This is not my daughter. My daughter was in this crib last night, but the little thing crying there this morning is not mine. Its eyes are redder, its skin less soft, its heart less pure. The little swaddle I fitted my girl in the last night is unchanged, so no human could have possibly performed this switch. Who could have, I don’t have the faintest clue. Maybe ein teufel, a devil, or a faerie, or a witch. All I know is that this is not my daughter.

         I birthed my daughter three months ago now. Her father was so happy when I told him we were expecting, but became much less so once she was finally in the world. He told me he wanted a son, had been convinced she’d be a son, and so he wouldn’t speak to me for our daughter’s first week. We’d done every test we could think of while I was pregnant to make sure. He’d insisted on it all, even if he chose not to believe the results. He’d say that God told him she’d be a boy. Nonetheless, the bag of wheat began to sprout before the bag of barley did. That meant she’d be a girl, so he found another test. He stood me in front of a mirror, timed me to stare at my own eyes for a full minute. I thought my pupils did get bigger, which he said meant boy, but he didn’t see that and spat at the ground and found another.

         She was a perfect engel on Earth from the day she was born, asleep from eight to eight, crying only so much as she needed to get my attention for feeding or cleaning or other readjustments. I heard her first laugh, a delightful little giggle that I could listen to for the rest of my days. Even her cry didn’t bother me, her wails forming a sort of song that I didn’t mind working to. The first time she really looked into my eyes, it all became worth it. I didn’t question my love. And I still love my daughter. But this is not my daughter.

         This little thing kicks as I try to feel its head. Its skin, patchy and red, burns to touch. Its eyes, leaking scalding tears, look older than those of my little girl. The whites aren’t white at all but red as its patches, bloodshot and watery. I can’t tell where the most dampness comes from between its eyes, its nose, and its open and white-spotted mouth. Its face is similar to my girl’s, but it isn’t hers. It refuses my breast, it refuses my rag. This thing is nothing like the little girl I set to sleep last night. If the neighbors see this thing in my crib or start to overhear its sobs, they’ll call me a hexe. They’ll say I cursed the thing, “my own child”, for Satan, to spite God. I’ll be hung, and there will be nothing anyone can say to save me. But I am no witch.

         I’ve heard of changelings, the children of mischievous things that simply aim to harm human parents so they can have their better human offspring for themselves. Creatures which steal human children in the night and leave their own in the human’s place. As the thing wails on, I fly to the bookshelf. My husband is a physician, so his collection of books will surely have something I can learn. My hands guide themselves past his dozens of hardcover tomes which cover various maladies and illnesses and right to the book of children’s stories I have long loved so dearly, flip through its well worn pages until I find what I need to about changelings.

         Rowdy, distempered children, always crying, always whining. Trolls, elves, faeries, forced upon a human mother and father by mythical parents who do not want them. The real child is alive, living safely in the woods, with a mythical family, though neither will be able to fit into their new community. My girl will grow up with trolls or fae, and amongst those wretched things she will feel like she is the unnatural one. I will have to raise whatever the thing was which took my daughter’s place for my whole life, and it will take and take and take without ever giving me or my husband anything in return. And my husband is the other problem.

         Everyone says mein mann is a kind one, with generosity and compassion and all the things a truly good man should have. They told me any woman would be lucky to have a husband like him, but that always hurt my heart. Before my vows, Mother had warned me that a doctor was not often a present lover. Now, I wish my husband weren’t so present. When he first saw our daughter, he flew into a rage, punching the walls, yelling, as if I could have simply chosen to birth a son, as if our daughter’s birth was just my fault. I can see him in my mind, coming back from work and seeing the thing that has replaced our daughter. His anger, his… He was already broken when he realized his precious son had never been. When he finds out that the daughter he only barely accepted was traded out for something that no respectable man would ever choose to marry… He must never know.

         If you catch a changeling fast enough, you can still get your child back. Changelings, those shifty creatures, cannot stand fire. I throw some logs into our hearth. Cause the changeling to feel pain, to regret the switch, and its parents have no choice but to trade back. The pot I choose is heavy, but once I get it atop the flames, their orangey tongues licking its black pewter bottom, it heats up quickly, boiling the water within. My longest kitchen spoon is my favorite, but it doesn’t mean anywhere near as much to me as my little girl does, so I’ll have to use it. As if it knows what is coming for it, the changeling wails louder. I falter before remembering my little girl, probably crying in a sharp pine basinet, missing her mother as much as I miss her.

         It is that thought that settles me as I pick up the scratching kicking little thing and drop it into the hot water. In the moment it takes me to grab the spoon the thing is grabbing at the pot’s lip, trying to climb out. That’s what the spoon is for. I push the thing back in, hold it down at the bottom of the pot where it can really feel the heat. There’s one last bubbly scream before it stops fighting. I hold it there as long as I can, just to be sure that the changeling is gone. When I finally fish the fragile little thing from the cauldron, it’s stiff and blistered. My daughter is not back. The figure still has its splotchy red skin, now discolored and deeply scalded, and when I open its mouth with the tip of the spoon’s handle I still see those white spots. At least now the crying has stopped.

         I leave the body in its crib and pack my things. My daughter was supposed to come back to me. Then no one could call me a witch or a bad mother. But now all that’s left of the life I built myself is laying still and swollen in my daughter’s bed. What if my husband doesn’t see how different the changeling is from our girl? He’d have me hung for my methods alone. I close the door behind me and take off into the thick greenery and dense trees of the Deutscher Wald that surrounds the town I’ve grown up in. With the child gone, my best hope is to flee and pray that my husband never finds me.