Changeling

“When you were a baby, you were stolen by the fairies,” my mother says over dinner.

I keep eating my salad. She tells this story a lot.

“They left a baby in your crib, and she looked exactly like you. Those same blonde curls, those pink cheeks. Those sparkling hazel eyes. You were such a pretty baby.” The past tense stings, as always.

I used to believe this story, when I was little. I even tried to tell some girls at school, so they'd know I was special, that the fairies had wanted me for their own. This was a mistake, showing my innocence, my weakness. I was too old to believe in fairies, they said. Too old not to know that mothers lie.

“But she wasn’t you,” she goes on, when I don’t respond. “I looked into those big baby eyes and I saw absolutely nothing.”

I focus on crunching the lettuce between my teeth, the sting of vinegar on my tongue. I wish for a piece of bread, crusty on the outside, soft and white in the middle, to soak up what’s left of the dressing. But bread is forbidden in our house now. It’s for my own good, my mother tells me, cupping my cheek in her hand. I know she’s measuring the fat there, feeling for the bone underneath.

“She didn’t cry,” my mother says softly.

I cry all the time. I cried this afternoon, when Angus Dormand stole my notebook and read it out loud to the kids on the bus. All those humiliating fantasies, strewn between the seats like spilled Cheetos and crushed into neon grime. Love poems punctuated here and there with an awful, damning she.

"They come from the woods," my mother says. "So that's where I went to get you back."

Last year, I tried to tell her. I stood in the doorway of her bedroom and said, "I think I'm gay."

My mother looked up at me, her eyes bright and tender, and said, "Oh, sweetheart," and for a moment I thought she would say she loved me no matter what. "Is this because you think you're not pretty enough to get a boyfriend?"

She pulled me into a hug. I couldn’t move.

"Don't worry, baby," she said. "This diet is going to work wonders, you'll see. And once you’re down a dress size or two, we'll get your hair done and buy some nice new clothes. All the boys will want to take you out."

That was three diets ago. So far, no wonders have been worked, but my mother never gives up hope.

"I carried that baby out into the woods. It was so cold, but she didn't cry, she just kept staring at me with those empty eyes. I set her on the ground, and she still didn't make the slightest noise. And I built a fire."

I think about the poem I ripped from my notebook, the one Angus read out loud. Her fingers like mist, her mouth on mine a thundercloud. After I tore it out, I shoved it in my mouth and let the paper turn to mush on my tongue. This salad tastes like that. I chew until I can't taste anything, then swallow the nothing. My stomach clenches, like an empty fist.

"I knew the fairy mother wouldn't let any harm come to her baby," my mother says. "So I picked it up and held it over the fire." She shakes her head. "I almost stopped right there, because what if I was wrong? What if I was about to hurt my real baby? But I looked that creature in its eyes and I knew it wasn't you. And I let go."

I can imagine the heat of the flames with perfect clarity, the smell of woodsmoke rising into the cold damp air. My mother's look of stony determination. There's some truth to this story, after all. She'll do anything to get her real daughter back, her right daughter, the daughter she should have had. She'll burn away all the parts of me that aren't supposed to be.

“The baby fell,” my mother says, and even though she’s told this story a thousand times her voice goes quiet and reverent. “And then it stopped falling. For a second, I thought it was hovering in the air, until I saw the hands that caught it. I couldn’t make them out at first, because they were the same color as the forest at night.”

This part of the story was my favorite as a child. My mother turning her head slowly to find a shape beside her, like a woman, but stranger, softer, melting at the edges. Her skin was blue or black or green, her mouth like an enormous knothole in a tree, and within–

“There you were,” my mother whispers.

I know none of this happened, but I still wish I could remember it. My mother taking me carefully from the fairy's mouth, trying not to let her fingers brush the gnawing bark. My mother kissing my soft cheeks, frosted with tears. Carrying me home in the warmth of her arms. Lying awake all night to watch my face, to make sure I was never lost to her again.

Dessert is avocado pudding. Flavored with chocolate and cinnamon, it still tastes like nothing but green sliming the back of my throat. I’m so hungry, but I can’t swallow another bite. “May I be excused?” I ask. She beams at me for leaving food on the table.

In my room, I light a candle that claims to smell like pumpkin pie, something I've never tasted. The scent that fills the room is warm and spicy-sweet, and I think about scraping the softening wax with a fingernail, placing it in my mouth.

Instead, I hold my hand high over the flame, then bring it down slowly, like lowering a flag. The heat is golden and lovely in the center of my palm until it sharpens and stings. I lower my hand further. The pumpkin-pie smell goes wrong, sugar burning at the edges. My arm trembles and in a second I’ll have to flinch or scream—

Cool fingers lace through mine. The pain eases. I’m holding hands with a cloud.

She’s here, under the trees where my bedroom wall used to stand. She’s made of water and moonlight, with my round cheeks and hazel eyes. This isn’t the mother, it’s the daughter, the one who was supposed to be me. I recognize her from my love poem. Shadows roll down her face like teardrops.

Our fingers are still entwined. I don’t know if she’s here to steal me or save me, but I follow her without question. She leads me into the dark between the trees, where mushrooms grow in magic rings. I know you’re never supposed to eat anything offered by a fairy, so I don’t wait for her to offer. I kneel and pluck and bite. The flesh is warm on my tongue. A single taste fills me like nothing I’ve ever eaten.

Breaking another mushroom from its stem, I look up at her, my changeling, my shadow self. I hold out the mushroom, but she doesn’t take it. She takes me, instead. She kisses me, and my heart grows a forest.

© 2023 Lindsay King-Miller

About the Author

Lindsay King-Miller is the author of Ask a Queer Chick: A Guide to Sex, Love, and Life for Girls who Dig Girls (Plume, 2016). Her debut novel, The Z Word, is forthcoming from Quirk Books in 2024. She lives in Denver, CO with her partner and their two children.