The Last Changeling by Jane Yolen

where they could be put back together. Then she made careful notes, of the kind she’d done for each birth she’d attended with Mistress Softhands, though not that last, disastrous birth where the queen of the Unseelie Court had killed one unfortunate apprentice and consigned the rest of their group to the castle dungeons.
    And not, of course
, she thought,
when Huldra gave birth to Og, there being no paper, no pen, and no time for any such.
    Snail had no idea how much time had passed. But when she went back into the professor’s room it was to learn that Huldra had finished the last gulp of the second deer, the dwarfs had been sent off to check on the unicorns, the professor and Maggie were taking notes in a book with the title
Of the Eating Habits of Wild Trolls
scrawled across the top of the page.
    Oh—and baby Og was beginning to stir in his apple barrel cradle.
    â€œI’ve finished taking it apart,” Snail said, wondering idly where Prince Aspen was since clearly he must have been the one who’d brought Huldra the deer. Funny, how she hadn’t heard a thing. He couldn’t have been
that
quiet about it and she was only just next door.
    It’s just like what happens in a birthing room
, she thought.
Intense concentration on one thing leading to a kind of deaf-blindness to everything
else
.
    â€œWe’re all but finished here as well,” said Odds. “Let me come and see how well you’ve done.”

ASPEN DOES SOME CLEANING
    A spen stared bleakly between the bucket and rag that Maggie Light had handed him and the furry
thing
he was supposed to wash. He had been distressed enough being forced into a servant’s role—again! But he was prepared to clean the rug with as much energy as he could muster.
    The rug had other ideas, sprouted teeth, and growled at him.
    â€œThe bowser does not like to be washed.”
    Aspen jumped in surprise at the voice coming from what he had thought was a long, grey cloak hanging on a strange rack. But then he saw pale eyes in the recesses of the hood and pale, knobby fingers just peeking out of the sleeves.
    â€œAnd I most assuredly do not want to wash it,” he replied. He wanted to add,
A task well below my station . . . or below my former station. The professor has made it perfectly clear that I hold no station here.
    Something about the creature seemed familiar, but he could see so very little of it, he could not figure out what it was.
Seelie? Unseelie?
“But that is the task I have been set.”
    He stopped for a moment, remembering something his old nanny had said: Work ennobles. He hadn’t understood it then, of course. He must have been five or six at the time when she said it. But now, suddenly, he
did
understand: Sometimes the noble thing to do is the lowest thing. Like helping Snail in the cave as she midwifed the troll baby into the world. Which led directly to Huldra the troll not eating anyone in Odds’s troupe.
This, at least, is a step up from a troll baby’s birth!
he thought.
Though on second thought, maybe not!
    â€œThe bowser respects firmness,” said the cloaked creature.
    Aspen nodded and took a cautious step forward, bucket before him as a shield. “I can be firm,” he said without much conviction.
    â€œBut not too firm! The bowser appreciates a gentle hand.”
    â€œFirm but gentle. I understand.”
    He took another step forward and the bowser rippled down the middle like a sheet being puffed out by a maidservant. Then the row of fearsome teeth reappeared in the front, and Aspen stopped, shaken.
    Firm.
    â€œStop it, bowser!” he snapped, trying to speak in the deep, strong tones he remembered his father using with the castle hounds. He sounded squeakier than his father ever had, but the bowser stopped rippling.
    However, its teeth were still bared.
    Now gentle.
    Aspen forced himself down to one knee, his face now alarmingly close to the