Falling In (9 page)

And then Isabelle looked at the picture she held in her hands. The trees no longer appeared happy, the moon no longer glowed.

The hammock was empty.

“I see you’ve been reading,” Grete said, remounting the steps to the porch. “Those stories of mine probably aren’t as exciting as the stories you’re used to, but you might learn something, you never know.”

“You don’t ever know,” Isabelle agreed, shutting the book. She reached into her lap to slip the picture back between the book’s pages—

But the picture was gone.

Grete leaned her face next to Isabelle’s and whispered, “Don’t be afraid. But don’t say anything to
Hen. She’s a good girl, but she’s lived in fear a long time, and there’s no telling what she’ll do if she finds out.”

Isabelle nodded.

“We’ve things to talk about, you and I,” Grete said, and headed inside just as Hen came bounding into the yard, waving a bundle of leaves at Isabelle. “Goldenseal! It heals everything!”

Hen went on for a few minutes about the miraculous properties of goldenseal, and while she did, Isabelle’s mind raced over possibilities and probabilities and practicalities. Grete, in her way, had just told Isabelle,
Yes, I am.
She had just told Isabelle,
Don’t tell.
Was that a threat? It hadn’t sounded like a threat, but now Isabelle wondered.

She looked at Hen. Would Hen even believe her? Well, Hen
did
believe there was a witch, Isabelle reasoned, so it wouldn’t be like trying to make someone like Charley Bender believe. Charley Bender—who for all Isabelle knew was still standing at the door of the nurse’s office, waiting for Isabelle to pop back up—probably pooh-poohed
the very idea of witches, but Hen’s whole life had been lived in the shadow of one.

Hen. At dinner the night before, a savory pumpkin pie seasoned with acorn shavings and lilyweed, she’d reminisced about the pumpkin soup her mother made on cold winter days. It was Hen who was sent to the root cellar to select two or three of the small, round pumpkins they’d stored there after the autumn harvest, because Hen knew from a look which pumpkins were best for soup and which were best for throwing out to the pigs.

“You knew Mam had a mind set on pumpkin soup when she told Jacob to skim the cream off the top of the milk and bring it into the kitchen first thing instead of taking it to market to sell of a morning,” Hen told them, spooning a bite of pie into her mouth. “Cream and a dash of nutmeg is what gives Mam’s soup its flavor. Of course, there’s hours of stewing and stirring to be done first, to get the pumpkin meat soft as it can be. Sugar, she’s the one you give the spoon to. Four years old, but right sensible. Not like Artemis, who’s six but without a
straight thought in his head. That one’s topsyturvy.”

Hen had four brothers and one sister: Jacob, Callou, Artemis, Sugar, and Pip. Hen was in charge of the whole brigade, as her mother was always busy cooking and baking and laundering and fixing and patching and cooking and cooking and cooking. Her father was rarely home. “Da is a peddler on the road, selling his wares across the Five Villages and beyond. He’s home in the coldest of the winter months, but rarely elsewise. Ah, but it’s lovely when he’s there. He reads us stories and tells us tales and lets us lie in bed of a morning while he milks the cows.”

“I’d think it be nice to have such a large family,” Grete commented as she poured herself some more tea. “Someone to play with at all hours of the day.”

“It’s not my job to play with ’em, it’s my job to mind ’em, and I’d do a better job of it if there were only one or two,” Hen said with a sigh. “I wish I was the youngest and not the oldest. If I were youngest, then I could run about and play Wallop the Dragon with all the rest. Instead I’m chasing the little ones
around in circles, and I’m no good at it. I try to be good at it, I do. But they’re always running away from me.”

“Where are all those brothers and sisters of yours now?” Grete asked. “Back home?”

Hen picked worriedly at a hangnail. “Off at the camps outside of Greenan, I suppose. They got away from me when we were heading up that way, and then I took up with this one.” She nodded toward Isabelle. “I guess I let them get away on purpose. Thought it might be fun to have an adventure on my own.”

If Hen was worried about her brothers and sisters, she didn’t say. Would she be more worried or less, Isabelle wondered now, if she found out the witch was ten feet away from where she sat? Maybe it was best not to find out. Remembering Hen’s desire to wrap her hands around the witch’s neck when she set sights on her, Isabelle shivered. Who knew what Hen would do?

And who knew what Grete had planned for them?

Maybe, Isabelle thought, it was time for a change of venue. For everyone’s sake.

“Hen,” she said in a quiet voice, sure that Grete couldn’t hear them from the kitchen. “Do you think we should be going soon?”

Hen, who had not finished reporting on the joys of goldenseal, stopped short. “But why? Grete is happy to have us, and there’s no place else for me to go. I’d wonder if there were any place else for you to go either.”

Hen had a point. Where would Isabelle wander off to if she left? She had already reached her destination, hadn’t she? She’d set out to find the witch, and apparently she’d found her. A disappointment of a witch, to be honest, not the least bit scary, no evil fumes steaming off her skin, a house filled with sunlight and healing plants, but a witch nonetheless.

“Well, sooner or later, we’ll have to go, won’t we?” Isabelle asked.

“Surely,” Hen replied. “But not during the season. We’ve come to a safe place, and we might as well stay until we wear out our welcome.”

But was this a safe place? Isabelle wondered. Was it safe for Hen, safe for Grete? For the rest of the day she peeked around corners, slinked through the yard, looked up and down and all around, watching and waiting for something to—to what? Jump out at her? Catch her in a trap? Reveal itself?
Oh, here we are, a pile of bones, just as you’ve been told
.

That night after dinner, when it was time to sit on the porch and read, Grete pulled a thin volume from the bookshelf and blew the dust from its cover. She sat in the middle rocking chair, and Hen and Isabelle sat on either side of her, Hen happily, Isabelle warily.

“Once upon a time,” Grete began, “there was a woman who lived in the woods with her husband and child, and they were very happy.”

But then the husband died.

The wife did what she could to make a life for herself and her baby. She hunted the woods for mushrooms and roots and healing plants, anything she could sell to the villagers to survive. The villagers bought the woman’s goods, but did not welcome her into their homes. She and her husband had moved to the woods from another place, and so were strangers, and unwelcome. After her husband’s death, the woman was no more welcome than she had been before, though from time to time a good-hearted villager left her a basket of potatoes or apples on her back porch, a loaf or two of bread, so she and the child wouldn’t starve.

How did the stories start? A woman alone in the woods, I suppose, is always suspicious. So it was no surprise that the village children spied on her and told tales about the baby, that horns grew out of the baby’s forehead, that she had a forked tongue.

The woman had always possessed certain gifts. From the time she was small she knew people’s names without being told, could peer into their minds, see their stories. She had the healing touch, could make words and pictures dance on the page. As a child, her family had moved many times, to keep her safe. Once her gifts were discovered, people tended to start terrible rumors about her, call her names, whisper how it would be better if she were burned at the stake, send the devil running. But because she heard the whispers in her sleep, her family always escaped in time.

The night her life changed forever, she’d heard the whispers in the trees, but the moon was full, its light bright, which confused the leaves and tangled the words and made them impossible to understand. What were the trees saying? She didn’t know,
so she went about her evening chores with a heavy feeling and not a thing she could do about it.

When a rock hit the side of the house, she ran into the yard and found the baby already abloom in bruises, a trickle of blood staining her forehead. The woman ran with the baby into the house, then ran out again, a jagged rock in her hand, but no one was there.

And when she went back inside, the baby was gone as well.

“So did you ever kill anyone?” Isabelle asked later, when Hen had gone inside to bed.

“Only one,” Grete replied.

“That’s an awful story!” Hen cried, thinking Grete was finished. “She found the baby again, didn’t she?”

Grete shook her head. “The baby was gone for good, I’m afraid. Listen to what the story says.” She held up the book. “’And the woman knew the fairies had taken the baby for a changeling, and that the baby would be sent to another world, and would, most likely, not return.’”

Hen reddened. “A changeling! Only a newborn can be a changeling! Besides, if the baby had been taken for a changeling, what did the fairies leave in exchange?”

“A note, it says here,” Grete replied, running her
finger down the page. “’No baby will ever be safe in these woods,’ the note read, ‘and so we shall not leave another in this one’s place.’”

“This story should be tossed onto the rubbish heap!” Hen stood, looked indignant, held out her hand. “I’ll do the job myself, if you’d like.”

Grete handed her the book. “Yes, I suppose you’re right,” she said with a sigh. “It’s a story that doesn’t bear retelling.”

Isabelle stared at her. Grete couldn’t mean that, of course. She was just placating Hen. How could this story—Grete’s story, for Isabelle knew the story belonged to Grete—not be told ever again, especially—

“I heard a child laughing in the woods outside the house the next day,” Grete explained to Isabelle. “And my thoughts brought a heavy branch down on his head.”

—especially since Isabelle had decided it was her story too.

I often think about people who get what they think they wanted. Lottery winners. Child movie stars. Everyone has some sort of wish, a dream, that they know won’t come true. Except that one time in a million it does.

But it seems like every few months the newspaper carries a story about the lottery winner who complains that money has ruined his life. Or about the young actress who has everything except happiness.

What is it about dreams coming true? Is it because we want the wrong things? Is it because no dream ever really comes true, at least not in the way we envisioned it coming true? The lottery winner
finds that money indeed can’t buy everything, particularly love, and the celebrity learns that having people looking at you all the time and trying to touch you and generally wanting to eat you up like a tuna fish sandwich, well, it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be.

And what of the changeling? You’ve known you were one all your life. You’ve felt it. I’m talking to you, lying there on the bed eating Twizzlers and collecting cavities—and you, over there, reading this while you should be doing your math homework. I know you know that I know you know what I mean. And what you think is this: If only you could go back to your real home, to your real family, everything would fall into place and you would be loved and admired all hours of the day and you’d get to eat as much chocolate as you’d like without feeling sick or having the tiniest pimple pop up on your chin.

But real life is real life, isn’t it? Which is to say, it’s not perfect, even when things go your way. Of course, most days things don’t go our way, we don’t win the big prize, the cute boy or girl doesn’t smile at
us, our teachers don’t suddenly discover our true and hidden genius. We’re used to minor defeats. We expect them. But we also expect that when our dreams finally do come true, it will be like the movies—our whole lives perfect and aglow, forever and ever, amen.