Changeling

By Adrienne Wood

Teenaged Lucia's family means everything to her—mother, father, grandmother, sister. But when her grandmother, Maggy, and sister, Nara, vanish, Lucia discovers that she and Nara aren't sisters. Undaunted, Lucia chases after Nara and Maggy into their own realm to bring them back home.

In this contemporary fantasy story from Adrienne Wood, who we are isn't always what we've been told, but family is forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adrienne Wood
• Release date: Mar 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201440831

Adrienne Wood

Adrienne Wood’s stories and poems have appeared in Spider, Fine Linen, Kansas City Voices, and others. She was reclusive, anti-social, and spent all day reading books way before it was cool. Adrienne lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan with one husband, two teenagers, three dogs, two cats, and one lizard. To find out what stories she’s playing with right now, visit adriennewood.com.

Book preview

To C, S, & N

CHAPTER 1

THE SCREAMING OF the smoke detector had stopped and the smoke itself was dissipating even though I could still smell the burned cookies. I thought that I had set the timer. Apparently not. Leaving the cookies on the stove to cool enough to be thrown out, I went back out to the garden, looking for Nara and Grandma.

Grandma’s garden was a wild tangle of plants, climbing over one another, scrambling through open spaces, thrusting themselves upward toward the sun wherever they could. Raspberry and blackberry canes and wild roses, throwing out their thorned whips, grew where they would and seemed to have a special fondness for the pathways. Sometimes I could move along the paths easily, but that day, irritated by the cookies and worried what was happening in my absence, I had to stop every few steps to move a thorned cane away from my legs. Vines scrambled up tree trunks and back down again, and the interior through which I walked was dark, more like a forest than a garden. Finally, I reached the heart of the garden, stepping out of the darkness and into a blindingly bright open space.

There were a few seconds of magic, like being transported to fairyland or something. The grass in the center was as green and even as a golf course. Around the edges, the trees were blooming pink, magenta, red, and white, and flowers filled the borders. The colors were riotous, and everything shifted slightly as if a gentle breeze was blowing all the time.

My eyes were still adjusting to the light, but I could see them moving, Nara and Grandma dancing together across the grass, their feet barely touching it. They were dancing like flower petals or butterflies, floating in the air, accompanied by the songs of the birds. I remembered being a small child and dancing with them. They would hold my hands and I would leap and bend as they did. I could keep up with them and be like them, just for those few moments as we danced together.

They hadn’t invited me to dance with them for a long time, and now, seeing me enter their clearing, they stopped altogether. They smiled at me, they reached out their arms to embrace me, but they left off dancing and came to join me, standing still. They didn’t draw me to them and into their dance.

We sat together on the grass. I told them about the cookies, and they only smiled at me, unperturbed. I reminded them that Nara’s and my parents would be home the next day, and that we would be leaving. They didn’t speak, but they exchanged a tiny, worried glance.

Nara didn’t talk, she didn’t even use sign language, but she had a laugh like tiny ringing bells. People didn’t understand, they thought she had something wrong with her. I understood her, though. Usually. She was my sister, and we spoke the same language, even if it was a silent one. Our Grandma was a lot like her, although she talked, at least occasionally. When she had to.

They had the same look: tall and thin, narrow face with impossible cheekbones and transparent blue-white skin. They had the same sea-green eyes and long, silvery blond hair. Sometimes they had the same expression on their faces, of shock and surprise, wondering what happened, how they got here. They were intelligent and resourceful and capable, but they always seemed a little lost to me.

I bore no resemblance to either one of them. My hair was brown, my skin tanned in the summer or sallow in the winter. People sometimes said I was pretty, but I knew it wasn’t the remarkable beauty they both wore.

Almost every morning I got up early and went to swim practice. I had the shoulders to prove it: I was muscular and sturdy and looked like a barge-woman. My mother joked that I was the Mac truck, while my sister and Grandma were the butterflies. Since she was as sturdy and Mac truck-like as I was, I was never offended. But I was jealous. Jealous of their delicate, ephemeral beauty. Jealous that they floated through life and doors just seem to open for them. Jealous that for all their eccentricities and peculiarities, they seemed to live in an entirely different world than mine. Better. More interesting. Magical.

We were staying with Grandma for a little less than a week while our parents were out of town. Our parents worried and fretted for a while, then decided that Grandma would be able to handle two teen-aged girls. Or, more likely, they decided I was finally old enough to handle Nara and Grandma. And I was, mostly. Except I could still smell the smoke from the