Silence filled the room once my mother finished speaking.

  I was more than a little taken aback by Mum’s story. Not only was I supposed to be dead, but my mother was technically the reason that I’m not human. Okay, maybe that was a little uncharitable. She did do it to save my life, and she couldn’t exactly get my informed consent because I was a couple of days old, but still.

  “What was I dying of?” I asked eventually.

  Mum shook her head. “Nobody knew. Vanessa – the local witch, she passed a few weeks later – thought it was something to do with your lungs. I tried everything.” My mother looked close to tears from recounting the story, which softened my heart.

  I opened my mouth to speak when Cassie, who had been silent up until then, suddenly jumped up. “Wait, hold on. I need to go and get something. I won’t be long!” She ran from the room as she spoke, leaving her words trailing after her. Moments after she left the room, we heard the door open and close in a hurry, and the distant sound of hurried footsteps.

  “...Okay,” I said flatly, before me and Mum collapsed into laughter. Leave it to Cassie to resolve tension, even unintentionally. By the time we had both recovered, I was feeling strangely better about the whole deal. Again I opened my mouth to speak, only to have my mother beat me to it.

  I wonder what she’s getting? The only thing I can think of that would be relevant would be one of Almon's precious books, and there was no way she would just take one of them.

  “I wish I could have told you. I almost did, many times,” she admitted. “I just didn’t want to risk harming you, if what Fel had said was true.”

  I shook my head. “It’s fine, I get it. Well, I get it up here,” I tapped my head. “It might take me a while to truly understand, but I can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same.”

  That had my mother smiling again, a smile unburdened by the fear of admonishment or rejection that had tinged the one from before the story. However, I caught something she had said. It made sense that she would want to tell me, but surely that would be static. If there were many instances of her wanting to tell me, then there must have been something to prompt it.

  “Wait, you said ‘many times’. What was making you want to tell me, besides the obvious?” I was a little worried that I had been accidentally doing magic or something.

  My mother simply sighed, deep and mournful. “Do you remember when you were younger, and you would always get left out of things? You always used to complain about the other kids being distant or dismissive, and you couldn’t explain why.”

  I was starting to pick up where she was going with this. “I was supposed to die, right? So I suddenly show up healthy, they assume you did something untoward. They don’t mention it to me because I clearly don’t know, but they also keep their kids away. Their dislike trickles down, you get this situation.”

  My mother nodded, contrition and bitterness warring on her face. “Yes. We didn’t always live this far out. A few weeks after you were healed I was ‘asked’ to swap homes with the previous owner of this house, a woman I didn’t even know. I’m sure you can guess why,” she sniffed. “They already didn’t like me because of your father, and now this? Well, now you know why we don’t get many visitors.”

  I felt myself getting frustrated with the others in the village, not for the first time. My father had been a merchant passing through town for a few days. Apparently, he had talked big about taking my mother away from here, but moved on as soon as he got her into bed. He never even knew about me, and from the pain and bitterness in my mother’s eyes when she talked about him I didn’t want him too.

  Nonetheless, I knew that more than one of our neighbours looked down on my mother for raising me alone, although they never said it to her face. If she was dealing with the whole town thinking she was some kind of devil summoner at the same time, then it explained why she didn’t really involve herself in the goings on of the village, to say the least.

  Part of me felt relieved that whatever drove people from me, which in turn made me feel pretty guilty. I shuffled over to give my mother a hug, which clearly surprised her. I wasn’t one to initiate contact like this normally, but the last couple of days alone had given me several crash courses on the healing power of hugs, so I thought I would try. I knew for a fact how good it was when Cassie hugged me.

  Eventually, we pulled away and I asked the question that had been burning in me since before her story. “Mum, you said that you had ‘theories’ about what I was.” Okay, so that was more of a statement, but still.

  My mother nodded. “He wasn’t exactly clear, bu-”

  “I’ve got it!” Shouted a voice from outside. Moments later we heard the door burst open, before Cassie came sprinting into the room gasping for air. She was red and sweating, and holding a huge tome in both hands, pressed to her chest like it was worth its weight in gold. While we waited for Cassie to recover her breath, I leaned forward to read its title: A Layman’s Guide to the Inner Planes Volume 3.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Nevermind, she so did.

  “Cassie, why did you steal one of Almon’s books?” I asked.

  Cassie held up a finger and took a few more seconds to regain her composure. “I thought that I… recognised the term that guy used… Changeling,” she panted, “and I figured out where from. Its in here. Almon made me read it a few months ago.”

  Cassie sat cross legged beside me, before placing the book on her lap and opening it to the index. She seemed to find whatever she was looking for, flipping the book to around two-thirds in. Then she flipped a few more pages forward, before settling on a passage at the top of the page. She gave me a questioning glance, and when I nodded she began to read.

  “The creatures of the Feywild reproduce in a series of unknowable and unpredictable ways. We know that they are capable of reproducing between each other, creating more fey of various castes. However, through a series of costly deals and one high-stakes wordplay competition, we have learned that it the fey that are also behind the ‘changeling’ phenomenon. Most seem to find explaining the process to be highly taboo, although we have found a couple that were willing to explain why they do this.

  As it turns out, these changelings are in fact another type of fey, one born through the union of a mortal and a fey, although this union need not be sexual in nature. While the nature of the process is still unknown, the nature of the changelings has been far more illuminated. According to one inter-planar source, the creation of a changeling is similar to a cultural coming-of-age ritual for the fey of higher castes. We have yet to find a fey who has created one to speak to, but it appears that these changelings are often viewed in a mixed light. Those fey powerful enough to create one seem to hold them in high esteem, much as they would a genuine child. However, lesser fey seem to dislike them, as they are linked intrinsically to the material plane rather than the Feywild.

  Changelings are known to have a very wide pool of traits to pick from, although we have found some consistent traits. While some of their abilities appear dependent on their fey progenitor, all appear to be capable some form of shapeshifting, although the limitations vary case-by-case. They also all have improved physical abilities when compared to the average of their mimicked race. Both of these can be linked to the largest discovery that we made during our questioning of the fey: a changeling is as much mana as they are man.” Cassie closed out her oration with a sigh.

  I felt lost again. There was a lot in there, and a lot of it made a lot of sense. The man from Mum’s story – Fel – was graceful and lean, elfin but not an elf, had the power to heal me as casually as placing a hand on my forehead. It seemed like he had actually provided Mum with some rare information, which made sense since she actually needed to know, which these researchers didn’t. That list of traits matched mostly too, although Fel also mentioned the strange lifeforce control that I had awoken with. Perhaps that was an ability dependent on my ‘fey progenitor’.

  There was also that ending line: ‘as much mana as they are man’. I had no idea what the implications of that could be, but it sounded like the kind of thing that could be important. This whole fiasco did explain a couple of things about my life which I hadn’t really thought of before, even though I had known they were strange. Like how I had never really gotten sick, and how I never ended up getting acne even in the heights of puberty. I guess I had just not had spots as part of my self image, and was magically wishing them away.

  I realised that Cassie and my mother were both staring at me and blushed a little for zoning out. “That does sound familiar. Still, fey? Am I going to need to be really careful with my words now, make sure I never lie?”

  Cassie shrugged. “It doesn’t mention the whole no lying thing in the book, because this one is more of an introductory guide to how planar beings interact with the material plane. Almon probably has more books about it, but he won’t let me read them.”

  “Oh, I am sure that you girls could ask him. I know that he seems all off-putting, but he’s just candid. He took one look at me when he moved here, announced to an empty square that the rumours were untrue and wandered off. He’s never treated me badly, which makes him better than a lot of folk.” My mother added, which actually did raise my opinion of the wizard rather a lot. I had never disliked Almon, especially because he taught Cassie for free just because he saw her talent. Still, he was so perpetually grumpy that it was difficult to get along with him either.

  I shrugged. Turning to Cassie. “We might as well, right? Besides, it’ll probably be a good excuse for why you took the book.”

  Cassie looked at me flatly. “It’s not an excuse if it’s the truth.”

  “But will Almon think its the truth?”

  Cassie paused, before slumping. “Fair. We should talk to him though. Later though, I just ran across half of town, I am not going back there for at least a few hours.”

  I grinned. “I see how it is. I learn world shattering secrets about myself, but we pause because you want a nap.”

  Cassie just nodded enthusiastically, before gesturing vaguely at me. “Finally, she gets it. Took you long enough,” she added with a giggle, before standing. “Now, I’m starving. You coming to get some food?"

  I shrugged with one arm. “I could eat.”

  Cassie seemed satisfied with that, and quickly left the room. I stood to follow her, before remembering something and turning to face my mother, who had been watching us with a satisfied smile. “Are you really okay with me following her when she leaves?” I asked, more than a little worried for her reply.

  She just nodded sagely. “Of course. I won’t lie and say I’m not going to be worried, but I would rather you be happy. If adventuring is what it takes, then that’s what I want for you.” Then she smirked. “Although I reckon it’s more to do with the company, isn’t it?” If blushed a little, feeling like I had been found out even though I wasn’t sure what exactly I had been found out doing.

  My mother’s smile turned more genuine. “Besides, I don’t know if she told you but me and Cassie have a deal. You two aren’t going anywhere until you’re both adults, so I get you for a whole year yet,” my mother said with a chuckle.

  I smiled, broad and bright. “Thanks Mum. You’re the best.” I waited just long enough to see her nod before turning to the door and catching up to Cassie, who had started walking without me.