Harvest of Changelings (24 page)

“It wasn't a seizure, Grand-dad. It's the game, Worldmaker. It's not a game anymore; it's real and—” Hazel stopped at the expression on both her grandparents' faces.

“You were delirious in the hall and in the ambulance—a winged horse? That was a dream, Hazel-honey, you were dreaming, that's all,” her grandmother said. “Just a very vivid dream.”

“But—never mind.” Hazel knew it was useless to argue. And maybe they were right. Maybe her game and her dreams had gotten mixed up and she really had been sick, with a fever or something. A virus, like the doctors always said. But she was positive she wasn't sick the way Charlie had been. And the horse had told her and told her it wasn't a dream.

“But what?” her grandfather asked.

“Nothing. I'm just tired.”

The doctor came back in then, with forms for her grandparents to sign. An electroencephalograph, blood work, some X-rays, a psych consult (just to be sure), the doctor said. Insurance forms.

“I don't think there is anything to really worry about, but I just want to be sure there's nothing I missed,” the doctor said as Dr. Richards signed each form. “We'll get these started right after lunch and she should be able to go home tomorrow morning ...”

The tests took most of the afternoon. First the electroencephalograph and the X-rays, then some man took little tubes of blood from her finger. Another doctor examined her eyes and then asked her question after question: did she ever have headaches? Any other dizzy spells? Hear voices, have bad dreams? Either her grandmother or her grandfather stayed with her, until finally Hazel was back in
the room with the yellow curtain. Her grandmother sent her grandfather home to get clothes for both Hazel and her and Hazel ate bland food from a plastic tray. Her grandmother was at her best at times like this. Hazel knew that when she was better, her grandmother's attention would refocus downstairs on her pots and the wheel and the clay, and Hazel would be back on the edges. But, for now, Hazel's grandmother's attention was on her.

Her grandmother fell asleep first and it made Hazel feel better to watch her sleep, her chest rising and falling, wisps of hair floating up and down as she breathed. It was as if her grandmother's breathing was a soft and very faint lullaby and Hazel felt herself slowly, slowly, falling down, down into sleep. As she turned over, stretching against the crisp hospital sheets, Hazel heard her name and the voice, low and dark, was a familiar one, one she had heard before. It caught her right between diving into a great warm pool of sleep, and being awake, listening to the hospital sounds, the voices outside, the distant metallic sounds. Hazel tried to wake up to answer the voice, but she couldn't. She could brush the bright underside of wakefulness with the tips of her fingers.

I'm not there
;
I'm here
.

Grandma? (and she knew she was asleep, as the words came without her mouth moving, with her tongue still)

No
,
over here
.

It was the dragon in the meadow. Its yellow eyes were like two fires in the room's darkness.

I know they told you were dreaming or hallucinating. They are wrong. Everything that happened was real, even though your body slept. You were in Faerie
.

Where am I now
?
I can see you and the bed and Grandma and the curtain and behind you
,
the white trees
.

Between. I am going to give you proof
,
proof that won't go away
.
Here
,
take this
.

Something small and shiny fell onto the white hospital bedspread.

And one last proof
:
open your right hand
.

The white streak was still there, luminous in the darkened room. Then, the dragon leaned, shot out its forked tongue, and licked her hand.

“It burns—and the white—” The white winked out, leaving behind two glowing, thin blue streaks.

No one can see that unless they are like you and have been here and belong with you
.

The dragon began to dissolve then, as if it were turning into its own smoke and when Hazel reached for it, it was gone.

Wait
—
I want to ask you
—
I need to know—

Hazel sat up in bed, breathing hard and fully awake and alone in the dark of the room. Her grandmother, a darker shadow in the chair, stirred and murmured something in her sleep.

Hazel opened and closed her right hand, dimming and brightening the streaks, like little lines of blue fire across her palm. She laid the luminous green scale against the blue. It was the size of a saucer and pliable; Hazel could bend it back and forth.

“Grandma?”

Her grandmother moved again, smacked her lips as if she had just eaten something pleasing in her dreams, and then was still. Hazel could hear her grandmother breathing. She lay back in the bed, pulling the spread up to her neck. She rolled over and opened her right hand on the pillow: two flashes of blue fire. She pulled the scale out from under the covers and laid it on the sheet: a soft glowing green.

It was true then, all of it.

 

The doctor let Hazel go the next afternoon.

“All her tests came out fine. She's a perfectly healthy nine-year-old, who seems to be putting herself under a lot of stress. She needs to relax. Here is the name of a good child psychologist. You should call her if there is another episode—and you might want to call anyway,” the doctor said and handed Hazel's grandfather a business card.

“Can she go back to school?” her grandfather asked, as he stuffed the card into his shirt pocket. Hazel said nothing.

“Let her have the rest of the week off. Relax. Stay home and play, watch TV, read a good book—”

“But I want to go to school tomorrow,” Hazel interrupted.

“Hazel, give yourself a break,” the doctor said, smiling. “Please call me if you need to.”

Hazel smiled back and stood when her grandparents did.
It's not school
;
it's the magic. If I told you I'd be in trouble
;
you wouldn't believe me
,
anyway. But I have a dragon scale in my pocket and two dragon tongue marks on my hand that glow blue in the dark
. Hazel shook the doctor's hand and then let her grandfather wheel her out of the hospital, her grandmother trailing behind.

Hazel wanted to see Alexander the minute she got home. Even before her grandfather had the car in the garage, she was out and
calling the cat's name. He wasn't in the house. She grabbed a can of Pounce from the kitchen and ran outside to look for him, shaking the can and yelling
Al-lex
,
Al-lexxxxx
. Hazel ignored her grandmother's protests to take it easy. She wished she could yell back she wasn't sick and she had never been sick.
It's
magic
.

“She's fine, Annie, just look at her. She's fine,” her grandfather said. “Let her go. Remember what the doctor said ...” Her grandfather's usually loud voice dropped into a whisper. It didn't matter what they were saying, Hazel thought as she made her way through the bushes that separated the Richards' backyard from the neighbors. It didn't matter.

“Alex, there you are. Why didn't you come when I called?” Hazel said. There was the cat, crouched by the neighbor's goldfish pond. He stared intently into the dark green water. He looked poised to strike, one paw half-raised. Hazel quietly knelt down beside the cat.

“What do you see, Alex, a goldfish?”

The cat turned and looked at her, his dark blue eyes intent on her face, his head bent to one side, listening.

“Here, have a Pounce,” Hazel said. She couldn't see any goldfish: just her face and Alex. Was he bigger than he was the day before? Maybe. But what Hazel could see without mistake was her ears. Pointed.

Alex touched her thigh with one paw. She sat back on her heels, and then lay down on the grass, her arms outstretched, her feet touching the edge of the walk outlining the pool.

“Hey, boy, do you see my ears? I bet you do,” Hazel whispered. “Here, have a Pounce. The cat leaned down to scarf up the tuna-flavored snack. Then he reached out with his paw again, this time to lick her hand, his rough tongue right on the two marks. In the shadow of the neighbor's house they glowed. Then he sat back and meowed and, for a moment, looked as if he were trying to talk.

ShetasteswhatIsmellfeel

Friday morning, the day Hazel went back to school over her grandparents' protests, Mrs. Collins sent both Malachi and Hazel to the library on an errand. She gave them a long list of books to find for her. The library was empty when they got there, except for Mrs. Perkins. She sat at her desk in her glass box office, typing carefully. Malachi and Hazel went there first, and stood waiting until she finally looked up.

“Mrs. Perkins? Mrs. Collins wants us—”

“It's okay, Malachi. Y'all go ahead; Mrs. Collins told me she was going to send the two of you up here this morning. If you need any help, let me know.”

“Here, Hazel,” Malachi said when they were standing in front of the 398's, the fairy tale section. “You take the first half of the list, it starts here, I think, and I'll take the other half—” He stopped and looked at Hazel's open right hand. The blue streaks glowed.

“You can see them?” she asked, whispering even though Mrs. Perkins couldn't possibly hear through the glass walls of her office. “The dragon said only those like me and who belong with me would be able to—only those who had been there, where the dragon is.”

“I've seen your face, reflected back at me, in water in the other place, with the white trees.”
And your thoughts like a murmur in my head therecanyouhearME
?

YesIcanhearYOUears&eyes
?

Malachi pushed back his hair and smiled.

We'reNotaloneanymoreShowme
.

Hazel pulled her headband down to her neck.

ThatfeelsbetterHURTSmyearsYoureyes are gold
.

YoureyesaresilverAndYOURcat
,
too
? “Hey, you don't need the headband anymore, Hazel. Nobody but people like us can see our ears are pointed. Well, my dad can, and Uncle Jack. I think the priest at our church can, too. Glamour is what Dad calls it: a fairy magic to hide things in plain sight. What about your cat?”

“Yeah, my cat,” Hazel said, sounding infinitely relieved, “bigger and his eyes—well, it's hard to tell if they are glowing, cats' eyes look so funny in the dark anyway, but he's smarter, too. Everything, all this, our ears, the cat—”

“It's real. I'm still trying to figure it all out, but it's all real. My mother—she was from there—the place in our dreams, where the dragons and the centaurs are. My dad told me she was Daoine Sidhe, a fairy. There are—two others—I think,” Malachi said softly, looking around the library. Mrs. Perkins had left her typewriter and was at her desk, buried in a catalog. There was nobody in the hall. The other nearest person was Mrs. Anderson, the school secretary. He could see her over Hazel's shoulder, through the glass display case. Mrs. Anderson was on the phone. And the goldfish in the library aquarium, swishing their long tails in and out of dreamy green water ferns.

“We'd better start getting Mrs. Collins's books before she sends somebody to look for us,” Haze said. “Who are the other two?”

“Yeah, I guess you're right. Most of these are in the 500's,” Malachi said. “We can talk while we get the books—I'll tell you who I think they are as we get these ones Mrs. Collins wants. Here is the first one,” Malachi said and pulled down a book on eagles and handed it to Hazel. When their hands touched there was a spark and a pop and for a moment, both their bodies glowed, a barely visible luminescence. Above them the lights flickered and one of the fluorescent tubes sputtered and went dead. Balls of light the size of a ping-pong ball shot out from the dead tube and ricocheted around the library, caroming off walls, bouncing off tables. The air glittered and sparkled with trails of light.

“Malachi, stop it, Mrs. Perkins, she'll see,” Hazel yelled and ducked as the ball zoomed over her head, to smash into the biographies, raining down glowing glitter that fizzed and popped and disappeared on the library's green carpet.

“I can't; I don't know how,” Malachi said as he began crying, big glowing tears that left luminous trails down his face. One of the balls struck the glass wall of Mrs. Perkins's office and bounced back straight at them. Trying to hide behind chairs or under a table did no good—the ball was like a guided missile: it paused and hovered and bounced again as Malachi and Hazel moved. Finally the ball shot forward and zipped through a chair and then through Malachi, from shoulder to shoulder, then in and out of Hazel. They both shook as sparks flew from their fingers, their toes, ears, eyes. Then, everything stopped. The dead fluorescent tube over their head hummed back to life. The tear-streaks on Malachi's face grew pale and then winked out.

“What did you do, say abracadabra or shazam or something?” Hazel whispered. She wanted very much to run as fast and as far as
she could. She forced herself to be still—running, no matter how far, wouldn't change anything.

“No, Hazel. We aren't becoming magicians or witches. They can work magic, make it do stuff. They know the words. Us, no, we are becoming—we are magical. You, me, the other two.”

“Here, let's get the books together,” Hazel said and crawled out from under the table. “Who are the other two? And what do we do now?” Hazel stood and picked up half the books. How had all that happened without Mrs. Perkins seeing anything? Or maybe the lady had, Hazel thought, as she stared through the glass walls of the librarian's office. Mrs. Perkins was at her desk, her glasses off, and her face in her hands. “Do you think she saw?”

“If she did, she will never admit it. Anyway, there have always been four of us in my dreams,” Malachi said as he picked up his half. “You, me, and Russell and Jeff.”

Hazel shuddered. “I hate Russell White and he hates me. Come on, let's check out these books. Not Russell, Malachi. I don't know Jeff, but he seems okay. Russell is mean.”

Malachi shook his head. “It has to be Jeff and Russell. All four of us are being called as a group; a quartet, I guess. You know, I can
move
these books—see?” Malachi said and the first three books on his stack floated a few inches up into the air. Then, wobbling, they floated past the aquarium to drop on the circulation desk. Then, with a smoother flight, the rest of the books Malachi was holding floated over to the desk. “You can do that, Hazel, I bet you can or will soon. It
has
to be Russell; he'll be all right. A centaur told me that in a dream.”

Hazel nodded her head as she followed him to the circulation desk. “I know,” she said, sighing. “I dreamed about him and Jeff both. I just don't like him. And besides being mean, he's gross. His clothes are always dirty. I wasn't really surprised to see them both wearing headbands. So, what do we do now? That all the books?”

“Yes, they are all checked out.”

Above them all the lights in the library flickered, popped, and went out.

There was only the sunlight from the tall library windows, broken into long rectangles by the venetian blinds. The library was in grey shadows for a long, long moment, then as if they were odd gumball machines, the light fixtures started popping out glowing white ping-pong balls that bounced and bounced and bounced. Behind them someone screamed, and they turned and saw Mrs.
Perkins's office was filled with the glowing balls and she was surrounded by them, trying to knock them away.

“We have to help her—can you make them go away—too late.” While Hazel was watching, Mrs. Perkins dropped out of sight.

“I can't stop it—I can't—I need all of us to be here,” Malachi yelled as the balls began exploding. It was like being inside Fourth of July fireworks as all around and above and under and through the library was filled with showers of stars.