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Changelings never remember precisely what is done to them in order to change them in the first place. What they do remember every waking hour is what they’re told throughout the process.
You can never go back.
‘Back’ is a vague concept to beings that remember nothing prior to their turning. ‘Back’ is the nebulous reality of a family that, somewhere, woke up to an empty crib. Perhaps they mourned before picking up the pieces and moving on. Because they do move on, every single one of them. Sometimes the crib remains empty; sometimes a new offspring fills the void, guarded viciously by parents who’ll never allow it to meet the same fate as the previous.
They will never look for you. They never speak of you. They’ve all forgotten you.
They’ll have a dead child over an Impure one.
There are tales of a Changeling who went back, one who was taken young but not quite young enough. She remembered things from before, the tale went, and decided to look for her birth family. What she remembered was enough to find them - ignoring warnings, clawing her way back even as her brethren tried to hold her back. She had appeared before her bloodkin wounded but deliriously happy, reaching out for them with hands stained by the blood of her brothers and sisters.
They had recognized her as one of their own corrupted young, the tale went on. They had reached back for those outstretched arms.
And then they had torn her apart.
Kheevaldar. Remember her name, for no one else will. Keep it in your mind, always, lest you wish to meet the same end. They know what you are now. They don’t want you back: they want you gone. You don’t belong with them anymore.
They don’t belong in the Darklands, either, for they are--
Impure
-- not true trolls anymore. They won’t belong in the human world once they’re placed in it to keep up a charade: should the families they’re placed into ever find out the truth of what they are and most of all what they’re not - not their children, never their children - they would end them just as quickly and willingly as the fabled Kheevaldar’s family has done with her.
They simply would never belong. Full stop. End of sentence.
But you will live on, for the glory of Gunmar.
Perhaps the tale of Kheevaldar is true, perhaps it is only a legend; there is no telling. But none of the Changeling ever doubted for one moment that going back to their roots, or revealing themselves to humans, would spell their death. That’s how things are. The last part, however, is untrue - at least for some of them. At least for one of them.
Stricklander refuses to live on for anyone’s glory.
For the centuries that follow, Stricklander lives on out of sheer spite.
Ithaca.
Stricklander hears that word for the first time at his fake father’s knee, when his human hide is barely past the age of five. A man of vast knowledge, this one, a scholar all too eager to teach and with a library Stricklander will certainly go through when he’ll be able to read openly without arising suspicion. His placement was chosen well, and in due time it will give him access to all the knowledge he may need to get started.
For now, what his fake father gives him is an amount of attention and care that Stricklander finds almost staggering. A man who lost his wife in childbirth, clinging to his only son who looks so much like his dear, departed wife. From the outside, it must be quite the moving picture.
Except that the child who claimed his mother’s life while coming into the world is now sleeping in another world entirely, switched in the crib when his father was too lost in his grief to possibly realize anything was wrong. What he’s raising now is something else entirely - something he will tear apart with his own hands if the truth ever becomes clear to him.
But it will not, as long as Stricklander has a say in it. He is safe there, and he intends to keep it this way.
“... And this is Ithaca. Can you say that, Gwallter?”
Of course he can: he can easily speak just as well as any human does, and sometimes the fact he cannot do as much is frustrating. “Ithaca,” he repeats, placing a small hand - so soft and repulsively pink, but he’ll grow used to it, he has to - on the open book, where one small mass of land, among larger Ionian islands, is circled in red. It looks so tiny, so insignificant compared to the others, to the rest of Greece. What’s so important about it?
He looks up questioningly, and the man laughs. He has a pleasant laugh, a smile never too far away from his lips. “The homeland of Ulysses,” he says, and turns a page. The text on it is entirely written in ancient Greek, but he goes on to read it as though it’s his own language, translating with ease as he goes. “Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy…”
Ancient human history is rife with tales, and throughout much of his life Stricklander will find no greater joy than uncovering them, learning all he can. That one, however, would always stick out.
Ulysses of Ithaca - not the most powerful of greek kings, not the greatest of warriors. Few men at his command, compared to the forces of Agamemnon or Menelaus; his skill in combat forgettable next to Achilles or Ajax. But cunning and full of tricks, and eventually he was the one who had caused the mighty Ilium to fall. A clever cover. A disguise. Knowledge. And he had won, ending ten years of siege. Let the great ones win battles - he had won the war, and gone on to trick even gods.
There were parts of the tale, however, that left him far less enthusiastic.
“... This daughter of Atlas has got hold of poor unhappy Ulysses, and keeps trying by every kind of blandishment to make him forget his home, so that he is tired of life, and thinks of nothing but how he may once more see the smoke of his own chimneys…”
Almost a decade wandering at sea just to go back to a rocky island? Was Stricklander truly supposed to believe that it had been worth all of it, that something about that rock in the middle of the sea made it better than other, far more wondrous places Ulysses had seen in his journeys? That the wife and son he had left behind had truly taken him back after twenty years - an old, changed man they couldn’t even recognize at first sight? Perhaps they had, but the thought leaves him cold. That’s far from something he can understand, far from something he can relate to.
They don’t want you back: they want you gone. You don’t belong with them anymore.
The world he was torn from is no Ithaca. His kind is hated and feared: if he returns, he will be crushed. The Darklands are no Ithaca. If he returns, he’ll be just an impure who failed his mission and be shown no mercy. This world he’s been sent into is no Ithaca, either, and will turn on him the moment his mask is down. He cannot, will not, allow himself to forget as much for even one moment.
You don’t belong.
Unless he can make it so, of course, changing that world like Gunmar has changed him. But that is a thought he won’t have until much, much later: that day he simply settles back and listens in silence. He observes, as he was sent there to do. He learns.
His fake father will live twenty more years past that day. Happy years, and fruitful most of all: he is a good teacher, and Stricklander is an apt pupil. To his dying day, he’s proud of his Gwallter. To his dying day, he’ none the wiser. Stricklander sees no reason to break the illusion in his last moments. He watches his light die out, and then buries him with the words Ulysses used to shed his disguise and reveal himself to his father upon returning, at long last, to Ithaca.
I am he, father, about whom you are asking.
A lie, the last of many. The man’s son still sleeps in the Darklands, not having aged a single hour since the moment he was stolen. The day comes when Stricklander’s own human hide stops aging, and that means it is time for him to move elsewhere, lest someone catches up with his true age. Names, countries, identities - none of them any more real than the one before.
He wanders. He learns. He spies. He meets more Changelings, works to put the bridge back together, and most of all he creates the basis for a world his brethren may run one day, should Gunmar fail to return, from Impure to secret rulers. When he gets wind that trolls have settled in a place now called Arcadia Oaks, he is amused by the name. Arcadia, the idyllic world of old; they must have high hopes for this new refuge they have found for themselves, but those hopes are vain. Corruption reaches everywhere. He reaches everywhere.
Et in Arcadia ego.
It is an amusing thought, but nothing more than that. This place’s name means nothing: Arcadia, the perfect world, was never something he had much interest in.
He doesn’t realize it’s Ithaca he’s looking for until he finds it. That is when he realizes something else he can hardly believe he missed: when yearning for Ithaca, it was not a rocky island Ulysses truly wanted to return to. It was home, and all that made it a home.
When Walter Strickler finds it, she has blue eyes and a different name.
Barbara.
Derived from the Greek word βαρβαρος - foreign. It didn’t take long, however, before the term ‘barbarian’ gained a negative connotation that would last to the present. History has always been merciless to outsiders, no matter in what world.
No, not just history: those who write it. Stricklanders thinks, not for the first time, that perhaps he should take the time to write a history book of his own: it is amazing how many things humans can get wrong, and having to repeat them in his teaching is nothing short of excruciating.
He comments on her name casually when they first meet, at the first parent-teachers meeting day after Jim Lake Jr. starts attending the Arcadia Oaks high school. It is a dull meeting for the most part, as most parents do have a tendency to be dull, but she surprises him by correcting the accent of his - admittedly rusty - ancient Greek, and then laughs at his surprise.
“I’m sorry! It’s just that so many medical terms originate from Greek - you could say I had to learn a few things. Knowing the root of the words makes things easier to memorize.”
She is a clever woman, that much is clear to him, and he has to admire the way she can juggle both a demanding work and the difficulties of raising a son on her own. Still, she is nothing more than that, just like her son is nothing more than a smart young student he rather likes.
Then Jim stops being just a student. Barbara ceases being just his mother. That second change is almost as abrupt as the first and, all things considered, a great deal more pleasant.
For a time, he can almost believe he belongs.
“What are you, Walt?”
Impure.
“I am someone who can help your son.”
That is all he needs to tell her, and she trusts him. Regardless what she’s just seen in his eyes, regardless the insanity she’s witnessed, regardless the sinking realization he’s not human - she still trusts him with something she values more than her own life.
“Then go to him!”
She is far from the first human to place her trust in him. She is the first to do so while knowing, or guessing, the truth of what he is. He is aware, on some level, that he’s not deserving of that trust. Not after all the lies, and certainly not after all the danger he put her in for his own safety. She will know about that in due time, of course, and she will hate him for it.
He’ll take that hatred, if it means she’ll be alive to feel it.
You can never go back. They want you gone.
As he drives his car towards the entrance to Trollmarket, struggling to keep the wheel steady and remain conscious despite the cobwebs of darkness already clouding his vision and the mayhem behind him, he fails to appreciate the irony of turning to them for help. Of course they’ll want him gone - because he is a Changeling, and because… well. He gave them plenty of reasons to be cross with him, to put it mildly. He could be a full-blooded troll, and they’d still be itching to crush him.
Then again, being chased by an immensely powerful assassin bent on grinding him to dust hardly leaves him much of a choice. He can only hope that they will be able to save his life, if anything for the sake of their Trollhunter’s mother, and then refrain from--
they tore her apart
-- killing him for the same reason. It’s far from a safe bet, but he has no choice. For the first time, he truly feels events are entirely out of his control.
And it is terrifying.
Something hits the back of the car, and causes it to swerve violently. He barely manages to keep it from overturning, and bites on his lower lip to keep himself awake and aware, to make his head stop spinning.
I just feel like I’m losing control.
Barbara, sometimes you have to focus on what you can control over what you can’t.
The car. Right now, all he can control is that blasted car.
“Straight on! Just drive!” Jim Lake screams somewhere behind him. Before them, there is nothing but a wall.
“How do you know it’ll open?”
“I don’t!”
“It’s not opening!”
The boy is muttering something under his breath, but Stricklander doesn’t hear him. It doesn’t matter. There truly is no choice: reaching Trollmarket is their only chance to live.
But you will live on, for the glory of Gunmar.
To hell with Gunmar. To hell with the Order of Janus. To hell with everything.
Stricklander puts all of his weight on the gas pedal, and the wall swallows them all.
There are several versions of Ulysses’ end. According to some, he left Ithaca again and found his death at sea. Stricklander found that fitting, when he first heard of it. It seemed natural: how could a man who incarnated the desire for knowledge ever be content on a small island, with so much out there yet to see?
Now, Strickler finds it far less obvious: after finally coming home after a long journey, who would willingly leave it? Now that he has to leave Ithaca behind, he finds it too difficult for words. Too painful for words, dwarfing by far the physical pain he had felt while removing the binding spell.
You’re the one thing I am looking forward to forgetting.
They’ve all forgotten you.
There is nothing left for me in the human world.
Nothing left in that of the trolls, either.
You cannot belong.
I don’t want to go.
They don’t want you back.
“I have overstayed my welcome.”
The words come easy to him; words always came easy to him - so much so that he doesn’t think Jim understands how much there is behind them. Except that the Trollhunter speaks again behind him, voice quiet, and Strickler suspects that perhaps he does, after all.
“Thank you.”
Let me stay and help, he almost says, but he doesn’t. After all, Ulysses fought with deceit. Now there is time for no such thing - only for battle, and the young Atlas is far more ready for it than he could ever be.
At least, he hopes he is.
“You may not believe me, young Atlas, but I do wish you luck,” Stricklander finds himself saying. “And hope we meet again, one day.”
Take care of your mother.
Jim Lake Jr. finds his gaze and holds it. There is no anger left, and in some odd way it is a relief.
“Goodbye, Mr. Strickler."
The world of the trolls disappears behind him. On the surface, the human world is now closed to him as well; once the connection with his familiar - the child sleeping in the Darklands, the boy whose father he buried as his own - is broken, his human hide will be gone.
But he’s not thinking of it just yet. He can’t plan that far ahead, not with his entire future and destination unknown.
All that he knows is that, once again, there is no going back.