Changeling Child
by Miranda Miller
“Changeling Child” by Miranda Miller. Copyright © 2024 by Miranda Miller.
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There was a fairy who went to Marta’s church.
People didn’t talk about it, but everyone knew. He sat in the back in a long coat with his hair combed over his ears and he didn’t leave his seat. He stood when everyone else stood and sat when everyone else sat, and during the songs he opened the songbook and didn’t sing a word.
He didn’t speak to anyone, and no one spoke to him.
Fairies weren’t unusual, of course. People liked to pretend they didn’t exist, but they did. They curdled milk and stole children and cursed anyone who dared to touch them. Everyone in Marta’s town knew not to travel the streets on the night of a full moon, and if they were foolish enough to do so, they would be painfully, scrupulously polite to any strangers they met. Fairies were far too magical and strange to be gotten rid of in any normal way, and so most people went about their days pretending they weren’t real, and went about their nights safe at home with their doors locked against fairy influence.
The fairy in Marta’s church made pretending rather hard.
Marta hadn’t known he was a fairy at first. He was the last to enter and the first to leave, and she didn’t know how long he’d been coming, only that between one day and the next, she’d looked around and recognized everyone except for the lone stranger in the back. When she tugged her mother’s sleeve and asked who he was, her mother’s mouth thinned into a line and she whispered that he was a fairy, and he was not to be bothered.
At first, Marta couldn’t believe it. Fairies were evil, said her friend Alice. They were heathen remnants of an obsolete god, said her teacher. Fairies can’t go to church, said Marta’s grandmother. They’re the unbaptized souls of babies and minions of the devil. When Marta pointed out that it was hardly babies’ faults if they weren’t baptized, her grandmother huffed and said that they were minions of the devil, then, and to stop asking so many questions.
Marta had a lot of questions. Marta wanted to know, if fairies were minions of the devil, why did the fairy come to church? Was it a punishment? Was he in pain? Nobody could answer her. They told her to leave well enough alone, and to never, ever, meddle with fairies.
Marta tried. She really did. But curiosity is an intrinsic trait of both children and cats, and she couldn’t leave anything interesting alone for long.
She read all the books she could find on fairies, and learned that when it came to fairies, there were a lot of rules. You shouldn’t eat their food, and you shouldn’t thank them, and you shouldn’t go to fairyland with them or else you might wake up thousands of years in the future. Above all else, the stories said, you should never, ever tell a fairy your true name.
The stories had very little to say about fairies and church. They implied that God and fairies were not on speaking terms, and that was that. But then what was the fairy at Marta’s church doing? The whole point of church, Marta felt, was to try to hear God a little bit better in the people around you.
Marta had to know. And, she reasoned, she’d been forbidden from speaking to fairies, but she hadn’t been forbidden from speaking to parishioners. The fairy came to church every week that she could remember, which had to have been enough times to be considered a parishioner.
Marta was careful not to ask anyone exactly what traits made someone a parishioner. She was at the age where she had figured out that she could get away with things by following the letter rather than the spirit of the law, and claim childish ignorance if it all went south. Marta decided that a parishioner was anyone who went to church regularly, and made sure that no one had the chance to tell her otherwise.
Marta chose her moment carefully. She asked her parents if she could stay after church one morning, just to pray a little and ask some questions. Her parents agreed, telling her to be home in half an hour, and to stay out of the street. Marta agreed and clasped her hands to pray as people slowly trickled out of the church. So as not to make herself a liar, Marta asked God for help in answering her questions, and also for safety. Just in case.
She peeked out of the corner of her eye to see an empty church. The fairy was long gone. She’d known he was always first out, but it would make finding him rather tricky, especially if he could ride away on a sunbeam or a butterfly’s wing like the fairies in her books. She darted out of the church faster than was quite respectful, and dashed down the steps. Left or right? Marta lived to the left, along with most of her friends, and she’d never once seen the fairy in that direction, so she turned right.
The street quickly turned into neighborhoods and labyrinthine roads, and he could have gone down any number of turnings. Or just straight into the trees, Marta realized. Fairies lived in glens and mushroom rings, didn’t they?
She ran down to the first intersection, and looked up and down. Nothing. She ran to the next. Nothing. She ran to the next intersection, feeling guilty about getting further and further away from where she’d told her parents she’d be, when she looked to the left and saw the edge of his long coat disappearing around a corner.
Marta dashed after him. Once she turned the corner, it didn’t take long to catch up. The fairy was walking fast with his head down, but he wasn’t running, and Marta was the fastest runner in her class.
He heard her footsteps approach, and stepped to the side to let her pass without looking back. Marta ran past him, then turned around, trying to catch her breath.
“Hi,” she said, beaming wide enough to show her missing tooth. “I think we go to the same church.”
She’d never seen much of the fairy beyond his long coat settled in the shadows of the church, so she took the opportunity to properly look at him. Up close, his coat was a sort of warm tan, and his dark hair didn’t fully obscure the slight point to his ears. He could almost, but not quite, be mistaken for human. There was something in the gracefulness of every movement, the strange green light behind his eyes like a cat’s at night, that told Marta with absolute certainty that this was a fairy.
He wasn’t what she’d expected. He wasn’t wearing a cloak made of night or a pin of starlight, and he was dressed in simple human clothes. He looked even more human when he frowned at her, and hunched his shoulders a bit, as if to ward off a chill.
“I think you’re mistaken.” His voice was ordinary, and a bit rough, and Marta realized that he wasn’t as old as she’d thought. She’d thought all fairies were ageless and near-immortal, but he sounded a bit like her neighbor’s oldest boy, who was apprenticing to the carpenter.
“No,” said Marta firmly. “We do. St. Beatrice’s. I just saw you come from there. I followed you,” she said, to forestall any further denial. Fairies could be cagey, and play with the truth, so it was best to be clear and exact when dealing with them.
“Okay,” agreed the fairy with a sigh. “What are you doing here?”
Marta realized that she’d gotten exactly what she’d wanted—a chance to speak with the fairy—and fought down the urge to cheer.
“I wanted to ask you a question.”
The fairy raised an eyebrow. “Well?”
Marta blurted it out. “Why do you go to church?”
The fairy’s face flickered for a moment, a feeling flashing across it too fast for her to understand.
“Is this it, then?” His voice was scratchier than it had been. “Did they send you to tell me to stop coming?”
“What?” Marta drew back. “Nobody sent me. I was just curious.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”
Marta bristled. “No, I’m serious. Nobody sent me. I came on my own. I snuck out of church, and I followed you.”
She glared at him, and she could see the moment when he believed her because his eyes widened and he took a step back and said, “Oh, that’s worse. You shouldn’t be following strangers home, kid.” He looked up and down the street. There was nobody else around. “You need to go home before your parents start to worry. Do you know the way?”
“Of course I know the way,” scoffed Marta, “My parents don’t care if I go all over town.” That was an exaggeration, but the fairy didn’t need to know that.
“Go home,” said the fairy. “I’m serious.” He pointed back down the street, and Marta huffed.
“You didn’t answer my question!”
“And I won’t,” he said. “Not unless you can get your parents’ permission to come ask me questions.” His tone of voice suggested that he didn’t think it was very likely. Marta didn’t either. “Go home.”
Marta groaned and stomped off. At the corner, she looked back to see him walking away, fast. Head down, shoulders hunched. She wondered how far away he lived.
Marta’s parents told her not to take so long at the church next time, but didn’t suspect a thing. Marta poked at her dinner that night. There was absolutely no way they would ever let her get near a fairy, not even one from church. It was impossible.
Impossible. Marta froze, then inhaled the rest of her dinner and asked to be excused. She ran to her room to dig up her book of fairytales. Impossible tasks were all over them. Tasks given from princesses to their champions, from mother-in-laws to daughter-in-laws, from fairies to clever peasants. There were impossible tasks all over her stories, but the thing about impossible tasks was that there was always a way to do them. You just had to be clever or magic, or know somebody clever or magic, in order to find the solution.
There wasn’t a drop of magic in Marta’s whole town, so she would have to be clever. She didn’t want to ask anyone else’s help. No one else had been interested in why the fairy went to church.
Marta wrote down the fairy’s challenge, as close as she could remember it. I won’t answer your question unless you can get your parents’ permission to come ask me questions.
She sat in her room and stared at the paper and started to think.
Marta looked for loopholes until her eyes went numb. There was nothing. No way around it. She had to have her parents’ permission, and there was no way they would ever let her go talk to a fairy. Marta could imagine how that conversation would go. Mom, Dad, can I go talk to the fairy from church? No, no, absolutely not, and you’re getting extra chores for a week.
Was there a way she could refer to him as not-the-fairy? As—Marta abruptly realized that she didn’t know the fairy’s name. She hadn’t introduced herself, she’d just started asking personal questions. That was embarrassing. She’d been rude, and she hadn’t even noticed. She would ask his name the next chance she got, she promised herself, to make up for it. Or ask for his nickname. Fairies were weird about names, weren’t they?
She flipped open the book of fairytales and started skimming. Names, names, there! There it was. You weren’t supposed to tell a fairy your true name, because then they could control you. That’s why all the fairytale heroes gave themselves nicknames—Spider or Quickwit or Barrel-rider. And all the fairies went by Briar or Goodfellow or the Young Stranger, because they didn’t want to give their true names either.
So she couldn’t ask for his name, and she couldn’t call him “the fairy”. Maybe she could just say “one of the people from church”? But her parents would ask which one, and she’d have to tell them.
Unless she didn’t. Marta shot up from her bed and pumped her fist in success. If she told her parents that she wanted to talk to a bunch of people at church, like one person from every family, they would hardly ask for a list. They would assume she would stick to the people they were most familiar with, and that would be that. And if she said that she wanted to ask about their family history with church, she wouldn’t be lying.
Marta put her plan into motion the very next day. For the next history project, their teacher was making them pick a subject to research and present to the class. Marta asked if she could write about religion in their town, and incorporate interviews from actual people. She couldn’t neglect the research in favor of interviews, her teacher warned her, and Marta agreed without hesitation.
She brought the idea to her parents, who were pleased that she was taking the initiative to improve her less-than-stellar work in history, and agreed that she could go talk to people as long as she was polite. So, the very next day, after school, Marta beelined for the street where she had last seen the fairy.
Marta hoped that he lived in a house. If he lived in a mushroom circle outside of town, she might be out of luck. But there were faster ways to get to the forest than going through this winding neighborhood, so when she got to the intersection where she’d last seen him, she picked a street and followed it, looking for odd nature things in the yards. She felt a bit like a detective, looking for clues.
When she’d finished walking up one street, she would go back to the intersection and take another. There was nothing really out of the ordinary about any of them. Just rows of houses, some cluttered, some not. Some had cracks in the plaster, and some had children playing in the yard, who waved to Marta when she recognized them.
It was getting close to dinnertime, and Marta still hadn’t found him. She went back to the third street at the intersection.
She was tired and hungry and frustrated when she saw it. A lovely little house with blooming roses and daisies and a sentry pair of sunflowers elegantly arranged in the yard. That had to be a fairy’s house. Marta ran up the walk and knocked on the door. Nothing. She knocked again, louder.
A voice called from within the house to wait, and Marta bounced on her heels, grinning with success, ready to ask his name and then her questions, when a woman answered the door.
She was stern-looking, with short dark hair and a frown on her face. She also looked a little bit familiar. Marta thought that perhaps she sold flowers at the market.
“Can I help you?” the woman asked.
“Sorry,” said Marta. “I saw the flowers and I thought the fairy might live here. Do you know where he lives?”
The woman scowled. “Try the dump two doors down. My flowers are the product of skill.” She shut the door firmly in Marta’s face.
Marta frowned, then backed down the stairs to look first right, then left. Two doors down on the right was a rickety little house with crumbling plaster and the shutters falling off. It didn’t look much like a fairy’s house at all. There weren’t any flowers in the yard, and the only tree belonged to the neighbor on the other side, and it was dying. Marta wondered if the woman had lied. Still, better to check.
She walked down the sidewalk and up to the front of the house. She knocked.
There was the sound of crashing from inside, and low grumbling. She couldn’t tell if it was the fairy or not. She knocked again. The grumbling stopped, and suddenly the door was yanked open and the fairy glared down at her.
“What do you want?”
Marta couldn’t help herself. She beamed. “I got permission!”
He blinked. “What?”
“I got permission,” repeated Marta. “From my parents, like you said. They said I can come ask you questions about religion and history as long as I’m polite.”
He squinted at her. “You’re not lying, are you? I’ll know if you are.”
“I’m telling the truth,” said Marta. Not all of the truth, but that was what fairies were known for. She was just playing by his rules. “Is now a good time for me to interview you, or should I come back later?”
The fairy sighed, ran a hand through his hair, and swung the door open further. “Now’s fine,” he said, and turned to walk back into the house. “Watch your step. I dropped a glass.”
Marta followed him in, closing the door behind her and walking into a little kitchen where the fairy was sweeping glass shards into a pan. He looked almost ordinary, but there was a hint of something otherworldly about him when she looked at him out of the corner of her eye.
“What’s your name?” she asked, sitting down on one of two little chairs at a small table. The kitchen was barely big enough for two, with some cupboards and an icebox along the wall. There was a cast-iron cooking stove and a short stack of wood opposite them.
“Franklin,” he said, standing up to dump the glass shards in a bin. “What’s yours?”
Marta hesitated. Should she tell him her name? Or make up a name? Would that be rude? She hesitated too long, because he looked at her and blew out a frustrated breath, the way her mother did when the rabbits had dug up the garden again.
“I can’t actually do anything with it,” he said. “That’s a lie people tell to get out of accepting responsibility for their actions. Look, I can just call you Nosy Church Girl if you’d prefer—”
“No,” said Marta quickly. “No, sorry. My name’s Marta.”
He nodded slowly. “Nice to meet you, Marta.”
“Nice to meet you, Franklin.”
He sat down at the table across from her, and looked at the paper and pencil she had neatly set out on it. “You’re prepared,” he said, a bit surprised.
“Yes,” said Marta. “I’m writing an interview research paper now,” she informed him, feeling the tiniest bit self-important.
Franklin—which was an odd name for a fairy, Marta thought, it felt too normal—shifted in his seat.
“Why do you go to church?” She wrote, carefully, Franklin at the top of her paper, and looked at him expectantly.
Franklin considered this. “The same reason anybody else goes to church, I suspect. I grew up going to church, and it’s a habit.” After a moment of looking at her, he added seriously, “I believe. I believe that there’s something big and good out there, and church is a way of talking to it. Everyone needs someone to talk to.”
“That’s it?”
Franklin laughed. “Were you expecting something more dramatic? Look, why do you go to church?”
Marta shrugged. “My parents say I have to.” Franklin just looked at her. “And I guess I like it,” she said, grudgingly. “I mean, it’s boring sometimes, but we talk a lot about being nice to people and helping them out, and that makes me feel good.”
“See?” said Franklin. “That’s all it is, really.” He sat back, satisfied, and Marta was suddenly abruptly certain that she’d been outplayed.
She threw down her pencil. “But doesn’t it hurt you?” she burst out. “My grandma says that holy things burn fairies.”
Franklin flinched. “So you do know,” he said, a strange bitterness in his voice. “I’d started to think—but no, of course everyone can tell.”
“Tell what?” asked Marta. “That you’re a fairy?”
“Yes,” snapped Franklin.
Marta moved back in her chair. She’d upset him, but she wasn’t sure how. “Sorry,” she said.
Franklin sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “No, it’s fine. I just— Never mind. Holy things don’t burn fairies, as far as I’m aware.”
Marta frowned. “Then why don’t you go up front with all the other adults?”
Franklin smiled a bit. “I figured it might be better to stay in my seat and not cause any trouble for a little while. Just until people got used to me.”
“Got used to you?” Marta repeated. “What do you mean?”
Franklin raised a wry eyebrow. “Fairies don’t usually go to church, Marta. That’s why you wanted to come talk to me in the first place, isn’t it? Sometimes people need time to get used to new things.”
Marta frowned. “You’ve been coming for a while, though. Haven’t people gotten used to you yet?”
“Have you?”
Marta considered this. “Well, no,” she admitted, “but that’s only because my parents would never let me come say hello. Or look at you too long.” Franklin’s mouth twisted to the side in something that wasn’t a smile, and she quickly assured him, “But now that I’m talking to you, I’m sure I’ll get used to you very quickly.”
“That’s kind of you,” said Franklin. “Was there anything else you wanted to ask?”
Marta looked at her list of questions. She’d just wanted to ask why he went to church, and now that she knew that he went for the same reasons anybody else did, the thrill of mystery had gone out of it. But, she figured, she could do the rest of the ordinary interview and put it in her paper anyway.
She looked at the next question on her list. “What is your family’s history with religion?”
Franklin got an odd sort of look on his face, half laughter and half sorrow. It was a very fairy expression. He seemed to come to a decision after a moment, and said, “My parents were raised in the church, and it goes pretty far back, I think. Grandparents, great-grandparents. I think the great-great grandfather,” he hesitated, thinking, “on my mother’s side?—was a different denomination. But he changed to marry my great-great grandmother.”
Marta blinked. “All those fairies went to church? Where did they live?” She’d definitely have heard of it if there was a church full of fairies anywhere nearby.
Franklin shook his head. “They weren’t fairies.”
Marta frowned. “They weren’t fairies? But you’re a fairy. How’d that work?”
“It’s complicated,” said Franklin, which Marta knew was just an adult’s way of saying, I don’t want to tell you.
“Tell me,” said Marta. “I’m not a little kid, you know.”
“So demanding,” said Franklin, but she could tell he was softening. She’d been prepared to be much more stubborn. Maybe he was lonely, Marta suddenly thought, looking around. It didn’t look like anyone else lived there. Everyone needs someone to talk to, he’d said, but if people stayed away from him for fear of getting cursed or magicked, who did he have to talk to? Me, decided Marta, and she promised herself that she would figure out a way to make it true. “It’s a long story,” he said at last. “Are you sure you have time?”
Marta looked out at the setting sun and gasped. She didn’t have time. In fact, she was nearly late for supper. “No,” she said, jumping to her feet. “I have to go home.”
Franklin stood with her and went to open the front door. “That’s all right,” he said, “Be careful crossing—”
“Can I come back tomorrow?” Marta blurted. “After school again? I want to hear the story.” Franklin looked surprised. “And if it’s private I don’t have to put it in my paper, I just want to know.”
Franklin smiled at her, and she smiled back. “Yeah, alright,” he said. “You can come back tomorrow.”
“Yes!” said Marta, jumping down the front steps before whipping back around. “Wait, what’s your last name? My parents say I’m not supposed to talk about adults with their first name.”
Franklin laughed. “I’m barely an adult,” he said. “You can call me Franklin. But my last name is Redding.”
“Thank you, Mr. Redding,” Marta said, and laughed when he wrinkled his nose at her. She turned and dashed off down the sidewalk, and was halfway home before she remembered that you weren’t supposed to say “thank you” to fairies. She wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was something about owing them a favor?
The next day, Marta ran straight to his house after school. He opened the door right after she knocked and showed her in. This time there was a little plate of biscuits and two glasses of water on the table.
“Are you hungry?” he asked as they sat down, pushing one of the glasses towards her.
Marta was, but she also knew that you weren’t supposed to eat fairy food unless you wanted to be stuck in fairyland forever and ever.
“Did you make these?” she asked, stalling.
Franklin shook his head. “I got them down at the corner store. Sorry if they’re a bit stale. They were day-old.”
Well, Marta thought, they were hardly in fairyland now, and it couldn’t be fairy food if it was from the corner store. “That’s alright,” she said, leaning forward to grab one. “They look good.”
Franklin seemed pleased, and took a biscuit as well.
“I do want to hear your story,” prompted Marta after a moment. “With your parents and the church and everything.”
“I know,” said Franklin, staring at his glass of water like it contained the secrets of the universe. “I’m just collecting my thoughts, I suppose.”
“Okay,” said Marta, and fiddled with her pencil, and ate another biscuit, and waited.
Franklin thought for a bit longer, then drank from his glass, set it aside with a decisive thump, and said, “What do you know about fairies?”
“A lot, I think,” said Marta. “I mean, I know all the stuff my parents warned me about, like not going out on a full moon, or going into mushroom circles. And I’ve been doing a lot of reading and talking to people, but some of that’s wrong because it says that holy objects burn fairies.”
“Do you know what a changeling is?” Franklin asked.
Marta nodded. “That’s when a fairy swaps a human baby and a fairy baby. Then the fairy baby causes trouble for the parents, and they have to pinch it to make it cry in order to get their real baby back.”
“That’s the usual story,” said Franklin. “But it’s not quite true. The fairy baby is just a baby. It can’t curse a household any more than a normal baby can. It doesn’t know how. The fairy parents can curse the household on behalf of the child, in order to clue the humans in to the swap, and to get their child back.” He paused, looked at his long-fingered fairy hands, and said, “Most fairy parents do that. Most fairy parents get their children back.”
Marta didn’t like where this was going. “Were you a changeling?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Franklin, the simple bare truth on his face. “And I didn’t know it. Neither did my parents.”
Marta leaned back and looked at him from top to toe. He might appear human at first glance, but he was definitely fairy. “I don’t mean to be rude,” she said, “but you couldn’t tell?”
He was too quick, and too long, and he was sort of gray if you looked at him out of the corner of your eye.
“No,” said Franklin, looking at the back of his hands. “You couldn’t tell when I was growing up. Changeling magic is powerful. You look exactly like them, right up until you get swapped back.” He leaned back in his chair and opened a drawer, taking out a scrap of paper. “This is what I used to look like.”
It was a rough pen and ink sketch showing a smiling young man. Slightly crooked teeth, hair all messed up. An image of human joy, caught in a moment. Marta looked at Franklin. It was him, but different. The Franklin in front of her had perfect teeth, and his hair was messy in a way that was artful. He was the young man in the sketch made fairy.
“How old were you when they swapped you back?” she asked, handing him the sketch.
“They didn’t,” said Franklin, “Not really. The fairies of Blackfriar River are notoriously lazy. You’ve heard of them?” Marta nodded. She had. Her mother had a childhood friend who’d moved there, and she’d spoken of barely any fairy trouble. “That’s where I’m from,” said Franklin. “They didn’t put a curse on the household to clue the parents in, and they forgot to come back. I grew up. I turned twenty-one six months ago. Four months ago, at midday, I answered the door, and there was a pair of fairy lords and a human baby waiting on the doorstep.”
“A baby?” said Marta, wrinkling her nose. “After all those years?”
“Time moves differently in fairyland,” said Franklin. “A thousand years in an afternoon, an afternoon in a thousand years. They thought he was cute, as a baby, and they kept him that way. And then they got bored of him, and thought, ‘wasn’t there something else we were supposed to do with this?’ and sent him home.” He sighed, fiddling with the sketch. “I was all grown up. If they’d taken me back, they would have had to present me to the fairy courts. Decided on my title and status. Someone would have had to make sure I wouldn’t embarrass them if the fairy queen came by. It was too much trouble, so they dumped the baby in my arms and told me I was no longer considered a son of theirs.”
Marta winced. “Were your parents there? I mean, your human parents?”
“Dad was,” said Franklin. “He’d been in the back garden, so he walked up in time to see them leave. He saw my glamour fail. I was holding him—the real Franklin—and fairy magic fades in the face of truth.” He leaned back to put the sketch back in his drawer. “And now I look like this.”
“What did your dad say?”
Franklin shrugged. “He just looked at me, and he said, ‘Is that Franklin?’ and I said, ‘Yes’, and he held out his arms and I gave Franklin to him, and he looked at the kid, and there was a sort of birthmark, on the wrist, that I’d—well, he’d—had as a kid, but it had faded as I’d grown up, and the kid had it exactly. I saw it, and I reached out to touch it, just a finger, to see,” and Franklin held out a finger towards Marta, as delicate as if he was going to brush a petal, and held it an inch from her arm, “and he stepped away from me. He didn’t let me touch him.”
Marta felt sick. She couldn’t imagine what she would do if her parents did that. If they recoiled from her like she was dangerous to touch. Biting her lip, she reached forward her own finger and bumped Franklin’s, and he blinked and came back from whatever memory he’d been walking in to give her a small smile. “And then what?” she asked.
“I left,” said Franklin. “Straight out the front door and after the fairies. I ran past my mother on the path back, but I don’t think she recognized me. The fairies were gone when they got to the forest, and I didn’t know how to follow them, so I left town with the clothes on my back and came here.”
Marta looked around the little house. “Straight here?”
“Pretty much,” said Franklin. “I’m renting the house, and I work with the foresters. I wore a hat when they hired me, and I don’t think they realized what I was until I showed up for my first day. But now they’re afraid to fire me, and they think I’ll help them avoid offending the fairies of the forest.”
“Do you know how to avoid offending fairies?” Marta asked. Franklin raised an eyebrow. “I mean,” she said, tripping over her words, “I don’t want to offend you, on accident. You seem nice.”
“Thanks,” said Franklin dryly. “And no, I don’t. I’m offended the same as anyone—any human—and I’ve got no more idea about fairy manners than you have.”
“Huh,” said Marta. “Do the foresters know that?”
“I tried to tell them. They mostly just make agreeable sounds at me and stay as far away as they can. They’re nice enough, but they never say thank you and I don’t know anyone’s name.”
“That’s rude!” said Marta.
“Human-rude,” said Franklin. “But fairy-safe. Mostly I just call them ‘you there!’ and point, but I live in fear of the day that someone’s under a falling tree and I have to shout, ‘Blondie, move it!’”
Marta snorted. Then she stopped. It was a little funny, but also sad. “That’s not right. My mother knows everyone who works in her shop, and nearly all the customers besides. And she talks to them all the time.” Marta looked around the empty little kitchen. “I bet you’re lonely.”
Franklin raised an eyebrow but didn’t disagree. “There’s not much to be done about it.” He tilted his head, thinking. “I suppose that’s another answer to your original question. I go to church, and I feel less alone.”
“Do you?” said Marta. “Because, not to be rude again, but nobody sits with you. And they don’t—”
“I know,” said Franklin. “But I don’t go to church for the people. I go to church for my faith.”
“But how?” said Marta, finally finding the question that she’d really wanted to ask all this time. “How? The stories say that God and fairies are enemies, or at least they ignore each other.”
Franklin smiled sadly. “I heard those stories too,” he said. “I almost believed them. And then I thought, I had faith before I knew I was a changeling, but I was a changeling the whole time. Knowing that about myself didn’t change any part of who I actually was.”
Marta considered this. It was an interesting point. Was any part of Franklin fundamentally different? She was going to ask another question, though about what she wasn’t yet sure, when Franklin glanced out the window towards the golden setting sun.
“It’s getting late. Shouldn’t you be getting home?”
Unfortunately, he was right. Marta gathered her papers to go, then hesitated on his doorstep when he showed her out. “Mr. Redding,” she said, then amended it to, “Franklin,” when he laughed and shook his head. “Can I come back next week? I have to interview some more people now, but, well,” she tripped over what she wanted to say, and it all came out in a rush, “I don’t think you should be lonely, and I’d like to visit you.”
Franklin looked down at her, far more tall and fairylike than he’d seemed across a kitchen table eating biscuits. “You can,” he said at last, and smiled at her.
Marta beamed back, jumped down the steps, and ran all the way home.
She finished her interviews and used them in her presentation at the end of the week. Mr. Redding made a brief appearance in a few quotations about tradition, but was an otherwise unremarkable element of her talk.
For the rest of the week she was thinking of Franklin, alone and lonely. It wasn’t good for people to be alone, she knew that. Her parents had taught her to never leave the other kids out in playground games, because you had to have compassion, which meant not letting other people feel awful because you felt awful with them. But now Franklin was getting left out as an adult, which had to be doubly awful because he was all grown up and didn’t have parents to go home to. Or even any friends at all.
She wasn’t sure what to do about it all, until she was walking home from school with her friends and saw the foresters bringing the wagon through town.
“Are those the foresters?” asked Alice, pointing down the street. Marta and Jerry looked down to see the wagon full of lumber crossing the intersection.
There were two men at the front, guiding the horses, and another two at the seat, minding the lumber. Three more followed after, to help unload the wagon once they arrived at the lumberyard. One of them was Franklin.
“Yeah,” said Jerry, “There’s my dad.” He waved, and the bearded man on the cart waved back. “Did you know, there’s a—”
“I think I know that man from church,” said Marta suddenly, cutting Jerry off as she waved vigorously. “Yes, it’s Mr. Redding. Hello, Mr. Redding!” She lifted her voice for the last part, and it carried. Her friends watched, bemused, and every single one of the foresters looked sharply at her, and then at Franklin.
Franklin, who’d been staring absentmindedly at his feet, looked up, surprised, and a smile broke out across his face when he saw her pumping her arm. He waved back, and that motion of alien grace was enough for the rest of the children to recognize him as a fairy.
Alice gasped, and both Alice and Jerry drew back slightly. Marta just grinned at Franklin as she continued towards her neighborhood, and her friends scrambled after her. The foresters never stopped, though out of the corner of her eye she saw them eying Franklin.
“Marta,” said Jerry slowly, falling into step beside her. “That man’s a fairy.”
“I know,” said Marta.
“You know?” exclaimed Alice in scandalized tones, “Then what are you getting his attention for? Kids are supposed to avoid fairies.” She considered this. “Adults too. Everyone, really.”
“Well, that’s hardly nice for the fairies,” said Marta. “Wouldn’t you get lonely?”
“Then I’d go hang out with other fairies,” said Jerry. “They only come near people to cause trouble.”
“Not always,” insisted Marta. “He has a house in town. He lives here, and you know we’d hear about it if he cursed anyone. I say, if he’s living in a human town, we should treat him like one.”
“I think you’re crazy,” muttered Alice. They walked the rest of the way home in silence.
That evening, just after supper, there was a knock at the door. Marta was sent to open it, and greeted Jerry’s father, Mr. Cartwright, with a smile. He didn’t smile back. “Where are your parents?” he asked her. “I need to speak to them.”
Marta led him to the dining table, where he said hello to her parents and sat down in the offered chair. She was just about to ask if she could be excused when Mr. Cartwright said, “Marta said hello to one of the foresters earlier today. Marta,” he said, turning to her, “Do you remember which one?”
Marta had the sudden unique feeling of having swallowed a frog. Or a toad. Something was jumping in her stomach, and she didn’t like it. Her parents were looking at her with gradually developing frowns.
“Yes,” she said slowly, “I’m not going to forget I know someone. It was Mr. Redding.”
Mr. Cartwright looked at her parents.
“I haven’t heard that name before,” said her mother. “Marta, how do you know Mr. Redding?”
“Well,” said Marta, wondering if there was a way to avoid getting into trouble, “he goes to our church. We got to talking for my project, and he’s pretty nice, so I’ve been trying to say hello to him more.” Her mother smiled a little. Mr. Cartwright didn’t. Marta pointedly added, “He’s been kind of lonely since he moved here, since you guys don’t talk to him. My mom is friends with all of her coworkers.”
“Marta,” said her father, a quiet warning.
“Yes, well,” said Mr. Cartwright, and he didn’t look as embarrassed as she’d hoped. He just looked concerned. “You know he’s a fairy, don’t you?”
Marta’s parents were suddenly not amused, and Marta dropped her gaze to the table. “Yes,” she admitted. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? In the face, and the movements and things.”
“Is that the fairy from church?” asked Marta’s mother. “I told you to leave him alone. Fairies are dangerous.”
“Marta,” said Mr. Cartwright, “did you tell him your name?”
“I did,” said Marta. Her mother gasped. Her father reached to hold her mother’s hand. “Just my first name, though,” she added, but they still looked horrified. “It’s not dangerous,” she said. “He told me he can’t do anything with names. And he told me his name, too. He’s Franklin Redding.”
Mr. Cartwright shook his head. “That’s a human name, Marta. That’s not his real name.”
“That’s the name he uses,” said Marta firmly. “And Mr. Cartwright, I think you should tell him your name, too. He doesn’t know anyone’s names, at all, and that’s rude to him.”
“It’s not rude,” said Mr. Cartwright. “It’s safety.” He looked at Marta’s father. “I’ll go and check the family records, see if there’s anything that can be done. Otherwise we might have to—” He cut himself off, glancing down at Marta.
She glared back. “There’s nothing to be done. He’s not a bad fairy.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” said her mother, half despair, as she reached for her across the table. “All fairies are bad fairies.”
“No!” said Marta, pulling out of her grip. To her embarrassment she was starting to cry. “He’s just lonely, and he’s a person like anyone else, but you’re all leaving him out!”
Mr. Cartwright was saying something in an undertone to her father, and her mother was reaching out for her again, but Marta shook her off and ran out the back door, pressing her wrist into the damp corners of her eyes.
The adults started shouting, and chased after her, but it was dark and Marta was fast, and soon she was several neighborhoods ahead of them.
It only took her a few moments to decide where she was going. She was never going to be allowed to see him again, she knew, and she was going to be in trouble anyway. She might as well say goodbye properly.
The streets were scarier in the dark, but Marta squared her shoulders and marched past the few people hurrying home before the full moon came out and there was a risk of meeting someone inhuman in passing. An owl called overhead when she entered Franklin’s neighborhood, and the flowers of the human woman were all closed up and sleeping.
The clouds were clearing and the moon was just starting to show itself when Marta set foot on Franklin’s porch and knocked sharply.
There was no answer, so she knocked again, louder, and was debating whether she should call his name when the door was yanked open.
Franklin stared out above her head, fully dressed and fairy-tall and holding a stick in one hand. His gaze dropped to her, uncomprehending for only a moment, and then he tossed the stick behind the door and got down on a knee, asking, “Marta, what’s wrong?”
“They found out,” said Marta, trying to fight off the tears. “They found out, and I’m in trouble, and you might be in trouble, and I’m never going to see you again even though I was going to be your friend.” Overcome, she leaned forward and hugged him around the shoulders.
Franklin froze, but after a moment gently patted her back, making calming noises. “Hey, hey, it’s okay,” he said. “You’re okay.”
He waited for her to pull herself together and lean back before he asked, “Do your parents know where you are? It’s late.”
“No,” said Marta, shaking her head and wiping her face on her sleeve. “I ran away.”
“Oh,” said Franklin, and his voice was softer than she’d ever heard it. “Oh, Marta, you can’t do that. You’re going to worry them.” He stood up and offered her his hand. “Come on, I’ll walk you home.”
Marta, sniffling, took it, and they started the long walk back through his neighborhood towards the center of town and her house on the opposite side. It was properly night now, and nobody was out on the streets except for the moon and the two of them. Franklin’s shoes scuffed lightly on the street, and Marta took two steps for every one of his, but he walked slow for her, which was nice.
In the center of the town square, Marta thought she saw a flicker of a person-shaped shadow at the corner of her vision, but when she turned no one was there.
“Come along, Marta,” said Franklin, his voice carefully light. “Nothing to see there. You’re with me, and you’re perfectly safe.”
He wasn’t telling her something. “Was that a fairy?” she asked him, looking around more carefully. “Do they really come out under the full moon?”
“Well, I’m out, aren’t I?” Franklin pointed out. “But I couldn’t say. It seems to me that the best course of action, as with meeting any other stranger on the street at night, is to politely mind your own business and they’ll mind theirs.”
As they approached Marta’s neighborhood, she could see her house lit up with candles, and the lights in the neighboring houses as well. Her stomach sank. Soon she was going to have to say goodbye forever, and she was going to be in trouble for ages and ages.
They were only a few houses down when her neighbor’s door swung open and Mrs. Candleby was staring at her like she’d seen a ghost.
“She’s here!” she shouted down the street, “Your girl’s here!”
More doors swung open, as neighbors holding candles leaned out of doorways and windows to gawk at her. Marta’s front door slammed open, and her parents came rushing down the steps, followed closely by Mr. Cartwright, only to stop at the edge of the street and stare at her and Franklin.
They’d stopped in front of her house, and Franklin’s hand had tightened on Marta’s with all the shouting, but now it was quiet, with an audience lined up at doors down the street under the moonlight.
“Give her back,” said her mother, swaying forward but not daring to step closer. “Give my daughter back to me.”
“Yes, of course,” said Franklin, and though the words were calm, his voice was shaky. He loosened his grip on Marta’s hand. Marta didn’t let go. He tried, subtly, to shake her loose, but Marta held on. “Run along to your mother, now.”
“No,” said Marta. “Not until you tell them the truth. You didn’t take me, you’re walking me home. I ran away,” she hotly informed her mother—and a dozen nosy neighbors. “He made me come back. He said you’d be worried.”
“Whatever you say, dear,” said her mother faintly. Marta hated it when adults ignored her. “Come here, now.”
“No,” said Marta.
Franklin tried to shake her loose again, but she gripped his sweaty palm tight. “Marta,” he hissed at her, “Let go.”
“No,” said Marta, and to prove her point she grabbed his wrist with her other hand.
There was a murmur in the street around her, but she was too focused on not letting go, since Franklin had begun to try in earnest to get loose, and he was big. But he was also trying not to hurt her, which left her with the advantage.
“Marta,” Franklin said, half helplessly. “It’s late, and I don’t really want to be walking around at midnight under a full moon. Please let go.” He looked over her head at her parents and said, “I really am just walking her home. And I’m sorry about all this. I thought she’d had your permission to come talk to me.”
There was a dramatic noise from her mother that told Marta she was definitely in trouble. “You didn’t have to tell them that!” she said, glaring at him.
“That’s what you told me,” said Franklin. “Now will you let me go?” He looked at her, scared and tired and something else, and Marta felt all the fight draining out of her. She couldn’t put it off any longer.
“Goodbye, Franklin,” she said, and she walked over to her parents. Her mother grabbed her by the shoulders the instant she was near and pulled her close. Marta twisted around to watch Franklin, who had stuck his hands in his pockets and started to walk away.
“Er, Redding,” said Mr. Cartwright, who was standing on the other side of her father. Franklin turned around, face carefully blank. “You know the girl’s name.”
“Only her first,” said Franklin. “But even if I knew the whole thing, I couldn’t do anything with it. I don’t know how, and I’d certainly never want to.” He tilted his head, considering. “You can know mine, if it makes you feel better. Franklin Phillip Redding.”
“Franklin Phillip Redding,” repeated Mr. Cartwright. “That’s a very human name.”
“Yes, well,” said Franklin, shrugging. “My parents raised me under the assumption I was human, so it was rather a surprise to all of us.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Marta’s father. “You’re a changeling?”
“Yes,” said Franklin.
“Then what’s your real name?”
“Do fairy parents name the children they swap out?” Franklin asked, and there was a bite beneath the conversational tone. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve been Franklin all my life, and I’m not about to stop now.”
“You haven’t stopped a lot of things,” Mr. Cartwright said. “You’re the first fairy I’ve ever heard of to eat jerky and eggs for lunch. My oldest son eats like that.”
Franklin stepped closer, into a place where the moonlight silvered on his hair. “And I’m the first fairy any of you have seen come to church. Marta here was the only one curious enough to come say hello.”
“Why do you go to church, Franklin?” asked Marta’s mother, and then she added what Marta hadn’t been able to put into words. “The church doesn’t want you there.”
Franklin shrugged, a bit helplessly. “I was raised in it,” he said. “It’s a comfort. It’s my home.”
“How, though?” she asked. “How can you love something that hates you?”
Franklin looked up at the moon for a long time. “I don’t believe it does,” he said, “Not really. I think that the people might not like me, but those are people. I’m not going to church for them. I’m going because I have faith, and my faith taught me that I am loved above all other judgment. I love it back. How could I not?”
There. That was the answer Marta had been looking for. It settled just underneath her heart like the answer to a fairytale riddle.
Marta’s mother let go of Marta’s shoulders and went up to the fence.
“What are you doing?” asked Marta’s father, but he didn’t stop her.
“Franklin Redding,” said Marta’s mother, stepping down into the street. Franklin took a step back, but Marta’s mother reached out to touch his shoulder. “Thank you for bringing my daughter home. Come inside. It’s far too late for you to be walking alone.”
Sometimes, all it takes is a moment. One single shining moment in the moonlight, late at night, to show you who someone really is. Franklin was a fairy. He would always be a fairy, but he was other things, too. He was a good neighbor, and a thoughtful forester, and a young man with faith. He was the fairy who went to Marta’s church.
And maybe, in the near future when an older couple and a toddler show up on Marta’s mother’s doorstep, distressed and looking for their son, he’s a doting older brother to a boy who shares his name. But that’s the future.
For now, Marta looked at her mother inviting Franklin in, and thought that maybe it was the easiest thing in the world to love someone. All you had to do was see them, and then the love would come.
Miranda Miller is a writer whose short fiction has appeared in a variety of student literary magazines at the University of Iowa. Her work has also appeared in Sigma Tau Delta’s The Rectangle and onstage at the 2024 University of Iowa Ten Minute Play Festival. In her free time, she completes puzzles, podcasts, and novels at an alarming rate. She’s got three library cards and she’s not afraid to use them!
Author’s note: “When I was little, I had a book of stories all about fairies. In one story, the protagonist had to choose which of three roads to walk down: the narrow and difficult trail to Heaven, the wide and easy road to Hell, or the green and twisting path to Fairyland. This idea of Fairyland as a mercurial option three that is still somehow in conversation with religion sparked my imagination—and a lot of questions. In general, the overall message is that God and fairies are not on speaking terms. But what if they were? Could they be? And that’s where Franklin came from.”
People didn’t talk about it, but everyone knew. He sat in the back in a long coat with his hair combed over his ears and he didn’t leave his seat. He stood when everyone else stood and sat when everyone else sat, and during the songs he opened the songbook and didn’t sing a word.
He didn’t speak to anyone, and no one spoke to him.
Fairies weren’t unusual, of course. People liked to pretend they didn’t exist, but they did. They curdled milk and stole children and cursed anyone who dared to touch them. Everyone in Marta’s town knew not to travel the streets on the night of a full moon, and if they were foolish enough to do so, they would be painfully, scrupulously polite to any strangers they met. Fairies were far too magical and strange to be gotten rid of in any normal way, and so most people went about their days pretending they weren’t real, and went about their nights safe at home with their doors locked against fairy influence.
The fairy in Marta’s church made pretending rather hard.
Marta hadn’t known he was a fairy at first. He was the last to enter and the first to leave, and she didn’t know how long he’d been coming, only that between one day and the next, she’d looked around and recognized everyone except for the lone stranger in the back. When she tugged her mother’s sleeve and asked who he was, her mother’s mouth thinned into a line and she whispered that he was a fairy, and he was not to be bothered.
At first, Marta couldn’t believe it. Fairies were evil, said her friend Alice. They were heathen remnants of an obsolete god, said her teacher. Fairies can’t go to church, said Marta’s grandmother. They’re the unbaptized souls of babies and minions of the devil. When Marta pointed out that it was hardly babies’ faults if they weren’t baptized, her grandmother huffed and said that they were minions of the devil, then, and to stop asking so many questions.
Marta had a lot of questions. Marta wanted to know, if fairies were minions of the devil, why did the fairy come to church? Was it a punishment? Was he in pain? Nobody could answer her. They told her to leave well enough alone, and to never, ever, meddle with fairies.
Marta tried. She really did. But curiosity is an intrinsic trait of both children and cats, and she couldn’t leave anything interesting alone for long.
She read all the books she could find on fairies, and learned that when it came to fairies, there were a lot of rules. You shouldn’t eat their food, and you shouldn’t thank them, and you shouldn’t go to fairyland with them or else you might wake up thousands of years in the future. Above all else, the stories said, you should never, ever tell a fairy your true name.
The stories had very little to say about fairies and church. They implied that God and fairies were not on speaking terms, and that was that. But then what was the fairy at Marta’s church doing? The whole point of church, Marta felt, was to try to hear God a little bit better in the people around you.
Marta had to know. And, she reasoned, she’d been forbidden from speaking to fairies, but she hadn’t been forbidden from speaking to parishioners. The fairy came to church every week that she could remember, which had to have been enough times to be considered a parishioner.
Marta was careful not to ask anyone exactly what traits made someone a parishioner. She was at the age where she had figured out that she could get away with things by following the letter rather than the spirit of the law, and claim childish ignorance if it all went south. Marta decided that a parishioner was anyone who went to church regularly, and made sure that no one had the chance to tell her otherwise.
Marta chose her moment carefully. She asked her parents if she could stay after church one morning, just to pray a little and ask some questions. Her parents agreed, telling her to be home in half an hour, and to stay out of the street. Marta agreed and clasped her hands to pray as people slowly trickled out of the church. So as not to make herself a liar, Marta asked God for help in answering her questions, and also for safety. Just in case.
She peeked out of the corner of her eye to see an empty church. The fairy was long gone. She’d known he was always first out, but it would make finding him rather tricky, especially if he could ride away on a sunbeam or a butterfly’s wing like the fairies in her books. She darted out of the church faster than was quite respectful, and dashed down the steps. Left or right? Marta lived to the left, along with most of her friends, and she’d never once seen the fairy in that direction, so she turned right.
The street quickly turned into neighborhoods and labyrinthine roads, and he could have gone down any number of turnings. Or just straight into the trees, Marta realized. Fairies lived in glens and mushroom rings, didn’t they?
She ran down to the first intersection, and looked up and down. Nothing. She ran to the next. Nothing. She ran to the next intersection, feeling guilty about getting further and further away from where she’d told her parents she’d be, when she looked to the left and saw the edge of his long coat disappearing around a corner.
Marta dashed after him. Once she turned the corner, it didn’t take long to catch up. The fairy was walking fast with his head down, but he wasn’t running, and Marta was the fastest runner in her class.
He heard her footsteps approach, and stepped to the side to let her pass without looking back. Marta ran past him, then turned around, trying to catch her breath.
“Hi,” she said, beaming wide enough to show her missing tooth. “I think we go to the same church.”
She’d never seen much of the fairy beyond his long coat settled in the shadows of the church, so she took the opportunity to properly look at him. Up close, his coat was a sort of warm tan, and his dark hair didn’t fully obscure the slight point to his ears. He could almost, but not quite, be mistaken for human. There was something in the gracefulness of every movement, the strange green light behind his eyes like a cat’s at night, that told Marta with absolute certainty that this was a fairy.
He wasn’t what she’d expected. He wasn’t wearing a cloak made of night or a pin of starlight, and he was dressed in simple human clothes. He looked even more human when he frowned at her, and hunched his shoulders a bit, as if to ward off a chill.
“I think you’re mistaken.” His voice was ordinary, and a bit rough, and Marta realized that he wasn’t as old as she’d thought. She’d thought all fairies were ageless and near-immortal, but he sounded a bit like her neighbor’s oldest boy, who was apprenticing to the carpenter.
“No,” said Marta firmly. “We do. St. Beatrice’s. I just saw you come from there. I followed you,” she said, to forestall any further denial. Fairies could be cagey, and play with the truth, so it was best to be clear and exact when dealing with them.
“Okay,” agreed the fairy with a sigh. “What are you doing here?”
Marta realized that she’d gotten exactly what she’d wanted—a chance to speak with the fairy—and fought down the urge to cheer.
“I wanted to ask you a question.”
The fairy raised an eyebrow. “Well?”
Marta blurted it out. “Why do you go to church?”
The fairy’s face flickered for a moment, a feeling flashing across it too fast for her to understand.
“Is this it, then?” His voice was scratchier than it had been. “Did they send you to tell me to stop coming?”
“What?” Marta drew back. “Nobody sent me. I was just curious.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”
Marta bristled. “No, I’m serious. Nobody sent me. I came on my own. I snuck out of church, and I followed you.”
She glared at him, and she could see the moment when he believed her because his eyes widened and he took a step back and said, “Oh, that’s worse. You shouldn’t be following strangers home, kid.” He looked up and down the street. There was nobody else around. “You need to go home before your parents start to worry. Do you know the way?”
“Of course I know the way,” scoffed Marta, “My parents don’t care if I go all over town.” That was an exaggeration, but the fairy didn’t need to know that.
“Go home,” said the fairy. “I’m serious.” He pointed back down the street, and Marta huffed.
“You didn’t answer my question!”
“And I won’t,” he said. “Not unless you can get your parents’ permission to come ask me questions.” His tone of voice suggested that he didn’t think it was very likely. Marta didn’t either. “Go home.”
Marta groaned and stomped off. At the corner, she looked back to see him walking away, fast. Head down, shoulders hunched. She wondered how far away he lived.
Marta’s parents told her not to take so long at the church next time, but didn’t suspect a thing. Marta poked at her dinner that night. There was absolutely no way they would ever let her get near a fairy, not even one from church. It was impossible.
Impossible. Marta froze, then inhaled the rest of her dinner and asked to be excused. She ran to her room to dig up her book of fairytales. Impossible tasks were all over them. Tasks given from princesses to their champions, from mother-in-laws to daughter-in-laws, from fairies to clever peasants. There were impossible tasks all over her stories, but the thing about impossible tasks was that there was always a way to do them. You just had to be clever or magic, or know somebody clever or magic, in order to find the solution.
There wasn’t a drop of magic in Marta’s whole town, so she would have to be clever. She didn’t want to ask anyone else’s help. No one else had been interested in why the fairy went to church.
Marta wrote down the fairy’s challenge, as close as she could remember it. I won’t answer your question unless you can get your parents’ permission to come ask me questions.
She sat in her room and stared at the paper and started to think.
Marta looked for loopholes until her eyes went numb. There was nothing. No way around it. She had to have her parents’ permission, and there was no way they would ever let her go talk to a fairy. Marta could imagine how that conversation would go. Mom, Dad, can I go talk to the fairy from church? No, no, absolutely not, and you’re getting extra chores for a week.
Was there a way she could refer to him as not-the-fairy? As—Marta abruptly realized that she didn’t know the fairy’s name. She hadn’t introduced herself, she’d just started asking personal questions. That was embarrassing. She’d been rude, and she hadn’t even noticed. She would ask his name the next chance she got, she promised herself, to make up for it. Or ask for his nickname. Fairies were weird about names, weren’t they?
She flipped open the book of fairytales and started skimming. Names, names, there! There it was. You weren’t supposed to tell a fairy your true name, because then they could control you. That’s why all the fairytale heroes gave themselves nicknames—Spider or Quickwit or Barrel-rider. And all the fairies went by Briar or Goodfellow or the Young Stranger, because they didn’t want to give their true names either.
So she couldn’t ask for his name, and she couldn’t call him “the fairy”. Maybe she could just say “one of the people from church”? But her parents would ask which one, and she’d have to tell them.
Unless she didn’t. Marta shot up from her bed and pumped her fist in success. If she told her parents that she wanted to talk to a bunch of people at church, like one person from every family, they would hardly ask for a list. They would assume she would stick to the people they were most familiar with, and that would be that. And if she said that she wanted to ask about their family history with church, she wouldn’t be lying.
Marta put her plan into motion the very next day. For the next history project, their teacher was making them pick a subject to research and present to the class. Marta asked if she could write about religion in their town, and incorporate interviews from actual people. She couldn’t neglect the research in favor of interviews, her teacher warned her, and Marta agreed without hesitation.
She brought the idea to her parents, who were pleased that she was taking the initiative to improve her less-than-stellar work in history, and agreed that she could go talk to people as long as she was polite. So, the very next day, after school, Marta beelined for the street where she had last seen the fairy.
Marta hoped that he lived in a house. If he lived in a mushroom circle outside of town, she might be out of luck. But there were faster ways to get to the forest than going through this winding neighborhood, so when she got to the intersection where she’d last seen him, she picked a street and followed it, looking for odd nature things in the yards. She felt a bit like a detective, looking for clues.
When she’d finished walking up one street, she would go back to the intersection and take another. There was nothing really out of the ordinary about any of them. Just rows of houses, some cluttered, some not. Some had cracks in the plaster, and some had children playing in the yard, who waved to Marta when she recognized them.
It was getting close to dinnertime, and Marta still hadn’t found him. She went back to the third street at the intersection.
She was tired and hungry and frustrated when she saw it. A lovely little house with blooming roses and daisies and a sentry pair of sunflowers elegantly arranged in the yard. That had to be a fairy’s house. Marta ran up the walk and knocked on the door. Nothing. She knocked again, louder.
A voice called from within the house to wait, and Marta bounced on her heels, grinning with success, ready to ask his name and then her questions, when a woman answered the door.
She was stern-looking, with short dark hair and a frown on her face. She also looked a little bit familiar. Marta thought that perhaps she sold flowers at the market.
“Can I help you?” the woman asked.
“Sorry,” said Marta. “I saw the flowers and I thought the fairy might live here. Do you know where he lives?”
The woman scowled. “Try the dump two doors down. My flowers are the product of skill.” She shut the door firmly in Marta’s face.
Marta frowned, then backed down the stairs to look first right, then left. Two doors down on the right was a rickety little house with crumbling plaster and the shutters falling off. It didn’t look much like a fairy’s house at all. There weren’t any flowers in the yard, and the only tree belonged to the neighbor on the other side, and it was dying. Marta wondered if the woman had lied. Still, better to check.
She walked down the sidewalk and up to the front of the house. She knocked.
There was the sound of crashing from inside, and low grumbling. She couldn’t tell if it was the fairy or not. She knocked again. The grumbling stopped, and suddenly the door was yanked open and the fairy glared down at her.
“What do you want?”
Marta couldn’t help herself. She beamed. “I got permission!”
He blinked. “What?”
“I got permission,” repeated Marta. “From my parents, like you said. They said I can come ask you questions about religion and history as long as I’m polite.”
He squinted at her. “You’re not lying, are you? I’ll know if you are.”
“I’m telling the truth,” said Marta. Not all of the truth, but that was what fairies were known for. She was just playing by his rules. “Is now a good time for me to interview you, or should I come back later?”
The fairy sighed, ran a hand through his hair, and swung the door open further. “Now’s fine,” he said, and turned to walk back into the house. “Watch your step. I dropped a glass.”
Marta followed him in, closing the door behind her and walking into a little kitchen where the fairy was sweeping glass shards into a pan. He looked almost ordinary, but there was a hint of something otherworldly about him when she looked at him out of the corner of her eye.
“What’s your name?” she asked, sitting down on one of two little chairs at a small table. The kitchen was barely big enough for two, with some cupboards and an icebox along the wall. There was a cast-iron cooking stove and a short stack of wood opposite them.
“Franklin,” he said, standing up to dump the glass shards in a bin. “What’s yours?”
Marta hesitated. Should she tell him her name? Or make up a name? Would that be rude? She hesitated too long, because he looked at her and blew out a frustrated breath, the way her mother did when the rabbits had dug up the garden again.
“I can’t actually do anything with it,” he said. “That’s a lie people tell to get out of accepting responsibility for their actions. Look, I can just call you Nosy Church Girl if you’d prefer—”
“No,” said Marta quickly. “No, sorry. My name’s Marta.”
He nodded slowly. “Nice to meet you, Marta.”
“Nice to meet you, Franklin.”
He sat down at the table across from her, and looked at the paper and pencil she had neatly set out on it. “You’re prepared,” he said, a bit surprised.
“Yes,” said Marta. “I’m writing an interview research paper now,” she informed him, feeling the tiniest bit self-important.
Franklin—which was an odd name for a fairy, Marta thought, it felt too normal—shifted in his seat.
“Why do you go to church?” She wrote, carefully, Franklin at the top of her paper, and looked at him expectantly.
Franklin considered this. “The same reason anybody else goes to church, I suspect. I grew up going to church, and it’s a habit.” After a moment of looking at her, he added seriously, “I believe. I believe that there’s something big and good out there, and church is a way of talking to it. Everyone needs someone to talk to.”
“That’s it?”
Franklin laughed. “Were you expecting something more dramatic? Look, why do you go to church?”
Marta shrugged. “My parents say I have to.” Franklin just looked at her. “And I guess I like it,” she said, grudgingly. “I mean, it’s boring sometimes, but we talk a lot about being nice to people and helping them out, and that makes me feel good.”
“See?” said Franklin. “That’s all it is, really.” He sat back, satisfied, and Marta was suddenly abruptly certain that she’d been outplayed.
She threw down her pencil. “But doesn’t it hurt you?” she burst out. “My grandma says that holy things burn fairies.”
Franklin flinched. “So you do know,” he said, a strange bitterness in his voice. “I’d started to think—but no, of course everyone can tell.”
“Tell what?” asked Marta. “That you’re a fairy?”
“Yes,” snapped Franklin.
Marta moved back in her chair. She’d upset him, but she wasn’t sure how. “Sorry,” she said.
Franklin sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “No, it’s fine. I just— Never mind. Holy things don’t burn fairies, as far as I’m aware.”
Marta frowned. “Then why don’t you go up front with all the other adults?”
Franklin smiled a bit. “I figured it might be better to stay in my seat and not cause any trouble for a little while. Just until people got used to me.”
“Got used to you?” Marta repeated. “What do you mean?”
Franklin raised a wry eyebrow. “Fairies don’t usually go to church, Marta. That’s why you wanted to come talk to me in the first place, isn’t it? Sometimes people need time to get used to new things.”
Marta frowned. “You’ve been coming for a while, though. Haven’t people gotten used to you yet?”
“Have you?”
Marta considered this. “Well, no,” she admitted, “but that’s only because my parents would never let me come say hello. Or look at you too long.” Franklin’s mouth twisted to the side in something that wasn’t a smile, and she quickly assured him, “But now that I’m talking to you, I’m sure I’ll get used to you very quickly.”
“That’s kind of you,” said Franklin. “Was there anything else you wanted to ask?”
Marta looked at her list of questions. She’d just wanted to ask why he went to church, and now that she knew that he went for the same reasons anybody else did, the thrill of mystery had gone out of it. But, she figured, she could do the rest of the ordinary interview and put it in her paper anyway.
She looked at the next question on her list. “What is your family’s history with religion?”
Franklin got an odd sort of look on his face, half laughter and half sorrow. It was a very fairy expression. He seemed to come to a decision after a moment, and said, “My parents were raised in the church, and it goes pretty far back, I think. Grandparents, great-grandparents. I think the great-great grandfather,” he hesitated, thinking, “on my mother’s side?—was a different denomination. But he changed to marry my great-great grandmother.”
Marta blinked. “All those fairies went to church? Where did they live?” She’d definitely have heard of it if there was a church full of fairies anywhere nearby.
Franklin shook his head. “They weren’t fairies.”
Marta frowned. “They weren’t fairies? But you’re a fairy. How’d that work?”
“It’s complicated,” said Franklin, which Marta knew was just an adult’s way of saying, I don’t want to tell you.
“Tell me,” said Marta. “I’m not a little kid, you know.”
“So demanding,” said Franklin, but she could tell he was softening. She’d been prepared to be much more stubborn. Maybe he was lonely, Marta suddenly thought, looking around. It didn’t look like anyone else lived there. Everyone needs someone to talk to, he’d said, but if people stayed away from him for fear of getting cursed or magicked, who did he have to talk to? Me, decided Marta, and she promised herself that she would figure out a way to make it true. “It’s a long story,” he said at last. “Are you sure you have time?”
Marta looked out at the setting sun and gasped. She didn’t have time. In fact, she was nearly late for supper. “No,” she said, jumping to her feet. “I have to go home.”
Franklin stood with her and went to open the front door. “That’s all right,” he said, “Be careful crossing—”
“Can I come back tomorrow?” Marta blurted. “After school again? I want to hear the story.” Franklin looked surprised. “And if it’s private I don’t have to put it in my paper, I just want to know.”
Franklin smiled at her, and she smiled back. “Yeah, alright,” he said. “You can come back tomorrow.”
“Yes!” said Marta, jumping down the front steps before whipping back around. “Wait, what’s your last name? My parents say I’m not supposed to talk about adults with their first name.”
Franklin laughed. “I’m barely an adult,” he said. “You can call me Franklin. But my last name is Redding.”
“Thank you, Mr. Redding,” Marta said, and laughed when he wrinkled his nose at her. She turned and dashed off down the sidewalk, and was halfway home before she remembered that you weren’t supposed to say “thank you” to fairies. She wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was something about owing them a favor?
The next day, Marta ran straight to his house after school. He opened the door right after she knocked and showed her in. This time there was a little plate of biscuits and two glasses of water on the table.
“Are you hungry?” he asked as they sat down, pushing one of the glasses towards her.
Marta was, but she also knew that you weren’t supposed to eat fairy food unless you wanted to be stuck in fairyland forever and ever.
“Did you make these?” she asked, stalling.
Franklin shook his head. “I got them down at the corner store. Sorry if they’re a bit stale. They were day-old.”
Well, Marta thought, they were hardly in fairyland now, and it couldn’t be fairy food if it was from the corner store. “That’s alright,” she said, leaning forward to grab one. “They look good.”
Franklin seemed pleased, and took a biscuit as well.
“I do want to hear your story,” prompted Marta after a moment. “With your parents and the church and everything.”
“I know,” said Franklin, staring at his glass of water like it contained the secrets of the universe. “I’m just collecting my thoughts, I suppose.”
“Okay,” said Marta, and fiddled with her pencil, and ate another biscuit, and waited.
Franklin thought for a bit longer, then drank from his glass, set it aside with a decisive thump, and said, “What do you know about fairies?”
“A lot, I think,” said Marta. “I mean, I know all the stuff my parents warned me about, like not going out on a full moon, or going into mushroom circles. And I’ve been doing a lot of reading and talking to people, but some of that’s wrong because it says that holy objects burn fairies.”
“Do you know what a changeling is?” Franklin asked.
Marta nodded. “That’s when a fairy swaps a human baby and a fairy baby. Then the fairy baby causes trouble for the parents, and they have to pinch it to make it cry in order to get their real baby back.”
“That’s the usual story,” said Franklin. “But it’s not quite true. The fairy baby is just a baby. It can’t curse a household any more than a normal baby can. It doesn’t know how. The fairy parents can curse the household on behalf of the child, in order to clue the humans in to the swap, and to get their child back.” He paused, looked at his long-fingered fairy hands, and said, “Most fairy parents do that. Most fairy parents get their children back.”
Marta didn’t like where this was going. “Were you a changeling?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Franklin, the simple bare truth on his face. “And I didn’t know it. Neither did my parents.”
Marta leaned back and looked at him from top to toe. He might appear human at first glance, but he was definitely fairy. “I don’t mean to be rude,” she said, “but you couldn’t tell?”
He was too quick, and too long, and he was sort of gray if you looked at him out of the corner of your eye.
“No,” said Franklin, looking at the back of his hands. “You couldn’t tell when I was growing up. Changeling magic is powerful. You look exactly like them, right up until you get swapped back.” He leaned back in his chair and opened a drawer, taking out a scrap of paper. “This is what I used to look like.”
It was a rough pen and ink sketch showing a smiling young man. Slightly crooked teeth, hair all messed up. An image of human joy, caught in a moment. Marta looked at Franklin. It was him, but different. The Franklin in front of her had perfect teeth, and his hair was messy in a way that was artful. He was the young man in the sketch made fairy.
“How old were you when they swapped you back?” she asked, handing him the sketch.
“They didn’t,” said Franklin, “Not really. The fairies of Blackfriar River are notoriously lazy. You’ve heard of them?” Marta nodded. She had. Her mother had a childhood friend who’d moved there, and she’d spoken of barely any fairy trouble. “That’s where I’m from,” said Franklin. “They didn’t put a curse on the household to clue the parents in, and they forgot to come back. I grew up. I turned twenty-one six months ago. Four months ago, at midday, I answered the door, and there was a pair of fairy lords and a human baby waiting on the doorstep.”
“A baby?” said Marta, wrinkling her nose. “After all those years?”
“Time moves differently in fairyland,” said Franklin. “A thousand years in an afternoon, an afternoon in a thousand years. They thought he was cute, as a baby, and they kept him that way. And then they got bored of him, and thought, ‘wasn’t there something else we were supposed to do with this?’ and sent him home.” He sighed, fiddling with the sketch. “I was all grown up. If they’d taken me back, they would have had to present me to the fairy courts. Decided on my title and status. Someone would have had to make sure I wouldn’t embarrass them if the fairy queen came by. It was too much trouble, so they dumped the baby in my arms and told me I was no longer considered a son of theirs.”
Marta winced. “Were your parents there? I mean, your human parents?”
“Dad was,” said Franklin. “He’d been in the back garden, so he walked up in time to see them leave. He saw my glamour fail. I was holding him—the real Franklin—and fairy magic fades in the face of truth.” He leaned back to put the sketch back in his drawer. “And now I look like this.”
“What did your dad say?”
Franklin shrugged. “He just looked at me, and he said, ‘Is that Franklin?’ and I said, ‘Yes’, and he held out his arms and I gave Franklin to him, and he looked at the kid, and there was a sort of birthmark, on the wrist, that I’d—well, he’d—had as a kid, but it had faded as I’d grown up, and the kid had it exactly. I saw it, and I reached out to touch it, just a finger, to see,” and Franklin held out a finger towards Marta, as delicate as if he was going to brush a petal, and held it an inch from her arm, “and he stepped away from me. He didn’t let me touch him.”
Marta felt sick. She couldn’t imagine what she would do if her parents did that. If they recoiled from her like she was dangerous to touch. Biting her lip, she reached forward her own finger and bumped Franklin’s, and he blinked and came back from whatever memory he’d been walking in to give her a small smile. “And then what?” she asked.
“I left,” said Franklin. “Straight out the front door and after the fairies. I ran past my mother on the path back, but I don’t think she recognized me. The fairies were gone when they got to the forest, and I didn’t know how to follow them, so I left town with the clothes on my back and came here.”
Marta looked around the little house. “Straight here?”
“Pretty much,” said Franklin. “I’m renting the house, and I work with the foresters. I wore a hat when they hired me, and I don’t think they realized what I was until I showed up for my first day. But now they’re afraid to fire me, and they think I’ll help them avoid offending the fairies of the forest.”
“Do you know how to avoid offending fairies?” Marta asked. Franklin raised an eyebrow. “I mean,” she said, tripping over her words, “I don’t want to offend you, on accident. You seem nice.”
“Thanks,” said Franklin dryly. “And no, I don’t. I’m offended the same as anyone—any human—and I’ve got no more idea about fairy manners than you have.”
“Huh,” said Marta. “Do the foresters know that?”
“I tried to tell them. They mostly just make agreeable sounds at me and stay as far away as they can. They’re nice enough, but they never say thank you and I don’t know anyone’s name.”
“That’s rude!” said Marta.
“Human-rude,” said Franklin. “But fairy-safe. Mostly I just call them ‘you there!’ and point, but I live in fear of the day that someone’s under a falling tree and I have to shout, ‘Blondie, move it!’”
Marta snorted. Then she stopped. It was a little funny, but also sad. “That’s not right. My mother knows everyone who works in her shop, and nearly all the customers besides. And she talks to them all the time.” Marta looked around the empty little kitchen. “I bet you’re lonely.”
Franklin raised an eyebrow but didn’t disagree. “There’s not much to be done about it.” He tilted his head, thinking. “I suppose that’s another answer to your original question. I go to church, and I feel less alone.”
“Do you?” said Marta. “Because, not to be rude again, but nobody sits with you. And they don’t—”
“I know,” said Franklin. “But I don’t go to church for the people. I go to church for my faith.”
“But how?” said Marta, finally finding the question that she’d really wanted to ask all this time. “How? The stories say that God and fairies are enemies, or at least they ignore each other.”
Franklin smiled sadly. “I heard those stories too,” he said. “I almost believed them. And then I thought, I had faith before I knew I was a changeling, but I was a changeling the whole time. Knowing that about myself didn’t change any part of who I actually was.”
Marta considered this. It was an interesting point. Was any part of Franklin fundamentally different? She was going to ask another question, though about what she wasn’t yet sure, when Franklin glanced out the window towards the golden setting sun.
“It’s getting late. Shouldn’t you be getting home?”
Unfortunately, he was right. Marta gathered her papers to go, then hesitated on his doorstep when he showed her out. “Mr. Redding,” she said, then amended it to, “Franklin,” when he laughed and shook his head. “Can I come back next week? I have to interview some more people now, but, well,” she tripped over what she wanted to say, and it all came out in a rush, “I don’t think you should be lonely, and I’d like to visit you.”
Franklin looked down at her, far more tall and fairylike than he’d seemed across a kitchen table eating biscuits. “You can,” he said at last, and smiled at her.
Marta beamed back, jumped down the steps, and ran all the way home.
She finished her interviews and used them in her presentation at the end of the week. Mr. Redding made a brief appearance in a few quotations about tradition, but was an otherwise unremarkable element of her talk.
For the rest of the week she was thinking of Franklin, alone and lonely. It wasn’t good for people to be alone, she knew that. Her parents had taught her to never leave the other kids out in playground games, because you had to have compassion, which meant not letting other people feel awful because you felt awful with them. But now Franklin was getting left out as an adult, which had to be doubly awful because he was all grown up and didn’t have parents to go home to. Or even any friends at all.
She wasn’t sure what to do about it all, until she was walking home from school with her friends and saw the foresters bringing the wagon through town.
“Are those the foresters?” asked Alice, pointing down the street. Marta and Jerry looked down to see the wagon full of lumber crossing the intersection.
There were two men at the front, guiding the horses, and another two at the seat, minding the lumber. Three more followed after, to help unload the wagon once they arrived at the lumberyard. One of them was Franklin.
“Yeah,” said Jerry, “There’s my dad.” He waved, and the bearded man on the cart waved back. “Did you know, there’s a—”
“I think I know that man from church,” said Marta suddenly, cutting Jerry off as she waved vigorously. “Yes, it’s Mr. Redding. Hello, Mr. Redding!” She lifted her voice for the last part, and it carried. Her friends watched, bemused, and every single one of the foresters looked sharply at her, and then at Franklin.
Franklin, who’d been staring absentmindedly at his feet, looked up, surprised, and a smile broke out across his face when he saw her pumping her arm. He waved back, and that motion of alien grace was enough for the rest of the children to recognize him as a fairy.
Alice gasped, and both Alice and Jerry drew back slightly. Marta just grinned at Franklin as she continued towards her neighborhood, and her friends scrambled after her. The foresters never stopped, though out of the corner of her eye she saw them eying Franklin.
“Marta,” said Jerry slowly, falling into step beside her. “That man’s a fairy.”
“I know,” said Marta.
“You know?” exclaimed Alice in scandalized tones, “Then what are you getting his attention for? Kids are supposed to avoid fairies.” She considered this. “Adults too. Everyone, really.”
“Well, that’s hardly nice for the fairies,” said Marta. “Wouldn’t you get lonely?”
“Then I’d go hang out with other fairies,” said Jerry. “They only come near people to cause trouble.”
“Not always,” insisted Marta. “He has a house in town. He lives here, and you know we’d hear about it if he cursed anyone. I say, if he’s living in a human town, we should treat him like one.”
“I think you’re crazy,” muttered Alice. They walked the rest of the way home in silence.
That evening, just after supper, there was a knock at the door. Marta was sent to open it, and greeted Jerry’s father, Mr. Cartwright, with a smile. He didn’t smile back. “Where are your parents?” he asked her. “I need to speak to them.”
Marta led him to the dining table, where he said hello to her parents and sat down in the offered chair. She was just about to ask if she could be excused when Mr. Cartwright said, “Marta said hello to one of the foresters earlier today. Marta,” he said, turning to her, “Do you remember which one?”
Marta had the sudden unique feeling of having swallowed a frog. Or a toad. Something was jumping in her stomach, and she didn’t like it. Her parents were looking at her with gradually developing frowns.
“Yes,” she said slowly, “I’m not going to forget I know someone. It was Mr. Redding.”
Mr. Cartwright looked at her parents.
“I haven’t heard that name before,” said her mother. “Marta, how do you know Mr. Redding?”
“Well,” said Marta, wondering if there was a way to avoid getting into trouble, “he goes to our church. We got to talking for my project, and he’s pretty nice, so I’ve been trying to say hello to him more.” Her mother smiled a little. Mr. Cartwright didn’t. Marta pointedly added, “He’s been kind of lonely since he moved here, since you guys don’t talk to him. My mom is friends with all of her coworkers.”
“Marta,” said her father, a quiet warning.
“Yes, well,” said Mr. Cartwright, and he didn’t look as embarrassed as she’d hoped. He just looked concerned. “You know he’s a fairy, don’t you?”
Marta’s parents were suddenly not amused, and Marta dropped her gaze to the table. “Yes,” she admitted. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? In the face, and the movements and things.”
“Is that the fairy from church?” asked Marta’s mother. “I told you to leave him alone. Fairies are dangerous.”
“Marta,” said Mr. Cartwright, “did you tell him your name?”
“I did,” said Marta. Her mother gasped. Her father reached to hold her mother’s hand. “Just my first name, though,” she added, but they still looked horrified. “It’s not dangerous,” she said. “He told me he can’t do anything with names. And he told me his name, too. He’s Franklin Redding.”
Mr. Cartwright shook his head. “That’s a human name, Marta. That’s not his real name.”
“That’s the name he uses,” said Marta firmly. “And Mr. Cartwright, I think you should tell him your name, too. He doesn’t know anyone’s names, at all, and that’s rude to him.”
“It’s not rude,” said Mr. Cartwright. “It’s safety.” He looked at Marta’s father. “I’ll go and check the family records, see if there’s anything that can be done. Otherwise we might have to—” He cut himself off, glancing down at Marta.
She glared back. “There’s nothing to be done. He’s not a bad fairy.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” said her mother, half despair, as she reached for her across the table. “All fairies are bad fairies.”
“No!” said Marta, pulling out of her grip. To her embarrassment she was starting to cry. “He’s just lonely, and he’s a person like anyone else, but you’re all leaving him out!”
Mr. Cartwright was saying something in an undertone to her father, and her mother was reaching out for her again, but Marta shook her off and ran out the back door, pressing her wrist into the damp corners of her eyes.
The adults started shouting, and chased after her, but it was dark and Marta was fast, and soon she was several neighborhoods ahead of them.
It only took her a few moments to decide where she was going. She was never going to be allowed to see him again, she knew, and she was going to be in trouble anyway. She might as well say goodbye properly.
The streets were scarier in the dark, but Marta squared her shoulders and marched past the few people hurrying home before the full moon came out and there was a risk of meeting someone inhuman in passing. An owl called overhead when she entered Franklin’s neighborhood, and the flowers of the human woman were all closed up and sleeping.
The clouds were clearing and the moon was just starting to show itself when Marta set foot on Franklin’s porch and knocked sharply.
There was no answer, so she knocked again, louder, and was debating whether she should call his name when the door was yanked open.
Franklin stared out above her head, fully dressed and fairy-tall and holding a stick in one hand. His gaze dropped to her, uncomprehending for only a moment, and then he tossed the stick behind the door and got down on a knee, asking, “Marta, what’s wrong?”
“They found out,” said Marta, trying to fight off the tears. “They found out, and I’m in trouble, and you might be in trouble, and I’m never going to see you again even though I was going to be your friend.” Overcome, she leaned forward and hugged him around the shoulders.
Franklin froze, but after a moment gently patted her back, making calming noises. “Hey, hey, it’s okay,” he said. “You’re okay.”
He waited for her to pull herself together and lean back before he asked, “Do your parents know where you are? It’s late.”
“No,” said Marta, shaking her head and wiping her face on her sleeve. “I ran away.”
“Oh,” said Franklin, and his voice was softer than she’d ever heard it. “Oh, Marta, you can’t do that. You’re going to worry them.” He stood up and offered her his hand. “Come on, I’ll walk you home.”
Marta, sniffling, took it, and they started the long walk back through his neighborhood towards the center of town and her house on the opposite side. It was properly night now, and nobody was out on the streets except for the moon and the two of them. Franklin’s shoes scuffed lightly on the street, and Marta took two steps for every one of his, but he walked slow for her, which was nice.
In the center of the town square, Marta thought she saw a flicker of a person-shaped shadow at the corner of her vision, but when she turned no one was there.
“Come along, Marta,” said Franklin, his voice carefully light. “Nothing to see there. You’re with me, and you’re perfectly safe.”
He wasn’t telling her something. “Was that a fairy?” she asked him, looking around more carefully. “Do they really come out under the full moon?”
“Well, I’m out, aren’t I?” Franklin pointed out. “But I couldn’t say. It seems to me that the best course of action, as with meeting any other stranger on the street at night, is to politely mind your own business and they’ll mind theirs.”
As they approached Marta’s neighborhood, she could see her house lit up with candles, and the lights in the neighboring houses as well. Her stomach sank. Soon she was going to have to say goodbye forever, and she was going to be in trouble for ages and ages.
They were only a few houses down when her neighbor’s door swung open and Mrs. Candleby was staring at her like she’d seen a ghost.
“She’s here!” she shouted down the street, “Your girl’s here!”
More doors swung open, as neighbors holding candles leaned out of doorways and windows to gawk at her. Marta’s front door slammed open, and her parents came rushing down the steps, followed closely by Mr. Cartwright, only to stop at the edge of the street and stare at her and Franklin.
They’d stopped in front of her house, and Franklin’s hand had tightened on Marta’s with all the shouting, but now it was quiet, with an audience lined up at doors down the street under the moonlight.
“Give her back,” said her mother, swaying forward but not daring to step closer. “Give my daughter back to me.”
“Yes, of course,” said Franklin, and though the words were calm, his voice was shaky. He loosened his grip on Marta’s hand. Marta didn’t let go. He tried, subtly, to shake her loose, but Marta held on. “Run along to your mother, now.”
“No,” said Marta. “Not until you tell them the truth. You didn’t take me, you’re walking me home. I ran away,” she hotly informed her mother—and a dozen nosy neighbors. “He made me come back. He said you’d be worried.”
“Whatever you say, dear,” said her mother faintly. Marta hated it when adults ignored her. “Come here, now.”
“No,” said Marta.
Franklin tried to shake her loose again, but she gripped his sweaty palm tight. “Marta,” he hissed at her, “Let go.”
“No,” said Marta, and to prove her point she grabbed his wrist with her other hand.
There was a murmur in the street around her, but she was too focused on not letting go, since Franklin had begun to try in earnest to get loose, and he was big. But he was also trying not to hurt her, which left her with the advantage.
“Marta,” Franklin said, half helplessly. “It’s late, and I don’t really want to be walking around at midnight under a full moon. Please let go.” He looked over her head at her parents and said, “I really am just walking her home. And I’m sorry about all this. I thought she’d had your permission to come talk to me.”
There was a dramatic noise from her mother that told Marta she was definitely in trouble. “You didn’t have to tell them that!” she said, glaring at him.
“That’s what you told me,” said Franklin. “Now will you let me go?” He looked at her, scared and tired and something else, and Marta felt all the fight draining out of her. She couldn’t put it off any longer.
“Goodbye, Franklin,” she said, and she walked over to her parents. Her mother grabbed her by the shoulders the instant she was near and pulled her close. Marta twisted around to watch Franklin, who had stuck his hands in his pockets and started to walk away.
“Er, Redding,” said Mr. Cartwright, who was standing on the other side of her father. Franklin turned around, face carefully blank. “You know the girl’s name.”
“Only her first,” said Franklin. “But even if I knew the whole thing, I couldn’t do anything with it. I don’t know how, and I’d certainly never want to.” He tilted his head, considering. “You can know mine, if it makes you feel better. Franklin Phillip Redding.”
“Franklin Phillip Redding,” repeated Mr. Cartwright. “That’s a very human name.”
“Yes, well,” said Franklin, shrugging. “My parents raised me under the assumption I was human, so it was rather a surprise to all of us.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Marta’s father. “You’re a changeling?”
“Yes,” said Franklin.
“Then what’s your real name?”
“Do fairy parents name the children they swap out?” Franklin asked, and there was a bite beneath the conversational tone. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve been Franklin all my life, and I’m not about to stop now.”
“You haven’t stopped a lot of things,” Mr. Cartwright said. “You’re the first fairy I’ve ever heard of to eat jerky and eggs for lunch. My oldest son eats like that.”
Franklin stepped closer, into a place where the moonlight silvered on his hair. “And I’m the first fairy any of you have seen come to church. Marta here was the only one curious enough to come say hello.”
“Why do you go to church, Franklin?” asked Marta’s mother, and then she added what Marta hadn’t been able to put into words. “The church doesn’t want you there.”
Franklin shrugged, a bit helplessly. “I was raised in it,” he said. “It’s a comfort. It’s my home.”
“How, though?” she asked. “How can you love something that hates you?”
Franklin looked up at the moon for a long time. “I don’t believe it does,” he said, “Not really. I think that the people might not like me, but those are people. I’m not going to church for them. I’m going because I have faith, and my faith taught me that I am loved above all other judgment. I love it back. How could I not?”
There. That was the answer Marta had been looking for. It settled just underneath her heart like the answer to a fairytale riddle.
Marta’s mother let go of Marta’s shoulders and went up to the fence.
“What are you doing?” asked Marta’s father, but he didn’t stop her.
“Franklin Redding,” said Marta’s mother, stepping down into the street. Franklin took a step back, but Marta’s mother reached out to touch his shoulder. “Thank you for bringing my daughter home. Come inside. It’s far too late for you to be walking alone.”
Sometimes, all it takes is a moment. One single shining moment in the moonlight, late at night, to show you who someone really is. Franklin was a fairy. He would always be a fairy, but he was other things, too. He was a good neighbor, and a thoughtful forester, and a young man with faith. He was the fairy who went to Marta’s church.
And maybe, in the near future when an older couple and a toddler show up on Marta’s mother’s doorstep, distressed and looking for their son, he’s a doting older brother to a boy who shares his name. But that’s the future.
For now, Marta looked at her mother inviting Franklin in, and thought that maybe it was the easiest thing in the world to love someone. All you had to do was see them, and then the love would come.
Miranda Miller is a writer whose short fiction has appeared in a variety of student literary magazines at the University of Iowa. Her work has also appeared in Sigma Tau Delta’s The Rectangle and onstage at the 2024 University of Iowa Ten Minute Play Festival. In her free time, she completes puzzles, podcasts, and novels at an alarming rate. She’s got three library cards and she’s not afraid to use them!
Author’s note: “When I was little, I had a book of stories all about fairies. In one story, the protagonist had to choose which of three roads to walk down: the narrow and difficult trail to Heaven, the wide and easy road to Hell, or the green and twisting path to Fairyland. This idea of Fairyland as a mercurial option three that is still somehow in conversation with religion sparked my imagination—and a lot of questions. In general, the overall message is that God and fairies are not on speaking terms. But what if they were? Could they be? And that’s where Franklin came from.”
“Changeling Child” by Miranda Miller. Copyright © 2024 by Miranda Miller.
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What a beautiful story. The ending left me in tears of gratitude. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteWonderful and thought provoking, great story!
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