The Changeling Read online

  Most of the children who went to Rosewood School lived right in Rosewood Manor Estates, but not the Carsons, of course. The Carsons attended Rosewood when they lived, from time to time, on the north side of the hills in an old wreck of a house that was known as the Old Montoya Mansion. There was a New Montoya Mansion some miles away where the real Montoyas lived. The real Montoyas were what Grandmother Abbott called a “very old family.” People said that the Old Mansion still belonged to the Montoyas, although they had left it long before when the freeway overpass was built almost over its roof. The shade trees and lawns and garages and stables had been torn out so that an orchard could be planted right up to its windowsills, but the house itself had been left standing. People said that was because poor Mrs. Carson had been a Montoya before she married, and even though she was what Grandmother Abbott called “a disgrace to her good name,” the house had been left for her to use for as long as she lived. So the Carsons came and went, leaving Rosewood when the trouble they were always in got particularly bad—and coming back when things had blown over.

  All the Carsons seemed to be forever in trouble, and it was possible to hear all sorts of rumors about what kind of trouble. Younger Rosewood kids liked to scare each other by guessing murder and kidnapping, and slightly older ones thought it might be smuggling or piracy. But when Martha asked her father about it, his answer wasn’t quite that exciting.

  Mr. Abbott said that Monty Carson seemed to have a weakness for dishonesty in a small way, and bad luck in a big way. Like marrying for money and then getting nothing but an old wreck of a house, or buying large quantities of merchandise at auctions or bankruptcy sales and then not being able to sell them. And once he had started tearing the insides out of the old mansion to turn it into a roadhouse, and after half the work was done he found he couldn’t get a permit. Of course, it was true that Monty Carson had been in jail at least a couple of times, but Martha’s father said he thought it was for bad debts or receiving stolen property, instead of the kinds of things the kids in Rosewood like to gossip about.

  There were lots of Carson children, and there had been years when there seemed to be one in almost every grade at Rosewood School, but by the time Martha was in second grade, there was only one left—a boy named Jerry who was in fifth grade with Martha’s brother, Tom.

  But then one day, a few weeks after school started, there was a new girl in Martha’s room, and it turned out that she was a Carson, too. Martha remembered exactly how it happened.

  The class had been working quietly, heads down—it was Mrs. Morris’s second grade, and Mrs. Morris was very particular about quietness—when suddenly the door opened and a loud clear voice said, “Hello, is this the second grade?” Everyone turned, and there stood a very small girl almost completely hidden under clothes and hair. A large dress, much too long and too wide, covered the newcomer almost from the ankles up to where the hair took over. Martha glanced at Mrs. Morris, expecting her to say something about using a “good classroom voice” because the voice from the door had been very loud; but Mrs. Morris must have been too startled, for once, to think about such things.

  For an uncertain moment Mrs. Morris said nothing at all, and then she said, “Hello” in a surprised tone of voice. After another pause she asked, “Are you a Carson?” Mrs. Morris had been at Rosewood School a long time and she’d been through a lot of Carsons, but even so she seemed unsure. The new girl was dressed like a Carson, and she looked a little like one, too. All the Carsons were dark with heavy curly hair, high cheekbones and wide mouths. Most of them were also rather large and blunt looking. This new girl looked like a Carson seen through the wrong end of a telescope.

  “I’m Ivy,” the new girl said. “Ivy Carson.”

  “Are you sure you belong in this room, in second grade?” Mrs. Morris asked. She was probably thinking that since she had never seen Ivy at school before, she must be just beginning.

  “Oh yes,” Ivy said. “I’m all finished with first grade. I got first grade all learned down at Harley’s Crossing where I used to live with my Aunt Evaline. I usually live with my Aunt Evaline, only she’s been sick so I came to live here ’til she’s better. It’s all written down about my school and everything on this paper.”

  She left the doorway and toured around the classroom on her way to the teacher’s desk, looking around her at everything and even stopping to peer into the aquarium on the way. When she skipped up to the teacher’s desk, Martha noticed, for the first time, Ivy’s way of walking—a kind of weightless skimming, like a waterbug on the surface of a pond. While Mrs. Morris looked at her papers, Ivy turned around and looked at the other kids, and that impressed Martha, too. Martha could barely stand to face all those eyes at once, and she’d known most of them all her life. But the new girl looked around, blew the hair out of her eyes and smiled, and a lot of the class smiled back. In second grade some of the kids at Rosewood School could still enjoy the novelty of someone new and different without feeling they ought to punish them for it.

  Martha didn’t really meet Ivy right away, because when the teacher asked for a volunteer to show the new girl around, Martha was too shy to raise her hand; but after a while Ivy got around to discovering Martha. If she hadn’t, they might never have gotten together, because in those days Martha would never have made the first move toward someone new.

  It happened one day when Martha was late going out for recess. She started down an empty hallway, but when she turned the corner, there was Ivy sitting on a railing. She was talking to somebody—only there wasn’t anybody there. Martha was embarrassed, and she just kept on walking, trying to pretend she hadn’t noticed. She was almost close enough to touch when Ivy said, “Hi.”

  Martha jumped and mumbled and kept on walking. Ivy jumped down from the railing and ran after her.

  “You’re Martha,” Ivy said.

  Martha nodded. “How did you know?”

  Ivy screwed up her face, eyes squeezed shut as if she were concentrating. “I think it just came to me.” She opened her eyes. “I saw you, and I just thought ‘there’s Martha.’ But maybe I heard the teacher say it. I’m Ivy.”

  “I know.”

  “Did you just hear me talking to someone?”

  Martha nodded uncertainly. Ivy nodded back. Her eyes were dark gray, a kind of smoky black, and they stared without blinking. Martha started squirming. Finally Ivy said, “I was talking to Nicky. He’s a friend of mine.”

  “Nicky?” Martha said, looking back along the hall.

  “Well, his name is really Red Eagle, but I call him Nicky for short. He doesn’t mind.” She leaned forward and said more softly, “He’s an Indian.”

  “An Indian?” Martha said in a squeaky voice, and she leaned around Ivy to look more carefully down the hall.

  “Umhum,” Ivy said. “But he’s just a small one.” She held out her hand. “About this big.”

  Martha looked carefully along the railing and up and down the empty corridor. There still wasn’t anybody there, but she only nodded with a nervous smile.

  “I’ve been bringing him to school with me because he’s lonesome for Harley’s Crossing. That’s where I came from, too. But most of the time I don’t talk to him when other people are around because they don’t like it that they can’t see him.” Ivy’s smile seemed to invite Martha to agree that that was a silly attitude.

  “Can you see him?” Martha ventured cautiously.

  Ivy looked down the railing. “Not exactly, right now. Sometimes I can, though. And I always know where he is, even when I can’t see him.”

  Martha was beginning to have a strange excited feeling. “I—I—had a—uh, friend like that once,” she said. “Only he was a lion. A great big lion, but very friendly. He used to sleep on my bed and walk around with me sometimes, mostly when it was dark. And I wasn’t the least bit afraid of the dark when he was there.”

  Ivy stuck out her lip and blew upwards at her hair. Then she pushed it back with both hands, looking at Marth
a very hard.

  “A lion,” she said. “A lion is a very good thing to have. You were lucky.”

  “I was lucky,” Martha said. For just a moment she could remember so well that she could almost see the huge tawny face of her lion and feel his warm strong back under her hand, the way she used to feel it when she walked down the dark hall to the bathroom.

  “Don’t you ever see him anymore?” Ivy asked.

  The lion faded, and Martha shrugged. “Oh well, I don’t play that kind of game anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, because I’m not afraid of the dark anymore—” Martha started, but then she stopped. After a moment she went on, “—at least, not very. Besides everybody teased me. And my mother told people about it at parties and things. She’d tell all about Marty’s imaginary lion, and everyone would laugh. Things like that.”

  Ivy nodded. “What was his name—your lion?”

  Martha hung her head. “It was—well, I just called him Lion.”

  “Okay,” Ivy said. “Let’s go see if you can find Lion again. Do you think you could if we both looked? Together?”

  “I—I don’t know,” Martha said. Then something she’d been holding back wavered and slipped away. Feeling daring she said, “Maybe we could.”

  Ivy looked at Martha thoughtfully before she looked back down the hallway. Martha’s eyes followed her gaze.

  “There,” Ivy said, “can you see Nicky now?”

  Martha looked very carefully. “Maybe I can,” she said slowly, and then louder, “Yes, I think I can, just a little. Does he have feathers?”

  Ivy nodded. “I thought you could,” she said.

  Martha looked until he was very plain—a smallish Indian with feathers in his hair, sitting there quietly on the railing. “Hello Nicky,” she said. Then she looked back at Ivy and—at the very same instant—they both laughed.

  They started off then, looking for Lion, and afterwards Martha always remembered how excited she’d felt—as if she’d already found Lion again, or something even better.

  3

  FROM THE TIME THEY went looking for Lion, Martha and Ivy were together a part of almost every day, in spite of the problems that arose. There were problems, and one of the first ones started because of Martha’s sister, Catherine. That year, the year that Martha and Ivy were in second grade, Cath was in sixth grade, and Tom, Martha’s brother, was in fifth. Cath Abbott was always the prettiest and smartest girl in her class, and she had dozens of friends, but not any best friend, so it was hard for her to understand about Martha and Ivy. She complained about them quite a bit that year.

  Of course, Cath usually had something to complain about. The Abbotts sometimes joked about Cath being a complainer. Mr. Abbott said that Cath had a great many talents and complaining was certainly one of them. “And there’s no use trying to shut her up until she’s made her point,” he said. “I guess she gets that from her lawyer father,” he said, rumpling Cath’s blond hair.

  When Martha’s father said that, her mother laughed coolly. “Well, I have to agree that a tendency to complain runs in that side of the family.” Martha’s father didn’t laugh, and Martha had a notion that Grandmother Abbott wouldn’t have laughed either if she’d been there.

  Anyway, Martha and Ivy were one of Cath’s favorite complaints for a while. For instance, one night at dinner, not too long after Martha and Ivy had met, Cath said, “Mom, I wish you’d do something about Martha. She and that friend of hers are always doing the nuttiest things at school. And everybody knows she’s my sister. It’s really embarrassing.”

  “What kind of things?” Mrs. Abbott asked.

  “Well, today they were running up and down behind the backstop when the sixth grade was out for P.E., and they were jumping into the air and flapping their arms and making squeaking noises. I just about died. Everyone was laughing at them.”

  Everyone looked at Martha. Tom grinned at her and said, “What were you doing, Marty? Being Superman? I used to do that, Cath. I remember playing Superman with Clay Sutter when I was real little.” He put out his arms and pretended to soar across the table. “Marty the Supermouse to the rescue,” he said.

  Cath grinned reluctantly, and asked, “What were you doing, Marty?”

  “We were being the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz.”

  “See,” Cath moaned. “Flying monkeys, right out in front of all my friends.”

  “Well, I think that’s understandable,” Mrs. Abbott said. “Children Martha’s age often play make-believe games. After all she’s only seven years old.”

  “Well I didn’t,” Cath said, “And the rest of the second grade doesn’t do things like that. At least not right out in public. And Martha never did, either, until she started playing with that Ivy. Besides, Mom, that Ivy’s a Carson, did you know that? I thought you and Dad didn’t want us to play with those Carson kids.”

  Mom looked at Dad as if she wanted him to say something, but he only shrugged his shoulders and went on eating his dinner. Grandmother Abbott wasn’t there, or she certainly would have had something to say. As it was, it was left up to Mom, and it was easy to see that what Dad wouldn’t say, or the way he wouldn’t say it made Mom angry. She smiled a hard sharp smile at Dad before she said, in her silkiest voice, “I didn’t exactly say that, Cath dear. As I recall it was your father, and your grandmother, I might add, who thought it wasn’t a good idea when Tom brought that big Carson boy home last year.”

  “Well, what do you think, Dad? About Martha and this Ivy Carson?”

  Mr. Abbott sighed, “As I see it, Cath,” he said, “this is a slightly different situation. The Carson boy was quite a bit older than Tom, and he’d been in some trouble around the neighborhood. Besides Tom had dozens of friends to choose from. He didn’t need to choose a boy who—”

  “Jerry’s all right,” Tom interrupted. “And he’s in the same grade as I’m in.”

  “But he is older, dear,” Mrs. Abbott said. “I don’t really think a little girl like Ivy is anything to worry about. Besides I understand she lives with her aunt most of the time. It’s quite likely she’ll be going back to her aunt’s soon, and the problem will solve itself.”

  “No, she’s not! No she’s not!” Martha yelled suddenly, and everyone stared at her in astonishment.

  “Marty!” they said. “Don’t speak to your mother in that tone of voice.” “Marty. I’m amazed at you.”

  They were amazed because nobody yelled in the Abbott family—and especially not when they were fighting. The rest of the Abbotts fought quietly and politely by using words that said one thing and meant another. It was a dangerous game with rules that Martha could never understand, and so long before she had started crying instead.

  She cried that day. When everyone turned on her in amazement, she burst into tears and dashed from the room, headed in the direction of her favorite crying-place. No one was in the least surprised at that.

  In those days, Martha was known as a champion crybaby. She knew that a crybaby wasn’t considered a good thing to be, but since she was one, she made the most of it. Not that she ever tried to start crying; but once she had gotten started, she put everything she had into it. The size and wetness of Marty’s tears was a favorite family joke.

  “Oh, oh, get out your water wings. There she goes again.”

  “Good night, Marty, what are you bawling for? I hardly touched you. Now cut it out before you drown yourself.”

  “Marty’s crying again. Every hour on the hour. Just like Old Faithful.”

  Martha had begun by crying anytime and anyplace, but after everyone got to talking so much about it, she had taken to doing most of her crying in one particular place. That was in a small luggage closet behind a larger closet. Martha had discovered she could push a tunnel-like passage among stacks of suitcases, to a low spot under the eaves behind a large steamer trunk. After she’d padded the spot with a favorite old quilt, it made a safe and comfortable hideaway for crying or hiding. />
  After a while, of course, Cath had discovered the hideaway and told the rest of the family, and it became another family joke. “Marty’s Mousehole” it was called. The rest of the Abbotts seemed to think it was just another of Marty’s imaginative games, but it had never seemed like a game to Martha. As it turned out, that evening when Martha yelled at everyone before she started crying was just about the last time she ever used the Mousehole.

  With Ivy around, Martha had less and less time for hiding and for crying. Ivy changed a lot of things for Martha, and time was one of the most important. Before Ivy came to Rosewood Hills, Martha had never paid much attention to time, because there was always more of it than she knew what to do with. All the rest of the Abbotts kept very careful track of time, and they were very particular about what they did with it. “No, I just don’t have the time today,” they would say, or “You know that Tuesdays at 3:00 is my time for such and such.”

  Martha didn’t keep a schedule, but if she had there wouldn’t have been much on it besides school, and perhaps working in Grandmother’s garden. The other things Martha did, such as eating and sleeping and reading and daydreaming, were not the kinds of things that had to be scheduled, and there was always more than enough time to do them in.

  But time began to seem much shorter after Ivy came. There was never enough of it for all the things they wanted to do.

  4

  THERE WAS NEVER ENOUGH time for Martha and Ivy, and for a while places were a problem, too. When they first met, Ivy occasionally went home with Martha after school, but almost from the beginning there seemed to be trouble. There was, for example, the time they bathed the ducks.

  It started on the way home from school one day when Ivy happened to find a broken twig shaped like a long thin slingshot.

  “Look, Martha,” she said. “It’s a divining rod.”

  “A what?” Martha asked.

  “A divining rod,” Ivy said. “It’s a special kind of magic stick. You hold it by the two short ends like this, and the other end points the way to water for a well or sometimes to treasure. My Aunt Evaline showed me how to do it.” Ivy turned around in a circle, stopped for a moment, and then began to walk. “Come on,” she called. “It’s pointing.”