Changelings: The Novelization (Book 1)

Miranda's Journal, Entry #7

Miranda’s Journal, Entry #7

I don't remember who I was forced to be in my school’s production of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. Good ole’ Will Shakespeare gave both girls names that start with 'H'. But I remember the basic gist of the story.

Fae king Oberon sees a human guy being a jerk to one of the H-girls. Being the romantic hippie that he is despite his own marital problems with Titania, he summons his minion, Puck. Oberon tells Puck to go find a purple love-drug flower and get Demetrius high with it. But see, there’s another guy in the picture, and Oberon didn’t exactly give Puck a detailed description. So Puck doses the wrong guy, and the soap opera unfolds.

But this is what actually happened.

Titania was a chieftess of the Eldritch clan. Oberon was a King of Sylph, the ruling house at the time, and a widower mourning the death of the Queene of Air and Darkness, Mab.

Lilith's scepter washed up on a Mediterranean shore, during an ancient Greek beach party organized by four runaway teenagers – two girls and two boys. One of the teens picked up the scepter, and all four got swept away to the Otherworld.

Oberon stole the scepter from the humans while they slept. They woke up, and the one of the boys berated one of the girls for losing the scepter – which was, as far as they knew, their only prayer of returning to the human realm. Oberon felt guilty, but didn’t know what to do about it – so he called up representatives from each of the different Fae clans, and summoned them to his home territory of Ellydan, where they sat around a table staring at the scepter and debating, Lord of the Rings-style.

Each took turns examining the scepter, which apparently still contained power if it could send humans past the barrier. But no one could find the ‘On’ switch. Until it got passed to the Eldritch delegation. Now you must understand – Eldritch at this point were considered nothing more than a cult of Lilith-worshippers. They did not have their own quadrant territory, like the Big Four Houses did. Instead, they lived in Ellydan, and worked for the Sylphs as gardeners alongside servant-Fae, such as the Kobolds who worked as domestic serving staff, and the Barghests who were designated as guards. The Sylphs’ reign was more hierarchal than the dynasties that ruled before and after. Even the amongst the Sylphs themselves, there was a certain caste system in place. Some birds were considered too dull, common or ungraceful, such as turkeys or chickens. Amongst the insect-Sylphs known as Pixies, the butterflies and  dragonflies were most highly revered, bees, beetles, spiders and ladybugs were respected... but ants, flies and mosquitos made up the common laborers of the Sylph’s second-class.

Only Titania proved capable of wielding the scepter, creating 'Love-in-Idleness', a flower with love-inducing juices. When used, a person would feel an overwhelming affection for whoever they saw first after taking it. Titania gave Oberon the flower as the cure for his guilty conscience. Just like in the play, Oberon gave the flower to Puck - a donkey-Kobold who served as emissary, jester and general lackey to his master - with instructions to get the human boy high on love.

But Oberon was greedy. He was envious of the Eldritch ability to wield the scepter, and feared that Eldritch would use this newfound power to elevate themselves beyond their current station... maybe they could eclipse the great Sylphs. If he couldn’t control the power of the scepter, he would settle for controlling Titania herself. So he kept some of the flower juice for himself and tried to drug Titania while she slept in a guest wing of the Sylph rookery. He waited beside her, so that his would be the first face she’d see.

But things didn’t go according to plan. Puck came in to tell Oberon that he had completed his mission, and woke Titania. Instead of turning to her right, where Oberon was perched, she turned to the entering visitor on her left and instantly got the hots for the donkey-headed jester.

Feeling like an ass himself, Oberon surrendered the scepter to Titania and never bothered her again. But as Oberon feared, the Sylphs were soon deposed in favor of the newly-powerful House Eldritch.