I asked author C.E. Murphy to write a piece on changelings in honor of the on-sale date of her newest novel, Truthseeker. Her first child is a few months old and surely, I figured, her fantasy-warped brain must have caused her at least a few moments of unquiet thought about the old legends. Here’s what she came back with:
A changeling, according to lore, is an infant the faeries have swapped out for a wretched, ill-tempered, baby-sized-and-mostly-baby-shaped monstrosity which they no longer wish to care for. Depending on the version, the faeries might take the human infant home to raise–or eat.
(Did I mention I’m a new mother?*)
Oh, dear. In looking up information on changelings to write this piece, I have been seized with an urge to write a book about one. There are so many possibilities. How about the version where an ancient faerie has been given the chance to switch places with a human infant so that he, the ancient, may live out his remaining days in comfort, cosseted by its human “parents”? Would that not make an awesome basis for a story? Especially if you tie it in with the idea that a changeling can be tricked into showing its true self by either presenting it with a set of pan pipes–irresistable to the changed folk, it seems–or, bizarrely, by brewing tea in eggshells, causing a changeling to call out, “In all my hundreds of years, I’ve never seen such a thing!” Put those two things together and–
–well, you have your ancient faerie, filled with all the knowledge and wisdom accumulated over the centuries, who has now been found out by his human parents. He doesn’t want to go back to Faerie and die a lonely death–after all, if you were immortal, or nearly, would you want an ancient lying around dying, reminding you that you, too, could die? So here’s your old one, prepared to bargain his knowledge in order to remain comfortable in the human world, and you inevitably have someone–perhaps one of the parents? Evil Parents, or at least step-parents, are a staple of fairy tales, after all–who might want the ancient faerie’s knowledge even more than she wants the infant who’s gone missing.
And then of course you have the infant who needs rescuing. Given that time is generally agreed to move differently in faerielands than in the human world, you could throw an extra wrench in the works by having the human kid all grown up by the time its parents even know to start looking for it. You end up with a world where nothing fits: an adult child born mere days ago, an ancient faerie desperate not to go home again, and no doubt the fate of thousands at stake with whatever key bit of knowledge the two changed beings share across the worlds . . .
See, this is what happens to writers. They start off planning to write a little blog entry about the breadth and business of folklore, and end up with another entry in the idea kettle!
–C.E. Murphy
*Actually, it’s clear my kid has not been swapped out for a changeling. Lucky me!
