The Changeling

by Victor LaValle

“Have you noticed that the stories about the first colonists in America are always about how they think the Devil is living out in the woods?” Jorgen peeked down at the knife quickly, with little more than a glance, and when the knife didn’t rise again, he stopped holding Apollo’s wrist. “I’m talking about the Puritans, I guess. They came to North America and swore monsters were waiting to get them in this savage land. But maybe it was the other way around. Maybe those Puritans brought monsters with them. Unloaded them from their ships right alongside the cargo. That’s what my people did. My great-great-great-grandfather. He brought a monster with him. It emigrated to America just like him.”

“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.”

“All these kids,” Apollo finally said. “You fed them to it?” “No,” Jorgen said firmly. “That’s not accurate. It tries to raise them. You see? It tries to be a good—” “Father,” Apollo said, but the word sounded spoiled in his mouth. Jorgen raised his arms and shrugged faintly. “It tries, but it fails. When it fails, it feeds. Then we must try again. That was our pact.”

“And you, I know you. One of these special new fathers. You’re going to document every moment, every breath of your child’s life. You take videos of them while they’re sleeping and slap them on the computer before the baby wakes up. You think you’re being so loving. You’ll be a better father than the one who raised you! Or the one who was never there at all. But let me tell you what I see instead. The neediness of it. The begging to be applauded. As if the praise of a thousand strangers would ever make up for the fact that you didn’t feel loved enough as a child. Oh, you poor thing. You were begging to be devoured. Maybe it’s you your child needed to be protected from. You leave a trail of breadcrumbs any wolf could follow, then act shocked when the wolf is outside your door. So concerned about being the perfect father, you don’t even notice your child has been snatched away! Replaced in the night by the offspring of a troll, a changeling whose beauty is only a projection of your own vanity.”

Apollo approached Jorgen Knudsen. “He’s your boy,” Apollo whispered. “He believed that the troll wasn’t our burden but our blessing. That we had to go back to the old ways, before we abandoned our traditions. When we were great. He thought maybe things had been going wrong from the moment Nils refused to sacrifice one of Petra’s children. The troll brought us to these shores, and it could save us again. That’s what he believed. We could channel that monster’s power into our own deliverance. That was our right, our heritage. That’s why we came to America! That’s why we worked so hard. But to do that, we had to return to our origins with whole hearts. So he took it upon himself to honor the pact, as it was meant to be. He did exactly as Nils had done one hundred and ninety years ago. I admired his fortitude.”

THE LAND FLATTENED again, and the trees spread out slightly, and the undergrowth became more tamped down. He’d reached a clearing, the forest floor so trampled it had gone smooth. The trees that ringed the clearing tilted at angles as if they’d been bumped aside by something as large as a truck or a tank. “Jotunn.” Apollo remembered Jorgen’s voice. “Trolde. That’s how we say it in Norwegian.”

“I never sleep,” she said. “Sleep is the cousin of death.”

Apollo kept his hands flat on his thighs. No quick movements, voice calm. “When I first saw you in the woods you were glowing,” he said. “You had a blue light all around you. But when I spoke to you, it went away.” “Is it still there?” she asked. “No,” he said. “I can’t see it anymore.” “ ‘You’re what’s wrong with our family,’ ” Emma said. “ ‘You. Are. The. Problem. Go take another pill.’ Those were the last words you said to me.” Apollo lowered his head. “I—” She spoke over him. “That’s the first time you took my light from me.”

Apollo almost laughed, but he felt too weak. The world is full of glamour, especially when it obscures the suffering of the weak.

The only surprise here was Emma. She stared at the body and tapped her throat. “I made him do that,” she said. Maybe Apollo didn’t expect shock really—think of all she’d experienced so far—but she discussed Jorgen’s wound, his death, so casually, like a bit of home improvement. A tasteful choice for the backsplash above the kitchen counters. “I wouldn’t let him sleep,” Emma said without passion. “I wouldn’t give him any peace. Every night I slipped inside his head and made him listen.”

He set the grave marker there in the woods, and this felt appropriate. The changeling had been born nearby—where better to commemorate its passing? To this day, there’s a bronze grave marker with the name “Brian Kagwa” hidden in Forest Park.

She stared at the bathroom mirror and, maybe for the first time in four months, saw her reflection. She couldn’t look away from it. “Who is that?” she whispered.

“I think Cal must’ve hit him at least once,” Apollo said. But when he lifted the shirt high enough, the wound didn’t look made by a bullet. Instead the flesh hung loose, and the skin appeared to have three long parallel tears.

The Knudsen line, and their centuries of service, had come to its end. By evening, there’d be nothing left of them but scorched wood and bones.

Emma finally spoke. “I’m not saying that. I’m saying I was on my own and keeping Brian alive, keeping myself alive, working on Jorgen day and night, and it was killing me, Apollo. You saw me, didn’t you? I wasn’t able to do it because I was so powerful, I was able to do it because I had no other choice. I had to do it alone, so I did. But now I don’t have to do it alone. At least I hope I don’t. We could be stronger together, but that means you have to help me. Can you do that? Will you?”

Kinder Garten had clung to his belief that he’d cared for his family, that he’d done something so horrific as an act of love. Did Brian West feel the same when he’d plunged his only child into steaming hot water, when he held him under? He must have; against all common sense he must have. When Apollo had become impatient with Emma, when he’d become cruel, how had he justified it to himself? He was trying to focus on Brian, to be the kind of father he’d never had. What lengths will people stretch to believe they’re still good?

They’d thought the storage box had been sitting beside a portion of the amphitheater wall, but now the wall moved. The wall rolled like an alligator spinning its prey in the water. Apollo and Emma were still on their knees. There, in the dark, an eye as large as a manhole cover opened. Jotunn. Trolde. Troll.

He leaned close to the stone and pressed his forehead to it. He felt as if he was finally burying what had been haunting him since he was a child. A funeral not for his father but his fatherlessness. Let that monster rest.

“There’s something I always wanted to ask you,” Apollo eventually said. “What was your third wish?” For the first time since they’d left the cave, Emma looked at Apollo instead of Brian. “My first wish was to meet a good man. My second was to have a healthy child.” “Yes.” “And my third wish was for a life full of adventure.”

The Q11 approached, its interior lights blazing. At this hour it was the brightest thing in the world. It might as well be a chariot pulling the sun across the sky. Nothing less would do for Emma, Brian, and Apollo. They stood as it slowed. “And they lived happily ever after,” Apollo whispered. Emma leaned into him. “Today,” she said. “And they lived happily today.” “Is that enough?” he asked, looking at Brian, looking at her. “That’s everything, my love.”