The Changeling (2 page)

For a long time Martha stood looking down the dark north side of the hill. Below her the path quickly disappeared in the shadow of oak trees, and further down she knew it wound tunnel-like, under heavy brush, and then through the old plum orchard until it reached the house. Martha had been down that path once—only once. All the other times she had waited, as she would wait tonight, at Bent Oaks Grove.

The wind at the crest was not very cold, but Martha found that she was shivering. She turned back, and a few yards down the hill she took the turnoff to Bent Oaks. The trees of the grove had grown up among a very large outcropping of jagged boulders, and the path entered between two turrets of stone, like a narrow gateway between tall towers.

Stepping back into Bent Oaks Grove was like stepping back through time—two years of it. It was a jarring step—like the one that surprises you at the bottom of a dark staircase, when you think you’ve already reached the floor. Martha stood stock still, while bits and pieces of shaken up memories whirled through her mind. Then she moved forward.

The grove closed around her. Growing so near the crest of the ridge, the old trees were exposed to the full force of the wind, so that they had been bent in places almost to the ground. Some of the branches, leaning away from the wind, had grown in great rolling twists and curves only a few feet above the hillside. The huge gateway boulders on the downward side had caught years and years of dead leaves and eroded soil, until the floor of the grove had leveled. Scattered around this flat area, small outcroppings of rock jutted up to form almost perfect chairs and tables, or mysterious monoliths and sacred altars, depending on who was using them. On the upward slope, a dugout area under a slanting rock made a shelter, a wide and shallow cave, and inside there was a rough wooden floor raised about a foot above the ground like a stage. At the edge of the stage a narrow path through a crevice led upward steeply to a ledge above the cave.

Once on the ledge Martha stood for a moment before she turned to climb on up the hill. Then she scrambled over boulders and pushed her way through underbrush until she came to a place where a flat rock covered a small crevice. Pushing aside the rock she pulled out a rough wooden box. Inside the wooden box, wrapped in a faded mildewed quilt, was another box—a metal one this time, a fishing tackle box.

Taking the metal box with her, Martha climbed back down to the ledge and from there by the crevice stairway to the stage below. The hinges of the metal box were so crusted with rust that she had to hit them sharply with a stone before the lid would open—but when it did the past sprang out at Martha like the creatures from Pandora’s box. Swarms and clouds of memories rushed upwards from every object her fingers touched.

There was a peacock feather, a small leather-covered notebook, a ring box holding an odd-shaped amber stone, a tiny silver bell, some matches and pieces of candle in a glass jar, two horsehair rings, one carved ivory chopstick, a small crumbling bouquet of dead flowers, a large crystal doorknob set in a base of clay, and a yellowed envelope containing a photograph.

It took a long time to lay each object and its memories back in place, and when she had finally finished, Martha closed the box and with it beside her, she sat down on the edge of the stage. She pulled her legs up under her skirt, wrapped her arms around her knees and began to wait.

As she waited she began to say, “Ivy, Ivy, Ivy,” letting the sound blend into the rising voice of the night wind. It was not loud enough for a call, or even an exclamation. After a while it began to seem more like a question.

I
VY CARSON WAS SEVEN
when she first came to Rosewood Hills. She was too little for seven and wispy thin, with a small dark face that triangled from high cheekbones to a pointed chin. There was really very little of her to notice, except for her hair and eyes. She had wild hair, thick and too curly and almost never combed. It foamed in tangled curls inches thick around her head, and usually halfway covered her face. She had a habit of sticking out her lower lip and blowing upward when she especially wanted to see something, to get the hair away from her eyes.

You noticed her eyes, too, right away, even though you could barely see them through the curly thicket of hair. They were strangely beautiful, huge and dark and set in a heavy fringe of lashes, like two great glowing jewels in a skimpy little setting.

The next thing you noticed was the way she moved, as if her bones were lighter than air, or as if she had somehow managed to get herself immune to the law of gravity. That was all you’d see unless you got to know her well, but then, you also discovered that Ivy was not afraid of anything—at least not anything that you’d expect when you were seven, like the dark, or high places, or dangerous people or monsters.

Martha Abbott, that same year, was a little fat for a seven-year-old, and her straight pale hair was cut very short, because she sometimes cried when it was combed. At home she had, for some time, been known as Marty Mouse, because her new front teeth were coming in too far out, and because she was
very
easy to frighten. At school Martha’s classmates described her as “the quiet fat one,” and her teacher said, “a sweet child but an awful daydreamer.”

That year, in the second grade, Martha had already heard quite a bit about the Carsons. Everybody had. For one thing their names were often in the paper—but not in the society pages, where other names familiar to the Abbotts were sometimes mentioned. The Carsons were usually written about under such headings as
YOUTH ARRESTED FOR BICYCLE THEFT
or
TEENAGE BURGLARY RING BOOKED
. Parents in Rosewood Manor read the articles and shook their heads and asked their children if there were any Carsons in their rooms at school.

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 Martha 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.