The Changeling

I often get my students to write their journal entries based upon pictures I've taped all over the walls of my classroom. One picture was of a cute baby but the florescent lighting of the room made her eyes look dark and sinister. As a result, I though we needed and "evil baby" story. So, I began this in class and shared it with my students. I promise I'll complete it one day and enter it in a short story contest. (When I get the time. Really.)

Kenzie, albeit with new teeth and the ability to walk and talk like a child way beyond her years, was normal as can be for the rest of the day and every day after that for a full week. The problem happened at night. Somehow, between the hours of ten p.m. and 5 a.m. she transformed or adapted to her surroundings in a way that any normal human child would not. The second day yielded another leg ringed like the a ‘coon’s tail. The third morning she woke with points to the top of her ears like an elf. On fourth she could jump up on the roof in a single bound. By the fifth, much to her parents’ dismay, she looked like a kindergarten aged child. On the sixth, she could run a three minute mile.
Her parents didn’t want the seventh day to come. But come it did, and on that day, miraculously, nothing changed.

“Even the Lord took the seventh day off,” Angelo joked.

Keisha didn’t bother to snap back. Tears welled up and she just shook her head. This was not the family they’d planned for.

Late on the seventh day, a stranger came to the door. She was a round little woman who spoke with a Celtic lilt. “Good day, dear ones. It has come to my attention that perhaps you may need my assistance.”

Angelo didn’t know what the woman was speaking of.

“You do have a changeling for a bairn, don’t you?” the lady inquired.

Angelo didn’t ask how she knew. At this point, he figured Jesus, Mary and Joseph were bound to knock on the door next. He just nodded and stepped back from the door letting the woman enter.

“Ms?”

“Slainte.”

“Ms. Slainte, we are at odds.”

“As any normal family would be. Donna fash yourself, lad. I will tell you how to catch the Good Fellows behind this mischief and all will be well.”

“Good Fellows?”

“Aye. The faeirefolk is what you’d be callin’ ‘em. They’ve snatched your wee one and put a changeling in her spot.”

Keisha had entered the room just in time to hear the visitor’s explanation for her daughter’s myseterious transformation. “What? Where is our baby? We must save her!”

“Aye. If you follow my instructions you will. Don’t get your knickers in a knot just yet, Missus. If you do as you must, your girlie will be jus’ fine. More likely than not, she’s sleeping peacefully in the hall of the Elfin king. When she wakes, she’ll be in her own bed, none the wiser.”

“We’ll do whatever you say,” answered Keisha.

Angelo nodded but remained mum.

“Good. Then let us be started.”

END OF CHAPTER ONE