Changelings: The Novelization (Book 1)

Chapter One: "Circle"

Chapter One

“Circle”

When Gordi came to, he was in a different world.

He did not consider the Otherworld his home, despite having spent most of his life there. Yet this place was as foreign to him as the Otherworld had been, when he was taken there as a young boy.

There was a feeling of warmth on his face and his shaggy hair, which for years had been unacquainted with brushes, scissors, and soap. He had not awoken fully, so he did not question the sensation until a moment later. His eyes snapped opened and he bolted upright at the same time, mind suddenly alert and racing – he was no longer in the cold and cavernous chamber, he realized. He was not in the ‘Otherworld’ at all. He was in THE world.

Gordi blinked against the harsh light that assaulted his eyes, which were accustomed to the dim, pale glow of the plants, gems, wisps and even people that populated that dark world he had left behind. This type of yellowish light illuminated all of his oldest memories, but he could not recall its name or source – and it was too strong for him to locate it here in this new environment, at least not until his eyes adjusted.

Small pale flowers, the blossoms of a Hawthorne tree, covered him. The dirt and grime from the Pits caused them to stick to his tunic, boots, hair, and skin. Grinding his teeth, Gordi brushed them off with disdain. Hawthorne trees were native plants of the Otherworld, and only grew in places where the veil between worlds was weak. When the veil has been rent asunder to allow passage, they spring up overnight. This tree had not been there until Gordi’s arrival.

The tree had another name, deemed derogatory by his former captors. ‘Faery Thorn’.

There was something smooth and metallic underneath Gordi’s left hand. He looked down to see the face of a worn iron shield, barely covered with the brittle remnants of age-old paint – white, with two intersecting bands of crimson, the center one running down the length of the shield and the other horizontally, near the three sharp points crowning the top. The Redcrosse Shield.

Gordi was glad to see that it had followed him, for he had risked the success of an already unlikely escape in order to procure it from the wall of the treasure room. This shield had protected a fabled human hero, the Redcrosse Knight, from the fires of his enemies. As Gordi slid his left arm through the ancient leather strap and grasped the rusted handle, he prayed that it would do the same for him.

Finally able see clearly around him, Gordi noticed that he was sitting in the middle of a circle - a ring of closely-grown toadstools surrounded him like hostile, diminutive soldiers standing guard. Like the Faery Thorn, this was the mark of unnatural forces at work – but circles of this kind were even more ominous, steeped in mysterious lore. They were once used as a trap to ensnare unsuspecting prey like a magical net. “Great,” he thought, “a damn fungus circle.”

Gordi stood up, wary – the last time he saw a ring like this was the moment just before his life changed, and he was taken away from all he knew.

Trepidation gave way to something else – there was no one around as far as Gordi could see. That was not their way – in the Otherworld they would have descended upon any human in the same moment of their transgression, for they had the help of their uncanny senses to alert them when something was amiss.

There was an old rhyme, a song of warning, which they would sometimes sing to intimidate children like Gordi - it contained most of what Gordi knew about the circles. He smiled, eager to put its accuracy to the test.

“He what tills the Faery’s green, nay luck again shall have,” Gordi recited aloud, mocking the vicious sing-song tones of his childhood ‘caretakers’. He kicked at the grass where he had just been sitting, upsetting the turf and sending it flying in clumps.