literature

The Lost Changeling (part 3)

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                                                                     **12 years old**
Areia's body made a rut where it skidded. She quickly pushed herself up and dug her feet into the ground, painfully sprinting barefoot across the road to her best friend’s house. She knocked – no, more pounded – on the door, praying they were home. Thankfully, Jordan opened the door. “Ariea? What-” she scurried past the half shut door and behind him, her still small hands clutching and his ribs. She could hear her father coming. Jordan closed the door and looked at her. Mud and dirt was all over her clothes, there were several cuts, scrapes, and bruises from the rocks, and a large red blotch were expanding on her cheek. He picked her up and carried her on his hip to the kitchen, where he set her down on the counter. Taking out the first aid kit from the cupboard and the iodine bottle from over the sink, he began to clean her up while she sat silently, tears making tracks in the dirt on her cheeks. Jordan handed her a tissue to dry her eyes. “Ariea, what happened?”

She sniffled. "Dad, he-he caught me, as I came back from the forest. And he got really mad. And he- he called me, he called me a," she bit her lip. "A changeling. He called me a changeling." She cried out when he touched her ankle. It looked sprained. Jordan was going for the tensor bandages when they heard the door fly open, smashing into the wall.

"Ariea go upstairs, to the bathroom, and lock the door. Put something heavy in front of it if you want. Don’t come out until I come and get you.” She nodded and raced up the back stairs. Just in time to, as her enraged father walked into the kitchen seconds after she had disappeared.

“Where is it? I know its hiding here. Where is that thing that stole my child and killed my wife?!” he grabbed Jordan’s collar, held him in the air, and shook him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I suggest you get out of my house before I call the police. I could have you charged with breaking and entering, and assault.” And child abuse he added in his mind. The man threw Jordan on the floor, and he hit his head off a chair on the way down.

“Fine then,” the father snarled. “Go on protecting that thing. It will only bring you grief. I’m not getting mixed up with its kind again.” And he walked out the door. Jordan picked himself off the floor and nearly blacked out. He gripped the counter and bowed his head, waiting for it to pass. Ten seconds later, he walked over to the sink and spit blood and saliva. He had bitten his tongue.

Checking to see that the man was REALLY gone, Jordan called up to Ariea. “He’s gone, you can come out now.” A moment later, she crept down the stairs, and ran to him, crying again. He picked her up. “shhhh.” He hushed. He was worried about her on two levels. The first was that she had been living with that man. He didn’t know if that was the first time she had been hurt. The second was that she was SO small. She was twelve, yet he could pick her up like she was six. But he didn’t have time to think about it. He needed to clean them both up. He wrapped up her ankle, and gave her an ice pack to hold to her cheek, which was still red. Then he looked at her. “Ariea, why did your father get so mad at you? What were you doing?”

“I was singing and doing a trick.”

“What were you singing?”

She shrugged “Just a song. I can only remember it when I’m in the forest.”

He bit his lip. “And because you were singing this song, your father got that mad at you.”

She nodded. “He called me a changeling.”

Jordan pulled out his computer, opened an online dictionary, and searched changeling. “Changeling. In folk lore, an ugly, stupid or strange child left by faeries in place of a pretty, charming child. A child surreptitiously or unintentionally substituted for another.”

Ariea nodded. “That sounds right.”

“Ariea, I think your father is drunk and still upset about your mother. You’re not ugly or stupid”

She shook her head fiercely. “But I’m strange. You have to admit that I’m weirder than most. And he wasn’t drunk. I’m not defending him, I’m stating a fact. His breath didn’t smell like beer. My being a changeling would explain everything! It would be how I know so much about faeries and all that. It’s why I sometimes see things others don’t. I would explain why I wasn’t too upset about mom. It’s how I can do this!” she thrust out her hands. Jordan looked at them, then at Ariea, then back down to her hands. He was shocked to see a shimmering, golden butterfly melting out of her hand, and taking flight. She looked up at him, trembling slightly, scared. Of course she would be, after her father’s episode he reasoned.

He sighed. “It’s not safe for you to go home. You’ll have to live here, with us, until we figure out what to do about this. If you want to, of course.”

She smiled and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Thank you.” She whispered into hid collar bone.
I thought I'd uploaded this already.....
So this is the end of the story. I'm sorry if it doesn't seem like it.
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