Changeling (8 page)

I began to explore. The floor was hard and cold. The wall at my back was clammy. Over my head, I found a row of hooks with cloths and wooden poles hanging from them. One pole had bristles on the end: a broom. Another pole ended in damp, sour-smelling ropes that made my hands feel greasy and dirty: a mop. I groped along the wall to a corner and came to a smooth, cold tublike thing with damp, greasy rags hung over the lip. As soon as I touched them, I knew just where the stink was coming from.

I stepped backwards, gagging. Something gave unpleasantly under my foot, then jerked sharply away. I lost my balance, falling onto something squishy and lumpy that screeched angrily. I hastily scrambled away from it as far as I could get, which wasn't very far.

“You stepped on me!” the closet monster yelled. “That hurt!”

Given the size of its closet, it had to be a small monster, but that didn't mean it wasn't dangerous. Boggarts are small; so are many devils. It's not a good idea to annoy either one. “I'm sorry,” I said hastily. “I didn't mean to.”

“You stepped on my hand,” it accused. Its voice was loud and flat. “You should watch where you are going.”

“I can't see in the dark,” I said apologetically.

“Then you should be more careful.”

The monster still sounded angry, but it hadn't mentioned grinding my bones to make its bread yet, which was a good sign.

The humming got suddenly more intense.

“Is that you?” I asked.

Silence, except for the humming and a rustle that I read as the monster making itself comfortable. “I believe,” it said thoughtfully, “that is the compressor of the central air-conditioning unit.”

“Oh,” I said. “Is that some kind of dragon or something?”

There was another silence. “You are teasing me,” the monster said reproachfully. “I do not like being teased. Teasing is not nice.”

Now, I've spent my whole life learning how to talk to different kinds of Folk. Nixies are interested in fish and cute boys. Leprechauns love shoes and gold. Brownies are into household hints. Tricksters like practical jokes. Demons like contests. All the Folk I knew about told stories, traded gossip, granted wishes, played games. They never, ever said things like “teasing is not nice.”

But if Carlyle's surprise wasn't a supernatural, then what was it?

“I've never heard of a compressor,” I said cautiously. “What's its magic? Is it dangerous?”

More silence. “Is this a test?” the surprise asked.

“No. I really don't know. And I don't like not knowing things.”

“Neither do I,” the surprise said. “Insufficient data can lead to unfortunate mishaps.”

“Right,” I said, which I figured was a safe thing to say. “Will you tell me about the compressor beast, please?”

“Very well,” the voice said. And it proceeded to give me an explanation in which the words “and,” “the,” “chill,” and “air” were the only ones that made sense. As the voice went on and on about flower-carbons and cold-producing poisonous magic insects called “refriger-ants,” I realized something.

Carlyle's surprise was a mortal child.

Park Folk can be pretty nasty on the subject of mortals, but Astris had always told me that most mortals were perfectly nice. Changelings were mortal, after all. Mortals from Outside were fine, too, as long as they stayed where they belonged. Wild mortals in New York, though, were nothing but trouble. They didn't know the rules, and even when they knew them, they usually broke them.

Secretly, I'd always thought it might be fun to meet someone where I didn't know what they were going to say before they opened their mouth. And now, here I was, talking to a genuine wild mortal. Or rather, it was talking to me.

Too excited to keep quiet, I broke into the stream of strange words. “Are you really, you know, a”—I couldn't call it a “wild mortal” to its face—“a human being?”

The ugly voice stopped short. Silence filled the darkness—the thick kind that happens when someone is really mad at you.

“Have I got that wrong?” I said uncertainly. “I read it in a magazine. I'm a human being, too—a mortal changeling. I didn't mean to offend you.”

Silence. I babbled on nervously. “I guess it's a silly question, huh? If you weren't a mortal child, Carlyle wouldn't have stolen you.”

“Carlyle did not steal me,” the mortal child said sulkily. “The Carlyle is a hotel. I can see it from my bedroom window.”

“It's also the home of the tengu who brought you here.”

“You mean the man with the long nose?”

“The Japanese mountain spirit,” I corrected. “Yes.”

The mortal ignored me. “He said I was a naughty child,” it complained. “That is not an accurate description of my behavior. Sometimes it is difficult for me to tell whether my behavior is appropriate or not, but I am not naughty.”

“Why did he
think
you were naughty, then?”

The mortal child was silent awhile. “It may have had something to do with taking my father's computer apart,” it said at last. “I remember that he was very angry when I dismantled his cell phone last summer. However, the situations were not parallel. I dismantled the cell phone out of curiosity. I dismantled his computer so that I could repair it.”

“Your father has a computer? Cool!”

I'd never seen a mortal computer, of course, but I'd read
Macworld
from front to back three times, so I knew more about them than magic computers, which were the realm of Tech Folk anyway.

“My father is a software designer,” the mortal said. “He was the one who taught me to install memory. He should have known that I would not attempt to repair his motherboard if I had not been confident of success. I still do not understand why he was so angry.”

“I got in trouble for doing something I didn't know was wrong, too,” I said. “It's so unfair. You were just trying to help your father and I just wanted to go to a dance, and now we're stuck in a broom closet, waiting to find out if a bunch of bogeymen vote us the naughtiest children in New York.”

“You are teasing me again,” the mortal child said reproachfully. “Bogeymen do not exist. Michiko made them up. And I am twelve years old. I am a preadolescent, not a child.”

I sat up in the darkness. “What do you mean, bogeymen don't exist? What's Carlyle, then?”

“Carlyle is a nightmare.”

“Nightmares are horses,” I explained. “Carlyle is a bogeyman. They're not alike at all. Who is Michiko?”

“Michiko looks after me. She is from Japan. She says that the Funny Man who lives on top of the Carlyle Hotel will come get me if I do not go to bed when she tells me to, whether I am sleepy or not.”

“Well, Michiko was right. That's exactly what he did.”

“I
told
you,” the mortal said. “The Funny Man is a figment of Michiko's imagination. I am having a bad dream because Michiko shouted at me. I do not like people to shout at me.”

I was beginning to understand why Michiko had shouted. “Are all mortals like you?” I asked.

“No,” the mortal said. “I am very intelligent, but I have difficulty relating to people. When I was younger, I had a therapist who helped me develop social skills. For instance, when I meet someone, I am supposed to say, ‘How do you do? My name is Jennifer Goldhirsch.' ”

The last two words hit me like a wave of freezing water. “Don't
say
that!”

“What did I say?”

“Your name.”

The mortal was quiet for a moment. “Why not?” she asked at last.

“Somebody might be listening.”

“What would be wrong with that?”

I tried to imagine explaining the most important rule of survival in New York Between to a mortal child who didn't believe bogeymen were real. “Never mind. Just never say that name out loud again. Ever.”

“I do not understand,” the mortal child said. “I like my name. It creates a pleasing image. Jennifer means ‘white wave,' and Goldhirsch means ‘golden stag.' ”

I didn't care what the mortal's name meant. I just never wanted to hear it again.

Not because I didn't like it. I did. It was my name, too—my true name, almost the only thing I remembered from before I came to live with Astris. It was a horrible coincidence that another mortal had it, too. I knew names worked differently Outside: Probably there were hundreds of Jennifers and even Goldhirsches, so the power got diluted. But in New York Between, I was it.

“Pretty,” I said, thinking furiously how I could keep this other Jennifer from blabbing our name all over the place. “Listen. You said this was a dream, right?”

“I believe it is,” said the mortal. “Yes.”

“Well, you know how in dreams, the rules are different from when you're awake?”

She considered this. “Yes.”

“In the dream, the rule about names is that you don't tell them to anybody at all.”

“Why not?”

“Bad things will happen.”

“What kind of bad things? Do you go to jail?”

I didn't ask what jail was. “Worse. Anyway, you can't use your real name. For example, everyone calls me Neef. It's my dream name. See?”

“Neef is a silly name,” she said.

I gritted my teeth. “Neef is not my
name
,” I said as patiently as I could. “It's what you can
call
me. You need a dream name, too.”

“Are you referring to a nickname? I already have a nickname. Mom calls me Jenny.”

I shivered as if refriger-ants were crawling up my back. “That's not made-up enough. What color is your hair?”

“Brown.”

So was mine. “That's no good. I can't call you Brownie if you aren't one. Let me think. What about Closet?”

“Closet is not a name.”

I thought up a couple more names, but she nixed all of them. We were arguing over MC (for “mortal child”) when the wall behind us opened. Carlyle appeared, all dressed up in a formal kimono, his long nose twitching with eagerness.

“And now, here it is,”
he projected over his shoulder.
“The moment you've all been waiting for! I present to you—the naughtiest children in New York!

CHAPTER 8

 
 
Carlyle dragged us out of the closet and into a riot of screaming and wailing like a banshee family reunion. I shut my eyes and clamped my hands over my ears. It didn't help. Besides, I couldn't stand not knowing what I was facing.

I peeked through my eyelashes at sea of bogeymen. They were every color of the rainbow and then some, bristling with horns and antennae and spines and spikes and teeth.

I closed my eyes again. Okay, it's important to know what you're dealing with. But sometimes the problem is too big to look at all at once.

Ladies and gentlemen. Honored patron of brats
, buzzed Carlyle, his mind-voice smug and confident.
Let me tell
you a little something about my candidates for this year's Eloise Awards.

When he wasn't talking directly to me, I could tune the tengu out and think about other things. Like how he couldn't possibly fit three hundred bogeymen into his nest. We must be somewhere else—somewhere big, maybe with exits I could see. I forced my eyes open a second time and studied my surroundings.

I was standing on a raised stage at one end of an immense hall lit by giant chandeliers like sculpted ice. Carlyle stood between me and the blur of color that had to be the unluckily named mortal child. Garlands of flower fairies draped the mirrored panels along the walls; a couple of long tables piled high with fairy food and balloons stood waiting in the back. I didn't see any windows or doors.

The bogeymen laughed hideously at something Carlyle said, and a chorus of panic-stricken screaming swelled to a fever pitch behind me. Turning, I saw a seething mass of scarlet faces and roaring mouths, grabbing hands and squirming bodies. It took me a breath or two to realize that they belonged to the naughty children, penned up in a big brass cage at the back of the platform.

The bogeymen were less terrifying.

Carlyle pulled me around again, but not before I noticed that there was a space between the cage and the back wall.

As you can see,
Carlyle buzzed,
they're a pair of hooligans. Disgustingly dirty, of course, but that's the least of it. This one
(he shoved the mortal child forward)
is driving her parents to the edge of madness. She is stubborn. She is disobedient. She is destructive. She is incredibly rude. She throws tantrums, and she never says she's sorry. This one
(he shoved me up beside her)
is even worse. She broke the geas set on her by the Genius of Central Park and disrupted the Solstice Dance. And she's not sorry either. Just look at that sullen pout. Have you ever seen a more hardened case?