By: Brianna Lee Hubler
Copyright © 2022 Brianna Lee Hubler. All rights reserved.
(Warning: This story contains sensitive content. One major theme of “The Changeling” is: No one is replaceable. Another major theme is: The fierce love parents should have for their children. Please read carefully with those themes in mind. Please do not read this if the subject of miscarriage is too painful for you. However, no insult is intended by the subject matter. Everyday, I grieve for the two children I miscarried.)
__________Crack! Thud! A branch of the apple tree broke. Something hit the ground beneath. Was it the branch? Or was there someone in the tree? The sound woke Lady Rena. The worry pulled her from her bed. She threw off the covers, stumbled to the window, and opened the shutters. She peered into the darkness, but the dim light of the stars could not overcome the shadows of the moonless night. Lady Rena saw nothing and heard nothing more. She closed the shutters and crawled back into bed. She scolded herself for letting her overactive imagination get the best of her, ignored her lingering concerns, and again, she slumbered.
***
__________The servants’ door was unlocked. This concerned not the lord and lady of the house, for twenty slept there in the servants’ quarters, scattered about the floor on bedrolls; no thief could enter without tripping over a poorly clad, shivering body. Yet tonight, the rickety door creaked, and opened but four inches. A darkly clad, slender individual, features hidden beneath a raven-feathered masquerade mask, slipped through the four-inch gap. He whispered a short spellscript and a faint light engulfed the room. A servant grimaced but did not awaken; a hard day’s labor had snuffed out any desire to rise before the sun. All slept deeply embedded within their dreams.
__________The masked invader’s slender feet danced between the bedrolls, through the servants’ quarters, out the door opposite his entry, and into the adjoining kitchen. The masked invader smirked. How easy it had been to pass into the castle unnoticed! He hid himself in a shadowed corner, pressed his back against a wall, and listened.
__________A couple guardsmen marched and chatted along their appointed watch route. Their deep laughter resounded in the large hall they passed through. The masked invader listened as their heavy steps and voices grew softer and softer. He waited for them to pass out of the hall, so that he could sneak in. A door in the hall shut, and the masked invader crept through the kitchen into the large hall. His light feet scampered from the kitchen exit to the edge of a flight of stairs. He pressed his back against the cold, stone body of the staircase and hid himself in its triangular shadow. Again, the invader listened, not only for wandering guardsmen and too-courageous servants, but for something specific—a cry.
__________The invader smiled when he heard it, the soft cry of the lord and lady’s newborn heir. A disgruntled, heavy-set wet nurse climbed the stairs after the sound. She grumbled about the height of the stairs and her displeasure in climbing them, how her feet ached, and how she had been to the child’s room only an hour before. Her grumbling preoccupied her; she did not see the masked invader slip behind her. Her heavy steps squelched the sound of the invader’s light ones. She made it up the stairs and into the nursery, not noticing that she was followed.
__________The wet nurse struck a match and reached to light the candle on a nightstand by the nursery door. A slender hand snatched the metal candleholder from the nightstand. The wet nurse turned and gasped. The masked invader bashed her skull with the candleholder and the heavy woman dropped to the floor. That won’t go unnoticed, the masked invader thought.
__________He rushed to the castle heir’s cradle, gently lifted the fussing infant from his bed, and consoled him. Then he lulled the child, softly, sweetly, with a song, though his lyrics were dark:
__________“Mommy perished in the fire,
__________provoking Daddy’s ire,
__________and knights stole you away.
__________If they find me here with you,
__________they might set me on fire too.”
__________The infant giggled.
__________The masked invader smiled, but then the door to the nursery swung open. Two armored knights marched into the room.
__________“Unhand him, Villain!” the knights ordered.
__________The invader’s face twisted so darkly that not even his mask hid his scowl.
__________“No,” he said, and that was all.
__________He held the infant tightly against his chest with one arm. With the other he punched a hole through the nursery window. Its stained-glass image of the Virgin Mary and her Holy Child shattered. The knights charged.
__________The masked invader leapt through the broken window, cradling the child against him. Two-stories beneath, he fled with the child into the woods. One knight sounded his horn, and a cohort pursued them.
***
__________A shrill shriek rose from Lady Rena’s bedchamber. Her fears had been realized, for the child’s father had returned. She rose again from her bed and hurried to the window. She heard the clanging plate armor of the cohort in pursuit. She shook her head and turned away, hugged herself and whimpered, They’ll never catch him now.
__________Her eyes darted to a small urn set behind a glass cabinet in her room. There rested the ashes of the child she had miscarried. Her whimpers turned to sobs.
__________“I’m sorry,” she cried. “I never should have tried to replace you.”
Endlesslore 