Page 5 of The Kingdom Cursed By Iron

“My mother was called Leah. Nineteen or so years ago she came to you with a sick baby. That was me.”

Tesha looks at me for a moment, then beckons me inside without another word. I hesitate, then follow.

“What does she want to know?” the changeling says when I’ve stepped into the house. It’s dark, the windows high and narrow, and the place has a distinct smell to it I can’t put my finger on. I glance up and see a dead rooster hanging from a rafter, just as Tesha’s hand snatches the chicken from my grasp. I let her take it, hoping it will be enough to buy the answers I came for.

“Why did my mom come to you?” I ask as Tesha gestures for me to sit on the single spindly chair in the room, covered with a sheepskin throw. “She was a gifted healer, but even she didn’t know how to cure me. But then I got better after I came here, yes? What did you do to help her?”

Tesha’s fingers pluck at the chicken’s feathers, but her eyes don’t break from watching me. From my limited understanding of her reactions, I’d say she looks wary.

“I know it was a long time ago,” I offer. “But my mother’s dead now, and I can’t ask her.”

The changeling’s shoulders drop and I think this explanation relaxes her a bit. Perhaps she thought I was seeking answers my mom didn’t want me to know. I quite possibly am, but it’s too bad if Mom didn’t want me to come looking for them. I can’t live my whole life in the dark.

“Her baby was sick,” Tesha says. Despite her white hair, she crouches down on her haunches like a child, looking quite comfortable on the floor. “It was missing what it needed. She wasn’t sure, but she guessed, and Tesha told her she was right.”

“And what was it the baby needed?” My head is spinning with ideas of charms and spells, an enchantment that would explain why I have these powers with metal. But none of these theories prepares me for Tesha’s answer.

“A true name.”

The words startle me so deeply that I physically reel, putting my hand to the edge of the chair to steady myself. The fleece covering it feels oily to the touch, but I’m too shocked for it to bother me.

“But humans don’t have true names,” I say weakly. “It’s a fae thing.” I’d barely known anything about the concept of true names until a few months ago, only that they gave you power over the fae who the name belonged to. That’s how Cebba had convinced me that finding out Ruskin’s true name was the key to my freedom. She hadn’t been lying—she was fae, so she couldn’t lie—but that didn’t mean she’d been telling the truth. I’d succeeded in getting him to tell me, but in some ways, it had just pulled me deeper under the hold he had on me.

Tesha smiles, her teeth the white of bone, and for the first time she seems friendly, almost amused.

“This baby had one. It needed it. It came from somewhere not all human. Not all Styrland.”

My stomach plummets into my feet and I have the urge to shout at her, to deny what she’s saying.

“If you’re saying Isaac Thorn isn’t my father—” It’s impossible. I have his eyes, his stubby fingers, everyone can see the likeness when they’re not mentioning how much I look like Mom.

Tesha is shaking her head. “No. This baby was—” She stops and jabs a finger at me again, “She—is all human. Just part of her came from elsewhere.”

I shudder with relief, because if the changeling was trying to suggest I had a fae father…I didn’t want to explore where my mind had been headed.

“My magic, you mean? The baby had some magic? That’s the part that came from Faerie?”

Tesha intertwines her fingers and looks away. “Tesha couldn’t say for certain.”

“But that could be the case?”

“Maybe. If her magic wanted to be named. If it wasn’t happy inside her—” she points at my chest, “—without her having the ritual.”

“The ritual to give someone a true name?” I guess, trying to follow her line of thinking.

“Not give,” Tesha says firmly.

“Okay…” It occurs to me that you’re probably born with a true name and then have to discover it. Tesha didn’t give me my name, she just learned what it was and passed it on to Mom, seeing as she wasn’t fae and couldn’t do it herself. “The ritual to find out what it is, then?” I correct myself.

Tesha nods eagerly, as if pleased I’ve started to understand her. I wonder how often she has a conversation with someone, let alone a coherent one.

“Tesha did it for Leah.”

“So you know it, my true name?” I ask, the question coming faster than I expect. She nods again.

It seems silly, this sudden desperation to know the details of something I wasn’t aware existed a moment ago. Learning Ruskin’s name unbound me from the magic of our deal, but my own name would hardly be of use to me in the same way. And when Ruskin had explained the meaning of his own name—Solskir, Shield of the Sun—its details meant much less to me than what it symbolized: His trust in me. Or the pretense of it, anyway.

But will hearing my own name tell me more? Will it help me understand something about myself I didn’t before? Certainly, it seems more than one person in my life has wanted to keep this piece of identity from me, and maybe they have their reasons for that. Mom knew this secret and never breathed a word of it to me, didn’t even leave any mention of it in her writings for me to find. Perhaps she thought it was too dangerous, that I’d be better off not knowing. Or maybe she died too soon to prepare me like she’d wanted, and just never got a chance to explain this strange start in life to me.

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