Something flashed downstream. Not the blue flash of a kingfisher, but something stranger, more shining and yet more shadowy. And looking after it, Murna's sight was caught and dazzled by the low sunlight through the budding twig-tangle. And when the sun-dazzle let her go, and she looked round again, there in the hollow of the alder roots, instead of her own red-haired baby, lay a tiny creature with great dark eyes in a little wizened face. [p. 20]
I hadn't previously read this short work by Sutcliff, written for the Antelope imprint of books for primary-school children and illustrated by the splendid Victor Ambrus (whose obituary I read recently in British Archaeologist, realising only then that he was known for Time Team and visualisations of prehistory as well as for his illustrations). As far as I can tell, The Changeling has been out of print since first publication in 1974, and the libraries I frequented in my youth did not possess copies.
It's the tale of Tethra, who is adopted by Conan and Murna of the Epidii after being left in exchange for Murna's own son. The Old One of the tribe predicts doom, dark days, curses et cetera: but Tethra grows up as part of the tribe, until a bad year comes to pass and the Old One reiterates his dire predictions. Tethra walks away before they can exile him, or worse: finds the Little Dark People, and is reunited with his birth-mother; seeks her help when he sees Conan, his adoptive father, badly wounded while hunting; and finally returns, not without regret, to the Epidii. It's not a wholly cheerful book, even when you ignore -- or, like many younger readers, are oblivious to -- the implications of withcraft, child sacrifice and ritual murder. (Tethra, bringing medicine to Conan, tells the other Epidii that he knows they will kill him if Conan dies from that medicine.) But it is full of the beautiful details that Sutcliff did so well: the stockade that's taken root and become a blackthorn hedge, the shimmer of light on water, a necklace of green plover feathers ...
The Changeling came to my attention because there's a new ebook edition from SF Gateway. I cannot recommend that version, as (a) it's £4.99 for 32 pages of text (b) it omits Ambrus's illustrations (c) the blurb includes the line 'Raising a child of the Fae Folk will bring disaster upon the Epidii people.' I cannot stress enough that there are no Fae here, nor (as far as I can recall) in any of Sutcliff's work: just Picts and Celts.
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