Harvest of Changelings Read online

  “Jeff, let me see if you have a fever. Let me feel your forehead.”

  “No, don’ touch me, please. I told you I don’t feel good. My stomach hurts and my head hurts.” Jeff could feel the two of them hesitating. He was sure they were looking at each other the way grownups did, with raised eyebrows and crossed arms. He groaned again, just to be on the safe side. Then the Clarks walked out of the room to talk; Jeff could hear them whispering in the hall. Then one of them, Mrs. Clark, walked away, and Mr. Clark came back in Jeffs room.

  “Okay, Jeff, maybe you’d better not go to school today. Ellen’s going to stay with you—”

  “I can stay by myself.”

  “No, you can’t. You may be almost eleven, but you are not staying here by yourself. Ellen will stay here this morning and I’ll bring some work home this afternoon, work in the study. Now, go back to sleep.”

  The door to his room closed and Jeff listened to Mr. Clark’s footsteps down the hall and into the kitchen. Then the hall door closed, cutting off almost all sound from the kitchen—he could just hear their voices, the radio, the clatter of dishes . . .

  That afternoon, when the doorbell rang, Jeff was so deep in a saurian struggle he didn’t hear it the first or the second time. When the chimes echoed for a third time, Jeff jumped. The clock on his dresser said 3:31. Mrs. Clark wouldn’t be home until five-thirty and Mr. Clark wouldn’t come out of his study until then, either.

  “Jeff, is someone at the door? If it is a salesman, tell him we don’t want whatever it is,” Mr. Clark yelled, his voice muffled.

  “I’ll go see,” Jeff yelled back, giving up the last pretense of being sick. He knew they were on to him and couldn’t quite figure out why they had let him get away with it. At least he had managed to keep his ears hidden when Mrs. Clark had taken his temperature in the morning. She had stared hard at the thermometer, gave him a small smile, and had left the room. Adults were just plain crazy sometimes. Now, who was there? A salesman, or maybe JWs, Jehovah’s Witnesses, like those who came by his parents’ all the time. Or two Mormons, with their bicycles behind them, in their skinny, black ties and starched, white shirts, their faces shining as if they had scrubbed them clean before each house. Or Baha‘is, with their broken record on peace and oneness. Magazine salesmen, maybe. Baha’i, Mormon, JW, or whatever, Jeff wanted them to go away. If he stayed quiet and made no dinosaur noises, maybe they would decide nobody was at home, stuff their tracts in the door, and leave.

  The door bell chimed a fourth time and then whoever it was started knocking. Jehovah’s Witnesses, Baha’is, and Mormons didn’t pound on the door. Neither did salesmen. Jeff put down the allosaurus and the plesiosaur and ran to the front door.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming,” he called, but the knocking got louder and louder. The door bell rang again as Jeff finally jerked the door open.

  “Russell White? What are you doing here?”

  Jeff knew who Russell was from Resource, but he had never spoken to the older and bigger boy; he had never even said the boy’s name. Russell was a head taller than Jeff, and Russell was twelve, almost thirteen, and Jeff wasn’t quite eleven. Russell’s red hair looked ragged, with little spikes jutting up in odd places on his head. Jeff was surprised to see Russell’s eyes were as green as his own. Russell leaned on the porch railing, crutches under his arm. His face was flushed and sweat dripped from his forehead. One foot was wrapped in an Ace bandage.

  “You don’t look sick. Yer not even wearing your pajamas,” Russell finally said. Jeff grinned in spite of himself. He had on a tyrannosaurus T-shirt, bright orange with a brilliant cherry red rex, another gift from the Clarks. Trying not to look obvious, Jeff smoothed his own shaggy hair just to be sure his ears were still covered.

  “Jeff, who’s there?”

  Russell froze and Jeff jerked around. Mr. Clark stood in the living room doorway, his glasses in one hand, a sheaf of papers in the other.

  “Russell White, from school.”

  “I brought him his homework,” Russell said quickly. “I, uh, live close by. I sprained my ankle.”

  Mr. Clark looked first at Jeff, then at Russell, then back at Jeff again, and shrugged.

  “That was awfully nice of you to do that on a sprained ankle. Let me know when you want to go home. I’ll drive you. Just come and get me in the study, Jeff.”

  “Okay, Mr. Clark.”

  Russell waited until Mr. Clark had gone down the hall and they both had heard the door closed.

  “Yer not sick. And he knows it, too.”

  “Well, I feel a whole lot better. I’ll probably be back at school—soon,” Jeff said hastily. “What happened to your foot? And what are you doing here? Why aren’t you at school? You didn’t bring me my homework—we aren’t even in the same class, except for Resource.”

  “I fell this morning at school. In the woods behind the playground. I was running away.”

  “Running away? From school? Are you running away now?”

  “No, I came to see you. Gotta question I need to ask. It’s important,” Russell said. “Uh, could I sit down? Just for a minute. My ankle really hurts and it’s kinda hot out here. My daddy would really be fussing if I were standing around with the front door open, letting all the cool air out. If we had air conditioning, that is. Gotta lotta fans.”

  “Yeah, okay, I guess so.”

  “Why do you call your folks Mr. and Mrs. Clark? Isn’t your name Gates?”

  Jeff made no reply except to open the front door as wide as possible and to step back and let Russell limp into the living room. Russell sat down gingerly and then lifted his foot up on the couch.

  “My daddy whipped me pretty hard ’cause I got in trouble in school and they had to call him to come get me. The reason I got in trouble is why I came to see you.”

  “I don’t know if Mrs. Clark would want you to put your feet up on the couch like that,” Jeff said slowly, as he looked around the room. He wasn’t sure if Mrs. Clark would care or not about feet on the furniture. His mother couldn’t stand it. Her living room had been kept like a church: quiet, still, and unsullied. This living room was different. Where his mother had five magazines, no more, no less, fanned out on the coffee table, Mrs. Clark had six or seven, dog-eared and coffee-stained, lying every which-away. His mother had wall-to-wall carpets, Mrs. Clark had throw rugs on wood floors. Where his mother had—

  “Why do you call your mama and daddy Mr. and Mrs. Clark? Aren’t they yer real folks?”

  “No, they’re my foster parents. How’d you get in trouble? What do you want to ask me?” Jeff said quickly as he sat down in a chair across the room. For a long moment Russell didn’t answer. He wrinkled up his face as if he were thinking really hard and picking out each word separately.

  “Okay,” Russell finally said. “Remember that story we hafta write for Miss Findlay? The book we’re supposed to make?”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, I got into big trouble over mine today,” Russell said, giving Jeff a curious look. “Miz Findlay said I copied mine out of a fairy tale book and that it was just like yours. She said you musta copied yers from the same place since they were about almost exactly the same thing.”

  “I didn’t copy my story,” Jeff said, wishing he hadn’t let Russell in the house.

  “I didn’t copy mine, either. I got it in a dream. Didya have the same dream? Ya gotta tell me, because if you did—”

  “What kind of dream?” Jeff said quickly and got up from his seat and went to the picture window, and started pulling the curtain drawstrings. The room grew light, then dark, then light. He could see Russell’s face reflected in the glass, then it would disappear, reappear. Maybe if he stood there long enough, Russell would give up and hobble home. “The dreams you got yer stories from. About the flying horse, the dragon, the centaur, Roth.”

  “His name wasn’t Roth, it was Thorfin—”

  “But you met him in that meadow, right? It was night-time and there were all
those stars, tons more than here at night, and two moons, right? You did, you did, I can tell by the way yer looking away. I knew it!” Russell crowed, shaking both fists over his head like a boxer. “I just knew it. Did you see the monsters, too—the red-eyed monsters?”

  “Red-eyed monsters?”

  “Yeah, right before waking up sometimes, real quick, with fire-whips,” Russell said impatiently.

  “I’ve dreamed about the centaur, the dragon, the flying horse, and the swimmers, mostly the swimmers. No red-eyed monsters.”

  “None? Oh well, maybe, I just see ’em and nobody else. Swimmers I haven’t seen yet. Anyway, I think all of it, all of them, are real, just like here is real.”

  “Real?”

  “Yeah, real. I woke up with a glowing white flower once, that left glowing dust on my hand—it was real,” Russell said and Jeff nodded. He, too, had awakened in the middle of the night with a luminous bloom on his pillow.

  “There’s something else,” Jeff said, feeling both enormous relief and surprise. He would have never guessed in a million years Russell to be the one he would tell his dreams to, but it didn’t matter. It felt good to finally be telling someone. Maybe he was glad Russell had come over after all. “This is why I pretended to be sick today.” Jeff walked over to the couch and sat down by Russell. “Look,” he said, and pushed back the hair covering his pointed ears.

  “Just like the centaur’s ears,” Russell whispered. Jeff sat very still while Russell touched each ear, tracing the point with his fingers. Then Russell felt his own ears. “Still round.”

  “I bet they’ll start changing soon. I just noticed mine this morning in the bathroom. Do you feel, well, different, since you started having the dreams?”

  “This morning,” Russell said slowly, “before I ran away, when I was with Miss Findlay, I pushed her away without touching her, and, I think I started a fire—the trailer burned up. Man, Jeff, what are we gonna do?”

  “A fire? Wow. I thought about running away, too,” Jeff said with a shrug. “You know every other kid in school is going to laugh at us. The teachers will probably call the doctor or Social Services or something. I wish we could go there, where the dreams are—why couldn’t we, if it’s real?” Jeff said. He was almost, but not quite, sure he could trust Russell. After all, this Russell who was sitting on the couch with him, his feet propped up on one of Mrs. Clark’s embroidered pillows, didn’t seem to be quite the same person who got into so much trouble at school all the time.

  “I think we can, Jeff, but we just have to figure out how. I’ve been trying to. I’m reading this book about Peter and Lucy and how they went to Narnia. They went in through a wardrobe one time, and the other time a magic horn called them—”

  “What’s a wardrobe? Narnia? What are you talking about?” Jeff asked.

  “A wardrobe is sorta big closet for yer clothes, but it’s not built into the wall. A big box, sorta—I have one—and in the book the wardrobe is magic and they go inside and keep on going and going until they’re there. And Narnia, man, it’s so much like our dream-place—there are centaurs and ...”

  Jeff listened, amazed, as Russell told him the story. Russell, reading? In Resource, when Miss Findlay asked him to read, Russell would refuse until she fussed him out. Then he would read very slowly, as if each word was something he was seeing for the first time.

  “But we don’t have a magic wardrobe or a magic horn. We aren’t even there together in our dreams—”

  “I know. Hey, I know what we can do, Jeff,” Russell interrupted, talking fast. “We’ll sleep in the same room, go to bed thinking about there, and I bet we’ll be in the dream-place together—but I can’t go anywhere for two weeks ’cause of what happened at school—”

  “I could come over to your house, Russell,” Jeff said. “Would that be okay? I think the Clarks would let me. They want me to make friends,” Jeff said and quickly looked away. Were he and this big, loud troublemaker boy going to be friends? “But they will want to meet your folks.”

  Russell shook his head. “No way my daddy’s gonna let me haf company while I’m grounded. Lissen, can you sneak out, without telling the Clarks? How ’bout this Friday, we could do it this Friday, you could come over after seven and before nine—they’re going over to Jeanie’s folks house—and I’ll be looking for you, get a flashlight, blink it three times at my window, any one of the windows on the roof on the side facing the trees—”

  “And I’ll wear black and my moccasins—”

  “Yeah, all right, gimme five, man,” Russell said and Jeff laughed and slapped Russell’s open hand. “We’re gonna go there, it’ll happen—oww—”

  “What’s the matter? Your ankle?”

  “My back and my butt. Where my daddy hit me—I told you he whipped me. I moved too quick just then. It ain’t nothing.” Russell leaned back into the couch.

  “Your dad beats you?”

  “Yeah, all the time—hey, show me your room,” Russell said quickly, changing the subject. “Ya gotta lotta neat stuff?”

  Jeff laughed when he opened his bedroom door and Russell gasped. Dinosaurs were everywhere. The shelves lining the far wall were crawling with dinosaurs of all shapes, sizes, and colors. A two-foot green tyrannosaurus towered over plastic and metal and stuffed dinosaurs. A herd of triceratops roamed across Jeff’s desk. A poster of diving plesiosaurs covered another wall and a mobile of five more plesiosaurs floated above the desk. Another mobile of swooping pterodactyls slowly turned over the bed. Some dinosaurs were wind-up toys and some were carefully built models. Some were paperweights and eraserheads. Dinosaur books and comics spilled off the desk onto the floor. A blue apatosaurus sat in the desk chair, poking its head out of a shoe box.

  “The plesiosaurs are my favorites. The Clarks gave me the apatosaurus when I came to stay with them in April.”

  “Wow. Where’d you get so many?”

  “I’ve been collecting them ever since kindergarten. Birthdays, Christmas, and, other—times my dad just got them for me. But, I left a lot of the ones he gave me there. I know all the kinds there are,” Jeff said and reeled off a long list of polysyllabic names. He hoped the names would make Russell forget what he had just said about his dad and the dinosaurs left behind.

  “I thought you weren’t any good at school stuff,” Russell said when Jeff finished his recitation with ankylosaurus. “Howdya remember all those long names?”

  “I can remember what I hear and my dad and my mom would read me the names. Mr. Clark reads them to me now. I can’t write them down too good; I get all the letters tangled up. Hey, there’s the bus,” Jeff said and pointed out the window. His dad had always brought home a new dinosaur the day after, either as a reward or an apology—Jeff wasn’t quite sure. It’s your mother’s fault, son, don’t you see that? If she hadn’t left, I wouldn’t need to. None of it. Here, you were a good boy last night, here’s a new dinosaur ... Jeff shook his head, hoping the memory would somehow tumble out of his head and break on the floor.

  “Well,” Russell said, “if the bus is here, it’s already gone past my house. I’d better get on home before Daddy or Jeanie get back. Whatcha going to do about your ears tomorrow? You can’t stay home all week.” Russell picked up his crutches and started out toward the living room and the front door.

  “I’ll wear a headband or something,” Jeff said. “Can you ride a bike with your ankle? You’re never going to get home on time in crutches. Let me get Mr. Clark; he really won’t mind driving you home.”

  “Nah, I’d better go by myself. Gotta bike?” They were at the front door and already Russell was sweating.

  “No, but the Clarks do. They keep lots of stuff around for different foster kids. Got a whole closet full of girl stuff. I’ll go get the bike; you wait on the front steps.”

  Jeff ran around to the back of the house and came back wheeling a bicycle. He watched as Russell climbed on, wincing when he saw the pain in Russell’s face when he started pedaling.


  “It hurts some, but I’ll be okay. I’ll hide it under the house and you can ride it back on Saturday morning. Can you hide the crutches until Friday? I don’t think I can carry them. A headband, huh? Like the tennis players on TV? What are you gonna say to Miss Findlay about your story?”

  “I won’t push her like you did—I don’t know; I’ll think of something. See you Friday?”

  “Yeah,” and Russell took off.

  I’ll just pull my dumb kid routine, Jeff thought. Miss Findlay will go on and on and I’ll just nod my head and say yes ma‘am and no ma’am. She would eventually get tired of talking and then she’ll tell me I’m going to get a zero and that she was going to call my parents.

  “I wonder what the Clarks will say,” Jeff said out loud, remembering his mom and dad had never done anything when teachers called. Somehow he doubted the Clarks would be the same. He stood on the stoop, watching until Russell was out of sight. Jeff shook his head. Had he really just agreed to sneak out of the house late at night, go down the road and sneak into somebody else’s house, spend the night—and repeat it all to get back into his bed before the Clarks found out?

  He had and he was going to do it.

  It rained all day, a constant deadening downpour. Even Narnia paled by late afternoon, especially when Russell reached Chapter Fourteen. Reading about Aslan getting killed by the White Witch was more than a little depressing. And it made him think for the first time of what else might be happening to him. The dreams about the centaur, the flying horse, and the dragon were wonderful and he had found them all in Narnia and in the other fairy tales. But there were other creatures in the stories as well: “... such people! Ogres with monstrous teeth, and wolves, and bull-headed men; spirits of evil trees and poisonous plants; and other creatures ... Cruels and Hags and Incubuses, Wraiths, Horrors, Efreets, Sprites, Wooses, and Ettins ... and the Witch herself.

  Russell shuddered. He wished Jeff could come right then and just be there, someone else nearby, another voice to take his attention away from the drumming rain and the shadows inside and outside. At least he hadn’t seen any creatures like the Narnian monsters in his dreams. Not yet, anyway. But if the good things were real, then the bad things were probably real, too. Even the Garden of Eden had had snakes. Finally Russell got up, closed the book, and the Red Fox haunted the house, trapped, trying to find a way out before the hunter came in his pickup. It sniffed and clawed at the doors, poked its nose in all the closets, growing more frantic by the minute. Finally the beast collapsed in front of the TV, its tongue hanging out.