I was a changeling child. My parents begat a child who laughed and giggled and played as babes do, but it was taken from them. The fair folk came in the night, and they spirited my parents’ true child away, and in its place they left me.
Though I looked identical to the taken babe, in the morning my parents knew immediately that I was not truly the fruit of their loins. I did not laugh as children do, nor play as children do, and as I grew up I behaved in strange ways and knew secrets I should not have known. They did not know why the fair folk took their child and left a duplicate in its place, but they tried their best to send me back and to have their true progeny returned.
They cried, at first. They despaired. That night my father, deep in his cups, rushed out into the woodlands beyond the village and bellowed out a demand that the fair folk take this creature back, that they retrieve this thing, this mockery in human skin, and give him his true child. But if the fair folk heard his demands, they did not heed them. No matter what my parents did, they could not return me.
So they reconciled themselves to the simple fact that their child was gone, and they settled on secrecy. They did all they could to hide the truth of me from the others in the village, did all they could to help me to blend in with the people and affect some semblance of humanity. Gradually, I learned.
In time, I think, they came to love me. In time, I think, they came to forget their true child—or at the very least to convince themselves that they had been mistaken that morning, that no switch had ever been made. Yet there was always a distance between us, and though that distance would grow shorter with the passing of the years, it never truly closed.
I was a changeling child, and though I sought to hide this fact, it seemed that the humans could always tell. Countless were the times when I would meet someone and they would look at me oddly, and later I would overhear them speaking with others about what a strange and off-putting creature I was.
It seemed that, even if they did not know for certain, even if they were unaware of the secrets of the fair folk and the nature of the changeling, they knew upon speaking with me that there was something different, something not quite right, about this stranger in their midst.
Oftentimes they would attempt to be friendly, at least at first. A man would reach out to shake my hand. A woman would look me in the eye and smile. But I would recoil at the man’s touch, and when I looked the woman in the eye in turn I would be greeted by all that she was.
I would see an intensity, a vastness, a wealth of humanity so overwhelming that I would have no choice but to turn away. Thus I would be deemed “rude.” Thus I would be called “cowardly.”
My thoughts were not their thoughts, and my actions were strange. The other children of the village would make a game out of mocking me, though it was rare that I would realize at first that that was what they were doing. I would gladly participate in my own humiliation, thinking it nothing more than a game, and thus would receive even more of their mirthful cruelty. When the truth of the situation would—belatedly—come to me, I would run home and cry into my mother’s skirts, and she would offer me all the hollow tokens of comfort that a mother is obliged to give to her child.
But she did not understand why I cried, and she would resent me for my difference. Over time, I grew to recognize this truth as well, and I grew distant from her. I learned how to hide my feelings, to disguise the intensity of my emotions. When they threatened to rise up and consume me, my mind would go numb and my soul would still itself, and so I would become empty and shielded from the turmoil within my own heart.
I was a changeling child, and as I grew, I learned all the ways to hide what I was. I learned to wear a false smile like those upon the faces all around me, and I learned to hide my discomfort at others’ touch. I forced down food which was revolting in texture, even as my stomach churned and I desired nothing less than to retch it up.
But even as my proficiency in this farce grew, the suspicion of those around me never truly faded. No matter how well I hid my difference, now matter how adept I became at wearing my human mask, they could always sense that I was not one of them, that I did not belong among their kind.
Still I worked to bury my truth. I stilled my emotions and I hid their intensity, but this ruse did nothing to quell their power. That intensity, though denied an outlet, remained. It roiled and it churned within me, and whenever I was fool enough to let my guard down, to relax my control just a little, it bubbled to the surface and overwhelmed me. I would scream and I would thrash as these emotions took hold, and my parents would take me and beat me and scold me for my outburst. And still I would scream until my voice was hoarse, until exhaustion claimed me and my bruised body fell still once more.
I was a changeling child, and when I was on the cusp of adulthood I wandered through the forest outside my village and basked in its peace. I let my mind grow still as I walked, and I left behind all the worries of my daily life. This became a routine, and I would often find time to walk beneath the trees.
One day in the midst of that wandering, I happened upon a pond of clear water. Standing there, at the edge of that pond, I looked down upon my reflection and I pondered the question of who I was. I desired to know the truth of myself, and to know what sort of creature had truly been left in that crib all those years ago.
I reached up with my hands and I grasped my face and tugged at my skin. It came off without resistance, peeled off with an ease that I never before would have imagined. There was no pain, not the slightest discomfort. Instead, with each new tearing, as each strip of flesh fell away, I was filled with a greater and greater sense of elation and freedom. When I was done, I stared down into the pond, and in my reflection I now beheld for the first time my true face, and I saw that I am grotesque and I am beautiful and I am alien and I am me.
Turning from the pond, I walked once more through the forest, and by the time I returned to the village my human face had grown back, for the people there could never look upon what I truly was. I left the forest, and I slipped in among humanity, masking the truth of my heart.
I was a changeling child, and when our village was in the grip of its harvest festival I stood alone at the edge of the crowd. The people danced, though none would dance with me. Humans played instruments and sang songs and the volume and the cacophony of it all filled my ears and filled my head until I felt that familiar numbness creeping through my senses to protect me.
All made merry. They drank and they laughed and couples snuck away into the shadows, giggling to themselves as they did was couples do away from prying eyes.
Alone, I watched it all play out, until soon enough I grew weary and retired away to quiet solitude, exhaustion heavy upon me though I had done so little.
That night I slept deeply, so thorough was my fatigue. I slept alone, with a weight heavy upon my soul. I found myself yearning for touch, even as I feared it.
I was a changeling child, and always I have been averse to the company of humans.
It was on the farms, and in the barns, and in the wilderness surrounding my village that I found kinship. Dogs swiftly grew to trust me, and the cats who hunted rodents in our food stores felt no fear of me. The people of the village soon learned that I had a knack for working with animals, and many were the days that I spent among the sheep and among the cattle, caring for them and protecting them and comforting them.
Even the wild beasts beyond the village did not fear me. In the forest I would find wolves, who sat by my side and rubbed their snouts against my arm as though they were tamed hounds. I found deer; the fawns and the doe would accept my hands against their fur, and the stags would bow their heads before me and allow me to pass them by unchallenged.
I was no threat to the creatures of the wild, and they understood this and accepted me. I did not challenge them, and my presence did not rile their passions nor offend their senses. When I was not working in the barns of the fields, I was in the forest, resting with a fox curled up on my lap as I watched the birds flit through the trees above me, and I was thinking deeply of this world I had been left in, and of all its wonders.
I was a changeling child, and when a troupe of performers came to our village I was among the crowd that gathered to watch them. I was soon drawn deep into the tale they spun and the story they pantomimed, and soon enough my attention settled upon one player in particular, who took note of me in turn.
We were the same, such was obvious. We were both changeling children, and when the play was done we found each other and shared with one another our truth. We bore ourselves openly in a way that we never had before, and we retired together and shed our skin and our disguises and for the first time exposed our beauty and our strangeness to another.
Together, we shared an intimacy both intense and magical. Together we were ourselves, bare and without pretense, our masks forgotten for just a little while. We held each other without discomfort, and we knew each other in our minds and in our hearts and in our flesh.
When the morning came, we said our farewells. The troupe left the village, and I returned to my everyday life.
I was a changeling child, and I live now in a little house at the edge of the village. I tend to my garden and to my chickens, and I care for my dogs who guard the coop and my cats who patrol my plants.
When I go to the market to sell my vegetables and my hens’ eggs, the people are courteous but they are not warm, which suits me well. We complete our transactions and I return home to my quiet and my animals. Children point and whisper among themselves as I pass, and the people of the village give me a wide berth.
My parents, for that is what I call them and that is what they were, are gone now. I live a simple life, and I am satisfied. Sometimes, however, my heart yearns for companionship; the sort that cannot be found among the beasts, and I recall the theater troupe and I wonder if I will ever again meet another who is like me. On occasion I will try, in my own fumbling way, to reach out to a villager, but the intimacy I crave continues to elude me.
For I am a changeling child, and my place is not among the humans of the village—nor will it ever be.
