“Changelings – Fairy children that are put in place by faeries to replace human children they’ve stolen. They tend to be paler, sickly and stoic. It’s said stolen children become faeries themselves.”
I wake from a wonderful dream of bright skies and flowers, colors of which I’ve never seen before. There were people all around me, their clothes from another time, and even though their faces were blotted out as how dreams usually were, I could tell the faces would also be otherworldly.
But that is all it was-another dream. And I was stuck here in my own dull reality, my own personal hell. A small attic my ‘mother’ deemed suitable enough to be a room for her only daughter. There was a single light above me that swung back and forth from an old wire that looked as though it would fall on my head at any moment. But I knew it wouldn’t, because it’s been in the same rickety condition for all my life. A look around this room and you would see a hole in the wall that wasn’t seen as a necessity to fix, dark rotting wood as a floor, and ratty curtains with a thick film of dust covering every inch.
I’m an outcast in family and society, a loner that never understands or is understood among others. But while out among them, I only smile and move along as if nothing affects me. Even indoors with my mother who for some unknown reason has hated me as far back as I can remember, I still paste a smile on this lonely face of mine and help her in any way I can.
Today I turned 18 years of age, which of course to my mother, meant I was old enough to be kicked to the side and out of her life. Today was the day I would be with no family and no place to lay my head. As I head down the stairs to the kitchen area of our home I hear someone humming a lovely tune from the kitchen. The melody flowed thru the air like a summer breeze and wound you in so all there was in the world was the lovely song.
“Laila, you’re awake. Good thing too, because you have a long journey ahead of you today.”
“Mama? To where will I be going?” I asked the woman before me. She looked so young with her hair down and curling around her face. Bright eyes and for once a smile directed my way. I almost couldn’t believe this to be the same woman I had seen yesterday.
“My girl, I need you to go thru the forest, past the tall tree. You will come to a small cottage. Knock on the door three times and ask for Ms. Cee. Now hurry up, don’t waste time standing around.”
My mother was talking in riddles and it was quite frightening. But not as frightening as the smile she sent my way as I was turning to leave.
I was walking thru the brush looking for the tall tree. Everything around me seemed so dead. How dull this place seemed from my eyes. I dreamt of a colorful place. I dreamt of so much more than this. While I was dreaming in my head of a different world, I caught movement from the corner of my eye. I turned around and saw a girl my age standing not too far away. She was what the people in my world would call beautiful. Long shining hair, that almost glowed around her face. She was taller than my 5’5” height, probably upwards of 6’ tall, with only the smallest curves in the right places.
As I stared at the girl, I noticed that she was humming a tune, quite like the one my mother had sung this morning. She seemed entranced by the forest, looking around her in awe. It was like she had never seen the trees before. As she was looking around her, she finally noticed me. She stopped quickly and froze.
“Are you lost?” I asked her.
“I don’t believe so.” She said looking around, her eyes looking in the distance at the tallest tree in the forest.
I looked to the tree and I remembered the task my mother sent me to accomplish today. Forgetting about the girl, I walked to the tree and kept going right on past, looking for the cottage in the woods that would complete the task.
“Hey, what is your name? Where are you going?” Oh right, the girl. I turned around and saw that she had followed me. I told her of my mother’s request and kept going. A few moments later we both came to a stop before a quaint little cottage sitting along a winding creek. Wild flowers all around of different colors, birds singing in the trees.
As we both stared at the cottage and its surrounding beauty, the front door opened, revealing a woman with few wrinkles to her face and streaks of gray to her dark, long, auburn hair.
“Hello, Laila. I have been waiting for you to come”, she said. “Ah, Aelin, you’ve come as well!” I looked around me to the other girl who I now knew was Aelin.
We stood side by side as the woman told us the age old story of the ‘changelings’. New mothers were so scared of their children being taken by the evil ones from afar.
“My mother… I’m…” I began.
“Your mother” the woman began, “Believed you to be taken and switched with another child, which is why she has treated you so unkindly all your life. She thought that in doing so, her real child would be returned to her.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense”, Aelin spoke up. I had all but forgotten she was there. The old woman and I both turned to her.
“Actually, she has a point. What does she have to do with any of this anyway?” I asked.
“That’s a very good question.”
Apparently, from what the woman went on to tell us, mother had two daughters, twins, and one was taken from her and pronounced dead. Aelin. Someone took her to get back at my mother, and placed her in a home in the human world, a world with so many different colors, a world that I dream about.
The perfect situation, Aelin would go home to mother and she would get her returned “changeling” child. And since mother thought I was a dirty human, and hated me so badly, I would go to the human realm and live out my dreams! Everyone would get what they wanted. Aelin and I smiled broadly at each other, coming to the same conclusion.
