The griffons’ shared bedroom was already open when I reached it. The right chamber—Gloria’s chamber—was empty, while the left was occupied: My partner stood over the bedside of Girard, who wore a large bandage over his right cheek and a lackadaisical smile on his beak. There was a dispirited, seemingly disembodied muttering which I would not have attributed to my partner but for the fact that Girard's beak was not moving. I rapped my hoof against the doorframe to announce my presence.

Bluebird turned around to face me. “Oh, Pesco,” he noted dully. He pushed a feeble grin. “This is a bit familiar, isn’t it?”

I gave a nod. Like the day prior, we found ourselves together in Girard's room again. Based on the look on my partner’s face, I had to wonder if we weren’t here for similar reasons. My partner’s next question confirmed we were on the same wavelength:

I cast a glance at Girard on the bed; his presence constrained my response. But to tell the truth, it was a stretch to say Girard was present at all. He lay outstretched on his stomach, his neck contorted in order to gaze up at us from his pillow. His eyes seemed to swim about like bubbles of foam in freshly stirred coffee, looking everywhere and nowhere at once, and that wide, lackadaisical smile writhed like a worm on his beak. Something was very wrong with the bird—or should it be said, the bug.

“I checked your bedroom, but you weren’t there. Blanche was up and told me I might find you here,” I said. I proceeded to nod in Girard’s direction. “What’s the matter with him?”

My partner’s grin faded as he pointed out a nearby empty bottle of cold medicine. I could smell it on Girard's breath from a distance. “I guess Gloria’s been taking good care of him,” he said. “Like always.”

I’ll say. Girard was medicated beyond the point of interrogation, and I could only imagine that was the point.

I knelt down to check the bird’s pulse, all the while as he giggled some incoherencies to nobody in particular. His heart was racing, his breathing uneven, and if I stared at his feathers closely… it was as if they shimmered and shifted before my eyes like an optical illusion. I did not think this last symptom could be attributed to the cold medicine.

“Gloria has all but given him an overdose,” I said. “We should consider ourselves lucky that he’s even conscious.”

I asked my partner directly, “What conversation would that have been, if he were in any fit state to talk?”

“Ohhh, well, ahah.” He rubbed his neck raw. “Just a strange little thing that was on my mind as I was lying in bed. A bit of fridge logic, you know? Nothing much. But also, ahah… I don't think I slept a wink last night.”

“I think Pesco will understand the feeling,” Girard drawled, enjoying a moment of partial lucidity. “Yesterday, he had those same red eyes as you…”

“Anyway,” Bluebird continued, looking now at the bird, “it was something you yourself said, Girard. Or at least, something you told Pesco, and he told me after the fact. It made sense at the time, until I really started to think about it. And when I did, ahah, I guess some other things started to make sense, too!

“What Pesco told me was that you didn’t think changelings handled the cold as well as, ahah, ‘us mammals.’ If you forgive the weird phrasing—we all have our uncharismatic moments, don’t we?—it does sound reasonable, doesn’t it? We mammals—you know, ponies and deer and zebras… and griffons—we have thick coats on our hides and warm blood in our veins. A changeling, on the other hoof, doesn’t have any protection against the elements. But, what about when they transform into a creature that does? I couldn’t think of why that wouldn’t be an obvious fix. It was a strange thing to me, but I’m not the brightest bulb in the box, and also not an expert on changelings. So I went and asked Blanche about it this morning—”

“Blanche,” Girard repeated, as if by reflex. “Blanche, yes, is a little strange. But I swear on the stalactites, I would have it no other way… still love her, I do, all the same…” he sang before trailing off.

“She tells me that it ultimately has to do with one of those misconceptions the public has about changelings. They really seem to be a misunderstood lot, don’t they? I guess Blanche’s take on it is that they wouldn’t be so misunderstood and reviled if they weren’t so deceptive. To each their own opinion, I suppose.

“Anyway, this misconception, she says, consists of a misnomer for their entire race: The truth is, changelings don’t actually do a whole lot of changing. Even after they transform, they don’t become the genuine article, in other words. She told me to imagine a changeling trying to pass itself off as a griffon, just as a hypothetical: They may grow their exoskeleton to approximate the rough size and shape of a griffon, and erupt all over their body with these chitinous little extrusions meant to mimic the texture of feathers and fur and what have you. But in the end, the transformation is only an illusion, she tells me. The changeling channels most of its magic not into sculpting its own body, you see, but into carefully reflecting the light this way or that, and then filling in the gaps of the illusion with a passively exuded hypnotic field.

“It all sounds so impressive to me! But ahah, I guess all the illusion magic in the world couldn’t keep a bug in a blizzard from freezing to death, now could it?”

“And while I had her,” he continued, “I had in mind to ask Blanche something else. It was something I’d had an idea about for a day or so, but I figured that she or Pesco must have already thought about it and dismissed it. That idea was: What happens when a changeling loses some part of its body? Does the illusion stick around?

“She thought I was asking on account of the wing fragment. She explained that a healthy changeling will normally leave a reservoir of its magic behind in any part that detaches from its body. These sheddings can maintain the illusion for up to a month! Impressive, huh? Apparently, back in the olden days, they would take the hair of a suspected changeling and play exactly this waiting game to determine their guilt or innocence. Or, if a town was feeling crueler than it was patient, they would just do what Bon suggested and lock them up and starve them of any and all affection!

“All that is to say, the undisguised changeling wing fragment could only have been left behind accidentally if our changeling was feeling very hungry. Blanche took that to mean that it must have been left behind intentionally, but if that’s the case, well, ahah… then I don’t know what to make of the color of the blood I woke up to on the tip of my wing this morning! Or on the cheek of your face right now, Pesco!”

He aimed a trembling wing in my direction. I observed on his furthest primary a smear of blood, or at least, what I had long since come to recognize as blood but for a single key difference: its ghastly green hue. I turned to examine myself in a nearby standing mirror. Bluebird was not mistaken; that same green stain existed on my right cheek, perhaps exactly where the bloodied phone receiver had brushed my face the night prior.

“Girard…” my partner whispered, “… you’ve been hungry for a long time now, haven’t you?”

There was no time for this. I leaned in and clacked my hooves beside his ears, trying to snap him to attention. “Girard, I’m afraid the game is over. You and Gloria have run out of time. Together, my partner and I have all the evidence we need to arrects you and Gloria for forgery and identity theft on a nigh-geopolitical scale. Your acts may even constitute treason.”

“However, you may have lost the game,” I said, feeling my throat tighten a little, “but I don’t think my partner or I count this as a victory. It’s not the game I thought it was. I see that now. The fact of the matter is, we’ve all run out of time—the Royal Guard phoned last night, and they’re not days away, they’re hours away. And I told them the truth: I told them I’d seen you with my own two eyes. Do you know where the truth will get you in a situation like this?”

“It won’t get you far.” Blanche’s speech was still fresh in my mind. “You asked me a question yesterday, and I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to respond. You asked what would happen if you turned yourself in. On behalf of the Royal Guard, my answer is it wouldn’t make a lick of difference, given what you and Gloria are already guilty of. On behalf of myself, my answer is that I don’t know. I simply don’t know what needs to happen, Girard. We still don’t have all the facts about the present, let alone the future. You need to tell us your side of the story.”

I had his focus, but only barely. Girard’s intoxicated euphoria gradually gave way to something more melancholic as he muttered into his pillow, “I just don’t understand.”

“Don’t understand why… why she would write such a beautiful story about changelings… about a love farmer, falling in love… coming out to everyone, changing everyone’s minds… Why would she write all of that, and then call the police on a changeling, just for saying hello?” He shook his head, and appeared to make himself quite dizzy in the process. “Blanche, yes, is a little strange.”

“We’re going to need to get at this through Gloria, and fast. I wasn't lying about the Guard. Commander Brightdawn said they’ll be here by noon. I suggest we tranq Girard with the magic suppressant just to be safe, and then go—”

“Wait just a moment, Pesco,” my partner said calmly. “I should tell you, Blanche gave me something before I left. It was the parchment she promised she would return to us. And it’s weird, I asked her why but she wouldn’t explain why she… Well, she told me to give it to Girard.”

My partner unzipped a saddlebag and pulled out the former piece of evidence. It was intact, but no longer in its original form: The parchment was folded into a quarter of its former size, and inked writing bled through the creases.

In lieu of any other action in this pressing moment, Bluebird took to fiddling with his tie.

“She didn’t tell me not to read it, but I feel like she should have, so, I haven’t…”

But then I realized its significance, and at that very same moment, I think Girard did, too. His swimming eyes finally came to rest and focused on something, that something being the twice-folded parchment in Bluebird’s hoof. He sat upright on his bed, looking even more ill than before.

In one motion I snatched the parchment from my partner, unfolded it, and began scanning the first few lines of the letter. I had already reached my conclusion as to its contents: “We can’t show him this.”

Because he’s already on the brink of cardiac arrhythmia. “Because it’s irrelevant, and right now we need to—”

I’d taken my eyes off the accused, and paid the price; Girard, who was docile and immobilized but a moment ago, now whirled past me in a blur as he swiped the paper from my hoof. He staggered away and slammed into the doorframe, still reeling from the medicine. I immediately gave chase, only to damn near kill myself tripping over his dirty laundry on the floor.

But Bluebird did not stop anyone. He remained rooted where he stood, perfectly aloof.

It was too late now, anyway. Girard, who was collapsed in a slump at the doorframe with the parchment in his lap, had certainly read the gist of the letter by now. I could only defer to my partner’s judgment as I picked myself up off the ground and limped over next to Girard. I was soon joined by my partner. As an unhappy trio, we read the contents of the letter in silence:

Thank you for your support, as a fan and as a friend. I am glad my stories have consistently entertained you over the years.

I need to ask you to stop reading into my stories any more deeply than that.

I need to ask you to stop reading into our relationship any more deeply than that.

I need to ask you to stop leaving toolmarks on my windowsill. Or more precisely, I need to ask you to stop reading my work before I'm ready to share it.

My apologies that this letter is two days late—perhaps we misunderstood each other's messages? But that's strange, since I've never known you to misinterpret the meaning behind my stories, even the more convoluted ones—perhaps we only see what we want to see?

Speaking of what we want: I don’t want anyone in my life who doesn’t respect my boundaries. If I need to explain why, then I can't explain why. It will fall on deaf ears.

But I'll admit, I feel I know less, now that I know more. Maybe you know the true meaning of Changeling Ringing better than I do. “Death of the author” is a fashionable phrase these days, after all.

So perhaps one day I'll publish a second edition of Changeling Ringing—it'll have the exact same words, but an entirely different message.

Such a large revision, however, will take me time to process.

I need to ask you to be patient.

I reached the end of the letter, but there was no indication that Girard or my partner had yet finished. So I read it again, only to reach the end again. And again. And then one more time still. I understood that we all must have been rereading the letter multiple times, waiting for the world to start turning again.

I decided it was most prudent to stay quiet. Girard, for his part, was still as a corpse—albeit one with its eyelids peeled clean off. Among the three of us, it was my partner who flinched first:

This was the corpse’s cue to reanimate. Without a word, Girard stood up. Politely handed the letter back to me. Traipsed into the shared bedroom’s common space and toward the exit.

With a face and a gait like a bird possessed, Girard followed through on his trancelike departure out of the bedroom and into the hallway. Bluebird started after him with soft steps and misty eyes, but I passed Bluebird by at a much brisker pace of my own: The confirmed perp is simply waltzing out of the interrogation.

I reached the exit a mere moment after Girard had, but my first glimpse around the threshold was of the bird in full flight all the way down the hall—he had broken into a mad dash just as soon as he had left our sight.

I whipped back around at my partner, skeptical that I would be receiving any help at all from this point onward. To my surprise, he spared only an instant to wipe his eyes before taking to the air himself and darting past me. I galloped after him to keep the pace.

Not only did Girard have a head start on us, but he was more familiar with the cramped and tortuous layout of his friend’s villa. He gained ground on us, and we soon lost all sight of him in our pursuit. However, this was not an issue. If we couldn’t rely on our eyes, we could rely on our ears; Girard’s weeping and wailing as he went meant he truly had nowhere to hide.

We rounded corner after corner guided by nothing but the peals of pure anguish. Girard started to sputter as he lost his breath. He choked and hacked and slammed into walls with greater and greater frequency, his stamina and coordination no doubt hamstrung by the pitiful state he was in both physically and emotionally.

We closed the distance he had gained on us, and he reentered our sights. I braced myself to tackle him by his hindlegs dangling in the air, but it seemed fortune was on his side as he flew around what would have been his very last corner: We had reached the spiral staircase that led down into the foyer.

Wheezing and whimpering on his lopsided flight path, Girard clipped his shoulder on the banister and spun into a crash landing onto the carpeted floor below. He picked himself up—a testament to his endurance that he was still conscious—and looked frantically about his surroundings. The foyer was not empty. On the divan Grid and Bon sat as a pair, the former tending to a makeshift splint on the latter’s hindleg (I was beginning to wonder if I hadn’t missed something important last night), and on the far side of the room, perhaps just having walked in from an adjoining corridor, there stood his dearest “cousin” Gloria, gawking bewilderedly at his distress.

Without a moment’s hesitation, he threw himself into her chest, draping his dead weight over her shoulders.

“You were right all along!” he cried, clutching her tightly. “You were r-right, right all along… I should have listened…! It’s all f-fallen apart, just like you said…”

My partner glided over the banister and floated down to the floor at a respectful distance from the unfolding drama. I kept a keen eye on the perps and the scene at large as I descended the stairs, wary of how this would unfold.

For a moment, Gloria’s claws flexed and shook, her nails protruding like knives as they hovered just behind Girard’s neck. But, through what looked like no small amount of willpower, her claws retracted and she reciprocated Girard’s embrace.

She stroked the back of his head as she cooed, “There, there, my little dove. Say no more. We'll be all right. I'll fix this. I always can.”

She pushed a matronly smile as she tenderly pried Girard off of her. She cast a glance at the two involuntary spectators on the divan, and then stared down me and my partner further away.

“Would I be correct to assume,” she chimed, “that this is you two fine officers’ doing?”

“You mean were interrogating him, despite your promise that I could be present during any such proceedings?”

“Honestly,” she brooded, “one has to wonder if the changeling is the real menace around here.”

She was lying, of course. We never made any such promise. I had to suspect that this was all amateur theater in order to win over the audience on the divan. This audience—Bon and Grid—still sat blinking in confusion for the most part, but thanks to the theatrics of all that they were seeing and hearing, it was clear they were starting to view me and my partner with newfound suspicion.

Gloria was tempting me mightily to reach beyond this whole game of hers and simply arrest the two of them. She was unaware of the extent of what we had on them, and was preying on uncertainties that we no longer had.

But I still needed to learn the truth of this situation, and my best chances of learning it lay with the changeling themself. “It’s not like that,” I said. “We only want to hear Girard’s side of things.”

“If you must speak to him so urgently,” she said, “then at the least, I insist I be present to act as his spokesgriff.”

“These are sensitive matters, Gloria.” I am literally incapable of believing a word out of your beak.

“With all due respect, you’ve already browbeaten my cousin to such a point that I believe he is unable to represent himself.”

Grid interjected, “Yeah, and I mean, it sounds like you gave her your word, Big Guns? I think you should really be a bit more considerate to Girard…”

But right then, a gravelly, baritone angel came to my aid. “Everyone, we have a problem.”

A new actor entered from stage left. Zorn walked up behind Gloria and her abused pet. Despite the insanity all around him, he was cliff-faced as ever as he continued:

“It is frigid in here. I fear the boiler is malfunctioning.” He looked over at Grid. “May you come with me to investigate?” And then to Bon. “And you as well, Bon. You may be the most familiar with your own villa.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Gloria snipped. “I’ll check it out with you, Zorn. Grid is a bit busy tending to Bon’s leg, as you can see.”

“Oh?” Bon said. “But weren’t you insistent on remaining with your cousin?” There was a skeptical flourish to his tone that made me want to clap for him.

Gloria’s body language tightened up as though she were actively being crushed in a vice. “They can wait for us, Zorn and I, I mean, to—”

“Really, it’s no bother!” Grid said, innocently but to my infinite amusement nonetheless. “Right Bon? I don’t think you’re totally bedridden or—”

“All right, all right, I’ll admit I may have overreacted on my cousin’s behalf,” Gloria said flippantly. “I’m sure this incident was but a well-intentioned misunderstanding on everyone’s part, and we can all move past it with the proper decorum moving forward. Do be kind with him, officers.” She stepped over her still-sniffling cousin to pair up with Zorn. “Let’s go. I think I simply tripped over a stray cable when I was in there.”

Grid paused to look at his friend on the divan, and then back at Gloria and Zorn. “You were in the boiler room?”

I’m sure Gloria only pretended not to hear him as she ushered my guardian angel away.

Bug in a Blizzard

by Paracompact

22. Return to Sender