Oberon's Children

Eventually I slept. I never left my new room that first night – I don’t even know if I had the strength to do so. I didn’t even really think about what Ai’Ilyn had said once she’d left. I just stared off into the distance until I realized the moonlight had disappeared and the only light left coming through my window was from the stars that spangled the sky.

  When I awoke the next morning it was once again to moonlight streaming through my window. I sat up, amazed all over again that I was alone. I’d never been alone in my entire life – there had always been people. I’d never had a room that was just mine, never lived in a house – I’d slept in buildings, but in a pile of my fellow urchins, or with the rest of the work crew if I was lucky enough to have fallen in with one. Ever since coming to the Bower I’d been with the other children – the only time I’d been alone was when I relieved myself, and even then Ai’Ilyn had been waiting just around the bend of the doorway.

  I moved out of my nestle, and my hand fell on something soft.

  New clothing was laid out for me in a neat pile. I pushed aside the shirt on top; it caught and separated, and I realized it was cut differently than the one I was wearing. I stared at it stupidly for a minute and then decided to change.

  I left my nestling clothing in a pile and slowly pulled the new changeling clothing on. The pants were basically the same, tight at the waist and wide throughout the hips and legs, but the shirt was cut so that my arms and stomach were bare and the rest of the fabric was pulled tight across my chest and down my sides, the silk making my skin tingle as it rubbed against my body.

  I stood in the middle of the room for a time, thinking that Ai’Ilyn had said she would return today, but a seed of the anger I’d felt the night before pushed me and told me not to wait for her. She seemed to have implied that I was one of them now, one of the Ilyn, or at least that I was becoming one. The Ilyn didn’t have to do anything they didn’t want to – the ones who took care of the children did, but there were other Ilyn throughout the Bower who were never seen in the company of children, who obviously had been chosen for other pursuits.

  I walked out into the Bower alone for the first time since I’d arrived. I was determined to go to the Hall, but as soon as I stepped out of my room I found myself paralyzed with fear. A sudden paranoid fantasy took hold of me and refused to let me go: that the first Ilyn who turned the corner would see me, strike me down, and lead me to deep cells under the earth where I’d be kept captive for the rest of my life.

  So I just stood there, frozen, for so long that my knees began to cramp as I watched the Fae go past me. Their looks further rooted me to the spot: I was used to being ignored, but now I was being seen. The Urden who passed me nodded their heavy-jawed heads and rumbled gravelly grunts of acknowledgement; Paecsies scuttled or flew by with their rainbow-wings and yellow skin and smiled at me, baring sharp teeth; creatures I’d never seen before, some so thin they looked emaciated, others short and fat, all acknowledged me as they passed, and some even watched me with curiosity until they were hidden from view.

  An Ilyn turned the corner.

  Fear rushed through me with an all-encompassing might. This wasn’t the human form that Ai’Ilyn had revealed to me last night – this was an Ilyn as I remembered them, with multi-hued skin, long thick fingers, and filed teeth. I wanted to run, I wanted to say something, I wanted to fight, and I did none of it. I just stood there, staring blankly at the molted face, this one bearing deep midnight blue marks that looked almost black, obscuring the left side of his body so that he looked only half-made.

  He saw me, his eyes catching mine, and the image of an Ilyn disappeared.

  In its place stood a man not unlike what Faolan might become in fifteen years. He had shaggy dark hair that fell across his eyes and down around his neck, and he walked with a simple, unassuming manner. Everything about him that I knew should be terrifying was simply gone, the illusion no longer able to keep reality from my mind. He saw me staring and changed his course, coming toward me instead of continuing on his way down the corridor. He stopped only a few feet away, looking down at me with hazel eyes.

  I opened my mouth to apologize for standing idly in this hallway, my body acting on autopilot, but he spoke before I could.

  “How are you faring?”

  I opened and closed my mouth a few times, trying to come up with words.

  “It’s a shock for all of us,” he said quietly, his mouth drawn into a grim line. “But the world isn’t fair. Being brought here lets us live.”

  I listened to the soft growl of his voice and blinked a few times, trying to work thoughts into my brain, to mold those thoughts into words.

  “What if it’s not worth it?” I finally asked.

  He frowned, but I saw that it wasn’t at my question, but at something he was thinking – maybe something he was remembering.

  “We all think that when it happens,” he said quietly. “We all look back on three years of torture and think there’s no way forward. But there is. You’ll see.”

  He smiled suddenly, lighting up his face and his beautiful hazel eyes.

  “By the blood, you’ll see,” he repeated.

  He ruffled my hair like I was a kid he’d known since childhood. He laughed, a short bark of sound, and then he’d moved on, continuing about whatever his business had been. As soon as he was several paces away, whatever illusion that cloaked the older changelings returned and changed him once more into an Ilyn, the color of his molting skin taking on the color of his hair in the silvery light of the moonstones, spines growing from his back the same color as the hazel of his eyes.

  He turned the corner and disappeared from sight; I turned right back around and disappeared into my room.

  When I was there again, I didn’t know what to do. What did people do in a room they had to themselves? What were you supposed to do when you were alone?

  I walked back across the space in a daze, moving toward the window, but I never got there. I was halfway across the room when I started to shake uncontrollably and a wave of dizziness swept over me.

  I only realized I’d sunk to the ground when I felt pain crack through my knees as they hit the unyielding floor of the Bower. The world was spinning and I was shivering. I hugged myself tight, wrapping my arms around my new garments and pressing the silk against my chest. The silk smelled like the Caelyr – like a dark, musty corner.

  “You can cry if you want to.”

  Ai’Ilyn’s voice penetrated the fog that had engulfed me, but only the words, not their meaning. I wasn’t crying, I was just shaking. I must be cold, or else scared.

  My face felt strange. I raised a hand to my cheek and felt wetness. The muscles beneath the tears were clenched in a raised sob, and I realized I was crying.

  Movement on my right – and then the face of Ai’Ilyn in front of me, sitting with her knees folded beneath her, her beautiful auburn hair spread out around her head like a halo – like one of those angels I’d heard the old woman of my childhood talk to when she thought no one was listening.

  “How are you feeling?”

  I stared at her with a blank, thoughtless expression, and then I started laughing. It started off as a chuckle, and then it worked its way into a strange snorting, and then to an all-out bellow of mirth, my whole body shaking just as it had when I’d been sobbing. It was just as strange as knowing I’d been crying – but at least I understood why I was laughing.

  How absurd it was to ask someone who was sobbing how they felt. How utterly ridiculous a thing to do.

  “Well,” Ai’Ilyn said, looking me up and down with a wry smile. “That’s two things I haven’t seen you do the whole time you’ve been here.”

  I was still laughing, but the ripples of it were dying down. Eventually it faded away altogether, and I just sat there, not really seeing any reason to speak at all.

  Ai’Ilyn raised an eyebrow.

  “Done?”

  I shrugged, non-committal. I felt justified in reserving the right to lose my
mind again if I so chose, but I didn’t plan on doing it again right that minute.

  “How are you feeling?”

  This time the question didn’t seem funny – it sounded like something she was trying to force on me. Like I was her patient and she was trying to corner me into giving a self-diagnosis.

  I shrugged again.

  “Uh-uh,” she said, shaking her head, and immediately I cringed, ready for her to strike me for doing something wrong. But the blow didn’t come, and my cringe was for nothing. She ignored the motion. “I need you to answer the question. You’ve got to talk to me, girl.”

  “No I don’t,” I said sullenly.

  Ai’Ilyn rolled her eyes.

  “Fine. But until you answer, you can’t leave the room.”

  “I just did.”

  “I know – but now there’s an Urden there that I brought with me.”

  “So I’m trapped here.”

  “Until you answer the question, yes.”

  “I thought changelings were free to do what they wanted when they went through the madness?”

  She laughed at me, a quick convulsion and exhalation of breath as if she were anxious even to get the laugh over and done with.

  “Look, you’re a danger to yourself and to everyone in the Bower when you’re untrained. The madness can come at any time, and while you can control it, that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to. After what happened with Tristan, I think you of all people should know that we have to take precautions.”

  I glared at her, my mouth clamped shut.

  She shrugged and stood.

  “Fine. I’ll come back tomorrow. Don’t try to leave – the Urden will just pin you down and sit on you if you do.”

  “What if I use the madness to get out?”

  She arched an eyebrow at me.

  “Go ahead and try it.”

  She moved toward the door and out.

  “I have to leave for food,” I said, just as she was about to turn the corner.

  Ai’Ilyn stopped and looked over her shoulder at me – she was just far enough away that her face was half Ilyn and half human, a combination that made me sick to my stomach.

  “I’d worry more about what you’re going to have to do when you need to pee, but I guess that’s just me. You have a window. I hope your aim is good.”

  She left. Panic hit me as I realized she was right, and I dashed forward.

  “Wait!” I called out, thinking I was already too late but that I had to try.

  I turned the corner of the doorway and saw she was standing just beyond it, leaning casually against the wooden wall next to a hulking Urden, who gave me one curious look and then turned away. Ai’Ilyn gave me a look that was neither curious nor amused.

  “You’re the most pragmatic of the bunch we got,” she said, “where did all of that go? You’re sullen and moody now? That’ll do nothing for you, as you well know.”

  I swallowed hard, and realized she was right. All the time I’d spent here trying to figure out the rules, trying to play by them so that I could be a part of this world. It had all turned out exactly the way I’d wanted it to – I was right, after all the arguments with Tristan, after all the questions Faolan had posed to me that I’d never been able to answer. I’d been right, there had been a reason.

  “I guess I’m feeling … off.”

  Ai’Ilyn snorted another quick laugh, that same simple convulsive exhalation of breath, and rolled her eyes.

  “You’ll have to do better than that.”

  She pushed herself off the wall and brushed past me, moving back into my room. I followed, steeling myself.

  The questions were simple. How was I feeling, had I had any nightmares, what had been my first thought when I’d woken up. I answered them as honestly as I could – something that turned out not to be very hard at all, considering I was already used to answering Ai’Ilyn’s questions in such a manner. Something else that made sense now.

  When we were done, she said that there was one last thing to do.

  “There is something very simple that we need to do,” she said. “Part of the why what we put you through is so effective is that the incoming nestlings don’t know what happens after the children change and disappear.”

  She placed me in the center of the room, and then moved to the window. With a quick twist, she hit some hidden latch and a membranous film appeared from one side of the frame. She stretched it across the window, and the silver light all but disappeared, plunging us into darkness.

  “This is to be your first lesson in using the madness. It is simple – barely any effort is required. The one important thing you must remember, however, is that you cannot let it drop.”

  My heart was beating with sharp, sickly thumps as I listened to her, trying to calm myself though I could barely see. She was moving around, I knew that much by the location of her voice, but my eyes were taking too long to adjust to the new darkness, and I couldn’t make out more than that.

  “Let what drop?”

  “The illusion that will make you look like an Ilyn.”

  My heart jumped into my throat.

  “What?”

  A silver light flared into life, and I saw Ai’Ilyn raising a moonstone in her left hand, watching me from above.

  “The other children cannot know what happens to them. Some of the older Ilyn remember a time when the Erlking allowed it … and they remember that many more children did not survive the transition.”

  She stooped down so that she was lower than me now, but closer to my eye-line.

  “No matter what you want to tell them, you cannot see the others in your group.” My mind went to Faolan, even to Brandel and Gwen; I took in a shaky breath, but Ai’Ilyn didn’t give me time to respond. “The illusion comes as much from me as from you – but you alone are the one who must sustain it. That madness – the fever that you felt, that heat that made you ache? – is always inside you. It’s the part of you that’s Fae, the part of you connected to the moonlight. It is what allows you to do what I’m about to show you.”

  She took a deep breath that made her chest rise, and closed her eyes. She let the breath out, and I felt something about her change or grow. There was no visible sign of it, but it was there, like a smell, or the sense of heat when you’re close to flame.

  She opened her eyes again and speared me with her vision.

  “Grab the madness.” Her voice was different – charged, like lightning clouds.

  “I don’t know –”

  “Don’t think,” she hissed. “Just grab it – let the fever take you. It already wants to – just let it.”

  Her voice compelled me, and something in the heat radiating from her and that metaphysical sense of something more, made it easy, and I realized that I wanted to do it, wanted to feel that way again. I licked my lips and did as she told me to, remembering the feel of the fever, remembering the way it made my mind race, the way it made me shiver with painful ecstasy.

  It came almost immediately, called up from wherever it waited deep inside me, and suddenly it was roaring to life, a huge inferno that was ready to consume me entirely. I staggered backwards and let out a whimper, but I didn’t want to let it go. I knew it was too much – I was pulling too much of it out – but the pleasure of it made me writhe and my knees began to buckle.

  “Control it!”

  The sharp lash of her words broke through the spell and my body responded even though my mind couldn’t. The grip of the fever lessened though it didn’t loose me entirely, and I found myself gasping and shivering. I grabbed my arms and held myself; my skin was burning to touch and very dry.

  “Good,” Ai’Ilyn hissed, and I saw her Ilyn mask flicker in and out of sight, and then abruptly her face was half human and half Ilyn, split directly down the middle. “Now hold it there – hold it at that level. Concentrate – it’s like breathing, you just let your body do it.”

  I took a deep shuddering breath, and the fever ratcheted up again. The air
hissed out of my mouth, past my chattering teeth, and the process reversed itself.

  “Good, good!”

  Ai’Ilyn looked different. Her face was darker and the moonstone now on the floor between us was dimmer, like the shadows were closing in around us. Her arms snapped out straight, landing her hands to either side of my head, hovering an inch from the skin. I could feel that same sense of not-really-there heat radiating from her, and a current jumped through me that made me twitch.

  “This is a simple process,” she said slowly, but I could detect strain in her voice. “It is the basis of much that we do with the madness.”

  The room grew darker still, and it felt suddenly colder even though I was burning up inside.

  “We call it the madness because that is what waits for us if we lose control of it. It connects us to the word and expands our minds – it comes from the Fae blood. It is a connection especially to moonlight and the shadows of the night.”

  The moonstone went out entirely and I gasped as we were plunged into pitch-black darkness.

  “Quiet! You’re fine.” The voice came from nothing, ringing out in the small room, bouncing around my head. Her hands were still to either side of my head, and I could still feel the current of energy passing through them and through me.

  “The illusion we are making is made of these shadows.”

  I felt something cool touch my left hand, and then felt my fingers engulfed by it. I wanted to scream, to pull back and run, but I was frozen to the spot by fear or something more I could not tell. The coldness ran up my arm and across my chest, pulling my skin together and making it dimple in rolling waves. I knew Ai’Ilyn was doing it, whatever it was, but I couldn’t sense anything more than that. It rolled down my other arm, then back to my chest and up over my shoulders to my back, then down, tracing the line of my spine, snaking fingers along my stomach, meeting between my legs, rushing to my feet.

  “It’s almost done. I’m going to hand it to you – you have to finish it.”

  “No – no, I can’t! I have no idea what –”

  “You have no choice. I’m going to hand it to you. When I touch my hands to your head, you will feel the fever spike – it is your madness grabbing onto what I’ve woven over you. You must accept it. If you reject it, then we’ll have to start all over again, and we’ll both have a nasty set of bruises from being thrown across the room.”

  “But – how – but how do I – ?”

  “You’ll know how. It’s just like breathing – you have to let your body do it. It’s like dancing the moonlight – you did it earlier than any of the others. Remember how that felt, remember how easy it was to step into the light? This is the same. You’ve been trained for this – trust yourself.”

  I was panting hard, trying to keep the fever at the right level, trying not to break away from Ai’Ilyn...

  “Here … we … go!”

  Her burning hands grabbed either side of my face and the cold thing covering me contracted. The fever spiked within me, burning me up as I desperately wrestled back control of it. I took in a deep breath, and let go.

  The cold disappeared. The moonstone blossomed once more with silver light, lying on the floor at Ai’Ilyn’s knee, and she released me from her grip. I swayed dangerously, and then caught myself with one hand braced against the floor.

  “Not … bad.”

  I looked up and realized both Ai’Ilyn and I were panting. A faint sheen of sweat had broken out across her forehead, and I could feel a matching gleam rising on my own. The fever was still with me, but it was deep now, back to where it lay dormant. My skin no longer burned, but instead seemed to be popping out all over in beads of sweat.

  “Did it work?”

  Ai’Ilyn nodded and smiled, triumphant and beaming. I looked down at my hands and gasped.

  I could see my real hands – my human hands – but they were covered in a tight mirage of what looked like another set of hands set directly over them. These new hands were only visible as outlines, and they showed hands like the Ilyn I had seen: long fingers tipped with sharp nails, and slim, strong palms that were tightly muscled.

  I reached up and touched my face, but nothing felt different.

  “The difference is only visible to others,” Ai’Ilyn said, looking me up and down with a critical eye. “When you’re not connected to the madness, you’ll see the Ilyn mirage around the other changelings who passed their changing. Remember – don’t let it down around the nestlings. I need your word on that.”

  “How do I keep it in place? What if I let it go on accident?”

  “You won’t – the only way you’ll let it down is if you grab the madness and push the illusion away, dispelling the shadows. As long as you don’t do that, you’ll stay cloaked. Does that make sense?”

  I nodded numbly. “I won’t show myself to the others.”

  “Good.” Ai’Ilyn stood. “Now it’s time for me to get back to them.”

  “Wait – how … are they?”

  She cocked an eyebrow at me.

  “They’re the same as always. None of them have changed yet, but that’s not uncommon. I knew you’d be the first, but the rest of them have time yet. I didn’t know that the boy –”

  She broke off and grimaced, shook her head.

  “Nevermind. The rest of the day is yours to do with as you see fit. I’d recommend you eat – you haven’t for a while. Soon I’ll check in on you and we’ll talk more. For now, work on holding the madness. Work on gathering it, pulling it in, and letting it go again.”

  She turned to go but stopped at the door.

  “Oh,” she said, “and good job not dying.”

  Her smile was feral as she left.

  For a moment I just stood there, not at all sure about what to do. I felt awkward and stiff, not being told what to do or when to do it. I was too used to orders.

  In the end, I summoned my courage and went to the Hall, this time making it past the first paralyzing step. I moved easily through the corridors, slipping between the other Fae and taking the most likely turns, the ones that led consistently down, having no idea where I was in this upper level. I quickly found my bearings, though, and realized I wasn’t that far off from one of the large meeting halls the nestlings often scrubbed. As I passed it, I looked in and saw a number of Ilyn, Paecsies, and several other Fae that were oddly wispy and white, clustered around a table, talking to each other in low voices and gesturing to a number of things I couldn’t see laid out on the table. When I paused to look, they turned to me and I froze.

  But all they saw was the Ilyn illusion in place around me – or else the outline of it, like the outline I’d seen of my hands or around Ai’Ilyn when she was farther than a few feet away. One or two of them nodded, and then they returned to their work, ignoring me. I moved on, descending to the Hall.

  I moved through the tables unthinkingly, heading for the distant earthen room where I had gone for three years straight, and only stopped when I saw a small girl dart in front of me, trying to catch up to the rest of her group as they passed through the door, led by an Ilyn with bright gold markings. Her hair was tangled and knotted, and there were leaves in it. I wondered idly where they’d been working – and then realized that I couldn’t eat in there.

  Where was I going to eat?

  “Over here,” said a voice behind me.

  I turned and saw a young man, several months older than me by the look of his face and the comfortable way he walked in his changeling clothing. He was tall, very tall, with broad shoulders and dark hair –

  I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach: It was Kyre, the young man we’d been watching when we first realized the changelings disappeared.

  “Get your food from there,” he said, pointing to the refectory, speaking in a deep voice and saying only what was needed. “Don’t go to any of the little rooms – go straight to the Ilyn in charge. It’s Hulir’Ilyn today. He’ll get you food.”

  Numbly, I nodded and did as he sugges
ted. Soon I was back in the Hall with a bowl full of the usual fruit, roots, nuts, and honey, but with a slice of freshly cooked meat as well. My mouth watered at the smell of it.

  I didn’t know anyone, and I couldn’t find Kyre again, so I went to my own table, a shorter one closer to the opening that led out onto the field of the clearing. I ate there alone, watching everything that happened. Some children came and went, led by various Ilyn; Urden hulked around, carrying large objects or else heading out into the fields; Paecsies flitted by and chattered with each other or whomever they were with.

  The meat was just as good as it smelled, and the rest of the food was delicious as always. The water I’d been given tasted different, and I remembered what Ai’Ilyn had said about the moonlight. I looked at the cup suspiciously for a minute, but then abruptly drank it all anyway. As soon as the last drop was gone, I felt suddenly invigorated, like some of the fatigue from the nights before had been washed away.

  I looked down at my hands again and saw that though most of the Ilyn-illusion skin was flaky white, there was a deep midnight blue patch near my right thumb. I looked down at my stomach and my chest, and saw patches there as well when I concentrated enough to bring the Ilyn-skin into sight.

  I sat there for hours, not knowing what else to do.

  Eventually, I watched the moonlight ceremony that first night and didn’t participate. I thought about how much I’d enjoyed it, the running through the grass. Now, though, the moon seemed shockingly bright, and the heat that rolled off that field startled me. When I stepped out into the field, holding the madness and trying to control it as Ai’Ilyn had said, the fever suddenly spiked, and I felt my skin flush. The world leapt into focus, and my heart began pumping blood through me with a riotous fury. I heard thumping all around me, coming in and out, and realized with a shock it was the hearts of the children lined up and waiting. A breeze whistled through the clearing, and I saw the exact path it took, down to the individual strands of grass buffeted by its passing.

  I staggered back inside and let the madness go, but not all the way. I went back to the room I’d been given without watching the end of the ceremony and collapsed in my nestle, my head spinning.

  I woke when Ai’Ilyn returned and shook me.

  “We need to talk about who you’ll tutor with.”

  “What?” I sat up too quickly – the room spun as I tried to rub the sleep from my eyes.

  “A tutor,” Ai’Ilyn repeated gently. “To help you better control the madness.”

  “You want me … a tutor? But I thought – you are my tutor, aren’t you?”

  “I’m in charge of the others in your group,” she said, not unkindly. The earlier snap was gone, but she still spoke briskly. “I’m only here to ease the transition. After we settle on the right tutor, you won’t see much of me anymore.”

  I had very mixed feelings about that – relief and fear, excitement and reluctance, all piled together. I don’t think I’ll ever figure out how I felt about that woman. And I think, maybe, that was the point.

  “But then why do you go away? Once every month you go away and you come back after shedding –”

  “Mmm,” Ai’Ilyn said, nodding. “What did you think it was?”

  “That you aged… because every time you came back you had more red – and when Ite’Ilyn looked over us the first time, he said that he had been here for a long time, and he’s mostly green –”

  “You’re surprisingly close,” she said, eyeing me with interest. “Once a month the enchantment has to be redone – but every time we redo it, part of the outermost layer flakes away to reveal color underneath. It’s damn tricky to do, and sometimes the days leading up to it can be … unpleasant. No one knows why. But that’s not what we’re here to talk about.”

  She looked at me pointedly and I shifted, uncomfortable. I stood, an abrupt movement that seemed to startle me more than her, and then rested my hands on my hips, then changed my mind and crossed them in front of me, beneath my chest.

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Of course – you can choose anyone.”

  “Anyone?”

  “As long as they agree.”

  “But … I only know you.”

  “Don’t be stupid – you know Zal’Ilyn and Ite’Ilyn, neither of whom have a group of children right now, and both of whom would be interested in taking you.”

  “They – are?”

  “Yes. Shall I tell them you’ll take them up on the offer?”

  “Well, I – I don’t –”

  “You need a tutor, someone who can give you more training in the madness. You’ve barely scratched the surface of what you can do. Ite’Ilyn would be good for you.”

  “All – right?”

  The next morning, I found a Fae outside my door. He was small and stick-like, and though he looked vaguely human, he was brown as a nut and equally hairless. I’d never seen one like him before – and I think that was evident in the surprise I showed when I recoiled from his appearance.

  “No need to gape,” he said, not trying to hide his disdain for me. He sniffed officiously, thrust his nose up into the air, and then turned and left. I scrambled after him, and we went up several levels and to the other side of the Bower.

  We stopped in front of a twisted doorway. He stood at attention beside it, and I stood there watching him, waiting for further instruction.

  “Go in,” he said finally, as if I was being intentionally obtuse and he had no patience for it.

  I rolled my eyes, not bothering to hide my exasperation though he made a good show of ignoring it. I moved forward through the doorway and passed into a narrow room very similar to mine, though easily three times the size. There was a single figure across the room, and I squinted against the suddenly blinding moonlight to try and make it out, taking a step further into the room as I raised a hand to shield my eyes.

  It was Ite’Ilyn, who I’d seen periodically since he’d come to take control of our group so long ago. The Ilyn façade was still in place around him, and I could see that even more of him was covered with deep green skin now. He was facing away from me, turned toward the window, and his broad but wrinkled shoulders were silhouetted against the strong silver light coming in from the heavy moon that was sinking into the horizon before him, pouring in so much light that it seemed almost as bright as day.

  “Good evening,” he said, turning to look at me.

  The wide eyes and ferocious face disappeared as he turned, swirling and fading away even though the distance between us hadn’t closed. The broad Ilyn shoulders gave way and revealed the slim and slightly-stooped shoulders of old age, and the green skin swirled into two bright points of light that became green eyes looking out of an ancient face that stretched across a strong chin and proud cheekbones.

  “How … did you do that?”

  He smiled at me, close-lipped, and his green eyes narrowed into kindly slits.

  “There are many things you can do when you learn to control the madness.”

  “Control?” I asked, feeling stupid.

  He smiled again. “Yes.”

  An awkward silence fell between us, and I knew he was waiting for me to fill it.

  “The other Ilyn can’t do that,” I blurted out. “Can’t control the illusion – it’s just there or it isn’t.”

  “They could if they wanted to,” he said, nodding as he watched me, scanning me up and down as if categorizing every little detail. “But no, they often don’t. They chose to let the illusions be set by one of the more skilled Ilyn so that they don’t run the risk of unraveling. It happens, for those who do not have the best grip of what they’re doing. It becomes part of them, controlled by them, but they can’t release it without help.”

  He fell silent again, waiting for me speak. I licked my lips nervously, not knowing how to respond.

  “I’m here to learn to ... control the madness. Right?”

  He smiled. “Yes.”

  “Should … should we start
?”

  “You need to ask me.”

  “What?”

  “You need to ask me. Ritual is important – you need to know why you’ve come here, and you need to ask me for my help. Every night you come, we will start like this.”

  I swallowed and cleared my raw throat. All the talking I’d done recently was almost more than I’d done in the three years total before the change.

  “Ite’Ilyn – will you teach me? To … um … to control the madness?”

  He smiled.

  The tasks seemed simple when he explained them: bend a twig without breaking it, walk over leaves without making noise, stand a small rock on its point. I knew there were tricks to them – of course there were, otherwise why would I need training to accomplish them – but I had no idea how impossible they would be.

  The twigs always snapped in half, no matter how I bent them, and Ite’Ilyn seemed to have an endless supply. The leaves were even more frustrating – dry and dead, there was absolutely no way to step on them without making them crack as they broke. And the stone, of course, didn’t even have a point to stand on.

  For the first moon’s cycle I spent with him, I accomplished absolutely nothing, and for the large majority of that time I kept my anger and frustration in check. Every time I took a deep breath to keep myself from bursting out when I’d failed yet again he would raise an eyebrow at me, pretend to hide his smile, and tell me to try again.

  When I finally did lose my temper, the fever flared up inside me and took me over. I lost a patch of time, and when I came back to my senses, Ite’Ilyn was standing over me. I found that the twig I’d been holding had formed into a perfect, unbroken circle, both ends meeting and growing into each other as if plucked from the tree that way.

  He seemed encouraged, and he changed his tactics, now forcing me to resort to the madness. When I was able to stand the stone up, he blew it over deliberately. When I was trying to focus on walking across the leaves, he would creep up behind me and shout in my ear. When I tried to bend the twigs, he’d come over and slap them out of my hands so that I had to move and evade him while he came after me.

  I never understood what I really did when I embraced the madness, but I don’t think its possible to understand it. Ai’Ilyn had said it best – the madness just was.

  I started coming to him whenever I could, and I realized I was addicted to the feeling it gave me. Ai’Ilyn was right – it was like the moonlight. The trainings weren’t scheduled – there really weren’t any schedules in the Bower, save the ones dictated by the cycle of the moon.

  That second month was harder. He made it a struggle each time, fighting me with his own madness, which seemed to show him the perfect way to thwart me. I fell unconscious at least a dozen times, either knocking myself out by crashing into a wall after going mad, or else finding myself unable to breathe, the fever burning me up and choking me before I could get control of it.

  But he stayed with me the entire time, and he always seemed available. His voice became such a part of me that every time I reached for the madness I heard him.

  And then the others began to change.

  It was Pinur Fe who went first. I had been watching them all from afar whenever I had the chance to do so, and though I had been secretly hoping Faolan would be next to go, it was Pinur Fe who broke down one day and started trying to pull boulders from the ground.

  The scary thing was that he managed it and almost crushed Durst before Ai’Ilyn knocked him out.

  He recovered much more quickly than I did – which, really, was to be expected since I’d been torn and bloody – and when he saw me for the first time after getting Ai’Ilyn’s speech about being a changeling, he gave me the biggest smile I think I’d ever seen him give. He rushed forward and wrapped me up in his huge arms, squeezing the air completely out of me. He told me as we ate that Faolan had told them all about what he’d seen the night he’d found Ai’Ilyn and brought her to me and Tristan on the edge of the clearing, and that since then they’d been wondering what had happened to me.

  His quiet nature returned very quickly, however, and we began to see each other only rarely. His skin had begun to take on a grayish hue, and he told me once that he wasn’t taking lessons from any of the Ilyn in how to control the madness – that he was taking lessons with the Urden instead.

  “Not all changelings are the same,” Ionmar explained to me when I asked her about it. In my spare time, I had made it a habit to visit her in the Caelyr Weaving Room, which was open to any so long as they didn’t get in the way of the work. Having gotten over my initial fear of the spider-people and my aversion to the racket of the enormous loom, I couldn’t understand why more changelings didn’t interact with the Caelyr, who were among the kindest people, Fae or otherwise, I had ever met.

  “How are they different?”

  “Some have different parents,” she said, hands weaving something I couldn’t discern as she spoke to me. She was always doing that – she was so talented at what she did that she barely ever had to focus on it entirely. “To be a changeling is to have both human and Fae blood in you. Some of you are from different Fae – some of you have Ilyn blood, which is the most common, but I would be much surprised if none of you had the blood of Urden or Paecsies, or even one of the less common Fae like the variety of Sylphs and Naiads that live along the borders of Arden.”

  “Arden?”

  “The forest that surrounds us; the forest that leads to all other forests throughout the human world. It is an old name – older even than the Erlking.”

  “So you think Pinur Fe is an Urden?”

  “I think he has the choice to be one.”

  “The choice?”

  She stopped what she was doing and turned to look at me directly, her black orb eyes ponderous.

  “Not all Fae are one thing or another,” she said slowly. “Such black and white thinking is much too simple. But we have madness in our souls, each of us in different ways, and with that madness we can bend ourselves to be what we wish, so long as we have sufficient background to get there. If Pinur Fe chooses the Urden, they will help him purge his human blood, and he will become one of them entirely. They value servitude above all else, and deem it the highest good any can achieve to be protectors and guardians. They believe there can be no self in this – and as such the human side of all who wish to join them must be taken away.”

  “But he can choose,” I said quietly, thinking about it distantly. “They’ll let him choose?”

  Ionmar nodded and resumed her weaving.

  “Coming to the Bower is not a choice,” she said quietly. “Staying here until the madness comes is not a choice. But now that you have passed the threshold, now that you will live, your future is your decision. It is … a terrible thing we have to do to keep you alive. If there were no reason for it, it would be despicable. If you were only human and we raised you like this, we would be truly monsters. But you are Fae – you are cursed and blessed with power and madness, and, in the end, when the choice is to force you to suffer or else to let you die, is that really a choice at all?”

  We sat in silence as I thought through what she’d said.

  “Go now,” she said after a time, with a kindly smile and a soft touch on my shoulder. I realized she was done with what she’d been weaving and that her spider’s forelegs were neatly creasing it into a tight, folded bundle. “I have responsibilities elsewhere tonight. And soon you’ll have others of your group to interest you – they should be changing any day now.”

  She was right – Gwenel and Brandel went by the end of that moon’s cycle.

  They reacted similarly to Pinur Fe when they found out I was alive. Brandel kept telling Gwen that he had known there was something to it after what Faolan had told them, and she kept rolling her eyes at him and saying she’d already admitted he’d been right.

  “I wish we could tell Faolan, though,” she said one day as the three of us walked down the corridor that led to the upper levels o
f the Bower, where our tutors all were. Both of them had been given to different Ilyn than Ite’Ilyn, but we were all in the same area and we went there together after meals.

  “Why?” I asked, suddenly at full attention.

  “He started out convinced that you were still alive, but now that we’re all disappearing…. He was certain that he would be next after you. He wanted it very badly. But then it was Pinur Fe, and now the two of us … and none of the changelings ever come back, so he will never know.”

  “He will when he changes,” I said quickly, but I knew by looking at them this wasn’t enough of an explanation.

  “What if he doesn’t?”

  It was Brandel who said it, and his normal intense curiosity was not present; he instead was very somber.

  “That’s not possible, though,” I protested, looking to Gwen for support. But she was looking down away from me, and as I appealed to her she grimaced and wouldn’t meet my eye. A heavy block of fear settled in the pit of my stomach, and I confronted Brandel. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  He swallowed and took a step back, glancing around. We had stopped and were to the side of one of the main corridors that twisted and weaved through the upper levels. Other Fae were passing us, but not many.

  “I’m saying what happens if he never does?” His voice was quiet and intense, and he wouldn’t look me in the eye.

  “But he has to, we all go through it, we’re all changelings.”

  “Some of them don’t.”

  “That’s – no – how can you know that?”

  “We heard Ai’Ilyn talking to Zal’Ilyn,” Gwen said. I shifted my attention to her, and this time she didn’t shrink back under my defiant glare. “Zal was telling her that he had begun to worry some of us wouldn’t change since we were taking so long. She told him that was ridiculous, that we all would, but he reminded her that it had happened before that some didn’t – that some don’t have enough Fae blood to induce the madness. He said she had to be ready in case we didn’t. That she … had to be ready to deal with us if we didn’t.”

  I looked between them both, but found I couldn’t say anything for a time. The thought that the madness would never come to some of us had never even crossed my mind.

  “But she did imply it’s a very small chance,” Brandel said quickly with some of his old enthusiasm. He even attempted a smile. “It’s just that Faolan must be really worried and we can’t get to him to tell him not to be.”

  I nodded, but stayed silent. After an awkward pause, we continued on our way, and then separated for our tutors.

  The next few months were an agony of waiting.

  I managed most of the time to suppress the thought that Faolan wouldn’t change, and it was only when the moon set and I lay awake that the thoughts would come back, and even then I tried not to let them in. I had a kind of unacknowledged, superstitious dread about it – as if just letting the thoughts exist in my mind would make the fears come true, so I stamped them out.

  I wanted to broach the subject with Ai’Ilyn, to ask her straight out about it, but I found I couldn’t. I was too frightened of the answer I would get – so I chose to assume the best and ignore the possibility of anything else. But with every moon cycle that came and went, it became harder and harder to do so.

  By that time, several months had passed and most of the others had gone through the changing. There was variety, of course. None of us were the same – that was clear as we continued to grow. Most of us were Ilyn – Gwen, Brandel, and I the clearest examples by that point – but though we all received Ilyn-illusion disguises, it was clear that not all of us would remain as such. None of us knew where Celin came from, but after the change he became, almost overnight, so fascinated with the earth that Brandel and Gwen were convinced he was the child of something with an affinity for growing. Before long, when the madness was on him, he could cup flowers in his hands and make them bloom. Pinur Fe had a physical intelligence unlike anyone else. The Urden were strong beyond understanding, and all bulky in the kind of a way a heavily muscled man would be, so much so that they seemed to exist as boulders or gnarled trees in motion. Pinur Fe was like that, and became more so every night with his tutoring at the hands of the gray-green giants.

  When the madness took Durst, it was clear that he was a child of the sylphs, a group of Fae air sprites that looked like Ilyn but were insubstantial as clouds. He became thinner and almost frail-looking, and nothing could hold him down. He would move about the room like a wind devil, touching us and rushing away before we even realized what had happened. His hair and skin began to whiten, and his temperament was extremely erratic – so much so that, when we were not combined as one group in the midst of the madness, I found myself more than once actively wishing I could thrash him like Ai’Ilyn had when he’d first refused to work.

  That was the Fae in me – the part that clearly came from the Ilyn or something like them. The same part of me that finally decided, after nearly half of my year was up, that I had to see Faolan.

  I told myself the reason I needed to do it was that he needed know I was still alive. It was for him that I went, so I thought. I wanted him to know that we were all still alive, and that he didn’t have to worry after all. So I snuck into the old room one night – a task easy enough to do now that I could hold the madness and walk the Bower without making a sound.

  It was just as I remembered, and the first step I made into the room forced old images and feelings back through me as I looked down at my nestle. The sheets were perfectly straight, empty and flat, waiting for the next changeling who would use it. The next changeling who would be woken here by Ai’Ilyn or one of the others.

  Maybe even by me.

  I looked further up the row. He and Aelyn were the only ones left, and there had already been whispers that she would soon turn, that she had been acting oddly. I moved across the room, making no noise, wrapped in the madness as I was, barely even needing to breathe as the fever-heat washed over and through me. I stopped over him and turned back to look at the door – no form standing there watching me, no sense of alarm at all. We were safe.

  I let go of the illusion that shrouded me, letting the image of the Ilyn fade away. It had taken a week’s worth of practice to find out how to do it, but finally I’d managed, and now it was as easy as pulling off a piece of clothing. I took a deep breath to steady myself, trying to keep a hard grip on the madness. My thoughts were scattered and random, jumping from point to point, and I was shaking slightly.

  I touched his firm shoulder.

  He woke and was out of his nestle in seconds, swiping his arm around him in a huge swing as if fending off an attack. It was child’s play for me to dodge in time, deep as I was in the madness, but still it took me by surprise.

  As soon as the swing was completed I came forward, letting the madness direct me, letting my thoughts flow together without conscious direction. I grabbed him by the waist and threw a hand up to stop his other arm from coming down in a second swing.

  I felt him more than saw him stop. At my touch he froze and held himself still. The moon had set, and what little light the stars gave was almost nonexistent in the room. I realized only then how close we were. My only thought had been stopping him from making noise and keeping him from waking Aelyn, but now my arm was around his thin waist, my hand holding his lean, muscular arm, and our faces were so close that I could smell the scent of honey on his breath.

  He shifted and I recoiled a step, slipping out of his immediate reach. I pulled a moonstone out of my pocket, one that I had secreted away from a distant corner of the Bower weeks ago, and let the moonlight in it rise to a dim glow, just bright enough that he could see me.

  We stared at each other, not knowing what to do or say. After all the time we’d spent apart, it was like we’d been together the whole time. It felt like everything we could have said to each other we both already knew. Any apologies we might have made for not finding a way to see each other or to exchang
e words in passing seemed laughably pointless now that I was looking into his face.

  “Faolan,” muttered Aelyn sleepily, “what are you doing?”

  I held my breath, waiting for Faolan to respond, urging him to keep his wits about him.

  “Nothing,” he replied, his voice tight and controlled. My heart was beating wildly inside my chest, but the sound of his voice made it skip a beat. “A bad dream.”

  Aelyn grunted and rolled over and went back to sleep.

  “Where did you go?” he mouthed to me, staring wide-eyed. “What happened?”

  I wanted to tell him everything. My shoulders relaxed as tension simply drained out of me as I soaked him in. I could tell him – I could tell him everything that the Ilyn had told me after I’d gone through the madness. I could save him from some of the pain – I could tell him that I’d been right, and maybe then he could brace himself –

  Or maybe it would ruin everything.

  My body went cold and my hands went numb. This was what it was like. This was what it was like to be on the other side of the question. I’d been so angry at Ai’Ilyn for keeping the truth from me, trying to force me into compliance with some crazy plan that I hadn’t agreed to, but when it was my turn, when it was my choice to hide the truth or expose it, risking Faolan’s life, I knew without a doubt that I would never tell him. There was nothing that would make me put his life at risk.

  I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around him. The heat of my body increased, and I grabbed tight to the madness, desperately trying to keep it under control.

  “It’s all worth it,” I whispered, my lips brushing the edges of his ear. “There really is a reason … and I’ll see you soon.”

  I slipped away before he could respond, making for the door. He watched me go with wide eyes, and I felt his gaze on me long after I’d left.

  As soon as I was beyond the turn of the twisted doorway, I let the madness rise up and cover me, feeling the Ilyn illusion sweep over my body, pressing down against my skin. My mind turned to Faolan and I gasped as the sensation turned to painful pleasure. I kept walking, and only stopped when I was several turns away and two levels higher.

  My heart was racing and I couldn’t calm it. The fever had swept over me, this time with a power and persistence I could not resist. The ecstasy of it was greater than I’d ever felt, and it rolled over me in wave after wave as I shivered. I tried to walk again, but the pleasure rolled over me and I almost moaned. I stumbled and caught myself against the wooden walk of the Bower, and felt the wood pulsing under my hand, as if I could feel the life of the huge ever-growing tree.

  I shivered again, more violently, and clutched my arms around myself. I realized I was smiling and the thought crossed my mind that I was losing myself. I had to pull back, had to put the pieces of myself back together. I shouldn’t have gone to Faolan.

  But just the thought of him brought the feelings back, and the heat swept over me, settling in place and making my knees weak. I lost control completely and gasped, turning to catch myself against the sill of a high window that looked out over the Bower field.

  A glimmer caught my eye, a sharp sudden flash of silver through the window. I looked, wondering through the haze of heat who might be out in the field at this time of night.

  Oberon and Robin Goodfellow were crossing the field, leaving the Bower.