The Last Changeling by Jane Yolen Page B

had promised the Sticksman a favor in exchange for the ride. He remembered that favor now. It was his geas, his fate, and he spoke it softly to himself:
You will travel far and you will meet creatures old, odd, and powerful. You will ask each of them these three questions.
    He asked the first questions aloud.
“What is the Sticksman?”
    â€œThe Sticksman?” the creature asked Aspen. “What is that?”
    Aspen bit his lip. It was an old childish habit he thought he had overcome. Ever since Old Jack Daw had told him it was a
hsssko
—in the drow language, a “tell” by which players of the game of Chancer read another player’s face to know what chits he held in his hand—he had tried to lose the habit.
He let his face go bland, but inside he felt empty. He had been so certain of the creature.
    â€œSticksman,” he repeated. “Just something I thought you were.” He no longer had high hopes for his three questions, but he would ask them anyway, for after all, the promise had been given.
    Even if he was late in remembering.
    â€œWhat is the Sticksman?”
    â€œI asked
you
, man, because I know not,” the creature answered.
    â€œI suppose, then, you do not know how he came to be?”
    It was the second question.
    He/she/it cocked a skeletal head. “If I know not what it is, I deem it unlikely I would know how it came to be.”
    â€œThen I suppose,” Aspen said, “asking how the Sticksman could come
not
to be is right out?” That was the third question.
    The creature shook its skeletal head, which made an alarming creak, and looked away.
    â€œI have a question of my own,” Aspen said suddenly.
    â€œThe other questions were not yours?”
    â€œThey were given to me.”
    The creature nodded. “Then they were yours.”
    â€œYes . . . um . . . no! Or, yes, I do not know. I do not think it is important.”
    The creature nodded some more as if Aspen had made sense, though he felt he had begun to babble.
    â€œAnyway, my
new
question is this: What are
you
?”
    The creature straightened and pointed to the far end of the room. Aspen looked and saw another identical cloaked creature he had not noticed before. Or if he had noticed, he probably thought it just another cloak hanging on a hook.
    â€œMy sib and I . . . ” the creature said, pausing midsentence while its sib raised a skeletal hand in what started as a wave but ended in an ambiguous upturned palm. “My sib and I . . .” the creature began again, “we are so old, our names have passed from the minds of all creatures—even our own.”
    â€œTruly?” Aspen thought that seemed both likely and unlikely, he was not sure which.
    The creature and its sib nodded.
    â€œThen what are you called?”
    â€œWhy should we be called?”
    â€œI mean, if someone wants you to . . . to . . . come quickly.”
    The sib joined them, walking silently, as if its feet did not touch the floor. It said, “We do not come quickly.” But indeed it had.
    Aspen tried again. “Well, should I want to introduce you . . .”
    â€œSometimes,” said the first creature, “the professor calls me
You
.”
    â€œAnd sometimes,” the sib said, “he calls me You, Too.”
    â€œAnd sometimes,” they said together, “he calls us They or Them or Those.”
    â€œAnd when he is with Maggie Light, he calls us the Trio,” said the sib.
    â€œThough we are not three but two.”
    â€œAnd the last two of our kind,” added the sib.
    â€œActually,” Aspen said, smiling up at the tall creature, suddenly sure, “I believe there
are
three
of you. But Maggie Light is not one.”
    A sudden hush filled the room, as if eternity had entered, but before either creature could speak further, the hush was broken by a snore. The bowser, so long