True Thomas played me false, but it wasn’t personal, not really. He’s been with the Good Folk so long that he’s one of them himself, with all the vicious whimsy that entails. He’s always known how to save his own skin. Of course he’d discard me when his Queen ordered it. Of course he’d escort me to that rusty river and push me into exile himself, all for her pearly smile.
Faerie food is only dangerous for humans. I should know. I devoured whole homecoming banquets by myself. When I went home to my court I never meant to leave again. But the nature of a changeling is in-between. That rule wasn’t ever meant for me.
Seven years gone by in seven days–long enough for me to forget how to be human. Not long enough to lose my job, my friends, all those mundane things I wanted to shed, though a week away did noticeably reduce that month’s water bill. I lay in bed crying for three days when I first came back, too, and didn’t bother to shower. That may have had something to do with it as well.
True Thomas, the Faerie Queen’s pet. If the Queen could take someone over like that–well, it was worth trying. She could deny me my proper place, but not my cunning. I cut a one-woman Wild Hunt through crowds of Thomases. They’re common enough, even in this day and age. I swiped right on every Thomas, Thom, Tom that looked close enough: the angle of his jawbone, the tilt of his eyes, those particular details I couldn’t change later.
It was a shame that I couldn’t find a voice like True Thomas’s, but at least I wouldn’t call the wrong name in bed.
It’s not true what the magazines say. You can change a man, if you’re invested enough in the outcome, if you work at it. I wasn’t changing him in ways that inconvenienced him, after all. I wasn’t asking him to pick up the socks he left in the living room floor, the sweaters and flannels draped over the couch. Just little things, for me:
“I love how your hair looks long.” He let it grow, black and shaggy like a louche elven prince.
“You look sexy in glasses.” He stopped wearing his contacts, and I liked that better. Faerie optometry was behind the times.
“Green suits you so well.” Other colors, blue and red and black, rayon and polyester, disappeared from his wardrobe. Impatient, I sped that process up myself with a little bleach accident at the laundromat, leaving him in leafy cottons and fresh cream linens.
A human boy needs carrots, not just sticks. That was how the Queen had trained True Thomas to her hand, and it was how I trained New Thomas. Such work it was, concealing my edges under soft eyes and sweet smiles. It takes such a long time to rebuild a boy if you don’t want him to know you’re taking him apart.
After two years of quiet, patient work New Thomas asked me to marry him. He played a song he’d written just for me on his scarred acoustic guitar and when I looked at him through tear-blurred eyes I could almost imagine I was back in Faerieland.
Tomorrow the kitchen table, draped in ivory lace, groaning under silver platters, will bear a feast of goblin fruits. We’ll come home from the courthouse—no church weddings for changeling girls–and I’ll feed him tiny marzipan sweets and pomegranate seeds to bind him in a rite as old as memory.