The Changling of Fenlen ForestKatherine Magyarody
Elizabeth thinks she knows the gloomy Fenlen Forest. But when her treasured unicorn fawn, Sida, goes missing, Elizabeth tracks her into a strange land where the people think Elizabeth is a changeling, a malignant being who too closely resembles a missing girl.
If Elizabeth can find her fawn and uncover the fate of her lost double, can she stop the fear from turning into hate? To solve the deepening mystery, Elizabeth befriends a handsome, skeptical young shepherd whose stories hint at a dark secret lurking at the forest’s edge, and follows a herd of wild unicorns with the ability to unlock the past.
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Please provide a deleted scene
Note: In this deleted scene of The Changeling of Fenlen Forest, the main character Elizabeth faces off against Pa and his trading partner Heino, as they try to convince her to use her special bond to unicorns to make money (money for them, of course). Elizabeth must negotiate between their greed and the realization that her desire to protect the unicorn is not necessarily aligned with what is best for her half-sisters. The deleted scene reflects the fact that the original version had a lot more material on weaving and sheepherding.
“Welcome home,” Pa said as he lowered the ladder to me.
“This isn’t my home, you know,” I replied in Gersan while climbing. I said it to spite him, but my heart gave a pang. Wasn’t it starting to be? What would that mean?
But Heino laughed and the pang eased. No, I was right. This place should not be home, at least as long as Heino was welcome there. I clambered onto the portico floor and pulled the ladder up. Pa did not help because I had been rude. I closed the trapdoor gently, so as not to wake the sleepers inside.
“You need to talk to Heino,” Pa said. “Come, sit with us.”
“Why?” I did not sit. Instead, I leaned against the railing and crossed my arms.
“He has experience with unicorns and you seem to have lost yours.”
“Heino saw a unicorn?”
“When I was young and tender,” Heino said. He puffed his pipe, then smiled broadly. Against the glow of the embers, his teeth looked so delicate and pearly that I was suddenly sure they were fake.
“Tell me.”
“Once upon a time, when I was young, I saw a marvelous opportunity. I saw a unicorn. And I brought people to look at it. I became rich. Then the unicorn disappeared and so did my fortune. But now…now I am here because I would like to make your father, your sister and your brothers rich.”
His words implied that I would want to keep them poor, by keeping Sida from them.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Shame. It would be a waste to keep the family so…limited. Your sister’s weaving is remarkable, but she won’t get a fair price if she’s trapped in a backwater.”
I felt like I had walked into a trap. He had been talking about my unicorns, but as soon as I became defensive, he pretended that he had been discussing something else altogether … weaving.
“I’m going in,” I said, brusquely pushing off the railing and walking to the door.
“Or maybe it was just a goat with a deformed horn,” Heino added, as if in afterthought. “Just think what we could do with the real thing.”
“Sweet dreams,” Pa said as I passed through the door.
I stayed inside the next day. I carded wool. I even spun a little. Mostly I watched Heino. He seemed to have instinctively understood that I was rebelling against his presence. He and Pa went through Melina and Sarai’s inventory, which was stored in Torun’s smaller treehouse.
Seeing that I would not leave, they headed off to the village to compare the quality of weaving at the other houses.
Torun arrived home from the high pasture in the evening. “I thought we should shear the sheep,” he told Melina. But he glanced toward me.
“But Heino wants to see how we work,” Sarai protested. “He wants to see my work.”
“This is part of your work,” he said.
By the time Pa and Heino arrived home from the village the next day, the family had washed the sheep and had driven them back to the lambing-pens, now transformed into shearing-pens. There, among the mad, indignant bleating, Torun and Maro stood with shears in one hand, balancing their sheep with the other. Torun led an ewe out, forced her into a sitting position like a dog and tilted her back until she was propped against his shins. Her four spindly legs were stiff in the air in front of her. Torun’s sheep wiggled its head. Torun held her steadily by the nose to keep her still and continued to clip away, starting at the belly until a compact white body emerged from the thick fleece. Scratching behind her ears, Torun tilted the sheep onto her feet and let her go.
“You,” he called to Heino, holding out the fleece. “Take it.”
Heino screwed up his fine little mouth. “I am not here to help, but to observe.”
“Observe the quality,” Torun said, and flung it into Heino’s arms. The fleece was heavier than Heino expected, and he stepped back under its weight.
“It’s…nice.” He took it to where Melina, Sarai and Telka ran their hands over it, cutting off burrs and solid mats.
“If you don’t want to help,” Torun said, already starting on the next sheep that Maro had led to him, “Why don’t you go down to the river?”
“Look, I’ve seen the river. It’s pretty. The trees are nice. These sheep are nice, too. Are there other animals?”
“Not that I’ve seen,” Torun said. He was not smiling anymore, and from that, Heino knew he was lying. Torun shifted his gaze to me. “Do you want to learn to shear?”
At the same moment, Pa said “Elizabeth, come talk to me.”
I did not move.
“Elizabeth.”
Torun sighed and turned back to his work.
“Yes, Pa?” As I walked toward him, he turned and led me a little ways away from the rest of the family. He sat down on a large rock half buried in the thick grass. He patted the space beside him, but I did not sit. Heino followed us and took my place.
“Elizabeth, I think you have not understood us. You could make this an…opportunity.” He glanced over at Heino, who had obviously prepared for this moment.
“Look, girl. Men come, stay at your home, hunt for the unicorn. They don’t find it, so they shoot some stags. Then, they buy some pretty scarves and girdles for their wives before they go home. Even if the unicorn never shows up, you could build a hunting lodge for fat merchants who want to feel like noblemen.”
“Who would come?” Pa said, although he knew the answer.
“The rich and bored.”
“What would bring them?”
“Legend,” Heino said, flashing his small teeth. “Magic.”
“There’s no such thing as magic,” I said quickly in Gersan.
Pa translated into Verian for Heino, and Heino raised his eyebrows.
“Believe me,” Pa said. “The unicorn is not so important. This village could be famous. Instead of having each household have its own separate loom, you could gather them all into one building. Find the most popular patterns, crank those out, toss the others.”
“We are not interested in selling our wares,” I cut in. “That is not why we make them.”
Pa put up his hand before he spoke. “Your stepmother makes the best pieces. Sarai will soon be even better. She could be in charge, I think. Think about the money a woman could make, the independence she could win.”
Melina. Sarai. Money. Freedom. I felt my heart drop to my stomach. Yes. There was temptation in their words. There was truth in their ideas. Melina and Sarai did have the best patterns. They could devise a way to make weave faster, to make them famous. Maybe they could even escape Pa.
I opened my mouth, but I didn’t know what to say.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Katherine Magyarody grew up in Toronto, Ontario. During graduate school, she researched the history of adolescence, taught children’s literature, and wrote fiction on the sly. Her debut short story, “Goldhawk,” is anthologized in PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2017. She currently lives in Connecticut, where she blogs about interesting and weird unicorns at https://offbeatunicorn.com/about-offbeat-unicorn/.
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