The Changeling by Helen Falconer Read Free Book Online Page A

giving way, as they had yesterday, they remained as tightly woven as the rest of the circle. Locked.
    Shay came up behind her. ‘Careful now, they’ll stab you.’
    ‘It’s weird – I got through here yesterday, right at this spot, but it’s like the branches have grown back.’
    He tried to part them himself, then swore and stood back, sucking a large thorn from the base of his thumb before wiping the red blood on his faded jeans. ‘Are you sure this is where you got in before?’
    ‘Yes – see, look at the ground – you can see the treads of our shoes, going in under the hawthorn— What’s that?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘ That! ’
    Not far from their footprints, a small dead animal was lying covered by wind-blown blossom. No, not a dead animal – but not a living one, either. Aoife fell to her knees on the grass, gently brushing aside the flowers. A rabbit, with long grey ears and a fluffy white tail, and round black eyes. A child’s toy. She sobbed in horror: ‘She was here!’
    Shay crouched beside her, his hand on her shoulder. ‘Ssh, don’t be worried. This doesn’t mean anything. Any child could have dropped it.’
    ‘ How? ’
    ‘Any family could have stopped by to look at the fairy fort.’
    Aoife swallowed and wiped her face with her sleeve. ‘All right. I know. When I’m thinking straight like you, I do know she wasn’t real. But the minute I stop thinking about it, I go back to feeling like she was. I just keep going round and round, and every time I have it sorted in my mind, everything gets mixed up again.’
    There was a long pause. She turned her head to look at him. He had dropped his hand from her shoulder, but was still squatting on his heels beside her, gazing straight at her. There was an odd expression in his green-brown eyes, like he wanted to say something to her, but wasn’t sure quite how to put it, or how she would take it.
    She said defensively, ‘What? I know I’m an idiot.’
    Shay said, ‘I saw a sheóg myself once, when I was a kid.’
    ‘ A sheóg? ’ For a moment Aoife was seriously angry with him. It was bad enough Killian taunting her about leprechauns, or Darragh going on about goblins. ‘Oh, of course, stupid me – why didn’t I think of that – a fairy child, of course, that explains everything.’
    But instead of laughing at her burst of temper, or getting annoyed himself in return, he just settled himself down on the green hill beside her, his arms clasped around his faded jeans, and stared out over the endless orange-lilac sweep of bog, saying nothing at all.
    Aoife sat grumpily beside him until her irritation subsided. After few minutes she even started to feel bad about having snapped at him. He’d only been saying something to comfort her – that any fool can make mistakes about what they see. She lowered her head and examined the rabbit, and stroked its well-chewed ears. It had been well-loved once, before it had been forgotten. The toy looked back at her with small dark eyes, the black plastic scuffed with rough patches like the pale cataracts of old age. She sighed and shoved the rabbit into the pocket of her hoodie. Some child had loved it once. It seemed wrong to leave it outside, lonely and cold in the rain.
    Shay said, ‘I was out helping my father with the lambs, and a little girl came walking towards me along the cliff top, out of the early mist. She was even younger than me, not even old enough for school, and she was wearing a little red shawl, the way they used to on the islands. When she saw me, she seemed to get a big fright and turned and ran off again. I would have chased after her, but for my dad stopped me.’ His voice softened when he spoke of Eamonn Foley. ‘He said I should never, ever follow a sheóg. He said they liked to lure human children out across the bog to drown, to keep them company as ghosts.’
    Aoife suggested softly, ‘Maybe he was telling you a story to stop you running off on him.’
    ‘No, he really believed