Falling In Read online

  The bread they ate for dinner tasted twice as delicious as it had at lunch. “I guess we should save some for morning, shouldn’t we?” Isabelle asked regretfully. She could have eaten her portion and Hen’s and four more loaves besides.

  “I’d say so, miss,” Hen replied, sweeping the crumbs from her lap. “I don’t know how far we are from the camps, but the journey will seem twice as long if we don’t start off with a bit of something to eat.”

  “Hen?” Isabelle leaned toward the girl. “Would it surprise you to know I don’t know what the camps are—or why the camps are?”

  Hen smiled a rueful smile. “It wouldn’t surprise me if you didn’t know where the camps are, that’s the truth of it.”

  Isabelle lowered her voice to a confidential whisper. “I’m not from here, Hen, and that’s the truth of it too.”

  It was as if Isabelle had just realized this very fact herself, as if the thought—I’m not from here—had only now occurred to her. She’d felt at home all day, wandering down the path that split the woods, all sorts of nice smells and sounds popping up everywhere, pine and lilac and cedar and honeysuckle; birds chirping, water splashing over rocks. She felt as though she’d been sent on the best field trip in the world. Maybe not her world—or maybe it was her world?

  Isabelle looked around and wondered again, Where am I? And where is everyone else? Has Charley Bender gone back to PE? Is she at home in bed thinking over the day, explaining to herself again and again what happened? Are the authorities involved? Has my mother submitted a missing person’s report?

  Isabelle found that the more she let her thoughts wander in this direction, the fuzzier her immediate surroundings became. Two thoughts about her mom phoning the police and Hen became unfocused around the edges. A little snippet of worry about Charley Bender in the principal’s office trying to explain what had happened, and the shadows beneath the trees deepened into an inky black. Could she worry herself into nothingness?

  It was decided, then. She wouldn’t worry. Because Isabelle liked to think things happened for a reason, she decided there must be a reason she was here at the edge of this green and sweet-smelling forest chatting with the interesting and somewhat unusual Hen. She’d learn more, she was sure, as the days went by, about where she was and why. Maybe a bird would whisper the news in her left ear. Anything was possible, or at least that’s what Isabelle hoped.

  Hen stretched, then propped herself on her elbows. “I guessed as much that you wasn’t from here, miss. Just by your clothes. If you don’t mind me saying so, they’re a bit odd for these parts. Are ya from Aghadoc? I’ve heard tell that folks from Aghadoc go about things different.”

  “I’m from somewhere else,” Isabelle said. “If we could just leave it at that.”

  Hen nodded. “Everybody’s from somewhere else these days, seems like. Me too, I suppose.” She took a quick swipe at her eyes with the back of her arm. “I couldn’t believe it when the signs came. Ignored them at first, we did. And then last night, a shadow crossed the moon, and Mam pushed me and the little ones out the door.”

  “And the other kids in your village got pushed out of their doors too?”

  “It’s our season, ya see,” Hen said. “The witch’s season. She’s come to us now, to eat all the babies and hang the children from nets in the trees around her house, starving ’em until they’re nothing but bones clattering in the night when the wind blows.”

  The night air fell around Isabelle’s shoulders, and she pulled her hands inside the sleeves of her sweater to keep them warm. “Why does she do it?”

  “Some children killed her baby,” Hen answered, and gave a great shiver before she continued. “Years and years ago, when they used to have the summer festival, and all the five villages gathered. The witch lived in the woods outside of Drumanoo then, and folks left her alone. But then word came she’d had a baby, and that it was the devil’s child. A group of ’em—one child from each village—snuck into the woods that night to see Satan’s spawn for themselves. It was out there in the yard—in the middle of the night!—sleeping in a sling tied between two trees. One boy threw a rock at it, and then the others did, and the baby bled something fierce—”

  “And it died,” Isabelle finished, her voice barely a whisper. “That’s a terrible story. That’s the worst story I ever heard.”

  Hen shook her head violently. “No! What’s worse is now. She chases us from our villages. She eats our babies! She won’t ever stop seeking revenge, and it’s been near fifty years! I didn’t kill her baby. I’d nothing to do with it.”

  Isabelle leaned her head back and stared up at a sky carpeted with stars. A metallic taste filled her mouth. This story—Hen’s story—was taking her somewhere she didn’t want to go. It had a witch, and Isabelle had always loved stories with witches in them, would check out any book from the library that had the barest hint of a witch in it. But the story also held a baby close to its heart, and Isabelle couldn’t bear that baby. She couldn’t bear it! Because she could see it as it had been, its little chest rising and falling as its sling swung in the night breeze, the moonlit air warm on its skin. And then—awful, awful—she could see what it became when it was no longer a baby but had become a small, lifeless body, bruises like black flowers across its arms and legs and forehead.

  Hen had been right: Out of the leaves, they had made a bed fit for queens. But that night, Isabelle tossed and turned and didn’t sleep until the singing of the birds lifted up the sun.

  13

  Let me pause here for a moment. There’s a boy there in the third row, halfway back, who’s had his hand in the air for the last ten minutes. I guess some of you have never heard about keeping your hands down until the person telling the story is done. Not that it’s distracting to have someone waving wildly at you while you’re trying to remember exact details, the order of events, what this person said to that person. Oh, no, not distracting at all.

  You want to know what the lamps are? Oh, the camps. You want to know what the camps are. Haven’t I explained the camps yet? I thought I had.

  Here’s what I know. Back in the time of the witch, in the County of the Five Villages, each village had its season, and the children of that village had to leave until the witch had moved on. (The order of the villages went Greenan, Aghadoc, Corrin, Stoneybatter, and Drumanoo.) If you lived in Corrin, you ran to the woods north of Greenan. Aghadoc—the woods south of Stoneybatter. And so on.

  I don’t know much about the camps, to tell you the truth. I guess if it was spring or summer the children foraged for berries, fished in the creek, threw rocks at squirrels (not nice, I know, but they were hungry, and it’s not as if there was a grocery store half a mile down the road). Did they tell one another stories at night? Weave potholders out of long grasses? Make boats out of twigs? I don’t know. Somebody else will have to tell that story. Maybe you could do it. Some of those children are still around. Oh, they’re grown up now, but believe me, they haven’t forgotten. Go ask them yourselves. All you have to do is find the door.

  14

  In the morning the two girls continued south, and Hen made no complaint. She must know we’re getting closer to the witch, not farther away, Isabelle thought, so why doesn’t she turn around? Maybe Isabelle should offer to turn around herself, take Hen to the camps. It would be almost a day’s walk, but what was that to Isabelle? When they reached the camps, she could get more bread, maybe a jar of peanut butter—no, no, they wouldn’t have that—a handful of dried apples, then, enough to survive on as she made her way back south after making sure Hen was safe in the camps.

  Isabelle’s eyes felt hot and scratchy, her legs as though they’d been cast in lead. She didn’t have half a day’s walk in her, that was the problem with her plan. Besides, there was that look on Hen’s face, serious and slightly grim, as if she’d been setting her own plans in concrete all morning.

  “Is this the path you walked on yesterday?” Isabelle asked, trying to make conversation. Hen
’s silence was beginning to worry her. “I mean, as you headed north from Corrin.”

  “No, miss,” Hen replied. “We went through the woods. Didn’t want to be out in the open, ripe for the picking, especially with a shadow moon overhead. Even a half-masked moon sheds light if it’s full.”

  It was the sort of morning that made Isabelle happy not to be in school, the sky a soft blue, the sun warm on her shoulders but not burning. Although it hadn’t rained in the night, everything around her looked freshly washed. The dirt beneath her feet was as fine as powder; in fact, Isabelle could imagine mixing it with boiling water to make hot chocolate, throwing in a few choice white pebbles for marshmallows.

  There had been dirt like this at Isabelle’s elementary school. She could almost feel it sifting through her fingers as she remembered all those recesses she’d spent digging and stirring, adding water, creating a world out of the milky brown muck. She’d dug a hole six inches deep and twelve inches across in a spot behind the cafeteria Dumpster and lined it with small rocks to make a sort of mixing bowl. She’d used sticks for spoons, sometimes brought a plastic knife from home, sometimes a handful of marbles to decorate the cakes and pies she made.

  Kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade. Each year she’d rediscovered the dirt, some years in September, other years not until spring. In second grade a new girl had joined her, and for the first time Isabelle had known the pleasure of companionship, the two girls murmuring to each other as they stirred the batter for muffins or fashioned dolls from sticks and clay. A few words here and there. They hadn’t needed many.

  Angel Fisher. Isabelle had thought that was the most wonderful name in the world, had drawn picture after picture of a girl sitting by the edge of a stream with a net strung from silk, pulling angels out of the water. She’d mailed them to Angel using Christmas stamps. Angel had loved the dirt as much as Isabelle, had understood that it had magical properties, had understood without being told that you should never use a word like “mud” when you had the word “clay” at your disposal. Angel with her dark hair always captured in a braid, her fingernails bitten to the quick.

  They’d stolen her, of course. Isabelle saw it happening. The day Angel had arrived at the dirt with a foil-wrapped chocolate kiss in her hand, her eyes wide with surprise, Isabelle knew it was only a matter of time. April gave this to me, Angel had said. Right out of the clear blue sky, she gave it to me. April Hennessey, with her yellow hair and pink skin, her nose turned up like a pig’s. April, who did not want Angel’s friendship, only Isabelle’s misery.

  “I’m going to kill her, miss.”

  Isabelle stopped short, scattering pebbles to the edges of the path. “Going to kill who, Hen?”

  “The witch, miss,” Hen replied without breaking step. “I think God sent you to lead me to her. Could it be more clear, you there waiting for me on a rock in the middle of the path? Like the Lord himself had set you down.”

  “How old are you, Hen?” Isabelle scrambled to catch up with the girl.

  “Nine, miss. Ten in three months’ time.”

  “Do you really think you could kill a witch? You don’t have any weapons, any magic.”

  Hen came to a halt. “I’ve got strong hands, miss, strong enough to choke an old hag,” she said, squeezing one hand around the other wrist as if to prove her strength. “The witch must be ancient by now, nothing more than a bundle of twigs wrapped in skin. It came to me last night, as I was falling asleep. I was thinking how weary I am of being frightened. Now it’s the witch’s season in Corrin, and then she’ll hunt the children in Stoneybatter, and it will go on like that, village by village, round and round, until she dies. A witch can live two hundred years or more. So there’s years left of it, unless she’s stopped.”

  Hen turned and looked at Isabelle. She was quiet a moment before she spoke again. “You could help me, miss.”

  “Help?” Isabelle blinked several times.

  “Yes, miss. You could hold her while I have my hands around her neck.”

  Isabelle started down the path again. The sun flared above the trees, and a squirrel perched on a tree stump chattered angrily at the acorn in its hands. Isabelle’s hands began to sweat. She shoved them in her pockets.

  “I didn’t mean to offend, miss,” Hen called breathlessly as she ran to catch up. “We’ll say no more about it.”

  “I’m thirsty,” Isabelle said. “Are you thirsty? Are we far from the creek?”

  Hen looked toward the woods, her head cocked. “I don’t hear the water, miss, but it can’t be more than half a mile in, I wouldn’t think. The creek twists and turns, but these woods aren’t wide, and its course runs through the middle.”

  The shade of the trees cooled Isabelle’s skin. As she followed Hen, she tried to calm down. No one was going to get killed, she repeated to herself, not if she had anything to do about it. She concentrated on her breathing, thought about the way her toes flattened against the soles of her boots as she walked, how her knees bent slightly, then straightened with every step, and her arms swung loosely from her shoulders. She could feel the air finding its way between her fingers, could feel her ears holding on to her head for dear life. Every part of her hung together just so. She’d never known this about herself before. It was, well, comforting.

  When a second later her foot got caught under a tree’s exposed roots and Isabelle went flying, it was, well, less comforting. Just when you’re starting to get used to yourself, Isabelle thought as she tumbled to the earth, small rocks and twigs making themselves at home in her palms, her ankle throbbing with sharp little bleats of pain.

  Hen was beside her in an instant, unlacing Isabelle’s red boot, pulling it from her foot. Her cool fingers felt the tender swelling. “I don’t think it’s broken, miss, but it might be sprained. The creek’s not but a hundred yards away. You’d do well to soak your ankle in it, see if the swelling won’t go down.”

  Isabelle leaned against Hen as she hopped on one foot toward the edge of the creek. She lay back against the mossy bank, her eyes closed, and gingerly lowered her foot into the cold water.

  “You’ll need to wrap that before you put your weight on it again,” a voice announced from behind her. “Else you’ll stretch out farther what holds it together, and it won’t heal for an age and a half.”

  Hen was fast on her feet, scanning between the trees. “Who said that?” She leaned down to grab a large stick from the ground. “Ya best show yourself.”

  “You’ve nothing to be afraid of,” a woman’s voice said, and a second later, the woman herself stood in front of them, a basket dangling from her arm. “It’s my woods you’re in, so you are the trespassers here. But you’re welcome nevertheless.”

  She turned to Isabelle. “Shall I take a look, then?” She nodded toward Isabelle’s ankle. “I might be able to help.”

  Isabelle nodded. The woman had a pleasant face, lightly lined, crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes, which were blue, as in cornflower blue, as in the blue of a midsummer sky. When she leaned down to examine Isabelle, Isabelle could hear her knees crack, and thought of her mom, who seemed to crack and pop with every twist and turn of her body.

  The woman held Isabelle’s foot with one hand and with the other pushed it a little to the left, then a little to the right. Isabelle grimaced, and the woman raised her eyebrow. “That hurts, eh? I’d say you’ve got a mean sprain, but no worse. You shouldn’t put your weight on it for a day or two. I can put a plaster on it. Eucalyptus leaves, camphor. To help the healing.”

  Hen kneeled next to Isabelle. “I’ve heard eucalyptus will help with a sprain.”

  The woman looked at her. “You know about healing, do ya?”

  “Some,” Hen replied. “My uncle trained to be an apothecary, but he was killed in the Nine Years’ War and never put his learning to use. He taught me some things before he left.”

  “’Twas a bad war, that,” the woman said, nodding. She stood and brushed dirt from her apron. �
�Took many a life, and for naught, I’d say. Kings’ wars fought by villagers’ sons. Folly, all of it.”

  The woman lifted her apron and with one motion tore a strip from near the hem, and then another. “That should do for a binding, for now at least,” she said. “My house isn’t but a quarter of a league from here, but you shouldn’t cover any ground until that ankle is wrapped tight.”

  It felt natural to Isabelle to lean against the old woman’s shoulder. She hopped awkwardly along on her good foot but didn’t feel awkward at all. Why was that? And why did these woods seem so familiar? Why, when they got closer to the woman’s house—she pointed to the smoke curling out of the chimney—did Isabelle feel like she was going someplace she’d been before?

  Oh, she was pretty sure she knew why.

  Well, almost sure.

  Anyway, she was sure enough to start giggling like crazy, and after a minute Hen joined in, and even the old woman cracked a smile.

  “Why are we laughing, miss?” Hen asked after another minute.

  Isabelle shook her head. “Just happy, I guess,” she said, and then it was Hen’s turn to shake her head.

  “Just happy,” Hen repeated. “Who ever heard of such a thing?”

  And then the two girls laughed some more.

  15

  Grete’s cottage was small, and it was made to seem smaller still by a cacophony of—well, the only word that Isabelle could think of was stuff. There was furniture, of course, but not a lot of it, a round kitchen table with two chairs next to the stove, three rocking chairs in front of the fireplace. In the small bedroom off the kitchen, there was a narrow bed and a blue washbasin on a wooden stand.