The Changeling

Chapter 1: The Changeling

The morning mist clung to the rolling hills of Connacht as Áine O’Sullivan sat at the edge of her cottage garden, staring into the hazy distance. Her gaze was fixed on the line of trees that marked the boundary between her world and the Otherworld, a place she had been warned about since she was a child. “Never wander too far from home,” her mother had always said, “or the Sídhe will take you.”

Áine was not a girl prone to fear. She was strong and stubborn, with hair the color of sunlit straw and a face that still held the traces of the child she had been not long ago. At seventeen, she was the youngest of the O’Sullivan clan, the last of five sisters. Her family had always lived close to the land, farming potatoes and barley, tending sheep, and respecting the old ways. But the land was unforgiving, and life in the small village of Derrycahill was hard. Yet, it was not the toil or the uncertainty of the harvest that troubled Áine. It was something else—something far more unsettling.

She turned her head slightly, listening to the soft sounds of the cottage behind her. Inside, her mother was singing a lullaby to the newest member of the family, Áine’s baby brother, Séamus. He was only three weeks old, and already Áine felt a strange distance between herself and the child. There was something about Séamus that unnerved her, though she could not put a name to it. He was too quiet, too still, and his eyes—those deep, unblinking eyes—seemed to pierce right through her.

It was her mother who had first noticed the change. “He doesn’t cry like other babies,” her mother had whispered one evening as they sat by the hearth. “It’s as if he’s watching us, judging us. There’s something not right about him, Áine.”