The Changeling

            By dusk, the doctor in his carriage has dipped into the low, flatland of the valley, immaculately verdant, the sky reflecting the last reach of light along and upon the green, and the light in turn reflecting this omnipresent colour back into the air. In the summertime, it has continued to rain, and the landscape is soaked through; this flatbed of land an organic sponge relatively small to the great, vast world, and the foliage is shiny, embellished with fat morsels of dew intactly preserved in their robust roundness, so that these plants may be the very cultivators of the diamonds that at that moment, in the deep darkness of the darker continent, they were splitting the land apart for, cultivating misery, searching within a much harder, more arid earth, and the doctor could tell them to leave it, abandon their expeditions, and though he had never left the valley and its sparse neighbours, he would pluck them one by one from their nestled hearths, sip, and be wealthy.

  Amidst the humidity, the doctor perspired, his bottom and lower back cool and damp, and him sliding around in the seat, trying not to crumple to the floor. The road is unusually poor, he thinks, and in the days he has been gone, the torrential downpours of the evenings have only deteriorated the uneven spine of the lone road that had been carved clumsily into the ground so that, if need be, we may arrive and, if need be further, we may depart, but those journeys of necessity were intended to be taken with the strictest discernment and in good faith.

Around him, the swollen frogs swell up further and release, singing their positions with the low croaking noises that appear one after the other as the carriage rattles past, and in the bowl of the surrounding mountains, the sounds are lower and louder than elsewhere and the amphibious creatures, disguised from sight, are elevated to animistic spirits of mysterious intent, meddling in tongues. In response, the carriage rings the music of its perpetual threat of collapse upon the dreadful road, frenziedly waves the groaning of wood like a hat to the moon that has appeared, slick and sharp on each end, high above the dark silhouette of mountains, growing smaller, seeing nothing: let us pass.

  And in the very last throes of long daylight, while the nocturnal world prepares, is almost ready, the doctor arrives at the modest cabin at last, and is pleased to see all orifices of the home tightly shut and covered against the darkness, and this structure that conveys and contains the poverty of its inhabitants hunched over itself, back towards him, suspiciously clutching its secret from view.

“Why does he not come in?”

“Perhaps he thinks us already in bed.”

“Nonsense- he sees the lights, does he not?”

“I will go and see to him-”

“Don’t you dare move.” A pause here. “You stay with the girl and I will go to him.”

  The mistress of the house stumbles out the rear entrance of her lodging, simultaneously clumsy yet with feral alertness. Her eyes dart back and forth among the encroaching darkness with suspicion so vicious that the twilight, having spotted the full furiousness of her surveillance has stopped dead in its advancement, half-a-dozen feet still midair and lungs trembling, frozen in the midbreath. Having seen nothing to her dismay, she feels no relief, and lunges the weapon of her body forward against the darkness, the lightness, it doesn’t matter, and gains around the side of the house to assault the doctor, and anticipates in her mind’s eye the view of the carriage until it is before her.

The doctor, she sees, standing outside the closed door of the coach, leering into the window. The woman is taken aback for a moment, performs a quick survey of the surrounding and sees that besides the horse, still erect and tied to its position whilst succumbing to sleeping, they are alone. Surely there is no one else either in the driver’s bench nor, and through the preening over the doctor’s shoulders she sees through the very glass to which he jests, in the seated compartment of the carriage.  

“Doctor?” she asks, and it is a number of questions at once.

The doctor freezes momentarily, caught unawares in the middle of his opera, and spins his vessel of performance around to face her.

“The good missus,” he says with a bow.

The woman is perplexed and makes a series of decisions, one after the other and compounding in importance, to allow this show of eccentricity by and by. She gestures to the house weakly and the doctor nods in response. They are off, along the uneven ramparts and corners of the shack, guided in their steps by the yellow light that feebly escapes the immeasurably dense brocade of the structure where air has compounded itself so thickly that it is a miracle this little light is able to flee the weight of its gravity.Behind her, she is acutely aware that the doctor follows at a pace leisure in contrast to her own small, hurried steps, but she cannot feel in what airs he persists. The discomfort of uncertainty does not heighten her desire to turn and accost him, but rather squashes it completely dead. She remains facing forward until they are arrived at the shut door, which she pulls open and gestures him inside, neither meeting his eyes nor returning the quick smile.

From the neglected state of the property and the haggard, disheveled appearance of the woman, the doctor had imagined at the poor state of things to come. As the door was opened for him, he fills his lung reflexively with the cool, clean air of the evening, and does not exhale for some time as he steps over the threshold, bending his head slightly to accommodate his frame. He was not so tall, but the shack was that small, and crowded from wall to wall with the appliances of life. In a quick survey, the scene was ordinary except at once he could feel the temperatures within were so much hotter than out. Every window had been sealed shut with makeshift boards and any holes in the walls plugged with rags. As they enter, he hears the door pulled closed behind him immediately by the woman who had to quickly sidestep so as not to fall into his back, and the small gust of air their arrival has swept in alongside them gallops through the room energetically, meeting the pointed heads of fire at the wick of innumerable candles fixed throughout and tickling them awake so they dance like tongues laughing and lapping up the gloom.

In an instant, this burst of activity is over. He spies the husband sitting at a chair uncomfortably low to the floor at what must have served as the table on which the family took their meals, now supporting a buffet of indistinguishable messes strewn about, peppered with murky utensils. He sees the husband struggle to rise from his seat, thin and despondent, but the doctor raises his hand to beg in gesture of him, no, remain seated, and the man slumps back into his position with a silent sigh of relief.

The doctor cannot hold his breath any longer, he exhales in a single beat then draws a long inhale and retches at the foulness.

When secrecy began her long work in this household, it may have been morning time, dear with the speckled birds hopping around the grass of the gardens, collecting sticks and other delicious discarded things, flying them home on the slender, pliable twigs to the eagerly awaiting mouths of babes; or the mid-afternoon when sun, cascading upon the enveloping hills, grilled down the fallen leaves on the path until all the water within was sucked and returned, and the passing dog, skeletal and happy and riddled with fleas, would step down upon them two-at-a-time, to a crunching sound that was soft to the ears; or the evening, alas, not so different to this, when typically the windows had not yet pulled in, and the world with its heady aroma of flora all day upon the pan of the earth set slightly steaming, lofting through the entrances and dizzying the head where, in the melee and mundanity of time and logs burning, something is candied, something is different.  

It was here where secrecy hums in through the door propped open by a rock whilst the woman goes back and forth between the kitchen and the vegetable bed, her young daughter left unattended at the table, and secrecy scuttling in like a spider and inspecting a number of spaces before she is settled for now, and the doors and windows from then on are no longer left open again because they have begun to thoroughly interrogate the child. Their squalor was neater and less insidious then. To the doctor, the room smells of burnt potions and wild scuffles, rotting meat, and flesh that is still burning, and sweat soaked into the walls and carpet, and jungle heat, defecations, and an acrid sterile stench of something medicinal spilt, and a fireplace working and working throughout the day, and something that invokes a metallic mouth-feel. And in every corner of the homestead after long hard days of work, snug within her nests, secrecy is sleeping soundly, sweet and content amongst the filth, we feel poorly at waking her.

“So, how is the girl now?”

The father does not reply so the woman speaks, “she is the same.”

“Meaning that she has not confessed?” The doctor covers his nose and mouth with his sleeve.

The parents nod weakly, and the doctor nods in thoughtful response.

“Well, I have returned because there has been a change in things- a development. I’ve heard some news that has made its way from the capital, and it seems that the fair use of judicial- or let’s say ‘interrogative’- torture has been effectively suspended.”

The parents look uncertainly towards each other, the doctor continues.

“Now, this order as it turns out is retroactive as of the first of this month, so it seems you are in quite some trouble.”

Neither parent is moved to speak as they consider this information, yet they feel that speaking is necessary. The doctor, who can make sense of this internal struggle and is eager to abandon the unwholesome premise, skips directly to his point.

“They will send an inspector once word is out about the child, and I can imagine word is already out somehow, no? That is the nature of such small villages as these, try as we might to conceal. We are already, most likely, out of time.”

At this, the mother begins to say something but the doctor shakes his finger at her and proceeds.

“The marks on the girl will be…evident. There is nothing to be done about this and, regardless, she may choose to expose you and tell everything. Lies and lies, and she will paint you as the evil ones- it is her way and her will. But I think then, we have done everything we can. We have given this devil every opportunity and now it is time to preserve only what is salvageable.”

The woman gawked at the doctor, eyes wide and unblinking. He cannot tell if she is about to cry or has been crying earlier, or if the pungent fumes are wetting and reddening her furious gaze, more furious by the second. In the fireplace, a log is burnt through and collapses further into the smouldering pile, setting off a shower of sparks between him and the parents and sending a thick grey cloud through the room. Now his eyes are stinging as well, and he waves the smog away from him and chokes, but is determined to finish his presentation.

“I saw a girl,” he says between coughs, “at an orphanage I had some business in up North, and she is, as far as anything goes, as close of a match to your own as is important. I have managed to secure her, and she will be here by tomorrow midday, and she will be yours.”

A long silence, the doctor waits patiently, pleased, but after some time leans back upon a slight shelf for support as his legs tire. The parents do not glance at each other to converse with worried looks, but regard the doctor, then themselves, they gaze downwards to their bodies, then their shoes. The woman is pulled by the subconscious urge to look out the window in distant thought, and has forgotten for a moment that the windows are gone.

“So. You would like us to kill the child,” she says, and as she utters each word, she grapples with their flavour.

The doctor is awake in his movements again. “But that was always the case, no? The child is a demon and there is only one way to dispel it. You only must hurry up now before the law finds you out. I mean, in these dark times, one can scarcely believe that we are unable to turn to our institutions for help any longer- whilst devils convene among us! It is lunacy.”

“But the child has not confessed.”

The doctor is confused. “No? Oh yes, you had said, but what is the matter now? You know what she is- the confession is irrelevant.”

“But-” she tries, but cannot finish.

The father stirs in his seat, suddenly violent with exasperation as if he had been stowing all of his energy until now to release in a clumsy chorus of wails.

“Oh no!” He cries, “no, no, no, I can’t take it- I can’t take it anymore!”

The woman regards her husband wordlessly, all of her emotions have been plucked by the indecent tornado of his misery, and she is now free to marvel with immaterial clarity at the moment. She considers the tight, cramped space, and the only adjoining room to the modest lefthand side of the table where her husband sits. The door to the bedroom, locked with the child behind it and the key is somewhere; surely it is somewhere, where did she put it, she could not have lost it, it could not have hidden.

“I had been to see a woman…” she starts. The doctor leans forward to listen.

“I had been to see a woman, and she says if the child does not confess then, well, the child may be innocent.”

“A woman?”

A hesitation. “A medicine woman, along the bridge.”

“A witch.”

The woman and the doctor stare at each other for a moment.

“You allowed her to do this?” the doctor inquires with the characteristic pleasantness that is turning increasingly forced.

The man sits up and wipes his face on his hands, annoyed.

“No, of course not. She doesn’t listen.”

The doctor nods sympathetically. “And what did the witch say?”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter what the hag says! A curse has fallen on this house and now we have the law after us- who is this girl you talk about? What about her parents then?” The man rose to his feet, hot with frustration and jumping the stones from despair to anger with urgency, desperate to traverse the river to the banks of solution, and collapse.

“The girl is an orphan, as I said; no one will come looking for her.”

“The woman said that she might not be a changeling, if she hasn’t confessed. I mean, if we’ve tried everything ‘till now and she’s yet to confess. To be sure, she told me to catch a frog and place it in her hands, or just make her hold it, you know. Then we would know for sure.”

The doctor is rich in his disdain. “I see. You would turn to a devil to seek out a devil.”

“She’s only to help us-”

“-I can’t take this-” her husband sputters.

“-and I have one there now, and we can try it and then we’ll see!”

The woman points animatedly at the short, shabby windowsill beside the doctor that he had not noticed before. True, there is a large frog, trapped under a glass and barely alive, miserable and half-suffocated, wilting in a prolonged dissatisfaction at its involvement in the scene. The doctor catches sight of its bumpy figure, affixed with the glassy, swamp-like stare and recoils in disgust.

“What exactly will we see? What sorcery do you invite into your house- you have not had enough yet?”

“She only said that we would know for sure.”

The doctor studies her and thinks of what to protest next, but it is unnecessary because the husband is now in action again, and he crosses the room with a violent determination, pushes his wife out of the way and reaches for the glass, tossing it over where it falls to the floor but does not break, there is instead only a muffled creak, and the frog is too late to grasp at its freedom before his hands are around it. The amphibian springs back suddenly with a last breath of life, but he is squeezing and squelching his fist tightly, bits of the frog poking through the thick fingers, squawking and struggling, until he has made it to the fireplace where he tosses its limp body to the coals, and there is a sizzling and a new stink unleashed to the air.

The woman slaps at him repeatedly with bared teeth, and he covers his head with his arms for protection.

“Damn it, stop, STOP, stop it, woman, I’ve had enough,” and he grabs both of her wrists in his hands and shakes her.  

“What are you doing- you’ll damn the child with no proof!”

The doctor interjects here “I think, he knows in the true wisdom of his heart that we know all we need to by now.”

She stops to turn her fury against the doctor.

“Sure, you trust him over me, but I saw him! Saw him earlier by the carriage, but he was smiling to himself- all kinds of faces he was making.”

Her husband is exasperated. “So, he was performing for the carriage, so what? You’d imagine he’d be nervous, is all.”

“This is private business is what’s been said again and again, or is it not? That carriage was empty, for goodness’ sake, and that man was smiling for no one.”

Sheepishly, he looks to the doctor who only shakes his head in answer.

“Leave it, woman, please, I’m… I am completely run through with mystery for now.”

Wracked with disbelief, the woman gawks from one man to another with jaws hung open, and shakes her head as if to clear it.

“There’s still time, we could- we can catch another frog-”

Her husband sighs, interrupts. “No, we’re out of time. The law’s on our trail- we’ve got to start cleaning up now!”

Without realizing, her hand has pressed against the pocket of her apron and felt the key to the bedroom, to the child. Of course, she has not lost it; keys are always placed into the same few places without thought, tossed into the identical spots over and over so that their shape becomes embedded in time, and time, of which they had apparently run out, was still that funny thing that flutters and floats, running and running past choice and into consequence without pause- so she must make another decision now, so what? She had never once had the time to stop, but knew that there were choices that had the power to change things, and would she make them? Wordlessly, she hands her husband the key.

“The best way to kill a changeling is with iron,” he says nodding, and looking to no one. He leans by the stove and produces an iron poker that has been scratched and clouded by countless fires, black and dull, it swallows the surrounding light like a grave. “Doctor, would you please… please, do us this favour and…”

The man presents the deathly instrument, trembling in his grasp, but the doctor flinches and recoils to the wall.

“I’m sorry, good man, but I cannot. It’s, uh… an oath I have taken, you see, I cannot do any such harm.”

The man pauses, regarding the doctor and conceding, to his own despair. He nods woefully in understanding, then turns finally to face the locked door. His wife does not move and has not since she had uncovered the key; motionless and thus determined in her stillness to remain invisible to the room. The doctor steps forward from his corner, eager for a better view as the locking mechanisms are clicked and turned, and the sad, flat wood is pushed inwards, and now everyone can have a clear look at you, and look at you!

When baby’s breath hung like vines under heaven to canopy our sights, you were baked in sunlight, gleaming like coins and your hair was syrup- I was oil, floating across the surface of your world, screaming and rocking with the bubbling froth of tides and screaming “be mine! be mine!”. Even though now you have been morphed by the trials of conjecture, and your face is as scarred and indecipherable as one rock from another, to me you are not such anathema as your poor, dereliction would suggest- you are moonlight fallen silver and liquid upon stone steps. Oh, how the sight of you makes my heart quiver! Earlier, as I lay awake, I was plagued by thoughts of you again; I saw the fullness of your palms, and you running naked through the rain, the bushy, harvested cattails that you’d race down the river like boats, the hem of your skirt, the hairs in your brow, the ribbon around your throat. I could hear the animals braying and pounding the dirt as you arrive with your buckets full of grain, and your weariness, and your smile, and the times, oh- the times! But perhaps I am remembering things all wrong. Perhaps I have spun you in the hands of memory like pink silk; heard an angel calling from upstairs and confused it with your song, spilt the milk just to come flying all this way, land at your door and cry over the way things were before. I had hopes, you have them too, that these are only momentary despairs. I carry in all my extravagant miseries some miraculous ability to take any feeling and weave another from its components, so I mean it when I tell you that trust is always hope in its seed, yes, and you are only beginning to change into some other hypnotic being, and so I trust that these are only momentary despairs, and whatever dark cloud has flown above this place is passing, is leaving.

*This story was first submitted to the Reedsy Inaugural Literary Prize, under the prompt “write a story that includes a change or transformation”.