Falling In Read online

  Isabelle felt herself propelled out the door and back into the wide hallway. Samuel stepped out from behind her and pointed her in the direction of a heavy door at the end of the hall. “You go through that door and follow the path to the village. When it forks, you’ll go to the right, to the woods. Follow the creek north and you’ll find the camps in an hour’s walk. South will take you to Corrin. You’ll want to stay as far from Corrin as you can, lest you cross paths with the witch.”

  The air outside was warm for early April, and Isabelle wondered if it was, in fact, April air, or if she’d entered not just another world, but another season, too.

  She followed the path into the woods, which were cool and inviting, the gnarled trees heavy with leaves, branches arching in a canopy over her head. So what were these camps Samuel had been talking about? She didn’t want to go to a camp, especially not a camp filled with children. She knew about children. If they smelled the merest molecule of something different about you, noticed that one of your ears was set higher than the other, discovered disturbing patterns in the freckles on your arms—a wolf here, a pig’s head there—they turned against you. They made up stories about you. Watch out for that girl, they’d say, she morphs into a zombie whenever there’s a full moon. Do you see that girl? they’d ask. She squashes mosquitoes on her arms and licks up the blood.

  No, camps full of children were not for her. But a witch?

  Isabelle would really like to meet a witch.

  When she reached the creek, she headed south.

  9

  Isabelle Bean had always wondered if she was, in fact, a changeling—

  10

  You’ve probably guessed that about her already, haven’t you? Yes, Isabelle thought she was a changeling. Or at least believed there was a strong possibility she was a changeling. Okay: She had no proof whatsoever that she was a changeling, but she really, really hoped it was true.

  You know about changelings, right? Please don’t tell me you go to one of those schools where they only teach things you can actually prove, like two plus two equals the capitol of Arizona. Do you hear me sighing? I want you to march into your principal’s office first thing in the morning and say, “I demand you educate my imagination!” Homeschooled? Tell it to your mom.

  There are changelings everywhere. Most bullies are changelings, but a lot of shy children are too. That kid who’s always tripping over his own two feet? Definitely a changeling.

  Here’s the deal: One day a beautiful, perfect baby is born, and his mom and dad make a huge fuss, take a gazillion pictures on their cell phones and post them to their website, www.ourbabyisbetterthanyours.com, and generally behave like they’re the only people in the world who ever had a cute kid. Big mistake. There are fairies flitting all around your average maternity ward just waiting for that kind of hubris. The minute the parents turn their backs, watch out! A fairy trades out Little Miss Beautiful Baby for Little Miss Cross-Eyed. Happens all the time.

  Except sometimes the fairies make mistakes. They trade out Little Miss Beautiful for Little Miss Magical. Sometimes in their haste they grab an elf baby and trade that. Now, elf babies aren’t much to look at, it’s true, and they grow into plain, unexceptional-seeming children, but there comes a day, right around their twelfth birthdays, when they blossom like lilies. You know who I’m talking about, don’t you? The ugly duckling of the sixth grade who turns into the beautiful swan of seventh grade? Elf baby. Skinny kid turned Adonis? Elf baby.

  There are changelings all around you. If you’d been receiving a proper education all these years, you’d know that.

  11

  —and as she walked the path south toward Corrin, Isabelle pondered the notion again. She poked at it and played with it. A changeling! It would explain so much! Why she never understood the games other children played, could never get the hang of tag, flailed and flopped at kickball, never once scooped up a jack, then snatched the little red ball out of the air. Marbles skittered away from her. Jump ropes? No need to discuss.

  But Isabelle had other powers, or so she believed, powers normal children didn’t possess. She could make the second hand of a clock tick forward two tocks instead of one just by staring at it with her right eye, her left eye closed. Twice she’d made it snow by crushing five ice cubes and laying their remains on her windowsill at night. Moreover, she was fairly certain she and a squirrel who lived in her yard were in cahoots. She whistled, the squirrel tilted his head and chattered back. This had happened three times. The squirrel looked as if he knew Isabelle from somewhere else, and maybe he did. From the Enchanted Forest, Isabelle thought, the Other World, or maybe the Land of the Elves—whatever faraway place she had originally come from.

  She looked into the trees, half expecting to see her squirrel looking back at her now, but there were no squirrels to be seen, at least not on this part of the path. A few birds chattered behind the bushes, and the creek muttered absentmindedly as it wound its way through the woods. Maybe, thought Isabelle, the squirrels were at lunch.

  A changeling. The daughter of a fairy, or maybe a troll, although Isabelle hoped not a troll. True, she had a bad temper, as trolls were known to, and she supposed a troll could have tired of her at an early age and traded her in for some other child, a sweeter, prettier girl. Still, she’d rather be the offspring of an elf. Authentic elves were beautiful, if a little bit on the silly side. Isabelle wasn’t beautiful, she knew, but maybe one day she would be. Sometimes her mother brushed her hair out of her eyes and said, “You never know, Izzy. You could really be something when you grow up,” her voice only half-doubtful.

  If Isabelle was a changeling and was now on a journey back to her true home, she wondered if another girl, the one stolen from the crib in her mom’s house and replaced by Isabelle—was right now making her way back to her true home. If so, Isabelle felt sorry for her.

  It wasn’t that her mother was so bad. She tried, but she’d had no training, and when Isabelle’s dad had left after her third birthday, Mrs. Bean (much to her dismay) had had to do duty as a single parent, feeling more clueless than ever.

  The fact was, Isabelle’s mom hadn’t known the simplest thing about making a home for a kid. She didn’t know that children need bright colors and happy music, or that they should be read to every single day, fairy tales and folktales, funny books about trucks and silly books about cats wearing hats. From what Mrs. Bean had read in the newspapers, she assumed that television was the best way to keep a girl entertained, and so a gigantic, flat-screened monster of a TV was planted in the center of the living room, always on, always yakking away. Isabelle ignored it to the best of her ability.

  A quilt and a pair of flouncy curtains that hung over Isabelle’s window, both hand-me-downs from one of her mother’s coworkers, were the only splashes of color in an otherwise dreary house. “Someone has to teach you how to decorate, and no one ever taught me,” her mom said from time to time, apropos of nothing. She might be packing Isabelle’s lunch or polishing her reading glasses on the sleeve of her sweater. It was as if every so often Mrs. Bean found herself in the middle of an argument with an invisible critic. “I grew up in an orphanage, you know. I didn’t have a mother to tell me what sort of things to hang on the wall.”

  So the walls of the Beans’ house remained bare of paintings and photographs. And no one ever got upset about a vase being broken by an errant baseball, because there were no vases, or any potted plants, ceramic ashtrays, glass figurines, antique lamps, or gilt-framed mirrors for a baseball to demolish.

  But Isabelle had never minded. Her imagination was so lavishly decorated she didn’t need inspiration from framed prints and hand-painted pillows. She had only minded the dark, especially in the winter months, when the days ended early, finding Isabelle alone in the house, the light slipping out the windows.

  Now she wished she’d had time to leave a note before she’d left home. You’ll find my books in a pile in my closet, she’d have written. Please let your real daug
hter read them! Also: The bathrooms should be painted another color. Industrial gray is depressing! And buy more fruit! Children need fruit!

  The thought of strawberries and bananas made Isabelle hungry. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and then only half an English muffin with a dab of apple butter. Her stomach had felt funny that morning, and now Isabelle wondered if she hadn’t somehow known that today was the day when she’d be returned to her true home.

  A large, smooth rock, the size and the shape of a beanbag chair, presented itself in the middle of the path, and Isabelle sat down on it. If she didn’t eat something soon, she’d get a pinched feeling between her eyes, a feeling that could only be gotten rid of by taking two headache pills and placing an ice pack on her forehead for thirty minutes. If the headache wasn’t treated immediately, the pain grew larger and began to squeeze Isabelle’s head from either side, as if Isabelle were an orange and somebody wanted a glass of juice. Isabelle needed to eat.

  She closed her eyes and held out her hands. If this were an enchanted forest, as Isabelle hoped it was, then maybe all she had to do was wish for food. Don’t be greedy, she told herself as she composed her lunch order. A little cup of blueberries would do nicely, as would a turkey sandwich—though, did they serve turkey sandwiches in enchanted forests? Turkey sandwiches seemed so . . . unenchanted. A dripping honeycomb, that’s what she should wish for, though Isabelle didn’t really like honey, except in tea. Too sticky sweet.

  Porridge! A steaming bowl of porridge! Of course. The exact right thing. Isabelle lifted her hands a little higher and wished for a bowl of porridge, not knowing if she should wish out loud, so she didn’t.

  She waited to feel the weight of the bowl in her hands. After a few seconds, her hands still empty, she opened her eyes. A girl, no more than eight or nine, stood in front of her.

  “Yes?” Isabelle asked, trying not to sound impatient even as the hunger gnawed at her belly. “What do you have for me?”

  The girl stepped back, shaking her head, her eyes wide with fright. “I don’t have nothing for ya, miss. Begging your pardon, miss.”

  “That would mean you have something,” Isabelle pointed out. Was this girl a fairy, trained to speak in riddles and double negatives? She looked a little grubby and plump for a fairy, her cheeks altogether too tear streaked, but still, you never knew. “If you don’t have nothing, that means you have something.”

  The girl straightened and took a deep breath. “I have two loaves of bread with butter what Mam gave me for the journey,” she said, presenting a small burlap bag for Isabelle’s view. “I’ll share of ‘em if you’ll walk with me.”

  Isabelle searched her imagination for stories about fairies who shared food or took journeys, but couldn’t find any. “Walk to where?”

  “The camps in the woods,” the girl replied. “Where the other children from Corrin went. We was walking on our way this morning when I had to stop a moment to—” She nodded toward the ground, and Isabelle understood that the girl had needed to relieve herself. “I like a private moment for that, you understand, so I went deep into the wood, and when I got out the others had gotten too far ahead. I couldn’t catch up. I called after them, but no one called back.”

  The girl took a step closer to Isabelle. “I don’t know how they could’ve gotten so far ahead, miss,” she said in a near whisper. “Made me wonder, maybe the witch was nearby, not so far south as they say. Maybe she’d been following us and eaten them what had gone ahead of me.”

  Maybe, Isabelle thought, but more likely they’d run off, knowing that the girl would be scared to find herself alone. They’d heard her calls and covered their mouths so their laughter wouldn’t leak out.

  “I’m afraid to go on by myself, miss,” the girl continued. “I’ll offer my bread if you’ll be my companion.”

  Isabelle’s stomach grumbled. The pain began between her eyes. It would only be a moment before it sharpened its needlelike claws and took hold. She had to eat, but she didn’t want to head north, toward the camps, away from the witch. She could walk with the girl for the time it took to eat the bread, and then she could turn back, she guessed. The path was clear; the girl wouldn’t have any trouble following it.

  She looked at the girl, whose lower lip was trembling. It seemed a shame to send her back to the kids who’d abandoned her. Isabelle knew about children. She knew tears wouldn’t make them any nicer. Just the opposite, as a matter of fact.

  Isabelle felt a soft place open inside her. She wanted to help the girl. But if the girl knew where Isabelle was headed, she’d run fast in the other direction. So Isabelle would have to be a little bit crafty about it. It was the right thing to do. What this girl needed most of all, Isabelle could clearly see, was a friend.

  And so Isabelle Bean decided to give friendship one more try.

  “I’ll walk you to the camps.” Isabelle stood and pointed south. “For a loaf of bread, and any blueberries you might have on you.”

  “I’ve not got blueberries, miss, they’re not in season. But to my bread you’re welcome.” The girl gave Isabelle a worried glance. “Though shouldn’t we start out the other way, miss?”

  Isabelle touched the girl on the shoulder. “I know a shortcut,” she lied.

  The girl pulled a loaf of bread from her pouch and handed it to Isabelle. Isabelle broke off a piece for her young companion before shoving some into her own mouth. The pain between her eyes receded. The two of them began to walk.

  12

  The girl’s name was Hen, and she was useful.

  At first she couldn’t stop worrying aloud about when the path would split and she and Isabelle would begin to make their way north. “We’ve been south-bound for some time now, miss,” she’d noted after they’d been walking for more than an hour. “Isn’t it time we broke from the path and changed direction?”

  “If we keep going south, sooner or later we’ll be going north,” Isabelle pointed out. “One way always becomes the other if you give it time.”

  She could tell this bit of navigational wisdom didn’t ease Hen’s mind and decided to take a different approach. “Would you like me to tell you a story while we walk?”

  Looking interested, the girl nodded.

  “Do you know about changelings?”

  Hen nodded again. “Of course, miss.”

  Now it was Isabelle’s turn to be interested. She’d never met anyone before who knew about changelings. The kids she went to school with knew about aliens and they knew about murderers and kidnappers. They knew a little about monsters, though nothing useful, and a touch of vampire lore. But when it came to fairies, elves, changelings, and boggarts, no one Isabelle knew had the slightest idea. It seemed the most interesting things in the world were currently out of fashion.

  Isabelle peered at Hen with more curiosity than she’d possessed a moment ago. “So, what exactly do you know?”

  The girl laughed. “Why, all there is to know, I suppose, miss. The three Teague boys, all of them were changelings, now, weren’t they? Beautiful babes their mother had each time, and then the jealous fairies stole them, and look what she got in their stead—them barrel-faced boys thumping and clumping around, no sense in ’em. Changelings, every one.”

  So instead of Isabelle telling stories to the girl—Hen, she said her name was, not short for anything, just Hen—the girl told stories to Isabelle, and in this way they walked for another hour, before Hen noticed that the sky was beginning to darken.

  “It won’t do to keep traveling, miss,” she said, moving off the path and crouching beside a tree, hands on her knees. “Dark falls fast in these woods.”

  Isabelle hadn’t thought about night coming on. In the same way that she hadn’t worried about food until she got hungry, it hadn’t occurred to her that she would need to sleep until nighttime crept into view. She guessed it made sense that she would, but how do you sleep if you don’t have a bed? No sleeping bag? No pillow, no blanket, not the thinnest of quilts to come between you a
nd the ground? And, come to think of it, no ceiling to come between you and the clouds?

  Hen seemed to sense Isabelle’s concern. “Not to worry, miss. I’ll make us a comfortable sleeping spot. I’m not good at much, but I’m good at setting up camp. If you’ll help me gather a thing or two before evening comes, we’ll get a good night’s sleep, save the witch don’t get us.”

  They entered the woods through a thin stand of trees. Hen told Isabelle to gather leaves while she went in search of vines and fallen branches. “You’ll need more than that, miss, if you want to have a good night,” Hen had chided her the first time Isabelle appeared with her arms only half full. Isabelle dumped the leaves where Hen told her to and went back for more. Soon there was a hump-backed mound at the edge of the woods. “We’ll make us a bed fit for queens out of that, miss,” Hen said, and Isabelle felt oddly pleased.

  While Isabelle collected more leaves, Hen built a lean-to out of sticks and vines against the trunk of a chestnut tree. She showed Isabelle how to pull live branches from young maples and sycamores, leaves still firmly attached, and lay them on top of the lean-to to make a roof. “It’ll be snug in there, you’ll see, miss,” Hen assured her. “And them leaves will make a good, green blanket.”

  Only a thin strip of light still lay on the horizon. “We should get water from the creek before we eat our bread rather than after,” Hen said. “In five minutes, there’ll be no light left for us to find our way back to camp.”

  Isabelle marveled at the girl. That Hen! So practical! So full of good ideas! She followed Hen to the creek and dipped her hands into the cold water. She gulped it greedily. How long had they walked? She’d been on the path at least two hours before meeting Hen, and they’d walked a good two hours after that. Four hours of walking. Isabelle smiled. Not bad for a girl who routinely got a cramp in her side after one lap around the track in PE.