Phooka; The Changeling Makers

As told by Phonicious K. Tankerus III

Iodin Slathe was a man of limited means and limited ingenuity. But he loved his family dearly and always treated them well. In the warm times, he would plant his crop and dig deep holes in the yard for his children to fill with water and bathe in. In the cold time, he would harvest the crop and make large bonfires to bring warmth to his children. By anyone’s reckoning, he was a good man.
Iodin Slathe was not like other men, for his youth his mother had warned him of the dangers of the fair folk and how best to keep them placated for fear they would damage his life and livelihood. So Iodin Slathe left on his windowsill every night a porcelain bowl of warm milk with honey and said a little prayer to the Seelie folk to guide him, and the Unseelie folk to leave him be. And for most of his life, this practice served Iodin Slathe well.
Then a frost came early in the year, and just as suddenly as it arrived it was gone, but the bees were trapped in their hives, and the cows turned to sculptures in the field, and the crop dried up and Iodin Slathe was without milk, honey, or food and could no longer placate the fairer folk, or even feed his family in the cooling months.
So Iodin Slathe loaded up the ox and cart, and what little of the grain he had left in his barn and took his eldest son’s hand in his own and made him swear to watch the farm and care for the other children. Then Iodin Slathe did what he had never done before and set off on the road leading away from his meager beginning to search out his fortunes elsewhere.
Now when Iodin Slathe’s mother had told him all those years ago of the fairy to watch out for if he was ever to leave home, she told him how best to spot a patch of sod that moved in the breeze though none was there, and how to avoid a ring of stones that seemed benignly placed but gave off an aura of dangerousness. She had warned him that if he ever forgot or couldn’t give the fey their due, they would soon be on him as recompense for years of trickery owed. So, as he traveled along his way, Iodin Slathe was wary.
So wary in fact, that he almost did not notice, three days into his journey, that a man of age and halting gait had stepped into the path of his ox and cart. When he did notice, it was almost too late, and he pulled hard against the chop and rein of his oxen to force them into a sudden stop. He jumped from his perch and crouched near the older man to check if he was injured or harmed. “Allow me to help you to your feet, grandfather! I am sorry for the danger you were in!”
“It is quite alright. I knew the danger, Iodin Slathe, but I felt it worth to finally meet the son of the fair maiden who taught you so well our ways.” The old man said, as he turned to face Iodin Slathe, fuzzy brown fur covering his face like some humanoid rodent with eyes black as pitch but twinkling with delight.
“You are a fairy folk! Come now to exact your revenge on a man with no food and done in poorly by the fickleness of the cold?” Iodin exclaimed, backing away from the furry old man. “Quite the contrary, Iodin Slathe. In fact, I’ve taken pause to consider your case and I have found that in your life you have served the fairy well and you deserve some repayment for your efforts, for never let it be said that Mazusai does not reimburse kindness with kindness.”
“Mazusai? Is that your name, fair grandfather?” Iodin Slathe questioned, all too aware of the power a fairy possesses once they know your name, and aware that the same can be said for you of them.
“The one I choose today, it is.” The fey grinned mischievously. “I have a proposition. I have within me, certain powers. To free the bees in their hives, unstick your cows in their fields, and reinvigorate your crop so your children shall not go hungry. And I shall ensure that these things will always be, so long as you adhere to our deal we make now.”
Iodin Slathe considered, for his mother had warned him, so long ago, about the dangers of making deals with the fair folk, but he also knew that at home his children were starving, and his wife was scared and who knew what other fey could be coming to exact their vengeance without the promise of milk and honey to keep them at bay.
“What is your price, fair folk Mazusai?” Iodin Slathe asked with the resignation of an old man who knows that he is without choice or comfort. Placing a hand upon his should, Mazusai comforts Iodin Slathe as he tells him of the pact.
“On the Seventh night of seven months from now, your wife shall become plump with your seventh child. You will wait seven hours from its birth, and walk seven paces from your door where I shall be waiting with a child of my own. The child will look every bit the same as yours, and you shall take the child to take the place of the child you bore. On the Seventh Month of the Seventh Year from that night, you shall meet me at the crossroads Seven miles from your home, with the child that you raise as your own in tow. There, at the crossroads, the children will play as siblings for seven hours, at which point you shall return home. When at last our pact is completed, we shall never have business again, and your family shall know prosperity and want for nothing for seven hundred years.”
Iodin Slathe took a deep breath. What the fey asked was in fact a heavy price, one that he knew he would never agree to, were the life of his other children not hanging in the balance. What is one when you already have six mouths to feed? He thought to himself, even as he felt his lips accepting the fairy deal. Hand to paw-like hand outstretched, the two shook and the deal was made. “Return home, Iodin Slathe. You shall find Spring has come early and your fields will be tended and your cows milked and your bees protected. And you shall find your wife in a loving mood, and in seven months she shall be with child. Do not forget our deal Iodin Slathe, for I promise you I shall not.”
“Neither shall I, Mazusai. Neither shall I.” Iodin Slathe whispered to himself as he turned his oxen and began to head towards home. No sooner had he turned the crest to his homestead that he saw that the creature’s words were true. While the rest of the valley where his family had built their home was covered in snow and ice, still healing from the sudden frost, his home was warm and dry as if some personal sun was shining upon it. He arrived at his home, laden still with the spoils that he had set out to sell at market and trade for the lives of his family, but were now unneeded as his sons and daughters and wife surrounded him with excitement.
“Father! Father!” His eldest called out as he approached, “A miracle! We have been blessed by the gods! Warmth has returned to our home, and the flowers grow where we shall plant wheat and corn and the cows frolic in the fields, and the bees make steady work in their hives! We are saved by the gods!”
“Not the gods, my eldest son.” Iodin Slathe gently chastises. “By the fey that I have always kept in close company. I met one on the road to market and it blessed us with this bounty and great boon.”
“Praise be to the fey then!” His eldest exclaimed, and his siblings took up the call, as Iodin Slathe embraced his wife and they found themselves full of joy. That night the family dined on their meager rations and set their hearts to working the field in the morning to secure their riches. Before they slept, Iodin Slathe walked into the fields to pull milk from the udder of the cows and then snuck into the forest to harvest the nectar of the bee's hard labor. Mixing them together, he offered them in porcelain bowl under the moons, with a gentle prayer of thanks to Mazusai. When the family awoke, Iodin Slathe found the bowl empty, and to his surprise, the field worked and planted, perfectly rowed. Then he found his boots mended, his best shirt sized, and gifts for all his children left stuffed in their socks, hung at the foot of their beds. It was as if every fey of every sort has visited them in the night to impart on them gifts. Iodin Slathe’s children excitedly took up these gifts, thanking the fey for their blessings, even as Iodin Slathe’s wife leaned into him and he himself became worried.
For the next seven months, Iodin Slathe’s family lived in prosperity. With no need to work the farm, Iodin’s eldest son took up law and made his way to schooling at the College of Lords. The others each took up their own skills, until slowly and suddenly, none of Iodin Slathe’s children were farmers at all. And then, as foretold by the fey in the road, Iodin Slathe’s wife became plump with child and the whole of the family rejoiced at the great fortune of another to share their bounty with.
But as the months grew colder, and the mark of a year since his deal on the crossroads with the furry fair folk creature came and only slightly past, Iodin Slathe began to have misgivings about his deal. He sent a messenger to his son, at his College of studies, to ask of him to look in the great library it possessed, about the type of fey of which he had made his deal.
A week and a day before his wife was due, Iodin Slathe received his reply. The creature to which he had sold his child was a púca. A creature that wanders, searching for the lost to provide them aid, both benign and malevolent. A deep sinking feeling was felt in the stomach of Iodin Slathe as he read his son’s words over and over again. Though it was a fey, to him it seemed little better than a demon who waited to tempt men at their lowest, and this creature had secured his child from him. He would not have it. He sent way to his son, to search in his troves of knowledge on how to break a púca oath.
Then the happy day commenced, and the child was born, and the mother and child were both fine and healthy and Iodin Slathe rejoiced, taking his youngest child in his arms and holding it close, promising that no harm would ever come to them. But even as he held the child in his arms, he was all too aware of the hours slipping by. And when at last the moons had reached their height, the seventh hour dawned. Iodin Slathe looked out the window into the darkness and there he saw a middle-aged man, with dark fur and long ass-like ears that twitched in the moonlight.
Iodin Slathe wrapped up his child in swaddling cloth and began to walk out to the creature. He placed his body protectively around the child, to shield them from the cold, and from the púca itself. “The time has come Iodin Slathe. For seven months my creatures have protected your home and tended your field and I have come to collect on our bargain. In my arms, I hold the babe that you shall take as your own and raise as a child of the family Slathe.”
“And if I refuse? If I turn from our deal and dare not agree to take your generosity anymore and risk your wrath for the love of my child?” Iodin Slathe asked defiantly, knowing that to test a fey was to court death or something much worse.
“For every day you keep what is rightfully mine, Iodin Slathe, I shall take my pound of flesh from the others that you have sired. You have the option, Iodine Slathe, would you rather seven healthy children, or none?”
Iodine thought to his eldest son, learning the law and studying far from home, and looked down to the babe in his arms. With tears in his eyes that did not freeze despite the cold, he handed the child to the púca, who in turn handed the child in its arms to him.
“You have done right by us, Iodin Slathe. In seven years' time, you shall bring the child to me seven miles from your home where we first met at the crossroads and these children shall play together as siblings for seven hours. And then our pact shall be done and you and your family shall never know want for seven hundred years. Goodbye, Iodin Slathe.”
And with that, the púca turned from Iodin Slathe and disappeared into the night. So Iodin Slathe turned back to his home and returned to his wife the new babe, who if he had not known would not have been able to determine was not the child that he had departed with. He then received the message from his son, seven minutes too late to make a difference. It simply read, “Father, I have learned, that to beat a Phooka’s enchantment of their deals, one must simply invoke its true name.”
Too little, too late, Iodin Slathe knew nothing of this Phooka besides the name he had been given and the family had sung the praises of. Mazusai. A name that Iodin Slathe knew to be a false one, expertly crafted by the púca for just such a reason as to throw the dealers off its scent.
These were the thoughts that stewed in the back of Iodin Slathe’s mind for seven years gone, as he watched the child, that he had sold for his own, grow into a remarkable child, but always distanced and unloved by the man who all believed to be their father. Iodin spent the seven years hating the child and searching for a name that would let him gain back the child he had lost. Then the seven years were up, and the seventh month came and Iodin Slathe gathered up the child, placing it in the back of the wagon so he did not have to look at it as they traveled for the seven miles to the crossroads. Sitting at the crossroads, now no longer hiding its fey frame, sat the púca, with its long black tail and fur covering its entire body, looking like a humanoid hare with large black eyes.
“You have held to our bargain, Iodin Slathe. I am impressed.” Mazusai chortled.
“I have come to finish our bargain so that I may be rid of you, fair Mazusai.” Iodin Slathe responded with a deadpan tone. “Here is the child, your changeling. Where is my child who you stole from me?”
“It is here, Iodin Slathe.” The púca said, stepping aside, and there Iodin Slathe saw a child the mirror of his own, save the oval eyes and pointed ears that marked the child as Fey-touched. Iodin Slathe fell to his knees and let out a sob.
“Phooka! I challenge you. By the trueness of your name, I invoke our pact that you shall let me leave here with my child.” Iodin Slathe makes out, between bouts of sobbing hysterics.
Amused, the púca laughs but cocks his head after a moment as if to truly take in Iodin Slathe. “I accept, of course. But I may invoke my own pact. If you fail, then the deal shall be forfeit and I shall take my own price from what remains of your family. If you succeed then you may take the child and the changeling if you so choose, and your family shall know the prosperity I promised. But think quickly Iodin Slathe. For you shall only be allowed three guesses, and all must be made before the seven hours of our children’s play is up.”
Iodin fell to the ground in grateful sobs, as Mazusai took the children to a place in the road made specifically for them to play. Iodin Slathe thought back to every story he had read of Phooka and their mischief in the seven-year hence. After two hours, he decided upon his first guess.
“Phooka, I name you by your true name. You are Hahvei. You are the black hare the bane of thinkers.”
“I am not. One guess gone, Iodin Slathe. Two remain.”
A pang of guilt and sorrow wracked the body of Iodin Slathe, as fear took over him in a wave. He looked to the children who played together as siblings with nothing but love and companionship between them. His heart softened and he sat watching them for hours until he came to himself and remembered his task. Breathing deeply and choking back tears he says, “Phooka, I name you by your true name. You are Puck. You are the mischief maker and jester of the Seelie Court.”
With a mighty roar of laughter, the púca says, “I am not. Twice incorrect. Your next guess shall be your last.”
Dejected and defeated, Iodin Slathe finds himself again on the ground and surrounded by mudded clumps of dirt, drowned by tears. He looks to the children and draws himself close to hear their play. He hears the fey-like child say to the changeling, “Says here says that we must always share. And because Says here says it, I know it must be true.”
The changeling responds, “My mother says to always share, but my daddy doesn’t even talk to me.”
To which the fey-child responds, “That’s so sad. Maybe when we’re done, says here can take you home with us!”
The words of the changeling child break the heart of Iodin Slathe, who realizes in the moment what a horrible father he had been to the changeling child, and not matter the outcome of his final guess, he would never regain the seven years gone filled with sorrow and regret, lost in their own twisted way to Mazusai.
But then the words of the fey-child strike his ears and he ponders them again and again. As the final hour draws near to close, he looks up at the púca and laughs aloud. “Phooka! I name you by your true name! You are Cheshire, the mad one, who brings madness where you walk!”
As the seventh hour closes, and the pact, at last, is sealed, Mazusai looks with anger and frustration. With a growl, the creature changes form into a massive horse with a terrible mane and bird feathers and hoofs shaped like rabbit feet and said in a sickening, unseemly bray, “You are a fool, Iodin Slathe. You may have guessed my name, and I am bound to adhere to our pact. But one day, you or one of your children will complete the cycle, and make false offering to the fey. And then I will have my revenge.”
And with a pop, the púca was gone, leaving two confused children in its wake. Iodin Slathe walked over to them and gathered them both in his arms. He held them close and wept openly out of love for them both. “I am your father Iodin Slathe. I am father to both of you, one by blood and one by choice. I am sorry for abandoning both of you these last seven years.”
Each of the children clasped tightly to Iodin Slathe’s neck and kissed his cheek. “We love you father!” They both exclaimed, happy to at last be back in the arms of their true father. With a weepy smile, and tears still in his eyes, Iodin Slathe looked to his children and said, “Let us return home now and tell everyone of what has happened here! And tonight, I shall show you how to mix milk and honey, and teach you all the things you need to know about how to deal with fairies.”