Changeling

Wren.

The name seemed nothing less than unfamiliar to her as Lexi scanned over the page. However to the witch and elves surrounding her, the name seemed much more important. “Is it possible that my blood just doesn’t know how to spell?”

Margeux’s head snapped towards Lexi. “Your blood didn’t spell anything. My magic did. Do you doubt my magic, human?” Her words came out laced with venom towards Lexi as the girl shrunk back into her seat.

“No! No I was just saying it could have just misspelled Warren’s name…” Her voice shied away from her as she looked up at her. The three of them looked so intent that it made her feel small. She didn’t know which was being inspected, the page or her. “Who is Wren?”

Dillon crossed his arms and sighed. “I don’t know too much about him other than what I’ve read. He’s a little before my time. Roger?”

The man took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He was still visibly tired from the drive down, and was given a stressful situation to deal with upon arrival. The day was quickly taking a toll on him. “Wren is supposed to be locked up right now. He’s a fairy who was assisting one of the strongest dark fey of all time. He was the right hand man to a woman named Hildebrandt, who was banished and stripped of her immortality a few centuries ago, when my parents were younger.

“Hilde’s long gone now. Her body aged the same way a human’s did until she died alone in a jail cell. But he never forgot about her. There were rumors that Wren was in love with her. After her passing he was found and arrested for trying to continue her work. As far as I know, that’s where he’s been ever since.”

“If that’s the case then what the hell does this mean?” Margeux pointed at the paper, her finger coming down onto the desk with a hard slam.

“I don’t know. Can you ask it another question?” He leaned against the wall behind him as he looked over at her.

“Another question? And what do I ask? ‘Oh excuse me, do you mean the wren that helped the craziest lady in history a few hundred years ago?’” She looked up at him with hands on her hips like a frantic mother scolding her child.

“That’d be useful.” Roger didn’t look at her as the witch’s face turned a deep red, almost matching her lipstick. Just as she was about to explode, however, he spoke up again. “But instead it might be easier to ask what he wants with her.”

Margeux’s mouth remained in a tight line. “If she doesn’t know neither will her blood. It might be able to tell us the name of who claimed it, but it won’t be able to tell us his desires. It’s not a crystal ball, Roger.”

Selfishly, Lexi was glad she wasn’t the target of Margeux’s wrath any longer. The woman was small, but filled with energy that Lexi was quickly realizing could work for or against her. She and Dillon both sat quietly as the “parents” discussed the plan of action, both of them afraid to speak up and become the next target.

“I don’t know what we can ask it then.” Roger admitted. “I don’t know how we can get any more information out of it. The only person I know who would probably be able to think of anything is in there asleep on the couch and don’t try waking him up when he’s that drained.”

The witch’s expression softened as she looked back at the pen. “I don’t know either. The blood will be dead in a few moments anyways. It can’t keep talking forever.”

Lexi stared at the pen, still standing straight on the paper, waiting to be questioned. Slowly she placed her left hand around it but it wouldn’t move.

“What are you doing? You don’t have any powers to ask it anything. And if you could think of something you should have spoken up anyways instead of just sitting th—“ Margeux finally stopped talking, watching as the pen moved in Lexi’s hand against the page.

Dillon watched the page as she wrote slowly, and sloppily along the page. Her writing looked like scribbles compared to Margeux’s calligraphy further above on the page. Nevertheless, soon the question was written out. “What does Wren look like?”

Lexi expected a detailed description of the fairy she’d run away from to be written out on the page. Instead, however, the pen began moving in long strokes across the page, drawing out a picture for them. The pen’s speed was much faster without a hand guiding it, and soon it had finished a complete headshot of the man who had claimed Lexi’s life. It slowed as it finished its last stroke across the page before falling and rolling off the table into the floor.

Warren’s face was drawn onto the page, looking as he always had to her. Somehow, however, his smiled looked much colder on paper than in real life. “That’s Warren.” She said simply.

Margeux shook her head. “No. That’s Wren. Just as he was left all those years ago.” She crossed her arms over each other, holding her elbows as she looked down at the page, almost as if she were afraid to actually touch it.

“You knew him?” Lexi glanced up at the woman, curiously. “Before he was locked up?”

Margeux nodded. “I was still an apprentice back then. I was studying with a witch who helped the royal guard so I got to hear firsthand what he and his leader were doing to us.”

“‘Us.’ As in the witches?”

“As in all magic users. Fairies, elves, witches, wizards…even the royal court at the end.”

“In…England?” Lexi looked between the three of them with brows furrowed. “What do they have to do with all this?”

Dillon smiled softly. “Not in England. In Germany.” He patted her head like a naïve child as he continued. “The Royal Court rules over all things that the humans don’t understand. Like us, fairies, witches, spirits, and so on. There is a head for each group in the court. They are kind of like kings to us.”

Lexi nodded as she took in all she could. “And what did this Hildebrandt lady do to the court that was so terrible?”

“She tried to rule it.” Margeux explained. “She believed that having the nations run by so many people as leaders was causing a weakness. She tried to overthrow them all in order to become the leader of all magic creatures. She wanted to use our realm in order to wipe out your non-magic one and all of the humans in it. She had some followers too. Many who believed that magic was strong enough to create a more peaceful world than humans could, that they could solve all of the world’s problems.

“The group began killing off lower members of the court through the lowest means necessary; poison, sneak attacks, one even created an illusion to be a poor wizard’s wife and killed him in his own home. The cruelest part was they were each assigned their own kind. Hilde’s rule was if you can’t kill your own, you can’t kill your enemy.” Margeux sat back in the open seat at the desk, continuing on as the three of them listened to her story.

“Her followers were strong. Many of them were in line for the head chair for their race. I don’t know if they just got tired of waiting or if they thought they were strong enough to lead the realm on their own. I guess it never occurred to them that Hilde wasn’t up for negotiations. She would be queen and no one else. When people opposed her within her group, she killed them without thought. It became perfectly clear to each of them soon enough, not only was she stronger than them, she was crueler.

“Her cruelty was probably her downfall in the end. When she started killing off her own followers as they came to her with an opposing thought, many of them began realizing she was not what was best for them. Some turned themselves in for a pardon, willing to give the court information in exchange for a smaller sentence.”

“Is that how she was caught?” Dillon spoke before Lexi had gotten the chance, though he’d had the same question as she had. “Did someone rat her out where they could ambush her?”

“In a way. They didn’t ambush her with force, though. The time they tried that ended up with nothing but casualties. Instead they used the master fairy as bait. As soon as she attacked, she was wrapped in iron chains that the wizards and witches prepared for her. She was in jail for months, wrapped in iron chains, unable to move or eat. But she never broke. She never uttered any plea for mercy or forgiveness while they consulted on her punishment.

“After almost a year the fey and the elves came to a conclusion. They wouldn’t kill her. Instead they would strip her of eternal life, the gift only fey and elves themselves possess—even sorcerers lives are limited—and let her live the rest of her days in confinement as one of the humans she loathed so deeply.”

“You said Wren tried to keep going with her work. What exactly did he do?” Lexi’s face was pale after hearing the story. She wasn’t entirely sure she’d wanted to hear anymore, but part of her knew she needed to.

Margeux sighed and leaned back in her seat. “Wren was finally caught about twenty years after Hilde passed away. He’d killed an elderly human woman and a neighboring family heard the screams. When the human authorities were called to check in on him, he was arrested, where he killed four officers in cold blood before our guard caught him. He was put into prison then and has been ever since. Or so we thought.”

Lexi’s hands were shaking in her lap. Was that why she was taken? Just to be killed when she’d gotten older? She looked at the picture on the desk again, but the story just didn’t fit in her mind. This was Warren, not Wren. This was the man who, until a few days ago, was the perfect parent, not a murder and ex-cohort to an evil fairy. “So I was just a sheep waiting for the slaughter.” She said softly, not bothering to look up at anyone.

Dillon motioned to comfort her before Margeux piped in quickly. “Essentially, yes.”

“Marge.” Dillon’s eyes narrowed before turning back to Lexi. “Lex that’s probably not the issue here. You were his changeling. He wouldn’t have made you that if he was going to kill you.”

“Then what was he going to do to me?” She looked up at him suddenly, unable to hold back anymore. “What am I? What did he want with me? Why did he take me?” Her eyes were burning as she held back tears. “If he wasn’t going to kill me why did I leave? How did he get out?” There were so many more questions running through her head but she never got the chance to put them into words. Her voice gave out on her finally. She was still holding back, but she knew her words would betray her if she’d tried to ask anything more.

Dillon couldn’t think of a response to give her to make up for all of the questions she presented. Instead he took her hand, clasped together in her lap, and held them in his own as he said the only thing that came to mind. “You’re safe.”

At that moment, Lexi was tired of being strong. She’d refrained from shedding a tear after she’d run away, even after finding Warren’s…no Wren’s warning in Roger’s front yard. However, now she’d given up. She knew Margeux was probably thinking she was a stupid human for crying, she knew Roger would rather be anywhere in the world than in the room with a weeping girl, but she didn’t care. With every ounce of her being, Lexi cried.

As she did a pair of strong arms wrapped themselves around her. Her immediate thought was back to the day she’d run into Warren’s arms after her parents died. But these arms held her differently. They didn’t hold her to console her and make her feel more comfortable. These arms held her tightly, as if shielding her from all of the harm in the world. She knew whose arms they were.

“Dillon…” She looked up at him slowly as she regained her thoughts slowly. He waited patiently for the rest of her sentence as he loosened his grip around her. “I want to find out more about my parents.”

He nodded slowly. “Okay. Let’s go into the living room.” He took her hands again, helping her to her feet. The two of them made their way to the exit, only to find Roger still leaning against the door there, eyes closed in thought. “Excuse us Roger.”

Roger didn’t move, instead he remained where he stood, never moving.

Margeux stood suddenly and glared. “You’ve got to be kidding me, the idiot fell asleep standing up.” She shoved the man roughly. “Roger. Wake up!”

The elf’s face looked surprised, if only for a moment before returning to its naturally negative expression. “What?”

Dillon was holding back a laugh as he spoke. “We need to get by.”

“Why is she crying?” He didn’t sound concerned, only curious as if to see what he missed.

“Dammit Roger! You didn’t hear a word of my story did you?” Margeux walked to the man, grabbing him by the scruff of his shirt and thrusting him into Lexi’s seat.

“Let’s let her take care of him for a while.” Dillon chuckled.

Lexi couldn’t help but let a small smile creep onto her face out of pure amusement. She followed Dillon into the den where Sven was still sleeping peacefully, perhaps with more color in his cheeks than before.

Dillon pulled his laptop out of his bag and sat beside Lexi on the couch. “I didn’t have a lot to go on when I first started searching. So you’ll have to help out. What are their names?”

Lexi opened her mouth to answer him before realizing she had no idea. She was four when she was taken in by Wren. She had no idea what her last name was before then let alone her parent’s first names. “I don’t know. Can you just look up missing children during that year?”

He nodded and started the search on different engines and news sites. None came up with any hits for the year she had lost her parents. “There has to be a fire. I remember a fire. There has to be one listed somewhere.”

“None for this town. Are you sure I’m spelling it right?” he pointed to the town’s name at the top of the page he was on.

“Yeah that’s right. That’s exactly where Warren said he found me.” She looked closely at the page before it hit her. “It’s a lie. Warren lied so I couldn’t look it up.”

Dillon sighed deeply. “So we have nothing.”

“We have nothing. I guess I’m just back to being an orphan.” Lexi tried to sound sad, but she’d never known her parents, and found it hard to miss them without knowing them. It was ironic the idea that it was easier to miss a man she thought might have raised her to kill her in the end, but it was difficult to miss someone she knew when she was born. “I got what I came here with I suppose.”

“I suppose I could ask Margeux to look into it.” Lexi moved her injured hand to her side, shielding it. “What’s that?”

“Where she got her blood for the spell. It doesn’t hurt now, she gave me something for it. But it hurt at the time. I’d rather avoid that again at all costs.” She showed him her bandaged palm, still pain free from Margeux’s “family recipe.”

Dillon smiled warmly. “I’m sure she won’t be able to trace them off of you. You’ve been gone from them for thirteen years. You’re hardly theirs anymore.”

“I wouldn’t doubt a parent, Dillon.” Margeux leaned over the couch between the two of them. “A child forever belongs to their parents.” She glanced over at the pair of blue eyes that were watching her cautiously. “But I can’t trace them off of you. Your blood was claimed by another. Your skin is made up of completely new cells since then. You have nothing of theirs physically. And tracing off a soul is not only unheard of; it’s illegal as it requires ripping the soul from your body.”

“You can look into her past though can’t you, Margeux?”

Her lips curled into a red smile as she turned back to the boy. “Of course I can. But your bill is already stacked pretty high already, Dilly. Do you think you can afford another go with me?” Her voice deepened as she spoke.

His eyes narrowed. “Margeux.”

“My goodness you can never take a joke can you Dil.” She planted a kiss on his cheek before standing behind them, leaving a deep red imprint in its wake. “Reading a past is simple. But first, you’ll have to pay me for the tracing. I don’t work for free, Dillon.”

“Don’t we get a friend’s discount?” He looked up at her with a charming smile.

Margeux laughed loudly. “Discount? After the stress you just put me through I should charge you extra! In fact, I think I will.”

“I’m kidding I’m kidding. We’ll pay full price.” Dillon pulled a small bag from his pocket. “How much?”

“Twelve.”

“Twelve? I thought you said seven last time.”

“I did. But blood tracings are a lot more difficult and take more magic. You also have a fairy renting my couch and an elf renting my guest room. This is a bargain really.”

Dillon grumbled but poured some of the contents of the bag into his hand. Glass coins fell into his palm, shining a spectrum of colors as the light hit them overhead. Carefully, he counted out twelve of the coins before laying them in Margeux’s hand. “That’s twelve speks. Con artist.” The witch only smiled happily as she counted the coins in her hand.

Lexi glanced over at the coins remaining. “What are those?”

He held them over to her. “These are speks. The currency in the realm. They shine the same in any light, proving that they’re real. Dwarves have tried to make counterfeits many times but they don’t have the magic to produce the shine.” He cupped the speks in his hands to show her. Even in the dark, the colors shined as if struck by sunlight.

“How much are they worth?”

He pointed at the coins again. “Each of these is one-hundred speks.” Dillon shook the bag once more, spilling out more shards of glass into his hand. He pointed at one that was shaped like a diamond. “This is ten speks.”

Lexi watched as he packed the speks away back into the bag. “Is there a one spek?”

“Yes. But Roger and I don’t use speks very often so we don’t have a lot of the smaller coins.”

“And in dollars. What would they be worth?”

Dillon caught her glance at Margeux as she asked him. “Not much. We wouldn’t be able to convert them to dollars or anything.”

“Mainly because the conversion rate is sky high.” Margeux smiled coldly. “Each spek is ten dollars. Roughly.”

Lexi’s eyes widened as she turned to Dillon. “So you just paid her twelve-thousand dollars?”

“Yeah but it’s not a big deal really.” He glared at Margeux who was still smiling devilishly across the room.

“What can I say? I’m an expensive woman.” She packed her speks away into a pouch similar to Dillon’s before sliding them into her pocket. “I still say you got a good price for all you put me through.”

A groan came from the couch as the figure there shifted. Sven sat up, stretching tiredly. “What did I miss?”