Harvest of Changelings (31 page)

Larry White swung. Russell jumped back, feeling the air move in front of his face. He had
moved
—very slightly—his father's hand aside. It was all he could do. Dodging his father's fists, with magic and by being quick on his feet, was taking more out of Russell than he thought. His sides hurt. He tasted blood from his lips and his eyes. One side of his face was already swelling and he couldn't see very well out of his right eye.

“You'd better hold still, boy, or it's gonna be worse when I do get holt of you. Just tell me why you let that goddamn faggot touch you. You a faggot just like him? I ain't having no faggot for a son; I'll kill you first. Tell me the truth, boy. Yer just like your whore mama, except you whore for boys.” Larry White swung again, hitting air.

Two kitchen chairs lay on the floor. The salt shaker had rolled up against the refrigerator; the pepper shaker lay against the stove. The sugar bowl was in pieces and sugar was everywhere. Russell could hear the grains crunching beneath his and his father's shoes.

“He didn't touch me. Malachi's daddy is a good man,” Russell said softly, stepping back just out of his father's reach. He flicked his right hand quickly: a small
push
against his father's chest. Larry White jerked, as if something had hit him, and stood still, breathing hard. “He's a better man than you'll ever be. I hate you, you son of a bitch.”

“Don't talk to me that way, boy. Yer asking for me to beat the shit out of you. I've fed you, clothed you, took care of you when that sorry-ass whore mother of yours wouldn't. I ain't having no queer shit in my house; your teacher told me the truth about you going over to that queer's house, staying there real late with that other little fella, Jeff. He felt y'all up, didn't he? My son ain't gonna be no damn queer. Hell of a world—damn schools are closed, people are glowing like damn light bulbs everywhere you look—”

“You son of a bitch, that teacher is a damn liar, and you aren't ever going to hurt anybody ever again,” Russell whispered as he retreated one more step. Then, he took a deep breath and
pushed,
harder and with more force than he had ever done before. His father, wide-eyed in shock, lifted up off the floor and slammed into the refrigerator door. Larry White hung there for a long second and
then slid to the ground, his eyes closed, blood at the edge of his mouth. He didn't move.

Russell stood very still, waiting to be sure his father didn't get back up. He glanced at the clock in the microwave: ten. Jeanie would be home in two hours; she was only working half-days in the last weeks of her pregnancy.

Larry White still didn't move.

Russell ran, out of the kitchen and up the stairs to his bedroom. He grabbed the red fox from the manger and then
pushed
the window out of its frame, nails popping, wood splintering, the glass shattering and cascading down the roof. Then, with the fox safe in his pocket, Russell flew out the window.

Jeff had just about decided to take the little blue rex and the stuffed apatosaurus when he heard a tapping at his window. He looked up to see a face—Russell's face—pressed against the glass. For an instant, Jeff didn't recognize Russell. When Russell
pushed
open the window and slowly crawled inside, Jeff saw why. One eye was swollen shut. A big, purple bruise covered one side of his face; dried blood made a dark mustache on his upper lip. His shirt was torn.

“Russ, what happened?” Jeff whispered. The blue rex that had been hovering above Jeff fell to his bed with a dull thump.

“I killed him. I think I killed him, Jeff. My dad. He wasn't moving when I left. I got my fox and I flew away. I came here. I waited outside for a long time—I wasn't sure you would want me like this, after what I did.” Russell sat down on Jeffs bed by the blue rex.

“You killed your dad?”

“I don't know. I think so. I
pushed
him, Jeff, harder than I have ever
pushed
anything. He wasn't moving; there was blood. I don't know,” Russell said. He spoke slowly, as if talking hurt his face and he talked to the floor, as if afraid to look Jeff in the eye.

“Maybe you just knocked him out.”

“Maybe. What do we do now? I can't ever go—I won't ever go back there again.”

“We can't stay here, either. I've been meaning to tell you, but, you know, with the shadows and you getting stuck back there in your head—my father is coming to visit me today. I was going to run away to
your
house or Malachi's—but he hasn't
spoken
to me this morning, either.”

Russell frowned, looking up for the first time since he had
arrived. “Something isn't right. He always mind-speaks us—every day, every morning—”

They both felt it at the same time—a mind-scream:
help, help me, help me, the dark ones, the red-eyed ...
The words slammed around in both their heads like sharp, tiny rocks caroming off the sides of their skulls. Then, as suddenly as they had come, the words were gone, swallowed into a deep silence.

“Let's go find Hazel,” Jeff said. “And Malachi's dad. They can fix your face and check on your dad and tell us what to do. C'mon—here, hold my hand if you need to.”

“Okay.”

They flew out the window, followed by the blue rex.

“Hazel, honey, doesn't that little blond-haired friend of yours, Malachi, live in Garner?” Mrs. Richards asked her granddaughter mid-morning Monday. Hazel and her grandmother were down in the studio. Hazel sat on the floor, reading as her grandmother worked at the wheel. A radio sat on a table near the wheel. Around Mrs. Richards's head was a thin black headphone, linked to the radio by an even thinner black wire, like a tiny snake. Alexander lay stretched out beside Hazel, snoozing.

Hazel looked up. “Yes, Malachi lives in Garner. His father is a librarian at the public library there. I told you that.”

Her grandmother pulled off the headphones and looked at Hazel. She wiped her hands on her smock and came and sat down by her granddaughter on the floor. “He's on the news,” she said gently, one hand on Hazel's shoulder. “The Garner public library burned down this morning and he's one of the people missing. No body, no nothing. His father won't speak to the reporters—won't even come to the door—”

“Malachi's not dead,” Hazel said slowly, staring at her grandmother's pottery wheel. Of that, she was certain. She would have
felt
his death, like a sudden chill, or a tremor in the earth and in her body. Now she
felt:
nothing. And that was almost scarier than Malachi being dead. Nothing. No whispery echo of his thoughts, no warm brightness, nothing.

Her grandmother pulled Hazel to her chest, her arms folded around her granddaughter. “Honey, I am so sorry. I know he was your friend, but the radio said the library burned to the ground. He was last seen inside; there was no way he could have escaped. Once
the ashes cool,” she said softly into Hazel's hair, “they'll look again—for his remains. There's always something left.”

“No, Grandma,” Hazel and pulled away and out of her grandmother's arms. “Malachi's not dead. I'm going to go up to my room.” She stood up and nudged the cat awake with her toe. “Come on, Alexander.”

Her grandmother sighed. “All right.”

Hazel smiled at her grandmother and went upstairs, Alexander bumping against her side. Alex must have his own fairy glamour, Hazel thought. Otherwise, even though her grandparents were equally oblivious to just about everything outside of pottery and computers, they would surely see the beast bumping his head into Hazel's legs was the size of a collie. Wouldn't they? She laid her hand lightly on Alex's broad back, just enough to feel the vibrations from his deep, low purring. And now he mind-talks, she thought, looking down at the wide, flat head.

Then, as she came to the top of the second floor stairs, Hazel felt the cat's mind touch hers, as gently as he touched her face with his paws:
Waiting inside.

“Who's waiting inside—inside my room? Can you tell me who? Is it safe to go in?” Hazel asked just outside the door, which was covered with a huge circuitry map, something her grandfather had picked up at IBM. The door was closed and she knew she had left it open.

Alex bumped her leg and looked up at her, the blue in his eyes brighter than she could remember.
Inside. Waiting. Boys waiting inside. Safe.

Each word, sharp and clear, as if they had just been cut from new paper.

I hear you, Alex,
I
hear you in—

Open door. Boys.

Hazel opened her bedroom door, and there, sitting in the middle of her bed, were Russell and Jeff. The window was open and a touch of wind fluttered her white curtains. A big, purple bruise covered one side of Russell's face. One eye was a smaller, darker bruise inside the purple. His shirt was torn and Hazel could see more bruises on Russell's chest. A blue T-rex hovered about Jeff's head. Before anybody spoke, the dinosaur fell to the bed.

Golden boy trouble.

“I killed him, Haze, I killed him—”

“We ran away, they were going to make me see my dad, I don't want to ever see him again—”

Golden boy hurt dark.

“Something's wrong with Malachi. What are we going to do—”

Hazel slammed the door.

“Stop talking all at the same time. You, too,” she added, glaring at Alex who stared hard at her for a moment and then sat down on his haunches and starting licking his forepaws. “I heard something bad happened in Garner, on the radio—I mean, my grandmother did—the library burned down. What happened—one at a time. Russ, who did you kill? Did you really
kill
somebody? You first, then Jeff. Let me sit down first, okay?”
How did I get to be leader all of
a
sudden,
Hazel thought as she turned her desk chair around to face the two boys on her bed.
Was I second-in-command after Malachi?
Somehow, knowing something bad had happened to Malachi and that now Hazel was the one expected to decide made everything more real and scarier.
Malachi hasn't been kidnapped by regular criminals; he was kidnapped by magic.
And whatever Russ had done, or thought he had done, was magic, too.
We need an adult—we're just kids.

But for now, she was in charge.

“Okay, Russ, talk.”

Hazel knew, from little things Jeff and Russell had said, that both came from families not at all like her own. But just how different was another matter. Listening to Russell tell how his father had hit him so many times for so long a time (“I don't really remember him ever not doing it, now that I think about it.”) and all the things his father had said made Hazel feel as if she had stepped inside some dark and harsh and cold place, where no light came. Jeff's story of what his father had done and then seeing the scars on Russell's back and legs made Hazel feel ill. What must they feel like
here,
she wondered. Or was it that different here—where she would be invisible for days before either one of her grandparents noticed her? Her grandmother had spent the night in the hospital—but, once Hazel was well, she had become invisible again. But invisible or not, Hazel knew she was safe. It
was
different here. Was coming into her house a little like coming into the light? Into a church? And—for the first time—could she come back from Faerie once there? Russell and Jeff would never want to, she was sure of that. But, she knew she might. “What do we do now?” Jeff asked when he had finished talking. “Russell and me can't go back. We won't go back.”

Golden boy man.

“Huh?” Russell jerked his head around to stare at Alexander. “Can he talk? Malachi's daddy—is that what the cat means? He can talk, can't he?”

“Telepathy. Mind-speech,” Hazel said, wishing that for just a few minutes she could turn on her computer and call up her valley with its tall, white trees and big meadows and lie down in the sweet-smelling grasses and do nothing but stare up at the sky. Or better, because the valley was
there,
a nice, complicated computer game with good guys and bad guys and tunnels and secret passages and hidden doors and a treasure. A game that would last for a long time, so long she would be lost in it and nothing outside the game would or could possibly matter except when her grandmother or grandfather called her to come and eat.

“No, Alex can't talk—it's mind-speech, like I said, like Malachi does. He started—never mind. This is the clearest he has ever been. I think Alex means that Malachi's dad can help us find out what happened. And that we should go and find Malachi's daddy.”
As
soon as we can. Then an adult can be in charge and not me.

“It's bad,” Jeff said. “Whatever happened to Mal is really bad. I can feel it—”

“The red-eyed monsters. Those shadow-things,” Russell said and shuddered. “They have him. And—they want all of us, all four of us—they need all four of us,” he added.

“How do you know that?” Hazel said, wondering what she was going to tell her grandmother when she brought down two guests from her bedroom or that she and these two strange boys and Alex all had to fly away for a while. Really fly away.
Well, Grandma, you were so busy doing pottery downstairs I guess you didn't hear them come in. Can they stay? Oh, for a few days, for the rest of their lives.

“I had a dream. I had a dream this morning,” Russell said, shaking his head and looking at his hands. “In the dream all four of us were on a baseball diamond, each one of us on a base; Malachi was at home plate. It was night and there was a wind. Malachi raised his arms and this thin, blue light came out from each hand and drew a line in the air until it touched me. I was on first, you were on second; Jeff was on third. We all raised our hands and the light passed through all of us, and back around and through Malachi, over and over, getting brighter and stronger each time. It was like a web: the light passed between each of us—I mean, between you and Malachi, me and Jeff, me and you—until there was a blue web everywhere. The light got so bright I couldn't see the stars or the moon. And I
knew
each of you—I really knew you in ways and in places that I can't explain just yet,” Russell said and glanced quickly at Jeff and then back to his hands. “We were safe as long as we were together, all four of us, and we were powerful. The red-eyed things want that power.”

Jeff nodded his head. “I guess we find Malachi's dad then, and see about rescuing him. Right?”

“Right,” Hazel agreed.

Gold boy father home now.

“Okay, Alex. I guess we just fly over there.”

“Uh, before we go, can we have some lunch first?” Russell asked. “I'm starving.”

Hazel thought a minute. Maybe she wouldn't have to tell her grandmother and grandfather anything. They could all fly over to Malachi's house, talk to Mr. Tyson, and Jeff and Russell could stay there—well, not tell her grandparents anything right away. Besides, her grandmother wasn't likely to come up from her studio until nightfall. Once she got going on a project, Mrs. Richards would single-mindedly follow it through, in voluntary self-exile with the wheel and the clay. Her grandfather was the same way around computers.

“Y'all stay here. I'll go get some bread and peanut butter and stuff. We'll fix something in here. Then we will go over to see Malachi's father.”