared at him. “I wasn't the one who brought them here.” When he said nothing, she went on. “We stick with the plan.”

“What plan?”

He's right for once,
she thought
. We don't really have a plan.
Just a notion, an idea, a wish, a dream.

She said quickly, “You perform the play. I gather supplies. We leave in the night.”

He snorted, whether at the plan or the thought of his part in the play she didn't know. Either way, it infuriated her.

“I'm going into Maggie's room,” she told him. “It's probably safest there.” She was already past Huldra, who was sleeping on the floor next to Dagmarra's bed, with Og drooling mightily in her arms.

“Then I will come with you,” Aspen said in a loud whisper.

She wanted to turn and say, “Don't you dare,” but the wagon suddenly stopped short, and they were both thrown onto the floor, Aspen coming to a stop close to the troll's head.

And a bit too close to her open mouth
, thought Snail frantically as she tumbled by. She ended partway into the next room, where the golden bowser growled in her direction and showed its many teeth.

As she lay there, checking her body parts and realizing she wasn't actually hurt, Snail wondered what to do next. She heard Dagmarra call loudly, “Halloo, soldiers, come to help us set up? Tonight Professor Odds's players will perform
Eal, Ollm, and Fydir
as you have never seen it before. The dragon will be a revelation.”

“It snorts,” said Annar, equally loudly.

“It blows fire and smoke,” added Thridi. He, too, was all but shouting.

“It flies!” the three dwarfs shouted together.

Snail realized they were talking that way to inform Aspen and herself of what was happening. She sat back on her heels and listened to the rest.

Presumably it was the captain of the guard who answered. “We will not help you set up. We have to be alert for Unseelie folk. But we
will
get to watch the dragon fly.” And then, as if an afterthought, he spoke two of the dragon's lines:

I bluster, I fester, I blow,

and down your castle will go!

At that, Aspen sat up and whispered, “My brother taught me those lines. Do you suppose . . .”

But Snail whispered back, “No supposing. And no looking out the door to check, either. We need to stay hidden and get away as soon as we can.”

“
Before
the play?” he said, all of a sudden looking happy.

She had to suppress the urge to slap him. “Sure, because
that's
what's important here: you not wanting to perform.”

“Well, someone could recognize me . . .”

“Or
laugh
at you,” she said, “and that would be a tragedy!” She stood up and spun on her heel, making her way through the door into Maggie Light's room as if only there could she be safe.

“Well of course they will laugh,” he said, his face fixed in a pout. “We have had no time to rehearse. I have not spoken to the director—whoever that may be. And it will be my first time ever on a stage. If Odds wants me to be inconspicuous, he has certainly taken an odd way to show it.”

Odd indeed, she agreed silently, and closed the door before Aspen could follow. She would have locked it had there been a key.
At least I'll be alone here for a while,
she thought
. His pride will keep him out if nothing else.

She was perched on Maggie Light's bed for only a few moments before Professor Odds found her.

“You've no part in the play,” he said, “but you still have a part to play.” He reached out his hand to her.

She wished for once that he'd just come out and say what he meant. Then she revised that thought:
Maybe I
don't
want to know what he means.

In fact, all she wanted to do was leave. Leave with Aspen, she realized—no matter that she was mad at him right now. Leave and get away from this crazy professor, his murderous assistant, his talking bird and his double-talking dwarfs, his growling rug . . .

She briefly considered kicking Odds in the shin and making a run for it, but that would leave Aspen and Huldra and Og behind. And she couldn't do that.

Besides, she thought,
the wagon is still surrounded by soldiers.

So, she ignored the professor's hand but—acting as if she was in his thrall—followed him from the room.

ASPEN DRESSES UP

A
spen had heard Odds speaking to Snail through the closed door and realized that she was fine, but he did not go in. The old professor gave him the willies, and he had to figure out when and how he and Snail might get away.

The wagon began moving again, making strange creaking and groaning sounds.
Rather like a troll in labor
, he thought—remembering the time in the troll's cave where he had assisted Snail when Huldra gave birth to Og. He was wondering how long and how far they had to go into the fairgrounds, when the wagon slowed and then stopped again.

The groaning and creaking ceased and all was quiet.

For about three minutes.

Then a horrendous scraping sound began over his head. Aspen was briefly afraid a roc had traveled from the western wastes all the way through Unseelie territory and across the Unmastered Lands just to tear the roof off the wagon. Of course he had never actually seen a roc, though his tutor Jaunty had told him all about them. But surely if there had been a roc, there would be screaming coming from the crowd in the meadow, who were strangely silent, except for an occasional “oooh!” and “aaah!”

Despite the creaking, grumbling, scraping noises, the roof didn't seem to have moved, and the sound was soon over.

Then Aspen heard Annar and Thridi shouting outside. Since it sounded like instructions and not at all like a full-on panic, he stayed put.

Another scraping started, this time under his feet.

Next there was banging and clanging and the wagon shook and swayed as if they were moving again. But oddly, there was no sense of forward motion.

“Oddly,”
he thought.
Everything about Professor Odds and his crew can be summed up in some form of that one word
. Still he waited.

At last, though, his curiosity got the better of his sense of caution.
Soldiers or no soldiers, I have to know what is happening.

He supposed he could peek out the back door, but then he would be running the risk of being spotted. Suddenly, he remembered that Snail had told him of a spyhole in Maggie Light's room.
He could peer out of that with no danger at all.

If
he could find it. And if Snail and the professor were no longer there.

The professor was always a problem!

Aspen also worried about running into the dwarfs, whose room he had to go through to get to Maggie Light's. But surely they were still outside. He listened but could not hear any more shouts. It was a gamble he was willing to take.

Besides
, he told himself,
Dagmarra had only said to get inside, not to stay in any one room in the wagon
.

A part of him hoped he would run into Maggie Light.

Moving quietly, he got to the door, where he listened intently but heard nothing. The racket from outside had ceased.

Pushing the door open just a crack, he peeked through. When he saw what was on the other side, he gasped and involuntarily pushed it fully open.

The dwarfs' room was just
gone.
As was Maggie Light's. Or rather, their left walls were gone, and the beds and sparse furnishings were just now being hidden behind a lowering tan curtain. What was left of the rooms were now open to a field of long grasses where several groups of fey children tumbled and played while a small knot of mothers—mostly brownies and low-caste elves—looked on.

A walkway extended from the wagon ten paces into the field, and the ceiling canted up and away. The wall between the rooms was disappearing as well, being lifted up by what at first appeared to be a gigantic silver spider that groaned and creaked as it worked.

He shuddered. He had never liked spiders and this one was almost as large as the wagon. Only then did he realize with a start that the spider was not alive but was instead some kind of made being, its legs of cold iron, which meant that no one of Faerie but dwarfs could have had a hand in the making of it. Cold iron burned any other fey straight through to the bone.

As he watched further, the spider drew a deep blue curtain across the more ordinary curtain to make a back wall.

Now he understood what had happened. The central part of the wagon had been turned into a stage. The wonder was that it had taken him so long to figure it out.

For just a moment, Aspen thought that a giant stood at the front of this new stage until he realized that it was really the three dwarfs standing on one another's shoulders. Annar was on top, fastening the last of a dozen screened lanterns along the outer edge of the now-slanted ceiling. That done, he began tying the screens to a complicated system of ropes that led to the side of the wagon, ropes that snaked down the wall and into the professor's room.

“Oh!” Aspen said aloud.

Hearing Aspen's gasp, Dagmarra—who was on the bottom, holding up her brothers—turned, ignoring Annar's squeals of protest. Thridi in the middle just looked pained.

“Hauld yer whist!” she admonished. “Are ye daft? Get yerself inside. And don't come back out until yer dressed a proper princess!”

She seemed angry enough to let both her brothers fall so that she could come and punch Aspen, so he hurriedly shut the door and shuffled back into the twins' room. He thought briefly about leaving now while everyone was busy.

I could just walk out the back door and disappear and no one would know I was gone until Maggie Light came to dress me.

But it would mean leaving without Snail. And somehow that was not possible.

Might as well get ready for the play, then.

• • •

B
Y
THE
TIME
Maggie Light came to help him into his costume, Aspen was already in the dress, but it was pulled over his traveling clothes, which made him look like a rather hefty and lumpy princess. He thought he could use his dagger to cut the dress away in a matter of moments when they were ready to make their escape.

And I must admit, I am quite looking forward to cutting this dreadful garment to bits.

Still, he could not help feeling warm when Maggie Light oohed and aahed over how he looked and told him how well he'd done in buttoning, lacing, tying, and cinching the dress up.

He admitted it had not been easy. “Truly, it is a wonder a woman ever leaves the house with the preparation it takes.”

Maggie Light nodded in agreement. “And we're not half done, either.”

“What?”

“There's the makeup and the wig and the shoes, still.”

“Oh,” he said, staring down at his stockinged feet. He had not considered those things at all.

I remember when I used to like getting dressed up. In men's clothes, of course, but still . . .

With all that he had experienced lately, the blood, the death, the betrayal—
and the friendship, bravery, and sacrifice
he reminded himself, thinking of Snail—he was certain he could never again enjoy the frivolous pastimes of his youth. Then he smiled.
Pretty deep thoughts for a prince in a dress
.

“You seem happy about the play,” Maggie Light said. “That's good!”

He swallowed the sigh he felt rising, and let Maggie Light pin his hair up and start applying some kind of noxious powder to his face. All the while, he worked hard at making no complaints at all.

• • •

S
OME
TIME
PASSED
before he was completely transformed into Princess Eal. Maggie Light held a mirror in front of his face. Reflected in the glass was a garish trollop, with the emphasis on the
troll.

“Um,” he said, trying to think of something positive to say and failing utterly.

“Stage makeup,” Maggie Light said by way of explanation. “It will look much better from far away.”

Aspen stared at his reflection critically. “Will they be watching from Trollholm?” That was the kingdom of the creatures, sung of in ballads, though no one, Aspen mused, had ever returned to tell the truth of it.

Maggie Light gave her bell-like laugh. “That might not be far enough.”

Aspen stood unsteadily in the princess's high shoes. “Well, I guess I can play it strictly for laughs.”

“That's how we like it played,” Maggie Light said, “and you'll be playing it soon.”

“Is it time?”

“Peek through the door.” She opened it a crack.

Aspen peeked through and saw that it was already early evening. His stomach began to growl. He had no idea when he had last eaten. But his stomach was also roiling with fear. And then the fear filled his mouth like a foul liquid. He knew it was not fear of the soldiers. He had hardly given them a thought. It was fear of going out onto the stage and playing to that huge crowd.

Screened lanterns had been lit, and the giant spider, with its metal legs, was pulling on the ropes, shifting the screens back and forth. Streams of colored light in blues and reds and greens, and colors Aspen did not even know the names of, spilled from the lanterns onto the stage to fight with the amber light from the setting sun. The meadow grass had been trampled into a flat expanse by the rollicking children, and dozens of audience members already stood on the cleared ground. Some were watching the stage lights, others just gossiping or telling jokes.

Maggie put two fingers into her mouth and gave out an enormous whistle. The spider folded itself down into a box about the size of a valise, the metal legs on the inside. As soon as it was done, Maggie Light strode out onto the stage to huge applause. She waved to the crowd, then picked up the box and, seemingly without struggling with the weight of it, glided back behind the curtain.

Her performance not only pleased the crowd, it startled Aspen so much, he was lost for comment. But as he looked through the door, he could see even more folk walking up from the cook tents a short distance away. At that rate, the field in front of the stage would be full soon.

“Were we expecting this . . .” Aspen found himself gulping. “This big crowd?”

“Oh, yes,” Maggie Light said happily. “And it will soon be bigger. You're not frightened, are you?”

He wanted to say no, but suddenly realized that he was more frightened now than when he had been facing execution in his father's court. For some reason he could not lie to her.

“Terrified.”

She nodded. “It will fade.”

“When?”

Maggie Light smiled with a warmth that belied the cruelty of her next words. “I've never heard an actor complaining of it past their hundredth performance. Now remember to speak high, in falsetto, so you sound like a girl.”

She patted him on the shoulder and left him with his stage fright, his dress, and his now seemingly useless plans for escape.