Alina yawned and so did the collie.
“It’s such a silly life, Elak, a sheep’s. Munching on grass and drifting about in a flock, just to be shorn for your wool, or slaughtered at the Christ Mass. What’s the point of it, and why do they group together so stupidly like that?”
Elak lay there dumbly, and Alina ruffled the fur on his head with a grin, then answered her own question. “Perhaps they feel safer in the fold, dear Elak. Like most things do.”
The conversation had been rather one-sided, and Alina began to feel dizzy again. She lay back once more, but found herself still awake, staring mournfully at the slats in the old wooden ceiling, letting in the bitter weather, and the little flakes of snow that fluttered down, but vanished before they even reached her.
Alina was beginning to doze again when the hackles rose on Elak’s back. There was another noise, outside this time, and the dog started to growl furiously at the barn door.
“What is it, boy?”
The door opened and closed again noiselessly, and there in the darkness Alina Sculcuvant saw the glint of an axe blade. Elak sprang up with a snarl, but Alina caught hold of the dog as she realised who was standing there.
“No, Elak, don’t, it’s only Mia.”
Across the barn the little girl put the axe down carefully against the door and walked towards her friend. She was carrying a heavy sheepskin coat under her right arm and a cloth bundle in her left. The thick woollen coat was an old one that Malduk used to wear up in the mountains with the sheep, and was almost bigger than Mia was.
“For you, Alina,” said Mia, as she reached her bed. “You’ll need it on a bitter night like this.”
She held it out proudly to Alina, as Elak lay down again and put his head on his paws. Mia looked a little nervously at the large collie, for his sister Teela had snapped at her the week before. Elak was wagging his tail though, for he knew he was amongst friends.
“Thank you, Mia,” said Alina gratefully, “but what if your uncle finds out that you’ve …”
Mia could still hear the old couple’s arguing voices in her head, which had begun to rise as she had left the house and Ranna and Malduk had started to discuss Alina’s fate. She hated arguments so much, and the little girl felt sick, wondering fearfully if they had discovered what she had done that morning.
“Uncle won’t notice, Alina,” she answered. “I hid it at the back of the house the other day.”
Mia grinned as Alina wrapped the coat warmly about her. But her eyes darkened as she thought of what she had discovered in the chest. The little girl had realised it was a letter of some sort, and even at nine, Mia doubted that fairies and goblins wrote letters. Mia was desperately guilty, and almost frightened to speak of it.
“That mark on your arm, Alina,” she said, “are you sure you can’t remember what …”
“No, Mia. I’ve told you before. Please don’t ask again.”
Mia was going to say something about her discovery, when the barn door creaked loudly, and they both swung their heads. But the door just rattled on its own in the wind, then fell silent again.
“Nothing.” Alina sighed, looking at the bundle in Mia’s hands. “What’s that, Mia?”
Mia held up the parcel and unwrapped it carefully. Inside was some freshly baked bread, two large pieces of cheese, and a whole onion.
“Mia!”
“Don’t worry, Alina. I’ve been saving it up from my own meals.”
Alina took it gratefully, but she wasn’t hungry anymore; she was far too sleepy now. Instead she placed it carefully by her pillow, like some wonderful treasure.
“You’d better get back,” she whispered, with a heavy yawn. “They’ll be wondering.”
“No,” said Mia, sitting down beside Alina, “they’ve gone off somewhere.”
Alina looked back at Mia in surprise.
“Gone off? Where?”
“Don’t know.” Mia shrugged. “Maybe to buy some more tsuika. I saw them going down the track together.”
Alina wondered where they could be going at night, but almost wished that she had some fiery tsuika to drink herself—the local plum brandy that in winter was the surest way to warm the belly and fire the heart. The surest way to make your head ache too.
“I’ll sleep here too tonight, if you like,” whispered Mia. “It’ll be warmer, and perhaps we can try to share our dreams.”
It was a game Mia loved playing, getting Alina to close her eyes next to her, and seeing if they might have the same dream as they slept, because above all Mia wanted to dream of fairy kingdoms. Alina Sculcuvant, on the other hand, wanted to wake up to another world entirely.
“No, Mia,” she said. “It will only make them cross when they get back. You’d better not.”
Mia looked sadly at her friend.
“I don’t understand why they’re so hard on you,” she whispered glumly.
Alina had often asked herself the same question, and she had come to believe that it must be because they feared her link to the goblins, especially old Ranna. Alina was already old enough to know that nothing produces unkindness and cruelty so much as fear.
“It’s all right,” said the older girl, “at least a changeling has a roof over her head, thanks to them. Far warmer than many, and food and water too. We must all count our blessings. That’s what Ivan always says.”
Mia grinned at the thought old Ivan, a good friend to “Alin” over the years, and his only champion amongst the shepherds, probably because he so loved listening to Alin’s stories. Ivan had been there in the village last month, when Alin made up that wonderful tale of a girl, cruelly treated by her two elder sisters and made to work her fingers to the bone. Until she had found a fine silken dress in a hazel thicket, left by the fairies, and been seen by the handsome son of the village elder at festival, who had searched for her and taken her away to a better life. The boys had laughed at Alin cruelly for telling such a stupid, girly story, but wise old Ivan never laughed at Alin.
Alina’s remark about a changeling might have made Mia think of the mysterious parchment, but she was feeling very sorry for her friend, and instead she had another thought entirely.
“Well, if you really are a changeling, Alina,” she whispered, with a grin, “a goblin child, I mean, then perhaps you should teach my aunt and uncle a lesson.”
Alina looked up in surprise.
“A lesson? What on earth do you mean, Mia?”
“Oh, nothing too bad, Alina. But couldn’t you use your powers to stop them? Cast a spell or something. To make them kinder.”
Alina sat staring back at Mia, little knowing how badly she needed such a power that terrible night. If the sense of things that sometimes really did happen was a power, it was a very faint one. And though Alina had no idea where all the stories she wove came from, she didn’t see it as magic as some of the other children did.
Yet when she had been sad or hurt or frightened, she had often had the same thought herself. She would tell herself then that she was the daughter of a goblin queen, born in the heart of a magic flower, and suckled on honeydew, and could punish any who wished her harm, at will. That she could make their noses grow longer or their hair turn blue, that she could stop their voices with a wave of her hand, or make weeds sprout from their ears.
Yet Alina was fifteen now, and with time she had realised that she could do none of these things. She still asked herself whether that meant that she was no changeling, or simply that there was no magic in the world at all. In truth, at times she didn’t want there to be any magic, because the one thing that Alina Sculcuvant wanted above all others, and with all the strength of her passionate heart, was to be a normal girl.
“No, Mia. I couldn’t do any such thing,” she whispered gloomily. “Besides, do other children fare any better than me?”
The two children wondered at that strange thought. They had no idea how children beyond the village lived their lives.
“But they never stop scolding you,” said Mia indignantly, with all the deep sense of injustice of the young. “Even when I do something wrong, they punish you for it. It’s just not fair, Alina. It’s wrong. My parents would never … ”
Mia’s little blue eyes were suddenly wet with tears, and Alina sat up and hugged the little girl, feeling bitterly resentful that children should so be in the power of adults.
“We’ve each other, Mia,” she whispered kindly. “Always remember that. And I’m fine. Really. Don’t you trouble yourself about a changeling. I’m no more important than anyone else.”
Mia sniffed and wiped her eyes.
“You are. And at least you get to learn some wonderful things as a boy,” she said encouragingly, as Alina lay back again, and Mia reached down gingerly to touch Elak’s nose. “Things that ordinary girls never usually do.”
That was true enough. Malduk had taught “Alin” to count sheep on the mountains and read the seasons, to slaughter a lamb for festival and make Teela and Elak herd the dumb sheep about the valleys. To Mia these things made Alina seem as special as any goblin maiden, or the hireling of a fairy king. But although Alina always told herself that she should be grateful for it, with such useful knowledge came Malduk’s constant criticisms and threats, which only added to the deep sadness in poor Alina’s heart.
“Though who would really want to be a boy?” added Mia hotly. “They’re always arguing, or fighting and bullying each other.”
Alina smiled again. As she had sat by their fires listening to the shepherds, and deepening her voice to convince them she was a boy, she had often seen how tough they were on one another, and how hard a man’s life could be.
“Yes, Mia. They are.”
“I think you’re special, Alina,” said Mia, “and sometimes I don’t understand why you don’t …”
Mia paused helplessly, and Elak whined.
“What, Mia?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” answered the kindly little child. “What can girls do in the world anyway?”
Alina looked up and the barn door rattled again.
“You know, Mia,” she whispered ruefully, “I’ve sometimes thought of running away. Of going back into the mountains and the forests and finding out who I really am.”
Alina’s hazel eyes suddenly glittered.
“Of finding the goblins and the fairies and asking them if they stole me from a human home, long ago. Or, if I’m really one of them, why they abandoned me in the snow. Of seeking out Baba Yaga.”
Mia’s face was suddenly filled with fear. There was no figure more terrifying to the little girl than Baba Yaga. Tales of her came like bad weather from the Eastern lands, a hag who lived in a wooden house, supported on chickens claws, that walked around the forest on its own. A witch who flew through the night, in a huge stone mortar, using the pestle as her rudder and sweeping away any trace of her passing with a broom of silver birch as she spread her evil. But now there was an even greater fear than the one of Baba Yaga in the little girl’s heart.
“And leaving me here all alone?” Mia gulped, on the edge of tears again. “Shouldn’t you keep hiding from the fairies, Alina?”
Alina looked back at Mia and shook her head with a smile.
“I’m tired of hiding all the time, Mia. But don’t you worry. I’ll never leave you alone, I promise. I’ve a debt to your uncle and aunt too. They saved my life.”
“Only to make you their servant and scold you.”
The older girl winced inwardly. Alina Sculcuvant felt—no, she knew—that she was better than a servant, whether she was human or changeling, and this life of work and care seemed wrong. Yet her dim recollections of the past had made her feel that perhaps she had always been a servant. She patted Elak again and wanted to cry.
“Does a changeling deserve any more?” she said gloomily. “But you’d better get back now, Mia.”
Reluctantly little Mia got to her feet.
“All right then, Alina. Good night.”
Mia crossed the barn with a heavy heart and picked up the axe propped against the door.
“And Mia,” called Alina softly after her. “Thank you again.”
“That’s all right, dear Alina. Sleep safe.”
Mia was about to slip away, when she suddenly stopped and slapped her hand to her forehead.
“Silly Mia,” she cried. “I’m so forgetful.”
“What is it?” sighed Alina, feeling really sleepy now.
“I forgot to tell you again what I discovered this morning.”
Alina lay there listening, wondering where Malduk and Ranna could have gone.
“What, Mia?” she asked with another yawn.
The little girl frowned nervously.
“You must promise not to tell Uncle, Alina, or he’ll punish me.”
“Me, more like. I promise, though.”
The little girl reached into her pocket and pulled out the key.
“I found it this morning, and opened the old chest. They went to market early and I waited until I was alone,” said Mia, and in the darkness Alina couldn’t see her blushes. “There was a paper inside it, Alina. I tried to tell you before. Something to do with you.”
Elak’s ears had come forwards, as he sensed the sudden tension in the air, and Alina Sculcuvant was fully awake again. She sat up sharply.
“With me?”
“Yes, Alina. I’m sure of it. There was a picture at the top, just like that mark on your arm, and lots of words, I think. Could you read them?”
Alina was having exactly the same thought that Mia had had that morning, that goblins don’t write letters, and she got to her feet.
“Can you show me?” she said gravely, trying to throw off the effect of the potion. “Now, Mia?”
Mia’s little face showed her fear.
“But Alina, Malduk and Ranna—”
“If they’ve gone down to Moldov, there’ll still be time,” whispered Alina, rubbing her eyes. “We can look again, then return it before they get back.”
Mia was shaking, but she nodded slowly.
“All right then.”
“Elak, stay there, boy,” said Alina, as she walked unsteadily towards Mia. “And be as silent as the grave.”
With that Alina and little Mia slipped through the barn door, leaving the axe behind. Outside, the yard was eerily empty and the snow was getting thicker, heaping around the stone well and laying its heavy, silent carpet over the shepherd’s thatched house and the cluttered yard around it. There seemed to be no one about, and no noise from the hovel. The adults had gone all right.