The Changeling Read online

  Cath grinned, “Ivy Carson, you are crazy,” she said. But the way she said it was kind of respectful. “You kids are really far-out. That stuff you were singing sounded almost like some crazy poetry I had to read in English last year.” Cath opened a small purse she was carrying and took out a little brush and began to brush her long swinging hair.

  It was like Cath, Martha thought, to go off to be heartbroken all by herself, and take a makeup kit along. Finally Cath shook her smoothly perfect hair back from her smoothly perfect face and said to Martha, “It’s getting late, Marty. I’ll walk home with you.”

  Martha didn’t really want to go with Cath, but she thought she’d better. If she walked home with Cath, she could probably find out a little more about what to expect—in the way of teasing and tattling. So she said good-bye and went off, leaving Ivy to put away the sacred objects and get Josie down off the altar where she had curled up and was about to go to sleep.

  But Cath didn’t do any teasing on the way home. Instead she was strangely quiet most of the time. Once she asked, “Do you and Ivy play that way a lot?”

  “Like what?” Martha asked.

  “Oh, you know. Imaginary stuff. Magic and all that?”

  Watching Cath closely Martha answered, “Quite a bit.”

  “How do you think up all that stuff?” Cath said in a voice that sounded so honestly impressed Martha found herself answering frankly and enthusiastically.

  “Ivy does most of it. Ivy is—well, she’s great at imagining.”

  Cath didn’t say anything more until they were almost home. Then she said, “I guess I just didn’t know anybody like Ivy when I was your age.”

  It didn’t seem possible to Martha that Cath Abbott could actually envy anybody, but the way she sounded it almost seemed as if that was what she was doing.

  12

  MARTHA AND IVY STARTED the sixth grade together, and during that fall the games at Bent Oaks Grove and the history of the Tree People continued to grow. As time went by, both Martha and Ivy began to specialize in certain roles. Ivy especially liked to be the Princess Wisteria because the role required a lot of dancing; and Martha, to her own surprise, became an expert at being the wicked Queen Oleander. When she thought about it, it occurred to her that she liked being the wicked queen because the part gave her a chance to do all the shrieking and howling and ordering people around that she’d never dared to do in real life. But whatever the reasons, there were times when she amazed herself, and Ivy too, with a performance of really inspired wickedness.

  As Queen Oleander became more powerful, she began to find ways to conquer one source of magical protection after another, and it became necessary for the other side to be always on the lookout for new magic charms or amulets. One search started after the Crystal Globe gave a timely warning of danger to come. When Ivy consulted the Globe, which had once been a large doorknob, it revealed that a new and particularly fiendish attack on the Earthlings and the Royal Family was about to take place. This time it was to be made by two million starving sharls. A sharl, Ivy explained, was a small spider-shaped animal with huge daggerish teeth. They usually lived like rats in the cave homes of the Lower Ones, but the wicked Queen Oleander had ordered a huge army of sharls to be trapped and starved into a terrible ferocity. And now she was preparing to release them through the Doorway into Bent Oaks Grove.

  “What will we do, Earthling?” asked Martha who was being Princess Wisteria at the moment.

  Ivy consulted the Globe again. “I’m not sure, Your Highness. The Crystal Globe has stopped talking. I think the wicked queen must be interfering with its magic. I see strange flashing lights and hear strange noises.”

  “Let me see,” Martha said leaning over Ivy’s shoulder. “It sounds like what my dad’s electric razor does to the T.V.”

  But Ivy shoved her away. “Wait,” she said. “I see something. It’s an eye. A Golden Eye.” Martha tried again to see, and Ivy said, “There. It’s gone again.”

  “What is the Golden Eye?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll just have to find out. The Globe has gone dark again. You can see for yourself.”

  They both meditated for a while but with no results. Finally at the same moment they both looked at Josie who was sitting on the ground a few feet away.

  “Josie,” Ivy said, “how can we chase away the sharls?”

  But Josie was playing with a safety pin and a piece of orange peel and she wouldn’t pay any attention. She was making the safety pin talk to the orange peel.

  “Josie,” Martha said. “What would you do if a sharl was climbing up that rock beside you right this minute?”

  Josie made the safety pin say to the orange peel, “If you shut your eyes, a sharl can’t hurt you.”

  “Did you hear what she said?” Martha asked Ivy.

  “Umm,” Ivy said. “I think she means we have to find the Golden Eye and put it on the altar. Then when the sharls start coming, we all close our eyes—and then it happens.”

  “What happens?”

  “The terrible power of the Golden Eye.”

  “But what is the Golden Eye?” Martha insisted.

  “What is the Golden Eye?” Ivy asked Josie.

  Josie put down the orange peel and put her finger on one eyelid. “Eye,” she said.

  “The Golden Eye,” Martha said.

  Josie sat very still with her finger still on her eye. Then she pointed off towards the southeast. “Way—way—over there,” she said. So although it was already rather late in the day for beginning an expedition, they started out. Josie was given the magic chopstick wand to hold in both her fat little hands like a divining rod. Then they headed her in the direction in which she had pointed, and gave her a slight push. Martha and Ivy walked one on each side and a half step behind.

  The journey began in the direction of the freeway and the overhead pedestrian walkway that crossed it. Josie walked very fast for someone with such short legs—and very purposefully as if she knew exactly where she was going. When they got to the walkway, Josie stomped up the stairs, two steps for each stair, and down the other side again. Then, she pointed the wand back the other way and started to climb back up.

  “What’s the matter?” Martha asked, thinking the wand had made a mistake. But Ivy only rolled her eyes and made an exasperated expression.

  “She loves to climb over the walkway,” she whispered. She went to Josie and turned her back around. “No!” she said. “Don’t you remember? You are taking us to the Golden Eye.”

  Josie stuck out her lip and pointed, arms length. “The Golden Eye just went back,” she said determinedly.

  Martha giggled, and Ivy tried not to. “It did not,” she said firmly. “You ought not to be thinking about climbing stairs when you’re doing magic. Do you want me to let Martha carry the wand?”

  Josie shook her head and turned around. The wand wiggled and pointed, and the expedition got back under way. They walked and walked further into the southern tip of the Rosewood Range than they had been before, until at last they came to a high iron fence.

  It was an old fence, rusty and hung with dying vines, and beyond it lay what seemed to be the remains of a large garden. Through the fence, the dusty smell of dead plants and thirsty soil seemed to reach out and surround them.

  Before long they were tiptoeing down a weed-choked dusty path that led upward under thinning trees. They wound their way up the hill until, coming out of the trees, they saw the charred and blackened ruin of a house. Staring at the dark and jagged silhouette, Martha felt her shoulders jerk in an involuntary shiver. She turned quickly to Ivy.

  But Ivy was gone. Not really, but she might as well have been. She was standing perfectly still staring at the old house. There was a kind of blur about her, as if she had moved to a distance that had nothing to do with space.

  “Ivy?” Martha said.

  Ivy took a deep slow breath and turned to Martha smiling. “Let’s go there,” she said.

  “Do you thi
nk we ought to?”

  Ivy’s only answer was to take Josie’s hand and lead the way.

  It had been a large and beautiful house, and it had burned a very long time before. The loose ashes had long since weathered away, and the fire’s handiwork could only be seen on the charred edges of the walls, which rose in places several feet above the ground. Grass grew where floors had once been and a deep weed-grown pit marked the site of a large basement.

  Martha and Ivy walked slowly all around the ruin. Josie ran ahead of them chattering away as usual, but Ivy was strangely quiet. They stopped, at last, near where some wide stone steps led up to nothing and sat down on the dry grass. Beside them was the blackened stump of what must have been a very large tree. Finally Ivy said, “It’s too quiet. Have you noticed?”

  “Too quiet?” Martha asked. She listened and the silence was solid, like a wall.

  “We ought to be able to hear the freeway here, at least a little. It’s not that far away.”

  It was then that Martha noticed how the shadows of the ruined walls reached in jagged black fingers almost to where they were sitting. It was getting very late. “It’s getting awfully late,” she said. “Maybe we ought to—”

  “Shhh!” Ivy said. “I’m listening.”

  Martha listened too, until she began to feel she couldn’t stand it a moment longer. Then she got up and began to wander around. At the edge of the dead garden she sat down on an old stone bench and looked back. Josie was running from place to place, stopping now and then to talk as if someone were standing right beside her—but that was something Josie often did. Ivy was still sitting very still, with her face turned toward the burned house.

  Martha was beginning to feel a little desperate about getting away, when suddenly her foot, scuffling in the dirt in front of the bench, turned up something that had been lying buried in the soft dark soil. When she wiped it off, she found it was an amber-colored translucent stone, shaped in an almost perfect oval.

  “Look! Look!” she screamed. “I’ve found the Golden Eye.”

  A few minutes later as Martha and Ivy were boosting Josie back over the iron fence, Ivy said, “As soon as we get the sharls stopped, we’ve got to come back here.” She turned back up toward the house, invisible now behind the trees, and said it again. “We’re going to come back.”

  And Martha admitted to herself that they probably would.

  13

  MARTHA HAD LEFT THE ruined house that first day not at all sure she ever wanted to go back. What she didn’t at all suspect was that she herself would be the first one to urge that they return.

  It happened because Martha’s mother had made plans to take both her daughters to the city to an afternoon performance of the ballet. Cath, who was a Sophomore in high school that year, was still taking ballet; but she was beginning to complain that the lessons were taking up too much of her time. And it turned out that that particular Saturday afternoon she had no time at all. Pretty much at the last moment she told her mother that there just wasn’t any way that she could fit the matinee into her schedule. And so Mrs. Abbott asked Martha if she would like to bring a friend. Mrs. Abbott suggested that since Kelly Peters was also a ballet student, she might be delighted to see the performance. Martha was pretty sure that Kelly wouldn’t be delighted to go anywhere with her, but at her mother’s insistence she called to find out. Kelly’s mother answered, and she must have stayed within earshot because Kelly was ickily polite.

  “Well, thanks a lot, Martha,” she said. “It sure is nice of you to ask me, and I’d just love to, but today is the day that Janine is having her big roller skating party, and I already said I’d go to that. Da-a-rn!” she drawled with exaggerated regret, and the word phony leaped into Martha’s throat in such solid form that it almost choked her. But, like always, she didn’t say it.

  Then Mrs. Peters must have left the room because Kelly’s voice crisped, and she said, “I thought you knew about Janine’s party. Nearly everybody is going.”

  So Martha reported to her mother that Kelly had another date and suggested, not too hopefully, that maybe Ivy could go. Somewhat to Martha’s surprise, Mrs. Abbott agreed.

  Martha had known that Ivy would want to go, but she was really surprised by the extent of Ivy’s enthusiasm. She arrived early, combed and dressed so carefully that she hardly seemed like Ivy for a moment. On the way into the city Ivy told Martha and her mother that she had never seen a real ballet before—and not even very much on television. Aunt Evaline had no T.V., and the Carsons’ set was always either broken, or being used by someone else.

  “But I know a lot about it,” Ivy told Mrs. Abbott. “I took lessons the last time I was in Harley’s Crossing from a friend of my aunt’s. And I’ve read books about it—and I know in other ways, too.” When she said the part about “other ways,” she looked at Martha and grinned. Martha grinned back, knowing that Ivy meant about having been a ballet dancer in another reincarnation.

  Ordinarily, Ivy probably wouldn’t have bothered to leave out something just because it might sound too unusual for an adult. Martha had heard her say some pretty fantastic things, even in front of teachers. But that day Ivy was on her most careful behavior, at least until the ballet started. From the moment that the first dancer leaped on stage, Ivy forgot about proper behavior and everything else.

  Not that she did or said anything shocking, it was just that she stopped doing or saying anything at all. She just sat in her dusty red plush seat, pushed way back so far that her feet stuck almost straight out, and barely moved during the entire performance. In fact, she hardly seemed to breathe. During the intermission she managed to say, “It’s wonderful,” when Mrs. Abbott pressed her for a comment, but then she sank back into silence. She stayed that way all the way home.

  As soon as they got home, Mrs. Abbott had to leave again to pick up Cath from where she was decorating for a dance at the high school, so Martha walked with Ivy as far as Bent Oaks. When they were almost to the grove, Ivy began to run. Martha ran after her, and when she caught up Ivy was sitting flat on the ground in the middle of the grove in her only good dress—taking off her shoes. Then she tucked her skirt up inside the legs of her underpants and began to dance.

  Martha had seen Ivy dance many times before. She was always making up dances for a ceremony or ritual, and Martha had always loved watching her. Ivy danced with a wonderful kind of unity—as if no part of her existed outside of the dance—no part of her stood back to wonder how she looked. But this time the dancing was not as much fun to watch. This time, instead of just dancing, Ivy was trying to do some of the things she had just seen the ballet dancers doing. And, of course, she couldn’t.

  She kept trying things over and over, sometimes stopping to clench her fists or stomp her foot. Finally she came over to where Martha was sitting and dropped down beside her. Her face was flushed, and her voice sounded almost as if she were about to cry.

  “It was so beautiful,” she said. “And I was so sure that I could do it. I could just feel how in my arms and legs. I could feel just exactly how it would be to do such perfect—perfect—things, so easily and—”

  “But you do beautiful things,” Martha said. “The way you dance is beautiful.”

  “But it’s not right,” Ivy said. “It’s not anything. I can’t do the things they can do.” She looked at Martha as if she were very angry. “But I’m going to, though. I’m going to learn how.”

  For the next few weeks it was almost as if Ivy had gone away again. Actually she was right there at Bent Oaks Grove every spare minute; but she wasn’t much fun to be with. All she wanted to do was practice her dancing or read the books about ballet that she had checked out of the library. Martha and Josie waited patiently for a while, and now and then Martha even tried out a few steps herself, but after a week or two she began to get rather violently bored.

  It occurred to Martha to ask Cath if it were possible for a person to teach herself to be a ballet dancer, and Cath said it wasn’t. In f
act, she said, most teachers didn’t even like students to do much home practice between lessons because they would probably teach themselves bad habits. Martha relayed that information to Ivy, but it didn’t stop her.

  Ivy just nodded and said, “But that’s right at first, and this isn’t right at first for me. I had those lessons in Harley’s Crossing, you know. And besides I remember a lot from when I was a dancer before. Not in my head, so much, but my arms and legs remember, and they’re remembering more all the time.”

  Martha sighed and then asked resignedly, “Couldn’t you take some lessons, then? Cath’s teacher is supposed to be a very good one.”

  “No,” Ivy said. “It costs too much.”

  “Well then, I guess you’ll have to go on teaching yourself, but anyway, don’t you think we could do something else for a change? We never did finish about the sharls.”

  “Yes,” Josie said. “Let’s do about the sharls.”

  Ivy agreed and said that maybe they could do the Tree People again the next day, but when the next day came she still wanted to dance. That was the day Martha, in desperation, started talking about the burned-out house. She remembered very well how it had made her feel, but she also remembered how intrigued Ivy had seemed by it—and it was a time for extreme measures. She talked about the strangeness of the place and the sad silence, and finally she saw that Ivy was really beginning to listen. The next day they went back to the burned-out house.

  As soon as they were back beneath the black edged walls, Martha wished they hadn’t come. Somehow it seemed worse than before. Maybe it was the weather, cold and gray and threatening, that made the sadness of the place seem bitterer and less intriguing. Even Ivy seemed a little uneasy at first.

  But they had come to explore and so they did. They poked around for a while in a dry fishpond and grotto fashioned out of large rough rocks and agreed that if it were only closer to home it would be a wonderful place for the Lower Level. Then in what seemed to have been a kind of kitchen garden, they discovered a weathered trash heap, that when prodded by sharp sticks yielded old purpling bottles and a rusty dinner fork. Not far from the trash heap there was a stone bench, and Martha and Ivy sat down on it facing the house while Josie wandered around digging little holes with the bent fork.