The Changeling

by Victor LaValle

“He had to leave Norway, and he needed to bring his wife with him. He loved her, I expect, and didn’t want to start his new life without her. But when he saw the ship those naïve Quakers planned to sail, he immediately held doubts. The sloop was too small. He had to think of his family. So he brought insurance. But it came at a price. The Sloopers made it to New York and scurried away upstate. But Nils and Anna Sofie and Petra Mikkelsdatter stayed here in Queens. There was no park here, it was farmland. Thousands of acres of forest and greens. In our homeland these things are creatures of the natural world. Forests and mountains are where they make their lairs. Queens was a perfect place for it to settle. By 1898 the land for the park, as you see it now, was bought, and they began to design it. Golf courses, hiking paths, on and on. But it’s hilly country, still lots of pockets. Lots of caves. Lots of places for something large to hide. Jotunn. Trolde. That’s how we say it in Norwegian.”