The Changeling Sea: A sweet, simple fairytale about the sea

The Changeling Sea by Patricia A. McKillip

I’m a huge fan of Patricia McKillip’s work, but it’s taken me a while to get my hands on The Changeling Sea, and once read I found that it was a rather unique addition to her body of work. One of her earliest books (published back in 1988), and possibly her only work that was written specifically with a young audience in mind, The Changeling Sea is a slender novel with an extremely simple plot.

After her father’s death at sea, Peri (short for Periwinkle) and her mother become estranged. Peri takes up residence at the abandoned shack on the seashore, spending her days working at the inn and her nights staring at the sea. Finally frustrated into action, Peri calls upon what little magic she has and casts several hexes into the sea. Her actions are to have far-reaching consequences, for this charm calls into her life two princes — one from the land, one from the sea — who both need her help in finding their heart’s desire.

The basic outline of the changeling tale is an old one, and McKillip plays the trope straight: a king’s son begat on a sea-woman replaces the son of the king’s wife, with each child growing up in the “wrong” environment. It’s up to Peri and the travelling wizard Lyo to try and put the matter straight; a synopsis so simple that it’s in danger of revealing the entire plot. Yet it’s not in the familiar patterns of the story that the worth The Changeling Sea lies, it’s in the elegant way that McKillip tells it.

McKillip is renowned for the dense and metaphorical language in which she writes her stories, and though her trademark poetic-prose is considerably toned down for this particular book, she still writes beautifully. The small fishing village in which Peri lives is brought to vivid life — you can almost smell the scent of the fish and hear the roar of the ocean, and Peri herself makes for a largely passive protagonist, but an acute observer of the strange events that unfold before her. It’s an interesting choice to have the story of the two changeling princes told through the eyes of a young girl on the brink of womanhood, but her transient state is a perfect reflection of the two worlds that various characters straddle over the course of the story: the land and sea.

The Changeling Sea is a simple, original, effective fairytale; a very short novel that most people could read it in two sittings, maybe even one. But while it lasts, it’s a bit like watching the sun go down: very bright, very beautiful and strangely poignant.