Chapter 2
Itell myself that I don’t believe the stories, that changelings aren’t monsters—at least, not any more than the rest of us. I’ve been to Faerie; I’ve looked straight into the darkest heart of it. No matter what tales get told in Styrland about changelings and their nature, the reality can hardly be worse.
So then why is every inch of my skin prickling with apprehension as I follow Ruth’s directions? I don’t have to go far, as the crow flies, but it still feels like I’m stepping right out of civilization and into the unknown. The changeling lives just inside the border of the Kilda, somewhere most Styrlanders would never dream of setting foot, because it also holds the gate to Faerie, hidden among its trees. A place no human in their right mind would dare to go.
And yet even though I now know—and have fought—the kind of threats that might have wandered into Styrland through that gate, I still have to give my feet a stern talking to when I reach the first of the twisting trees. Their fallen leaves rustle under my feet as I step between the trunks, whispering for me to go back. But this isn’t the Emerald Forest, and there’s no magic making me hear their warnings. It’s all in my head. And my heart—because it’s my heart that wants me to stay away from everything fae. It”s what’s making my feet drag and my nerves spike with apprehension. Part of me wants to never think or look upon anything from that world ever again. It knows that way lies pain.
And answers too.
There are so many things I don’t understand about myself, my abilities, the things I can do with metal. The magic truly came alive within me when I went to Faerie, but I sense that it was there, sleeping deep inside, long before that. Yet that doesn’t explain exactly how that magic became a part of me. Does it have something to do with my encounter with this part-fae creature as a baby? And what did my mother know about it? I can only hope that the changeling has answers for me.
I see the changeling’s house now, squatting in the striped shadows of the trees surrounding it. Its roof is made up of haphazard bundles of sticks, giving it a spiky, hostile appearance, as well as helping it to blend in among the forest branches. It reminds me of some of the Low-Fae dwellings in the Seelie realm, if less welcoming.
I force myself to call out as I approach, even though my throat fights back against me, turning what I’d hoped would be a confident greeting into a wavering question.
“Hello? Is anyone home?”
I hear movement inside, and even the cadence of it sets my teeth on edge. The clicking of hard soles against wood, too light and fast for human feet, and a scrabbling noise against the door. I take a step back, alarm rearing up at the moment the house’s occupant is revealed.
Faerie has all kinds of wondrous sights and interesting people populating it, but something about the combination here catches me off guard: The person who peers out at me from the doorway looks far from human, but not in the high-cheeked, elegant way of the High Fae. I guess when she steps forward into a patch of light that she must be a mix of Low Fae and human parentage. Her pupils are a fraction too large and dark, her skin so sallow it appears to be tinged blue, and it looks oddly stretched over her features. Her white hair falls around her in wispy waves, but it’s shot through with what I think at first are dried leaves, bleached of color. Until I realize that’s just where the texture of her hair changes around her crown and temples.
She’s beautiful, in an unsettling, ethereal way, and I try not to stare, my brain still growing accustomed to her strangeness.
“Hello,” I say again when she doesn’t rush to speak.
“What does she want?” the changeling asks, blinking at me. Her voice is high and reedy.
“Who?” I frown.
“She!” she hisses, pointing a bony finger at me. “What does she want?”
“Oh,” I say, realizing she means me. “I wanted to ask you a question. About my mother.”
The changeling shakes her head, turning as if to walk back into her house.
“I brought a gift,” I say, thrusting out my hand, which holds the dead chicken Ruth gave me an hour before.
The changeling whips back round—too quick for any human—and tilts her head.
“Tesha doesn’t know her mother,” she says, but she eyes the chicken with interest. It takes me a moment, still getting used to her strange way of speaking, to understand she’s just given me her name.
“But I think I might’ve been here before—with my mother, years ago,” I step forward as I speak, hand still outstretched like the chicken is some kind of shield. The changeling doesn’t move. Her eyes flick to my face.
“She knows Tesha?”
I don’t know if she’s talking about me or Mom, so I just forge ahead, trying to explain quickly before she changes her mind.
“My mother was called Leah. Nineteen or so years ago she came to you with a sick baby. That was me.”
Tesha looks at me for a moment, then beckons me inside without another word. I hesitate, then follow.
“What does she want to know?” the changeling says when I’ve stepped into the house. It’s dark, the windows high and narrow, and the place has a distinct smell to it I can’t put my finger on. I glance up and see a dead rooster hanging from a rafter, just as Tesha’s hand snatches the chicken from my grasp. I let her take it, hoping it will be enough to buy the answers I came for.
“Why did my mom come to you?” I ask as Tesha gestures for me to sit on the single spindly chair in the room, covered with a sheepskin throw. “She was a gifted healer, but even she didn’t know how to cure me. But then I got better after I came here, yes? What did you do to help her?”
Tesha’s fingers pluck at the chicken’s feathers, but her eyes don’t break from watching me. From my limited understanding of her reactions, I’d say she looks wary.
“I know it was a long time ago,” I offer. “But my mother’s dead now, and I can’t ask her.”
The changeling’s shoulders drop and I think this explanation relaxes her a bit. Perhaps she thought I was seeking answers my mom didn’t want me to know. I quite possibly am, but it’s too bad if Mom didn’t want me to come looking for them. I can’t live my whole life in the dark.
“Her baby was sick,” Tesha says. Despite her white hair, she crouches down on her haunches like a child, looking quite comfortable on the floor. “It was missing what it needed. She wasn’t sure, but she guessed, and Tesha told her she was right.”
“And what was it the baby needed?” My head is spinning with ideas of charms and spells, an enchantment that would explain why I have these powers with metal. But none of these theories prepares me for Tesha’s answer.
“A true name.”
The words startle me so deeply that I physically reel, putting my hand to the edge of the chair to steady myself. The fleece covering it feels oily to the touch, but I’m too shocked for it to bother me.
“But humans don’t have true names,” I say weakly. “It’s a fae thing.” I’d barely known anything about the concept of true names until a few months ago, only that they gave you power over the fae who the name belonged to. That’s how Cebba had convinced me that finding out Ruskin’s true name was the key to my freedom. She hadn’t been lying—she was fae, so she couldn’t lie—but that didn’t mean she’d been telling the truth. I’d succeeded in getting him to tell me, but in some ways, it had just pulled me deeper under the hold he had on me.
Tesha smiles, her teeth the white of bone, and for the first time she seems friendly, almost amused.
“This baby had one. It needed it. It came from somewhere not all human. Not all Styrland.”
My stomach plummets into my feet and I have the urge to shout at her, to deny what she’s saying.
“If you’re saying Isaac Thorn isn’t my father—” It’s impossible. I have his eyes, his stubby fingers, everyone can see the likeness when they’re not mentioning how much I look like Mom.
Tesha is shaking her head. “No. This baby was—” She stops and jabs a finger at me again, “She—is all human. Just part of her came from elsewhere.”
I shudder with relief, because if the changeling was trying to suggest I had a fae father…I didn’t want to explore where my mind had been headed.
“My magic, you mean? The baby had some magic? That’s the part that came from Faerie?”
Tesha intertwines her fingers and looks away. “Tesha couldn’t say for certain.”
“But that could be the case?”
“Maybe. If her magic wanted to be named. If it wasn’t happy inside her—” she points at my chest, “—without her having the ritual.”
“The ritual to give someone a true name?” I guess, trying to follow her line of thinking.
“Not give,” Tesha says firmly.
“Okay…” It occurs to me that you’re probably born with a true name and then have to discover it. Tesha didn’t give me my name, she just learned what it was and passed it on to Mom, seeing as she wasn’t fae and couldn’t do it herself. “The ritual to find out what it is, then?” I correct myself.
Tesha nods eagerly, as if pleased I’ve started to understand her. I wonder how often she has a conversation with someone, let alone a coherent one.
“Tesha did it for Leah.”
“So you know it, my true name?” I ask, the question coming faster than I expect. She nods again.
It seems silly, this sudden desperation to know the details of something I wasn’t aware existed a moment ago. Learning Ruskin’s name unbound me from the magic of our deal, but my own name would hardly be of use to me in the same way. And when Ruskin had explained the meaning of his own name—Solskir, Shield of the Sun—its details meant much less to me than what it symbolized: His trust in me. Or the pretense of it, anyway.
But will hearing my own name tell me more? Will it help me understand something about myself I didn’t before? Certainly, it seems more than one person in my life has wanted to keep this piece of identity from me, and maybe they have their reasons for that. Mom knew this secret and never breathed a word of it to me, didn’t even leave any mention of it in her writings for me to find. Perhaps she thought it was too dangerous, that I’d be better off not knowing. Or maybe she died too soon to prepare me like she’d wanted, and just never got a chance to explain this strange start in life to me.
But either way it’s mine—mine to know, for better or worse.
I realize Tesha is watching me expectantly.
“Can you tell me what it is?” I ask.
“Tesha can tell her. For a price.”
“I already brought you a chicken,” I say hopefully.
“A higher price,” she says, a calculating tilt to her head.
My body chills a little, though perhaps I should’ve expected this.
“I see you really are part fae after all.” I’m unable to keep the coldness from my voice. Though I’ve had enough of fae deals and trickery to last a lifetime, here I am, considering striking yet another bargain.
“All right, then, what do you want?” I ask bluntly.
Tesha runs her fingers along the grooves in the floor, averting her gaze.
“A favor.” She turns to me, lifting her hands to her sides. “Tesha will save it for the right time.”
“That’s it? You can’t be more specific?”
“She will be able to help Tesha one day,” she says to me firmly. “Tesha only asks for that help.”
I don’t trust this strange creature that seems trapped between two worlds, two identities, but I also don’t think she has a reason to wish me harm or try to trap me. I consider the offer, constructing some wording that might put me in a safer position to agree.
“This favor—it cannot be a matter of life or death. And it cannot directly harm another, including myself. Those are my terms.” This covers the biggest hazards, at least.
She blinks and nods. “Tesha agrees. She will tell her the true name.”
She rises and crosses to the fireplace. I watch, fascinated, as she pulls out a bowl from a precarious tower of crockery and fills it with water from a jug, then places it in front of the fire. She goes to a chest of drawers next, pulling out a glinting piece of metal I realize is a needle once she’s holding it in front of the firelight. I watch as she pricks her finger with it and lets a crimson droplet fall into the bowl.
She holds the needle to the fire, sterilizing it, then turns to me.
“Now her,” she says, holding out the needle.
“For the ritual? Why does it need your blood too?”
“It needs fae blood. And hers.” She gestures with the needle again.
I kneel down so the bowl is sat between us and oblige, pricking my finger. As my blood swirls pink ribbons into the water, Tesha mutters words in a language I don’t understand. The old tongue, I guess.
Though the windows are all closed a gust of wind suddenly lances through the house, causing the flames to flare. As the air rushes past my ears I hear it, a whisper I somehow know is meant for me:
Lunasworn.
It feels like someone I’ve known all my life is calling for me, the echo the word leaves in my ears at once new and utterly familiar. I study the letters of it in my head, wrapping my mind around the shape of the word in an intimate embrace.
As the wind ebbs and the flames resume their usual crackling, I look to Tesha.
“Did you hear that too?”
Tesha nods. “The two in the ritual hear it.”
“But I thought true names were secret?” In Faerie it seemed like you were the only one who’d know your true name, but I realize now that’s impossible. A baby could hardly perform this ritual alone.
“The one who performs the ritual is…” She mutters a word in what I think must be the old tongue. I wonder for the first time if Tesha was born here, and where her parents came from.
“Exempt,” she says at last, looking satisfied she’s found the right word.
Exempt from what?I ask myself the question, unsure if Tesha will be able to explain it to me. Knowing a true name gives you power over someone, I’m willing to take a guess.
“So…you can’t use my true name? Even if you wanted to?” I say.
She nods, confirming my theory: the person who does the ritual for the child will learn their true name, but will be unable to use it against them.
I turn my name over, mouthing it to myself. Other than an instinctual sense of ownership, I don’t feel much more.
Lunasworn.
“But what does it mean?” I ask. “I don’t know the Old Tongue.”
“Lunasworn.” When she says it aloud, I feel a small pull at the center of my being, urging me to answer. “It means ‘Sword of the Moon’. It is an old name. Powerful.”
The literal translation means nothing to me at first, a pretty phrase without context. How can I be like a sword? I can barely hold one. And the moon? Other that lighting my nights like every other creature on this earth, I can’t say I’ve ever given it much thought. I was right then, and just like Ruskin’s true name, the meaning is as useful as?—
My train of thought stops in its tracks, giving way to an entirely new one.
Hisname is very much like mine, isn’t it?
Shield of the Sun. That was what he’d said his name meant. And me: sword of the Moon.
A set of pairs. Two sides of the same coin. It couldn’t be coincidence, could it?
I rise, suddenly wanting out of this stuffy house and this confusing conversation.
“Thank you for your help,” I say to Tesha. She doesn’t seem startled by my sudden goodbye, merely stands to watch me go. I pause at the door, remembering our deal.
“When you need me to repay my side of the bargain?—”
“Tesha will find her,” she says, without a shadow of doubt in her voice.
When I leave the thatched house of the changeling, I can’t help but feel like I’m fleeing something, the exact shape of it shadowy and unknowable to me. But whatever it is keeps chanting a pair of names in my head as I go.
Seeing Dad is what finally chases the names from my mind. He’s got his color back and, apart from the bandage around his head, he’s looking pretty cheerful. He reaches out to me as I come in.
“Nora, I woke and you were gone again. I was worried?—”
“It’s okay, Dad, I just had to check up on something.”
“I told him you’d be back,” Ruth says, her arms crossed and her observant eyes on me. “Did you get what you needed?”
“Yes and no,” I say truthfully. I’ve gotten some answers, but they’ve left me with even more questions.
Ruth lets us stay the night. Her guilt trumps her fear of Albrecht’s men and she can’t bring herself to send us out into the dark. In the morning, before we set off, I pay the healer. She tries to refuse, of course, citing Mom and calling it professional courtesy. I insist, though, and eventually she gratefully accepts the gold. As I hand it over to her, I wonder when I’ll get a chance to make more. Once upon a time I imagined that once I mastered alchemy, I would use my skills to enrich our whole village. Now with me in hiding and my workshop torn to shreds, I wonder if that dream can still be reality. Then the magic I did in Faerie tugs at my memory, and I realize I might not even need my workshop anymore. The tools, the calculations, the carefully hoarded ingredients…in the end, I didn’t need any of them. But I’m not sure how well the magic will work outside of Faerie. There was no way to tell other than to try it—and now certainly wasn’t the time for that. First I need to get Dad home safe. He’s my priority, and everything else—including the questions I have for him about Mom and me as a baby—can wait.
He’s well enough to sit up at the front of the cart with me, and we leave the village as the day starts proper, the swaying of our vehicle lulling me into deep thought. I re-examine what Tesha told me. I tried to keep it from my mind last night, but now in the light of day it seems silly not to question it.
Why would my true name align with his like this? Maybe I’m overthinking it, and all true names refer to weapons and celestial bodies…but somehow I doubt it. Like most things related to Faerie, wording matters, and I can’t help but think this collection of phrases has some important meaning I can’t yet piece together.
Dad puts a comforting hand to my shoulder, pulling me back to the present. He gives me a searching look and I understand. We haven’t talked, not properly, and he must have a million questions.
“Where did you go Nora?” he asks gently. “They said you’d disappeared from the castle. I hoped with all my heart you’d found a way to escape to safety. You were always so clever. But then there were stories…about fae magic and that Ru?—”
“It’s true,” I say, cutting him off before he can say the name. There’s still something about hearing it out loud that’s painful. “I tried to escape on my own, but I failed. I was stuck in a room with guards breaking down the door, moments away from capturing me again. I knew Albrecht would’ve still forced me to marry him, or had me imprisoned. So I had to think quickly. I know it seems crazy, but I made a deal with Blackcoat and?—”
“Nora, look.” Dad interrupts me to point at a group of riders on the road up ahead. My blood runs cold. Even from this distance their uniforms indicate that they’re soldiers—Albrecht’s men. I curse. We should’ve kept off the road, but Parsley is old and I thought she would struggle too much. It was still so early when we set off, and I’d thought we could risk it.
It’s too late to turn back now, though. One of them lifts their arm to hail us, and it’s clear we’ve been seen.
“What are we going to do?” Dad whispers to me. I shake my head. How I wish that sometimes he would have the answers. But that spark and drive in him went out when Mom died. For a long time, the burden of making decisions for our family has fallen to me. It’s my job to keep us safe, and so far I’ve let Dad down. They beat him before because of me.They might do even worse to him now, if I don’t cooperate. But cooperating would mean going back to Albrecht, and that would be…no. That’s not an option. I try to think as Sanna’s donkey pulls us slowly closer to the soldiers.
“We don’t know they’re looking for me. Maybe it’s something unrelated,” I say under my breath, but the hope in my voice sounds false even to my ears. I adjust my hood, despite knowing it won’t help if we’re put under any real scrutiny.
“You do the talking,” I say. “I shouldn’t draw attention.”
As we get closer, I examine the soldiers’ clothes and equipment. I have one weapon in my arsenal, and that’s the unexpected ability I picked up in Faerie—the magic Tesha told me doesn’t come from this realm. But I’ve only tried it in Faerie, in an atmosphere thick with magic. And so far, it only works on gold. I’m disappointed, but hardly surprised, when I don’t see anything in gold on the soldiers. Men of their class don’t exactly go around decked out in the stuff.
But there is other metal, lots of it, from their stirrups to their swords. A thought sparks. Maybe…
“What’s the matter, sirs?” Dad greets them, doing a good job of sounding calm.
“We’re looking for a fugitive of the king,” the captain of the soldiers says as his horse shifts on its feet. His eyes are already on me and I realize almost immediately that there’s no way we’re avoiding suspicion here. If there’s any chance that I’m the right person, they’ll take me to the castle just in case, and then I’ll be back where I was.
Unless I can stop them. And there might be a way.
When I was imprisoned by Cebba I managed to turn another metal into gold. I can’t make that happen here—I would need to be holding something already made of gold, and have direct access to the metal on the soldiers, and that’s not possible right now. But aside from that there was a moment, just a brief one, where I thought I could manipulate regular metal in the same way I could its yellow counterpart. If there’s even a chance I was right about that, then it’s worth trying now. Between my freedom and my father, I have everything to lose, and I’m not going down without a fight.
I don’t hear what Dad says next, but I assume he’s trying to concoct some cover story for me. While he talks, I focus on the sword at the captain’s side, pouring my fear and desperation for survival into the mental connection.
Iron. It comes to me clear as the sun still climbing in the sky. Though the captain’s sword is sheathed, I somehow know exactly what it’s made of, and the reveal startles me. Iron hasn’t been used for centuries for weapons of this sort. Everyone uses steel. Unless this soldier is carrying around an antique, he’s been armed with an iron sword for a reason.
I don’t have time to discover if I can do more than read its composition, because in the next moment the captain unsheathes it and points the blade directly at me.
“It’s her, the Gold Weaver. Take her to the castle.”
“No!” Dad grabs the reins from me, yanking them hard enough to startle Parsley and set her braying. She charges forward a few feet, making the soldiers horses rear and scatter, but then she’s slowing as quickly as she bolted and the soldiers are closing back in around us.
“It’s okay, Dad,” I say in a soothing voice, still trying to come up with a solution before he ends up getting hurt again. “Let’s just?—”
My empty assurances die in my throat as there’s a scream from one of the soldiers at the back of group. He disappears from view, as if he’s been snatched from his horse and the others startle, looking around for the threat. Then a cry goes up that lifts my heart and squeezes it tight all at once…
“It’s Blackcoat!”