Falling In Read online

  Isabelle could only shake her head and sigh. Occasionally she rolled her eyes. From time to time she tried to put herself in Hen’s shoes. She’d be angry too, wouldn’t she? After years and years of being terrified, sent running from home whenever the wind blew in a rumor of a witch nearby? What kind of nightmares these kids must have, Isabelle thought. Witchy, baby-eating nightmares. She shuddered.

  On the other hand, Hen was talking about Isabelle’s grandmother, which Isabelle was pretty sure violated a bunch of etiquette rules. Besides, Isabelle was just now getting to enjoy the idea of having a grandmother, and quite frankly, Hen was spoiling things.

  “You don’t have to follow me,” Isabelle told Hen around hour three of their trek. “There’s probably another path you could go on, a shortcut through the woods or something.”

  “I know all about your shortcuts,” Hen sputtered. “Shortcut to a troll’s bridge, most likely. Or an ogre’s den. No, I’ll keep to this path, if it’s all the same.”

  “Fine,” Isabelle said. “Whatever.”

  There were all sorts of things Isabelle was eager to think about, if only Hen wasn’t behind her grumbling. Her mother, for one. Just wait until Isabelle told her! She figured her mom would need to be trained how to use whatever gifts she had. What if Isabelle could help her communicate telepathically with Grete? Then the two of them could have mother-daughter conversations in their minds, and maybe Isabelle could join in. Isabelle was determined to develop whatever magical powers she had. She had to have some, right? She and her mom could check out some books from the library, start doing research online, learn how to put their magic to use—

  “Old spotty-faced cow,” Hen muttered.

  —do some sort of exercises for increasing their mind-reading abilities. And Isabelle would really like to dig deeper into how to make books write and rewrite themselves. She thought this might have some practical applications when it came to writing essays for school. You could start out with an essay on, say, “The Person Who Has Affected Me the Most in My Life,” and it might morph into “What I Want to Do to Change the World,” and then “World Peace: Is It Possible?” Isabelle thought if she figured out the trick, she might only have to write one essay for the rest of her education career—

  “Wart-nosed, one-eyed toad,” Hen continued.

  —not that Isabelle hated to write, she just wished her teachers would come up with better topics. Although she had to admit, if she was ever asked to write an essay on “Grandparents, Why They Matter,” she’d have a ton to say. But who would believe her? Well, as long as her mom believed—

  “Ring-butted, red-eared, snip-snouted hyena,” Hen added.

  But Isabelle was getting ahead of herself. First, the kids in the camps. Safe to assume they’d respond exactly the same way Hen had? Isabelle supposed so. But as long as they believed Isabelle, that was all that mattered. They could go home, stay home, grow up, raise families. Sooner or later they’d forget all about Grete—

  “Ought to chase the dirty worm-eater with sticks and rocks.”

  —or maybe they wouldn’t. If Hen, who had admired Grete and had certainly at one time had fond feelings for her, was back there snorting and bleating about beating Grete with sticks and rocks, then Isabelle might have a real problem on her hands. What if the kids at the camp wanted to do worse to Grete than just throw rocks at her?

  Isabelle felt in her pocket. Before they’d left, Grete had taken her aside and handed her a small pouch. “If you get in a bad spot, this can help. You just sprinkle it on the ground. It calms folks, soothes their feelings.”

  Isabelle looked at Grete, tilted her head to one side. “Is this a potion? I thought you said you weren’t a witch.”

  “It’s not a potion, and I’m not a witch.” Grete sounded as though she was running out of patience with Isabelle. “It’s spores from a kind of fungus that grows in the far woods. There’s nothing of the black cat about it.”

  Fingering the bag now, Isabelle wondered. Couldn’t Grete be just a little bit more magical than she was admitting? If so, Isabelle hoped she’d cast a spell on the kids at the camp, turn them into peace-loving hippies who believed in hugs, not homicide.

  “Black-souled baby killer.”

  Okay. Enough was enough.

  Isabelle turned around. “What babies? Name one baby.” She put her hands on her hips. “Do you know one single baby from your village?”

  Hen thought a moment. “Not from Corrin, no,” she admitted finally. “But there are stories from Greenan and Drumanoo. Many a babe has gone missing from Greenan and Drumanoo.”

  “See?” Isabelle was pleading now, wanting Hen back on her side. Wanting to be friends again. “Don’t you see? There are no missing babies. Only one missing child, and that was an accident that happened fifty years ago. There’s no witch, Hen! No witch!”

  Hen frowned. “You don’t have to be the witch to be a witch, now, do you? I wouldn’t wonder if you turned out to be a witch too, dropping in from another world the way you have, called here by your witch of a grandmother.”

  Isabelle decided to try another tack. Shifting her pack from her left shoulder to her right, she began walking again. “So we’ve never talked very much about my world, have we, Hen?” She threw out the question like she was lobbing a softball toward home plate. “It’s never really come up much.”

  “I didn’t know until this morning you were from another world, miss.” Hen’s tone was bitter, but she caught up with Isabelle and walked beside her. “Oh, I knew you were from someplace else, but I’d thought it was some province outside of the County of the Five Villages. Didn’t know you’d dropped in from the clouds or wherever it is you’re from.”

  “The way I got here was through my school,” Isabelle said, deciding to ignore anything Hen said that was even a little sarcastic or unfriendly. “Through a door. I opened the door and fell down here—well, to the school in Greenan, to be precise. Which sounds odd and strange and unusual, I know.”

  “Not that strange,” Hen muttered, kicking up a cloud of dust from the path.

  “What was that?” Isabelle wasn’t sure she’d understood.

  “I said, it’s not that strange,” Hen repeated, more clearly this time. “I’ve heard stories. Falling in, they call it. You’re not the only one who’s ever done it.”

  Isabelle sighed and continued. “Anyway, I was very happy that I had—fallen in. Because life at my school was the tiniest bit lonely. But since I’ve been here, I haven’t felt lonely at all, not with you and Grete—”

  “I don’t care to hear the witch’s name,” Hen snapped.

  “She’s not a witch—,” Isabelle started to protest, then stopped herself. “Fine. You and my grandmother. So that’s been nice. Nobody was ever very nice at my school. I tried to make friends, but I wasn’t very good at it. Now I think it’s because I’m a half changeling—”

  “Hush, miss!” Hen hissed from behind her. Isabelle, thinking that Hen was protesting that there was no such thing as a half changeling, and believing she could make a reasonable case that there was, turned to argue. But when she did, she saw that Hen was peering into the woods, one hand raised in Isabelle’s direction, as if to stop any words that might be about to tumble out of Isabelle’s mouth.

  Hen, still looking left and right, edged closer to Isabelle. “We’re being followed,” she whispered. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s that witch grandmother of yours either.”

  In a flash, Hen scooped up a rock from the ground and pitched it into the woods. “I see ya, ya old cow!”

  But the voice that yelped from behind the bushes was not that of an old cow or a young bull or any farmyard animal, and it was most certainly not that of Grete the Healer.

  No, from the sound of it, it was the voice of a boy.

  Wait a second.

  Make that two boys.

  32

  Isabelle pointed at the redheaded boy as soon as he stepped out from behind a bush. “You’re Samuel. From
Greenan.” She pointed at the other, taller boy. “And you’re the rat-faced boy, but I never heard your name.”

  The rat-faced boy sneered at her. “And you’re the witch’s girl.” He turned to Samuel. “I told you that’s what was going on back there. See how she knows who we are without even asking? Witchy indeed.”

  “She knows who I am,” Samuel corrected him. “She thinks you’re a rat.”

  Hen stepped forward. “If you’re from Greenan, what are you doing here?”

  “And how’s that your business?” Rat Face asked, reddening. “We’ve the right to be here, whether you think it or not.”

  Samuel ignored his friend. “We’ve been checking up on that one.” He waved his hand toward Isabelle. “Followed her when she left Greenan, tracked the both of you down Corrin way.”

  “We’ve had our eye on you, witch girl,” Rat Face added.

  “Just the first couple of days,” Samuel corrected. “Followed your tracks to Corrin, watched the goings-on for a bit, and came back. Not much to see, unless leaf gathering interests you. Doesn’t me, much. When we didn’t catch sight of the witch, we wondered if she hadn’t moved farther south and these woods were safe again for roaming. That’s why we’re out and about today. Our fishing gear’s in the bush over there.”

  Not much of a secret keeper, old Sam. Isabelle decided she liked that about him. In fact, she found him generally likeable. In fact, what if he came with her to the camp? If she liked him—she who liked very few boys, almost none she could think of, certainly not Rat Face over there—then anybody would. If Isabelle surrounded herself with likeable people, then the children would listen to her. They would trust her. They’d be less likely to stone her to death when she told them the news.

  “We’re on our way to the camp north of Greenan,” she said to Samuel. “I could use your help.”

  As Isabelle explained, she could see the interest on Samuel’s face. Oh, sure, it was interest mixed with disbelief, a half cup of fear, a dash of confusion, but definitely interest.

  Rat Face, on the other hand, laughed and rolled his eyes like yo-yos. “So you think your granny’s not a witch, then? She’s got you fooled, that one does.”

  Isabelle ignored him. “The sooner people know the truth, the sooner they can lead normal lives again,” she told Samuel. “They won’t have to be afraid of a witch anymore.”

  “If they believe you,” Samuel amended. “There’s no saying whether they will or won’t. But I suppose I believe you, so I’ll come. Quinn here, he’ll come too.”

  Rat Face—Quinn—looked at his friend. “You believe her? You believe there’s no witch? Just like that?”

  Samuel shrugged. “Never much believed in the witch in the first place. Well, I did for a time, but lately I’ve been wondering. It’s like she said”—he nodded toward Isabelle—“who do you know of that actually got killed? Always folks in the other villages, never Greenan.”

  “The only reason I’m going is to fetch my brothers and sister and take them back home,” Hen declared. “That one”—she nodded toward Isabelle— “can do all the talking about witches she likes. I’ll be no part of it.”

  Isabelle dropped back as the group began walking north. Why was Hen so stubborn? Why couldn’t she get with the program, get over it, get real? Fact: There was no child-eating witch. Fact: This was good news. Why couldn’t Hen accept it? Then she and Isabelle could go back to being friends. They could tell the news to the kids at the camp, drop off Hen’s various siblings at home, then head back to Grete’s for a big “Everything’s Okay Now” celebration.

  Yeah, Isabelle thought. Right.

  Catching up with the others, Isabelle was more than a little irritated to find Hen having a friendly conversation with Samuel (Hen, who had not said one friendly word to Isabelle all day), the two of them reminiscing about the different camps they’d been to over the years.

  “You’ve been to the camps north of Greenan before, I suppose?” Samuel asked. “Too close to home for us during our season, of course, but I always snuck over there when the children came from other villages, watched ‘em swing on the ropes over the creek.”

  “Aye, the ropes are good fun,” Hen agreed. “Bet we’ll find Jacob swinging on one when we get there. The only problem with the Greenan camp—no offense to you—is that the woods are frightening around the edges. You feel eyes peering in at you at night.”

  “All the camps are like that, not just Greenan,” Samuel said. “Anyone will tell you that the woods around the whole of the Five Villages are alive. We go to Aghadoc in our season, and the little ones won’t venture a foot from the campfire after darkness falls. When I was a wee boy, it didn’t matter if it were light or dark, I spent a whole day feeling spooked.”

  “Then everyone will be even happier that there’s no witch,” Isabelle asserted. “We’ll be bringing them good news.”

  Hen looked at Samuel. “You might want to be careful how you go about telling them about it,” she said, ignoring Isabelle completely. “You being a stranger, they won’t trust you much.”

  Samuel nodded in agreement. “We might do well to act the traveler at first, like folks looking for a place to stay. When they get used to us a bit, then we’ll tell them. A day or two, and we’ll know the best way to go about it, don’t you think?”

  “They’ll be wondering why you kept it a secret from them,” Rat Face pointed out. “They’ll think you’re not to be trusted.”

  Really, it was hard for Isabelle—who believed herself to be a peaceable person, but like most people had her limits—not to reach out and give Rat Face a hard pinch. But Samuel seemed to take Rat Face’s idea seriously. “Let’s think about it while we walk,” he said. “And when we reach the camps, maybe the answer will set itself in front of us, in plain view.”

  But when they reached the camps, what they found was not an answer.

  What they found was chaos.

  33

  Maybe you’ve been to summer camp. Remember the cozy cabins with their slightly funky, mildewy smell, the well-tended paths you followed from this activity (archery!) to that (lanyard making!) over the course of a morning? How could you forget the sparkling lake, the noisy, joyful mess hall, the s’mores, the sing-alongs? Oh, Michael, row that boat ashore, yes, indeedy.

  Even if you’ve never been to camp, this is what you imagine camp is like, isn’t it? Me too. The words that pop to mind are “idyllic,” “frolicsome,” “middle-of-the-night-giggles” (I know, I know, not a word, more a phrase, but you get my point). Happiness of the unfettered sort.

  I want you to close your eyes and take your giant mental eraser and erase all those images. Can you do it? I know asking you to rid yourself of certain thoughts is almost as good as asking you to think those thoughts obsessively (whatever you do, don’t think of pink elephants!), but do your best.

  Because here’s the thing: Your ideas of What Camp Is won’t work for this story, sorry to say. The camp we’re about to enter is of a different sort. It’s a camp where children are doing their best to survive without their parents, the whole time fearful of a witch popping out of nowhere to carry them off and eat them for supper. To say that the littlest children have constant stomachaches would be an understatement.

  Under the best of circumstances, the Greenan camp wasn’t a wildly happy place, but because it was a camp filled with children, all was not gloom and doom. The Greenan camp was known especially for its three rope swings tied to trees at the edge of the creek, and on warm days the children flew over the water, shrieking and squealing, little sisters ignoring their big sisters’ warnings, the tallest boys climbing as close to the tops of the ropes as they could.

  And so it had been at the beginning of the witch’s season, when the children had started to make their way into the camp, first in a trickle, then in a great stream of chatter and commotion. But two days before Isabelle first met Hen on the path to Corrin, a girl named Lanny entered the Greenan camp feeling dizzy and slightly out o
f sorts. She was ten, and normally the picture of health, and on this particular day she couldn’t figure out why she felt so strange. Had the witch cast a spell on her? Or was it just the fear racing around her heart that caused the white dots to appear in front of her eyes?

  No, not the witch, not the fear. It was influenza the girl carried with her into the camp, and it caused her to wobble on her feet and grab at branches to keep from falling. Within a day, half the children had caught it, and the other half were left to care for them. But how? Damp cloths on the forehead. Creek water boiled in a pot and dripped down their throats.

  You know and I know those remedies couldn’t possibly work against the flu. Nothing worked. And every day more children got sick, and so there were fewer children to act as nurses and gather food and keep the fires going.

  And then one day somebody came. They had been praying for this, the children who still had their wits about them, who weren’t roiling and writhing with fever and chills. They had been hoping for more than a week that somebody would come. Somebody who could save them.

  And now, finally, they were here.

  34

  Isabelle felt it even before they walked into the camp. Not just felt it, but knew it, as in: A little piece of knowledge had somehow knit itself into her bones. She knew that they shouldn’t go in there. Something was wrong.

  Rat Face agreed. “Smells funny,” he said at the edge of the clearing, from where they could see makeshift tents here and there, but not one single child. “Smells the way it did when Uncle Seth died. Like fever and rot.”

  Hen turned pale. “The little ones are in there,” she said in a shaky voice. “Sugar, Artemis, Jacob, all of ‘em.”

  “Then in we go.” Samuel put a reassuring hand on Hen’s shoulder. “We’ll find your little ones first, and then see what’s to be seen about the others.”

  “Yes, we must find them,” Hen agreed. She rubbed her hands hard against her arms, as though she were cold. “Oh, but won’t Mam be after me if a single hair of their heads is out of place!”