Changeling (11 page)

 
 
 
The Pooka raced across Central Park Central like a wind-blown cloud. In three strides, we were past the Obelisk and almost to the Museum. I felt a small, perverse pang of disappointment. Our escape was too easy.

Then the Pooka swerved north and galloped up the path that led to the Reservoir.

Startled, I grabbed the Pooka's mane and yanked for all I was worth. I expected a quick and undignified trip to the ground, but he only tossed his head and ran faster.

The light faded as the Pooka ran. Branches caught in my hair and plucked at my skirt. I clung to the Pooka's back, and Changeling clung to me, doing her banshee impersonation in my ear. I tried to tell her that she couldn't fall off unless the Pooka dumped her, but I don't think she heard me.

Halfway around Harlem Meer, I lay forward on the Pooka's neck—not an easy move, with Changeling stuck to my back like a baby monkey—and yelled, “Hey Pooka, what do you think you're doing?”

His ear twitched irritably. “Riding you through the Park, of course.”

“Why?”

“I'm the Pooka,” he said unhelpfully. “When a mortal gets on my back, I take her on a wild ride. That's what a Pooka does. I have no choice in the matter.”

I wanted to kick him, but I didn't. “You do too have a choice. You're my
fairy godfather
. What about your oath to protect and aid me?”

“I'm not at all easy in my mind about it,” the Pooka admitted.

“Oh, that makes it all right, then.”

“It's a fierce dilemma,” the Pooka said, sounding hurt. “There's the Lady's geas and my oath to you; there's my heart that bids me help you and my nature that bids me gallop the stranger on my back until sunrise. Throw the fairy changeling to the Hunt, and I'll take you to safety before a faun can scratch his ear.”

I thought about it—not very hard, and not very long. But I did think about it. “I can't,” I said. “I promised Changeling I wouldn't let anything hurt her.”

The Pooka tossed his head and slowed to a rough trot. “Do you say so?”

“I do,” I said. “I owe her a life debt. She helped me escape from a tengu and three hundred bogeymen, plus Eloise and a bunch of screaming kids.”

“She outwitted the Genius of the Plaza Hotel?” The Pooka was impressed.

“Kind of. Plus, she shares my true name, Pooka. If you save me, you have to save her, too.”

A low-hanging branch raked across my back like grasping claws. Changeling, who had settled into a steady moaning, shrieked with terror.

“Idiot,” the Pooka said.

“Thanks a lot,” I said bitterly.

“Not you,” he said. “Me. Hang on tight.”

He veered suddenly. I heard a snap that sounded horribly like sharp teeth missing my head. A deep voice bayed behind us in the undergrowth: “They're getting away!”

The Wild Hunt had found us.

The Pooka crashed through a stand of trees and barreled down the East Meadow, the Hunt surging up at his heels. A dead-meat smell choked my nose; wings and claws and snapping mouths haunted the edges of my vision.

I bent low over the Pooka's neck. Through his whipping mane, I saw the shadow of the Reservoir embankment and the glimmer of an early moon reflected in the Museum's glass wall. We were almost there.

I grinned with relief. And then I remembered that the Museum's entrance was all the way around the building on Fifth Avenue.

The Pooka gathered his hind legs under him and leapt up and up and up the glass wall, leaving my stomach behind. He cleared the hedge around the roof garden and landed with a tooth-jarring thump. As I rolled off his back, the Hunt appeared in the air above us, yipping and bellowing triumphantly. I scrambled under the nearest wooden bench and curled up hopelessly, waiting for the Hunt to find me.

Nothing happened. No claws ripped the bench away. No meaty breath seared the back of my neck. After a while, I peered around the bench. The Wild Hunt was boiling like a frustrated thunderstorm a tall giant's height above the Roof Garden.

“What's with them?” I asked weakly.

The Pooka had shifted into a black goat, and was huddled in the stony folds of an abstract sculpture. “I haven't a notion,” he said. “Perhaps they have no tickets, the creatures.”

“Neither do you,” I said.

“Hush. Maybe no one will notice.”

The Hunt obviously hadn't given up on their dinner. Claws out, they swooped toward us, only to bounce away when they hit the Museum's invisible barrier. Then they landed on it and tried digging through it. Something about their shrieks and their ugly, screaming faces reminded me of the naughty children in Carlyle's cage.

Giggling, I stood up, stuck my thumbs in my ears, and gave the Wild Hunt my best booga-booga.

“Don't be playing the fool, Neef,” the Pooka bleated. “We're not out of the woods yet. They're likely playing with us, the creatures.”

I stared at him. I'd never known the Pooka to be afraid before, or out of bright ideas, but then, I'd never seen him deal with a mess that wasn't his idea in the first place. “It's okay, Pooka,” I said. “The Museum's on our side.”

“But I haven't a ticket,” he said nervously.

I thought for a moment. “I'm a life member. You can get in as my guest.”

“And the fairy girl? What of her?”

I couldn't believe I'd forgotten Changeling. “I don't know. I'll think of something. Just get under the trellis, okay? That's where the door is.”

The Pooka scrambled to his feet and trotted over to a long trellis next to the glass building that housed the elevator.

I looked around for Changeling. She was lying a little distance away, with the back of her jacket pulled up over her head like a flowery turtle shell. I gave her a gentle nudge with my foot to get her attention. “We're going inside, Changeling, where it's quieter. See that statue under the trellisy thing? The three droopy guys with the long arms? That's Rodin's
Shades
. It's a door guard. It'll protect you.”

There was a pause, and then she rolled up onto her hands and knees and scuttled toward the trellis.

As we joined the Pooka by the door, Rodin's
Shades
raised its three drooping heads. “This is not an entrance,” its three hollow voices chorused. “If you wish to visit the Museum, you must use the main entrance on Fifth Avenue.”

“We can't,” I said. “The Wild Hunt is in the way.”

The statue sighed. “Is that what all the noise is about? The Curator will be very displeased.”

“In that case,” the Pooka piped up, “he should be informed immediately, so he can deal with them. We'll be glad to oblige, if you're busy at all.”

“This is not an entrance,” Rodin's
Shades
repeated.

“Looks like one to me,” I said, and banged on the door as hard as I could.

The Curator appeared almost at once. He looked from us to the Wild Hunt wheeling overhead and opened the door.

“What on earth is going on here?” he asked crossly. “All Hallows' Eve isn't for months.”

If the Green Lady of Central Park is all about wildness and growing things, the Curator of the Metropolitan Museum is all about collecting and conserving and keeping things safe. He's got a neat brown beard and little oval gold-rimmed spectacles clipped to his nose, and he tends to look at you as if he's judging your authenticity. Right now, he was examining the three of us like puzzling fragments of Mesopotamian pottery.

“Fascinating,” the Curator said. “It's not often I see an original and a forgery side by side. Not to mention the Wild Hunt. Is that pooka with them, Neef, or with you?”

“
The
Pooka,” I said. “He's my fairy godfather.”

“
The
Pooka. Of course. Well. It's very irregular, but under the circumstances, we'd better talk about it inside.”

He opened the door wider and we trooped in. The Pooka held his curling horns high, but I could see he was still feeling shaky. Changeling's hair was so matted with leaves and twigs that she looked like one of the untidier moss women. She headed straight for a potted palm in the corner, rolled herself behind it, and hid her head in her arms.

“That's better,” the Curator said, closing the door. “Now. The forgery is welcome as long as she observes the Museum rules. The Pooka, however, poses a problem. He is not a member nor even a copy of a member. In fact, he has no more right of entry than those unspeakable hooligans outside. I don't know what the Museum was thinking of, letting him land here.”

“He's my godfather,” I said. “He was saving me. Plus, I'm a life member. I get to bring guests.”

The Curator frowned. “One guest. In this case, the forgery.”

I thought fast. “But Changeling
isn't
a forgery. She's me. We're both originals, like two editions of a print. We count as one person. The Pooka is our guest. It's all completely legal. It must be. You said yourself that the Museum let him land.”

I held my breath while the Curator stroked his beard. “A neatly circular argument,” he said, and I let it out. “Still, allowing a trickster into the Museum is likely to lead to shenanigans. I do not approve of shenanigans. They upset the exhibits. I will only let the Pooka enter if you pledge your word that he will abide by the Museum rules while he is here.”

I looked at the Pooka, who looked back, his yellow eyes unreadable. Another promise; another responsibility I didn't want. Tricksters are tricky, after all. They're better at wiggling out of bargains than nixies are at swimming. But if I didn't agree, the Pooka would have to go out and face the Wild Hunt alone.

“I promise,” I said.

The Pooka looked sarcastic—but then, goats always look sarcastic.

“Good,” said the Curator. “Perhaps you'd like to start by informing him that goats are not welcome in my Museum.”

I knelt and looked the Pooka in the eye. “You heard the Curator,” I said pleadingly. “I've promised you'll be good, and I'd really, really appreciate it if you didn't make a liar out of me.”

The Pooka lifted his bearded chin. “It's sore grieved I am,” he said, his brogue thick enough to spread on bread, “to know that my own godchild should be having so little faith, when I'm after saving her hide at sore risk to my own.”

“Come on, Pooka. You know I'm grateful. You saved my life. But I'm not a total idiot, either.”

The Pooka slid his eyes sideways, then nodded. “I promise to try, then,” he said. “And you can't be asking for more than that, for you won't get it.”

I patted his cheek. “Good enough,” I said. “Let's shake on it.”

To shake, of course, the Pooka had to take his man shape. As a man, everything about him was long: feet, hands, hair, and body. He was so tall that the Curator only came up to his nose, and the top of my head was about even with his chest. His yellow eyes were deep-set and slanted under eyebrows like birds' wings. He wore black jeans, red high-top sneakers, and a black T-shirt with THE OYSTER BAND stamped across the chest in faded red Celtic scrollwork.

He tossed his long black hair out of his eyes and held out his hand. “Since you ask so nicely,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said, and shook. He still smelled like a goat.

The Curator nodded. “That's settled, then. Good. Now to get this riffraff out of my air space.” He clapped his hands. “Guard!”

The elevator clunked, the double doors whooshed open, and the Assyrian Winged Lion stalked out.

The Pooka put his hand over his heart and bowed almost double. Even I was impressed, and the Lion and I were old friends. But he looked a lot bigger here than he did hanging out in Ancient Near Eastern Art. His golden horned cap brushed the ceiling as he bent his kingly head to the Curator.

“The Wild Hunt is making a disturbance,” the Curator said. “Please encourage them to make it elsewhere.”

The Wild Hunt, all teeth and claws and hunger, is as old as the forests of the Old Country and as strong as fear. But the Assyrian Lion has been protecting mortals against evil spirits since the beginnings of human civilization. He paced through the glass wall as though it didn't exist, unfurled endless wings as bright as rainbows, and reared up onto his three back legs. He tossed his gleaming horns, opened his bearded lips, and roared until the building rattled around us.

The Wild Hunt tumbled up and away from him like a tattered wave, wailing with terror.

“That should settle them,” the Curator said placidly. “Now, if you're quite sure there's no one else trying to eat you, I need to get back to work. Enjoy your visit.”

CHAPTER 11