Week 11 Storytelling: Time for Change

Image Information: A more dramatic exchange of child for changeling. Source: Todd and Erin Favorite Five

            There was something about this town that made it different. Things happened and there was no explanation and people just accepted it. Just saw it happen and pretended it didn’t in hopes that it wouldn’t happen to them. But they whispered. Whispers that followed all of the unexplainable things, stuck to them like shadows, twisted behind them on the threads of the wind, carried from ear to ear, from person to person, as unexplainable as the things it followed.

            And there were rules. Rules you followed even if you didn’t fully understand them—sometimes purely because you didn’t understand them. But like the oddities in town, these rules were never talked about either. Instead they were implicitly implied and everyone expected them to be followed.

            But on the surface, this town was just like any other. And it was for this reason that Rayna and her husband chose this town to relocate to. It had looked beautiful and free and so different from the dark, damp city that she had lived in for years before this. But she had a family now to think of, and that meant moving to a better place with a better sense of community, and so she had done that. Which was how she found herself lugging box after box into their new mid-size house in the Irish countryside, green lawns for miles in each direction and beyond that more trees than she could even begin to count.

            “Hey babe?!” She called as she forced the front door open while juggling the box in her arms, “How are the girls doing? Are they asking for lunch yet?”

            She walked up the stairs and came to the nursery on her left. Putting the box down inside the door, she looked in on her husband and her twin daughters, all laying together on a light pink blanket laid out on the floor. Her husband was on his back on the floor, their two girls rolling around on their stomachs, gurgling at each other and playing as one year olds tend to do.

            She kneeled down on the ground next to them and greeted her husband with a kiss to his cheek. “I really feel like we’re going to do well here, you know.” She breathed out and settled down against his side. “I can just feel it.”

            The next day, her husband left for his job in the city in the early morning, leaving her alone with the twins to finish the unpacking job. The whole day was spent in this task. She carried the twins from room to room with her, placing them on their blanket and working on box after box.

            Everything was going perfectly well until after lunch when she got a phonecall from the neighbors, whom after having met yesterday had given them her information in case of emergencies.

            “Hi Rayna, I am so sorry to call you like this so soon, but I didn’t know what else to do. Is there any way you would be able to come over?” Rayna looked over to her twins, sleeping soundly on the floor of the living room.

            “Hey I’m really sorry, but the twins are sleeping. I probably won’t be able to come for a while. She hesitantly told her neighbor.

            “No Rayna. You have to come now. It’s important.” Her neighbors voice was frayed, threaded through with distinct distraught and pulled tightly at Rayna’s heart strings.

            “Okay, okay. I’ll come but I can’t stay long. I have to leave the twins on their own.” She hung up, checked on the girls one more time, and grabbed her keys. Locking the door behind her, she hurried down the road to her neighbors.

            Every step down the road made her feel a sharp sense of discomfort in her chest, but she hurried along, eager to get this trip out of the way and get back home. The trip was quick, inconsequential really, her neighbor imploring her to believe her and her feelings of foreboding that centered around her family. Rayna distanced herself and make to leave, angry that this was what she had come here for, but was stopped by her neighbor’s hand grabbing her arm sharply, “The whispers say their eyes are wrong, Rayna. The whispers say there is something wrong.”

            She ripped her arm out of the hold and left, disoriented and unnerved. She began to run back down the same path she had taken. In the distance she saw two figures walking into the woods. It looked darker outside than it did before, the trees more sinister, the grass less green, and taking it all in she grew more and more uncomfortable. Scrambling with her keys, she managed to unlock the front door. Finally getting the door open and her body inside, snapping the door closed tightly behind her. She caught her breath with her back against the door, eyes closed, breath sharp. Only to freeze. She heard a whisper on the wind, coming from the living room, “Oh look, mommy has returned.”

            Her hand shook as she dug her phone out of her pocket, the sense of dread that had been steadily growing since her earlier phone call finally solidifying deep in her abdomen.

            “There’s something wrong with the twins, John.” She clutched her eyes tighter together and heard a weird chuckle from the other room. “John, you have to get home as soon as possible. Something is very wrong.”

            She felt two small hands clutch her pant legs and tug. A little voice asked, “Mommy? What’s wrong?” She choked down a scream.

            “Please John. Hurry.”

Author’s Note:

            This week I chose to model my story off of the Celtic Fairy Tale, The Brewery of Eggshells. In this story, the twins are stolen away by goblin/fairy creatures and replaced with changelings. The mother thinks that something is wrong with her children and has her suspicions confirmed when they twins speak beyond their years and never grow up. I wanted to have the same creepy sense of change and exchange to be felt in my story. I wanted this magical world to coincide with the “real” world in a small town where secrets are kept.

Bibliography:

Celtic Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs with illustrations by John D. Batten (1892).