The Boy Who Lost Fairyland Read Online Free PDF Page A

Changeling is the sort of child who climbs out of his crib at night just because he sees something shiny that he wants. If you were not already a Changeling, you would have told me politely that you like bridges and porridge and your father’s snoring and to please be on my way.”
    They took their place in line. Everyone towered above Hawthorn—but do not worry, little love! When you are a grown troll no one will tower over so much as your left elbow.
    â€œYou said I was sweet and pliable! Was that why you chose me?”
    â€œOne: There is a department in the human world entirely devoted to receiving young boys and girls of Fairy extraction so that their supply of a certain kind of tale will never run dry, even when modernity comes and no one can remember what a spindle is. Two: See above. Three: Trolls, being mostly dirt and stone and moss with a bit of blood mixed in, are prime candidates. It’s like sending a piece of Fairyland itself on vacation. It’s much harder to talk a Wyvern into flying about on a Panther. After all, they have their own wings, and besides, they don’t fit very well into a Changeling suit. Might as well try to cram a forest fire into a handbag.” The Red Wind crouched down and touched Hawthorn’s face ever so gently. Her eyes grew large and soft. Tickets fell out of her coat onto the floor all round her. “Four: The mass of Fairyland must remain constant. A Changeling is a deal struck with the second law of thermodynamics. Spit on the palm and shake.”
    Hawthorn curled his fists. He tried very hard not to cry.
    â€œRed! Stop it! I just want to know—”
    â€œOne! Because you were born in—”
    â€œWhat’s going to happen to me,” finished Hawthorn, halfway between a whisper and a squeak. “In stories, when someone appears in a cloud of red veils and asks the son of two magicians to go away on an adventure, it’s because he’s the best man for the job, because he’s secretly a prince or has a birthmark in the shape of a train engine, and can invent unsolvable riddles and call the lava from the deeps and defeat the Unicorn Queen of the Electric Mountain, but I don’t think they have any of those things in this human world you keep talking about. I don’t even know that I’m as sweet as all that, if sweet is what you need to survive there. I’m not mean or anything; I know about runes and shape-shifting and I can fix the chimney by talking to it in a winsome way when Mother is busy with her leprechauns, but what I mean to say is: Maybe I won’t make a good Changeling. Maybe you don’t want to tell me what one is because it’s something awful, and anyway I only weigh half a ton, but my father says I’ll grow.”
    The Panther turned his heavy jet-black head and looked at Hawthorn with large, solemn, yellow eyes.
    â€œA Changeling,” he growled, “is a Fairy child brought across the border and exchanged for a human child so quickly and secretly that no one knows it’s happened at all. Like sweeping away a tablecloth and leaving all the glasses standing. You go there, the human comes here, and between the both of you the world has such a lot of fun it nearly passes out.”
    â€œBut what am I meant to do ?”
    The Panther wrinkled his muzzle. “You don’t have to tell a Changeling to do anything. They do it the way the sun does daytime.”
    â€œHere we are!” the Red Wind crowed. “Yes! Forty-six! We oughtn’t make it too obvious, you know. The best cheat is the one that looks like fair play.”
    And in hardly a moment, the glowworms scattered into tiny fireworks and settled back down into a broad, proud number 46.
    â€œNEXT!” boomed a deep, severe voice, which echoed all over the post office. That great bellow blew them straight back into the folk who had silently joined the line behind them. The party in front of them, all severe