Acquaintances, pt 1

They showed him the park. The grove was there, but it looked a lot less intimidating. It was just a few trees, nothing out of the ordinary. The rest of Harmon was just as Charlie remembered it. On their way to St Abraham Park, they'd passed the train station, almost got run over by a few trams when crossing the street, and then his heart had leapt when he saw the clock tower of the university. He was still looking longingly towards it across the park when he noticed that something was off. He looked around. The leaves were yellowing. It was autumn. Last time he had been here, it had been high summer. He remembered deciding to stay over the holiday to get better acquainted with the school grounds and preparing his courses.

"I've been gone for months." The other three avoided his gaze, even Julian, who had kept a watchful eye on him ever since they reached town. "You knew?"

"Man, I'm sorry. You probably been gone longer than that. How old are you?"

"31, why?"

"Rita?" She took a compact out of her pocket and handed it to Julian, who gave it to Charlie. Gertrude, back to her butterfly self, winced and turned away.

Frowning, Charlie opened the compact. "Wha- Fuck." Staring back at him from within the tiny mirror was some decrepit parody of himself, an old man with wrinkles criss-crossing his face. His hair was still black, but longer and unkempt. His nose and oddly hairless chin jutted out more than usual. His whole appearence was jagged and worn. He looked like a walking warzone. Charlie had become a completely different person. He didn't know who he was anymore, but one thing he knew for sure. This kind of change didn't happen in a few months.

"They'll wonder where I am."

"Who?"

"My colleagues, at the university, I have to go there and tell them I'm OK, that I'm alive, I've been missing for years, they probably think I'm dead! Oh shit. Mom."

"Charlie..."

"She calls me every week, she must be so worried!"

"Charlie, you can't go back."

"I have to find a phone. Do you guys have change? I'll pay you back."

"Listen to her, man!" Someone grabbed him by the shoulder. It was Julian. Gertrude was standing next to him.

"Charlie, they leave someone else. To take your place, you've been... exchanged. Like the bogeyman, you know how they tell you when you're a kid, where they would scare you and tell you the bogeyman would come and take you? It's true. It happens. That's pretty much what happened to all of us. And with each of us, they leave someone, something, behind. Something that looks just like you, talks just like you. So that no one misses you, no one will come looking."

"That's impossible."

"Charlie-"

"No, enough, fine! I'll go there myself, what time is it? Never mind, there's the tower. OK, if I hurry I can catch them between classes." He walked off, pushing every doubt and nagging question to the back of his mind, but they kept popping back up. Why hadn't anyone come for him? They must have, but how would they find him? Not even he knew where he'd been. And for how long would they keep searching? How long had it been? He looked at least 20 years older. His heart sank when he thought of the face in the mirror. All the time he had lost, all the things he could have accomplished, should have accomplished by now.

He stalked across the school grounds and past the gymnasium to the administrative building. He pulled open the front doors and was right on the doorstep when someone called his name.

"Charles Holcombe! Where do you think you're going, you rascal?"

It was a woman's voice he didn't recognize, and he couldn't place the source. The reception was milling with people, students queuing for exam results and teachers pushing past him to get to their next class. Someone else spoke, right next to his ear.

"What you got for me, Mary?"

One of the teachers turned away from the door and walked over to the receptionist's desk. He leaned over the counter to speak with a blonde girl. Mary. Charlie remembered her now. She had offered to show him around when he first got here. He looked at the man again, and his stomach turned. It was him. It was someone wearing his clothes, looking exactly like he had done when he moved to Harmon, as if no time had passed at all. He even spoke like him, in his voice. It was Charlie's job, Charlie's life. Charlie felt like he was in free-fall, he felt sick. He hurried out, afraid someone would see him, afraid someone would notice that his sword and gun were real.

Just as the doors closed behind him, he looked back. For some inconceivable reason, Charlie was compelled to look back. And the Charles Holcombe stared him straight in the eyes through the glass doors. Charlie saw a spark of recognition in its eyes. It knew.

Out of the Hedge, pt 4

"My way? My way where?"

"Back to the real world," Gertrude explained.

"This is real too!"

"Geez, I know, Rita, I'm just explaining so Charlie understands."

"Actually, I remember where I live."

"Really? But you have amnesia!"

"Rita!"

"What, he totally does!" She pouted, turned her back, crossed her arms and stomped off demonstratively, but only a few steps, not really putting any distance between them.

"Anyway," Charlie said, breaking in. "Like I said, I just don't know what I'm doing here, I never said I forgot who I am or where I live. I mean, I did tell you my name. Last thing I remember, I was in St Abraham Park, and there was this grove of trees..."

"Abby park? That's-"

"Rita, shush, he's remembering something."

"Yeah. Yeah... I went to the park, I mean, I just moved here, so I was just kind of exploring, but there was a grove of trees that I recognized from somewhere. I don't know that I ever saw them before, they just seemed so familiar. I remember the sun was up high, it was lunchtime, and the trees, there were just maybe four or five in the middle of this huge lawn, but they cast this really dense shadow. It was like a pitch black shade on the ground in there. I remember thinking it felt so weird, and so familiar, it felt... so out of place."

"Did... did you go in?" Gertrude whispered, and it was only then that Charlie noticed he was speaking in hushed tones himself.

"Yeah. And I don't remember anything after that."

For the first time since he'd met them, the three fell silent. Julian sniffed the air and scanned the forest around them. Rita stared at her feet. Gertrude's eyes went unfocused, looking at a point somewhere through Charlie's head. As he should have known, Rita was the first to speak.

"I know where Abby park is, we can take you!"

"What? I never agreed to babysitting."

"She's right, Julian, we have to help him. Plus, he's so close, and it's on the way."

"And then what? No. This is a bad idea."

"Come on, would you rather he went to the other side? Because if we don't bring him back, they will. Or if he gets lost again, and..."

Julian sighed. "Fine. If he tries something, I'll break his neck." Charlie had the feeling it wouldn't be the first time.

"Then it's settled."

"Yay!"

They set off alongside a wide trail that looked wheel-worn. The sun was out again, which made no sense to Charlie, but he refrained from bringing it up since everything he said only garnered strange looks. Julian led the way, keeping them off the trail itself, but with his eyes trained on it at all times.

"Why don't we walk on the trail instead?" asked Charlie as he kicked a root in revenge for stubbing his toe on it. "Ow."

"Julian says it's bad luck," Rita answered, slightly out of breath.

"Oh." He let it rest. In the short time he'd observed them, Charlie had noticed that they all seemed to have their own little fixations. Rita, who seemed otherwise very friendly, had ignored his offered hand twice, first when he tried to shake hands and later when she had tripped and fallen and he tried to help her up. Julian trusted no one and nothing, least of which the trail they were following. After his own run-in with the ravager, Charlie couldn't blame him. Gertrude stopped approximately every 100 meters to turn ponderously around full circle while the others waited. Charlie thought to himself that having one of these people in a class would have driven his colleagues back at the university insane inside a week, but he didn't mind at all. In fact, he found their antics oddly soothing. He felt safe with them.

Strangely, the trail ended in the middle of an alley. Charlie started. He had been so focused on not being tripped by protruding roots that he hadn't noticed the forest receding, but now when he looked back it was on the horizon. He followed the others through a large stone archway, and now he heard the cars going by, people yelling, a dog barking. He took in the atmosphere and filtered out Gertrude and Julian.

"Was this open?" she said.

"I saw Turner go through ahead of us," he reassured her.

"Hey guys, I never even noticed us getting out of the woods." Charlie pointed back, and then turned to look down his own index finger through the archway at an inner yard with an outdoor cafe where people appeared to be having tea. There were buildings all around, and no forest or horizon in sight. Charlie quickly brought his hand back down, but forgot to close his mouth.

"What the- Move! What are you doing?"

Someone grabbed him and pulled him further down the alley, where he fell flat on his back.

"Julian, he didn't know, he's a newbie! And look, it's closed now!"

Sprawled on the ground, Charlie looked up at the sky framed by brick walls rising towards it. The goat entered his field of vision, bent down and scowled at him. Then he left, leaving Charlie to pick himself up. He brushed off some dirt, and then realized what he was wearing.

"Oh." Then he looked at the others, heading out onto a busy street. "Wait! You can't go out there!" They stopped on the sidewalk to turn back and face him, and he caught up. "People will go nuts, I mean, you guys don't exactly blend in."

"See?" said Rita and pointed out this apparently ludicrous behaviour to the others.

"So maybe he is new," Julian conceded grudgingly.

"Charlie, it's alright, they don't see what you see. Look." Gertrude indicated a few passers-by, and sure enough, they didn't as much as glance at her. "They can't see what we really look like, they only see the mask. Here, I'll show you."

Gertrude took a breath, closed her eyes and wiped her hand over her face. Suddenly, where an alien butterfly girl had stood, was a lanky and rather ordinary looking 20-something with dyed blue hair. She had colourful tattoos down her forearms where her wings had been, and now that he thought about it, she'd always worn those dark leather jeans, t-shirt and chains, he had just been too focused on the rest of her appearance to notice. She just looked like she was really into punk. Or maybe in a band.

Now that he had a human comparison, he looked at the other two, who were still in their non-human forms, and connected the dots. Julian was barechested and his mask most likely had a goatee. Drummer? Rita was curvy, extrovert and would probably make an attractive human. Lead singer?

"Hey, you guys need a bass player?"

"Aw hell no! He is not joining the band!"

"Haha, I'm joking, Julian, I don't play."

For a split second, they just stared at him. Then they laughed.

"Shit, man, you had me. Hey, maybe you're alright." Julian slapped Charlie on the shoulder and walked past him, leaving the girls wide-eyed in disbelief.

Out of the Hedge, pt 3

The staff swung upwards with such force that he could barely hold on even with both hands. His adrenaline-addled brain had time to think that his arms would just be ripped out of their sockets, leaving the rest of him to be cleaved in two by the monstrous wolf. Then he finally followed the staff into the treetops where someone held Charlie around his waist and draped him unceremoniously over a sturdy branch, knocking the wind out of him.

"You OK? He seems OK," someone said in a low gravelly voice. Charlie tried to breathe and get his bearings. He wanted to make sure he knew which way was down before he moved. Propping himself up against the treetrunk, he looked around and saw three people. Deformed, strange people. One had blue skin and resembled a butterfly, down to the little antennae and wings protruding from his or her arms. Charlie couldn't tell if it was male or female. The second one was definitely female, with skin like a birch sapling and a multitude of flowers growing from her head and down her neck. The third looked like a big grey goat, the only mostly human features being his furclad torso and arms. He was handing the staff, which Charlie could now see was a highly polished baton, to the butterfly. They all seemed rather young, and they were all smiling.

"That ravager almost had you, but you're a pretty good runner," said the butterfly, and now Charlie could hear she was a she.

"Nah," the flower teased. "It did have a limp."

"I know, I wasn't going to say anything!" the butterfly said, and then the three of them burst into heartfelt laughter. And Charlie laughed too, because he was alive.

Back on solid ground, the goat handed Charlie the gun.

"You dropped this," he said and grinned, which looked odd on a goat's face. Charlie mumbled something in thanks, and then looked back and forth between the three, wondering when exactly he'd fallen through the rabbit hole. Was he going crazy? These people couldn't actually look this way, he had to be hallucinating. And that monster, had that been real? Now that it wasn't standing right in front of him, he could scarcely believe it hadn't been a dream.

"He's a newbie!" the flower suddenly said.

"Rita-" the butterfly started.

"What? It's obvious, look, he's staring at us."

"And he obviously never dealt with a ravager before," the goat chimed in. "He had a gun, should have just turned around and shot it."

"Come on, I remember you running a lot," said the butterfly.

"Just saying."

Charlie felt left out of a conversation of which he couldn't make heads nor tails, even though it somehow concerned him.

"I'm sorry, new to what?" he asked. Six eyes turned to him.

"Um," said the butterfly. "I'm not sure how to explain this..."

"I do!" the flower, Rita, exclaimed. "You just got away from the bad Fae, right? You're on your way back to the human world, right? So now you have to-"

"Wait, wait, stop. Who's Fay, and... excuse me, may I?" He held out his hand towards the goat's shoulder. The goat shrugged, and Charlie carefully stroked the fur. "Holy shit, it's real."

"Great, he's hopeless."

"He's just a newb!"

"Shut up, both of you!" The butterfly was fuming. "This is very important! We could screw him up if we don't do this right!"

The goat shrugged again, and Rita pulled a face. The butterfly turned to Charlie, and tried on a smile.

"Hi. I'm Gertrude, this is Rita and Julian. What's your name?"

"I'm Charlie." They shook hands. Her skin was very dry.

"Hi Charlie. We're just like you. We were all kidnapped and brought to some weird place, just like you, and then we managed to get out of there, some of us together, like Rita and I, and some of us on our own, like Julian here. Oh that's right, was there anyone else with you that you want to go back and help?"

Charlie must have looked puzzled, because he was.

"I mean, were you alone when you got out?" She spoke in soft sing-song tones, as if speaking to a child.

"I uh... I have no idea what you're talking about."

"It's OK if you don't want to talk about it. In fact, we don't talk much about our time in Faerie either. We just prefer to talk about other stuff."

"No, I mean, I don't know what I'm doing here, I was just suddenly here with these clothes and the gun, and I don't understand how I got here. I don't understand, I don't, it's, I don't know..." His face was hot.

"He has amnesia!"

"Rita, shut up." Gertrude looked concerned. "Well. Um, if you really don't remember..."

"Then how's he supposed to find his way?" Julian finished.

Out of the Hedge, pt 2

Later in the evening, he summoned the energy and courage to start walking again. Because St Abraham Park was to the north of the city, he kept the sun to his right, reasoning that since he'd walked here it couldn't be that far. He was still struggling to explain his strange outfit. He'd found that he had some kind of short sabre as well as a type of firearm he didn't recognize. At first he'd thought it was an antique or at least a replica of something Napoleonic, but it had a revolving cylinder like a six-shooter. For lack of anything better to do, he had taken out the rounds and seen that one was spent. That probably meant a bullet had been fired from the gun that was now hanging from his belt. That scared him. What scared him even more was that he seemed to know how to handle a gun. He'd never touched a gun in his life before today. He wasn't some sort of lone gunman, he was a scientist.

Thinking back to his laboratory, Charlie let slip a sigh. He wanted nothing more than to be back there, perusing an abstruse white paper and absent-mindedly sipping a camomile tea. He could almost smell it now. A cautious smile spread across his face, easing the wrinkles between his eyebrows, as he took a long whiff of the imaginary tea. Exhaling, he even thought he could hear some of the more rambunctious students chase each other down the hallway, laughing and screaming. He opened his eyes, stopped cold and cocked his head. The laughter was real. His ears only caught snatches of it carried on the wind, and most of it was drowned out by the whispering trees, but he was most definitely hearing the sound of laughing children. They seemed to be somewhere straight ahead. Charlie forged on through the undergrowth with renewed strength.

He felt affirmed when he stumbled across a path going roughly the same direction he was. Now in high spirits, he followed it. He was getting close, he could feel it. He was sure that the forest changed around him as he moved down the path, another sign of nearing civilization. After a short while, he realized that he no longer heard anything other than the wind in the trees, and the path ended abruptly in unusually dense vegetation. Thinking that it might have grown over, Charlie pushed against the leaves ahead of him, but only managed to open a large and painful scratch along his left arm against the unyielding thorny branches. Cursing, he held his other hand against the bleeding wound and turned around. He froze. Before him was something like a wolf, but with jet-black skin and mandibles like an insect. It padded soundlessly towards him on single-taloned paws, the waning sunlight through the leaves mottling its slick skin, and suddenly Charlie's eyes adjusted to the perspective. His blood turned to ice. The thing was huge, its startlingly blue eyes level with his own. It opened its mouth, clicked a pair of mandibles the size of his forearm, and laughed like a baby.

Before Charlie could react, he heard a loud crack echo through the forest. Then he smelled the smoke, saw the gun in his hand and the wolf-thing recoiling in pain, an oozing hole in one of its hind legs. Adrenaline took over, and Charlie ran. Somehow he found an opening beside him and squeezed between the branches, holding up his arms to avoid poking out his eyes on the thorns, the gun still in hand. He could hear something crashing through the bushes behind him. His neck stiffened and his arms flailed, trying to gain momentum. From somewhere in the back of his panicked mind, the math of four legs against two screamed for attention. He crouched down, almost going into a tackle against a tree ahead, but then shoved his foot down hard against the grass and turned at a right angle, hoping to outmanouevre the large beast. He heard a deeply satisfying thud and a grunt, a moment's silence as he gained some headway, and then something breaking into a gallop.

He was stuck on a straight stretch bordered by trees and high thick bushes. There was no way to go but forward, and the wolf-thing was sure to catch up. It was making that sound again, the sound of an innocent child's laughter coming from that dark glistening maw hungry to rend his flesh and break his bones. Just as he thought he would be impaled on the beast's mandibles, hoping for a quick death, he saw a red staff dangling from a treebranch.

"Grab on!" someone bellowed, and Charlie did.

Out of the Hedge, pt 1

Charlie had been running for a long time. He could tell because his throat was raw, his legs were numb and his heart seared with pain. A single thought burned like a white hot star in his mind: Keep running. No notion of running from or toward something, there was no past or future. Right now, Charlie had to keep running. He ran through brambles that tore at his skin, eager to spill his blood and drain him of determination. He raged through the mist that made him lose his way, plotting to keep him going in circles and steal his sanity. He fought through marshes that shackled his feet, trying to root him to the ground and break his spirit.

Through it all Charlie began to feel the taste of blood and the tension in his jaw, set square against the bile. He felt the sting of cuts and bruises on his arms and legs, the ache in his joints with every jarring step. Slowly, his mind strayed and he became vaguely aware of his surroundings. It dawned on him that he had been running for a very long time without getting anywhere. Everything in these woods conspired against him. He was stuck in a maze.

He stopped and doubled over, hands on his knees, gulping down air, filling his burning lungs. He couldn't breathe fast enough, his heart was trying to crack his ribcage, and his eyes swam in a sea of stars. He sagged onto the ground to catch his breath and looked around.

"Where the fuck- Where am I?"

Untouched wilderness stretched out in all directions. Trees and thick thorny undergrowth, with neither any sign of civilisation nor any lights in the distance. He must have somehow got out of the city, way past St Abraham park. He blinked. The park. His memory was fuzzy, as if it had happened years ago. He remembered that it had been sunny and warm, and he'd decided to go for a walk during lunch. Now it was getting dark, which meant he must've been away for hours. What in the world would possess him to wander off aimlessly? Why had he been running?

Rubbing his legs, trying to get some life back into them, he looked down and stopped. These weren't his clothes. Someone had dressed him up as a soldier. He looked like something out of a war re-enactment or like a tin soldier. Charlie sat back and just stared down at himself for a while, half hoping that the explanation would jump out at him, that something would trigger a memory. Nothing came. He couldn't recognize any of the things he was wearing. His mind was totally blank. Had he been drinking? Apart from being exhausted, he felt fine; no nausea, no headache. There had to be an explanation. Feeling his pulse rising and his face flushing, he ordered his brain to start working, start thinking, start remembering, to do anything. The thought went on and on in a loop, becoming a mantra that he focused on in a last-ditch attempt to collect his thoughts. Instead, he felt his mind go into overdrive, the one thought spinning out of control, which only got him more worked up. Now he wanted to punch something.

"Shit! What the fuck am I doing here? Hello! Help!"

His voice didn't seem to carry far. There was no hint of an echo.

"Hello?"

It was like screaming into a pillow. A sour tightness formed in the pit of his stomach. Charlie suddenly felt very alone.

Antagonist

I think I have a good idea for an antagonist that might give the story some depth.

Click for spoilers

Time in Arcadia isn't necessarily linear. Charlie experienced this first-hand, and although he now remembers nothing, it has definitely left its mark on his personality. His True Fae Keeper manipulated and molded him using the image of a girl made of porcelain.

When Charlie is first abducted as a child and brought into the Hedge by his Keeper, he is saved and freed by the Porcelain Girl, who in this instance is a grown woman and a mother figure. She thanks him for protecting her and returns him to his home.

Adult Charlie, with no memory of being abducted, unwittingly tries to recreate his ideal of the Porcelain Girl by studying artificial intelligence and robotics. Then he ventures into the Hedge and is recaptured. His Keeper puts him to work protecting a young Porcelain Girl. He fails every day and is forced to watch her shatter into a thousand pieces. Even when he thinks he's succeeded, she destroys herself (using his gun, throwing herself off a cliff, etc), and when he finally manages to save her from herself, he finds that he has to destroy her himself. That's just how the story goes.

After realizing the utterly hopeless nature of his task, he escapes. Charlie the Changeling is hunted by a nightmare version of Porcelain Girl. In this incarnation, she's all teeth, blades and blood, resembling a giant praying mantis. Charlie's Keeper has linked the two, and the plan is to use Charlie as a beacon for the Porcelain Girl. Charlie is emotionally unable to fight her, for reasons he can't remember, and instead repeatedly and apparently unintentionally sets traps for his fellow Lost, who are picked off one by one by the Porcelain Girl.

And now, more and more amnesiacs stumble out of the Hedge and join the Freehold.

First chapter outline

I like the Storytelling tips in Changeling, especially the tips for outlining sessions for a chronicle. So I wrote five bullet points and filled in the first and last with what I had already decided on for the Spring chapter in the synopsis. Then I worked backwards from the end, filling out the three middle bullet points, making sure to use something from the following sentence. I got these five sessions for the Spring Court chapter:

Click for spoilers

• Charlie escapes and is found in the Hedge by members of the Spring Court.


• Charlie gains a friend in the Spring Court and joins her motley.


• Charlie is introduced to the other courts by going to various functions with his new friend.


• His motley faces off with a rival motley from another court.


• Charlie's motley is wiped out by his captor's minions.

As it turns out, the fourth bullet point is the only new one to me, and I think it ties the story together pretty well.

Planning stages

I have some ideas for a Changeling chronicle, and decided to play it out on my own and write it down as a serialized story on this blog. I'm currently outlining the first part. If you want to follow the planning, here's a synopsis for the whole story.

Click for spoilers

Charlie was abducted as a child, but only spent a short time in Arcadia. He has since blocked out his memories of the True Fae, but they still visit him in nightmares. Through most of his life, he's been half changeling, half human, living with one foot in the Hedge. He has bouts of incredible luck followed by the worst luck imaginable. He works his way to the top, only to fall all the way to the bottom.

One day he recognizes a grove in a park he's never visited before. He steps through a gateway to the Hedge and is recaptured. After what seems like an eternity, he escapes, forever changed.

In his life as fully fledged changeling, Charlie has trouble finding a place in his new world. He lacks any clear memories of Arcadia, and thus can't identify with the other Lost. Everything is so very strange, yet it all feels strangely familiar. He changes courts roughly every year, seeing from the inside how each court rules during its season.

Following his instincts, Charlie suppresses his memories of Faerie once again and falls for the allure of the Spring Court. Having lived a most magical life, he regales his fellow courtiers with tales of poetic justice, echoing his own experiences in the mortal world. He grows fond of another Lost in the Spring Court, and joins her motley. They go to various functions throughout the year, introducing him to the other courts and the various Freehold members.

His motley is wiped out, and gripped by sorrow and paranoia, Charlie goes to ground. He finds solace when a member of the Winter Court takes him under her wing. He learns to blend in and returns to living as a mortal under an assumed identity. He starts to blame himself for his motley's unfortunate fate; he should've known better, recognized the danger and warned his friends. While remaining unseen at the edges of the Hedge, he learns a secret that piques his interest in the art of magic.

Charlie decides to stop repeating his mistakes, and to face his greatest fear: his memories. He turns to the Autumn Court, who find that his newly acquired secrets make him the perfect candidate. Charlie learns that his memories weren't suppressed, they were blocked by his Fae Keeper, to use him in an attempt to destabilize the changeling courts. After finding his true changeling identity and doing some soul searching, Charlie begins to disagree with the Autumn court's methods. He is shunned.

Fear gives way to wrath as Charlie regains his confidence. He wants revenge, and he has no patience for anything other than a direct conflict. Shedding his borrowed mantles, he unlocks new abilities that manifest during a Summer test of strength. The Summer court recruits him due to his newfound physical prowess, but will they help him in his campaign against his Keeper? Can Charlie convince the four courts to band together against the greatest threat they have ever faced?