Harvest of Changelings Read online

  “You don’t like Mal’s dad? I do; I wish I had a father like that—Russell, look out!”

  Out of the dark and the rain, a darker shadow formed, with long tendrils, twisting and uncurling, reaching out for each boy. The cool, wet air grew even colder, so cold Russell thought the rain would turn into snow. The shadow was familiar; he knew it. He knew what it was saying and what it wanted.

  “Fly, Jeff, fly as fast as you can. It’s me they want, not you—just me. I’m the evil one, the mean one—like my dad. I hurt; I hate. Get away, Jeff, are you crazy?” Russell screamed and shoved Jeff away, his aura growing brighter and hotter with each shove. The shadow shrank back, hissing.

  Jeff shoved back. “Look, don’t you see? It pulled away. You’re not like that anymore, you know that. You were never really like that, Russ, not the real you, the you that has finally gotten its chance. Russell, look out!”

  The shadow pounced, all its many legs wrapping around Russell, as if it were a net and had caught a huge fish. Russell screamed. The shadow tossed Russell up, and caught him in its cold claws, then up again, the second time catching the boy in its mouth. Russell’s hot white aura went out and he felt colder and duller than he had ever felt in his life, too cold to shiver, too cold for his teeth to chatter. The cold was turning him into a stone, a stone to be juggled in the air.

  He couldn’t just let the thing eat Russell, make Russell into darkness, but what could he do? I’m so little, so weak, so smaallll. No, not this time. Not like before when Someone had come for him in the darkness and he had let the Someone do whatever he wanted. Not this time. Jeff flew straight at the monster, the rain hissing as it struck his aura, which was now a white flame. He struck the monster dead center in an explosion of incandescent white light.

  Jeff opened his eyes and sat up.

  The storm was gone.

  The sky was clear, a pale grey-blue. The monster had disappeared. He was soaked and lying on soaked ground, in a mud puddle. Like a small ghost, some of his aura was still visible, tiny flickering white flames.

  “Russell?”

  Russell lay a few feet away, curled up in a tiny, tight ball. Jeff crawled over and laid a hand on Russell’s head. Cold, cold, cold. But, beneath the cold, a bare trace of warmth. Russell was breathing—barely.

  “He’s alive,” Jeff whispered. “He’s far away, but he’s there. He feels like he’s pure fear.” One of Jeff’s still-flickering white flames flowed from his hand into Russell’s wet, red hair, like water being absorbed by a paper towel. “He felt that—I felt him feel it—but he’s too scared to come back. I can’t get him back by myself.”

  Jeff closed his eyes, squinched up his face, and then stepped back as Russell’s body floated up from the ground. Keeping his hand on Russell’s head, Jeff took off, his feet barely touching the ground. After making sure neither of Russell’s folks were home, he slowly rose up to the roof, Russell floating beneath his hand. With Russell still floating, Jeff raised Russell’s bedroom window and then guided his friend’s body inside and onto his bed.

  Then Jeff called for Malachi and Hazel.

  Ben

  It had been a day. First that insane meeting at the school, then a weird conversation with his lawyer. Could Charlotte Collins make DSS do anything? Would there be social workers waiting at his door when he got home? The lawyer had no answers. What about the threat of a charge of child molestation? Yes, the other children had been at his house, but if he had tried to explain to Hallie why they were there, how they got there, she would have thought he was crazy. And he wasn’t a good liar. Yes, he had told the doctor lie enough times that it felt true, but he hadn’t had any practice defending himself against molestation charges. If he had explained to Hallie why he could never take Malachi to a doctor—yeah, right. And after that the county library director had called to talk about closing the entire system until the “emergency was over”—did Ben think that would be a good idea?

  Ben shook his head. Why not close the library? So what if there were people coming there to hide—why they thought they would be safer surrounded by books, he didn’t know. He doubted the schools would re-open on Monday, which was fine with him. Malachi didn’t need to be riding on an unprotected bus. Not that it mattered if he ever went back, Ben thought. His son would be gone after Halloween. Gone forever? Gone was all Ben could think of, conceive of, right now. What would happen after they crossed over into Faerie, cured Malachi of his fairy-sickness—it was just too much to think that far ahead—and he still didn’t know where the gate was.

  What? Why is the air in here getting so hot? His office smelled of white heat. The air shimmered and tiny lightning bolts zigzagged across the room, making zapping electrical popping sounds, a whoosh of smoke, and there, perched on his desk, was Ben’s son. For one brief wild moment, Malachi looked just like his mother: the glowing eyes, the golden-white hair, and the pointed ears. Ben felt his heart stop, squeeze, and then go on.

  Coughing, Ben waved away the residual smoke, wishing Malachi would hurry up and grow out of the special effects stage. And didn’t the boy ever think of the effect of others seeing him materialize in a puff of smoke in his father’s office?

  “I told you not to do this in public. And why aren’t you in bed—you’ve been sick, remember?” Ben snapped, glowering. He glanced out his door—the few people he could see on the library’s main floor didn’t seem to have noticed the pyrotechnics in his office. Not that it really mattered. How could it? Stranger things were happening almost every day lately, things that had nothing to do with Malachi.

  “Sorry, Dad, but I had to get here as fast as I could—neat trick with the smoke, huh?—and I really do feel much better and I’ve got to go help Russell, Jeff called me, Russell got attacked by a shadow, Hazel is already on her way—”

  “Slow down. One word at a time. What’s going on with Russell?” Ben asked, remembering what he had seen last week, when he had gone to pick up Malachi at Nottingham Heights after it had closed early. The other three had been waiting with Malachi outside the school, on the front walk. For a brief moment, before Ben was close enough to speak, he saw the auras of all four children, the different lights merging together, drawn into one greater aura by pink and red pulsing ropes of light.

  They are closer to my son and will know him better than I will ever be able to. They are more like him than I can ever be.

  “The Fomorii are after him. They attacked him during the storm—Dad—they need me. It will be all right; I promise.”

  And Malachi disappeared, winked out, leaving only the smell of heat in Ben’s office and a thin, grey haze of vanishing smoke.

  I don’t know them, these other three. Who is this Russell, who looks so tough and mean? This Jeff, who looks like he wants to hide behind the next tree and Hazel, the most normal-looking of the bunch, yet her eyes glow, too.

  Who are these three kids who are so attached to my son?

  Oh, God, the Fomorii.

  Jeff, Malachi, and Hazel

  It was late afternoon, almost twilight. The sky was darkening again, but at least for now, the darkness was not ominous, just the forerunner of night. Nights were another matter. As the changes progressed and the barriers between universes continued to fracture, nights became more and more horrifying and dangerous. Things roamed in the darkness. The good weakened, or so it seemed. Good people stayed at home, with their doors locked, windows bolted. Crosses, Stars of David, Amish hex signs hung on doors, along with cloves of garlic, all charms against what might be loose between sunset and sunrise.

  But that was night and this is afternoon, Jeff thought and looked at Malachi and Hazel, then at Russell. From below Jeff could hear movement, a TV, cabinet doors opening and closing, pots and pans banging. It was close to dinnertime. Russell’s stepmother was home; his father would be soon. When everything was ready, would he come up the stairs and get Russell? What would Larry White do if he found his son in a magical coma, curled up in a tight, little ball, cold to th
e touch, and his son’s best friends sitting around him? Jeff didn’t want to find out. Larry White scared him almost as much as his own father did.

  “Jeff, it has to be you to go in. He knows and trusts you far more than he does me or Malachi,” Hazel said. She looked tired, Jeff thought, and for the first time her long, brown hair was unbraided; strands kept falling over her face like a shifting veil. Hazel had brought her cat, Alexander, with her. The Siamese, now as big as a Maine Coon cat, had first prowled around the room, sniffing one thing or another. Now he was sniffing Russell and licking his forehead and his hands.

  “He loves you, Jeff. He can’t say it and I know it’s hard for you to say it, too. That means there isn’t anybody else he will leave his fear for but you,” Malachi said. Hazel looked tired. Malachi, on the other hand, looked sick and pale and worn out. Dark purple rings made his eyes look sunken and he was whispering, as if he didn’t have enough energy to speak louder.

  Jeff nodded, watching Alexander as he kneaded the quilt covering Russell and then curled up beside him, pressing his feline bulk against Russell. Hazel swore the cat could mind-speak. Jeff wasn’t surprised. He wished Malachi hadn’t said that about Russell loving him. His father had told Jeff he loved him. Love hurt. But I do really like Russell a lot. When does like become love? Does love have to hurt? And he is a boy. Boys don’t love other boys, do they?

  “Are you ready? We can’t leave him there much longer, Jeff. Russ may never be able to come back and that would mean the Fomorii would have won. Our set of four, our tetrad, would be broken, and we won’t be able to cross over on Samhain.”

  And you’ll die, Jeff thought. I’ll—I’ll have to go back to live with my father. He had been about to tell Russell that when the shadow had attacked. The Clarks had told him yesterday after dinner.

  “His psychiatrist thinks he has made enough progress to handle having you in the home again. His lawyer is petitioning the court and courts tend to favor the natural parents. We’re trying to fight it, but it doesn’t look good,” Ellen Clark had said.

  “Jeff? Hold my hand and Malachi’s,” Hazel said.

  They completed the circle and closed their eyes. A slow, white flame-aura grew around all three of them, through them, and above them.

  Malachi opened his eyes. “He’s there.”

  “I know,” Hazel said. “I felt him go.”

  They both looked at Jeff, whose eyes were still closed, as he sat between them, the light of his aura playing across his face.

  Jeff and Russell

  Jeff stood outside an elementary school, an enormous one with towering brick walls. It wasn’t Nottingham Heights Elementary or Vandora Springs or any school in Raleigh Jeff had ever seen. Yellow dust was everywhere and the trees Jeff knew—pines, poplars, oaks, sweet gums—were replaced by scrub pines and trash oaks. The schoolyard seemed to go on forever, spreading out from the school into endless prairie.

  The red of the brick and the yellow of the dust were bright, bright red and yellow, chrome red and yellow. The green of the grass was just as bright, but it was intermixed with splotches and streaks of white. It’s a drawing, Jeff thought, colored with Crayolas. He could see where the red and the green and the yellow overlapped, and the sky was a scrawled pale-blue half-sky, marked here and there with purple streaks. A black line marked the edges of the school. In one corner of the half-sky was a yellow circle sun, with radiating orange lines. Below the blue was a pale cream color—manila, Jeff thought, which was what the teachers called that kind of drawing paper. Jeff was sure if he walked far enough he would come to where the manila-and-blue-and-purple sky and earth met. The sky felt close, as if it were a huge window screen someone had just pulled down.

  “Russell,” Jeff said out loud, “is inside. I have to go and get him and bring him back.” His voice sounded strange and oddly flat. There were no other sounds: no cars passing, no wind in the prairie grass, no thunder in the sky’s purple.

  Only one door and a tiny line of windows broke the expanse of the brick wall. Jeff took a deep breath and walked across the yard and knocked on the door. He waited and knocked again, louder and harder. Finally Jeff pushed down the bar, shoved the door open, and went in.

  The inside was even brighter than the outside. Jeff stood in a classroom in which each wall was a different color: red, green, blue, and yellow. The polished linoleum floors was a mosaic, a maze of patterns and shapes—spirals, ellipses, waxing and waning moons, comets with long, long tails—that were only hidden by rag rugs, with even more colors spinning out of the centers. A cheerful fire crackled in the hearth. A deep red couch was against the yellow wall. That part of the classroom was like a living room, with soft arm chairs to either side of the couch, a table, a reading lamp. Behind one armchair was a darker yellow door, slightly ajar. The rest of the classroom was like any other: desks, a blackboard, the teacher’s desk, and a wall of windows overlooking a playground filled with jungle gyms, rope swings, and huge climbing mazes. Jeff wondered why the windows and the playground weren’t visible from the outside. Each desk was a different color, as if someone had used the 64- or 128-color box: burnt sienna, raw umber, periwinkle, aquamarine, maize, goldenrod, peach, mauve. The color names were neatly printed in black square block letters on each desk. The only other difference was that all the furniture looked just a little too big, as if large-sized children were expected to use the room.

  But the classroom had more than wild colors and off-sized furniture: Spices—cinnamon, nutmeg, clove—drifted in the air, rich and fragrant. He could even see spice-trails, shades of red and brown, tiny cloud snakes. And somewhere a woman was singing. Jeff followed the singing slowly across the room, touching each desk, the chairs, as he passed. The red couch smelled of strawberries; the yellow wall felt warm.

  Jeff opened the dark-yellow door and stepped into a long, long white hallway. “Hello? Hello? Russell? It’s me, Jeff. Where are you?”

  Nobody answered. The woman kept singing, a familiar tune, and as Jeff listened, he remembered he had heard it from a babysitter years ago, when he was very small: Down in the valley, the valley so low. Hang your head over, and hear the wind below . . .

  Jeff followed the singing down the long hall. The off-white walls of the hallway smelled of banana and when he rubbed his fingers on the wood and licked them, Jeff tasted banana. The hall floor was furry. Jeff wanted to take off his shoes and go barefoot. At the end of the hall was a closed purple door, the color of the clouds. The singing came from behind the purple door; so Jeff didn’t knock, he just turned the knob and went in.

  Hush, little baby, don’t say a word, Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird. And if that mockingbird don’ sing, Mama’s gonna buy you a diamond ring . . .

  Jeff stood in a bedroom—Russell’s bedroom. There was the wardrobe and the carpet Russell has salvaged from the dumpster. But this carpet was more than the ratty throwaway Russell had back home—Jeff’s feet sank into the thickness of this lush, soft warmness that covered almost the entire floor. The carpet stopped by the window, exposing polished cedar planks and there the singer sat, a woman in a rocking chair. Behind her was Russell’s manger. The star cast a white light on the Joseph and Mary and the Baby.

  Jeff didn’t recognize the woman. She didn’t look at all like what he remembered of Russell’s mother from the photograph on Russell’s dresser. This woman was older and heavier. She wore glasses and a pencil stuck in her dark brown, grey-streaked curly hair. A little boy with red fox ears sat in her lap, his face pressed against her. His red fox tail twitched across her legs. At the woman’s feet stood a large, long-necked glass jar, filled with a bubbly oily black fluid.

  The woman stopped singing and frowned when she saw Jeff.

  Jeff gulped and started talking as fast as he could: “Russell. It’s time to go, to come back, I mean. We need you. I need you. I don’t think I can finish this journey without you. I don’t want to. And Malachi and Hazel need you. None of us can finish this journey without you. We’r
e a linked group, a tetrad; Malachi says we all go or none of us go. Russell, c’mon.”

  “You must be Jeff,” the woman said in a low, sweet voice. “Russell, my little, red foxy, told me you might be coming and that you would be asking him to go. He doesn’t want to. He’s afraid, and as long as he is with me, he won’t be afraid. And those monsters—why should he have to fight those? They were so mean to him—they wanted him to let his anger out and then they were going to eat him up. I never. Russell can keep his anger in this nice jar where it will be safe and it won’t hurt anyone. You run along now, honey,” she said and smiled and started humming to herself, rocking back and forth.

  “Who are you?” Jeff asked, wishing he could crawl into her lap, too.

  “Why, I’m Miss McNeil, of course. Russell is in my first grade. Today we are learning lullabies. Russell said none of you really need him, anyway.” She looked away and started rocking and singing: I gave my love a cherry that had no stone . . .

  Jeff took a step closer. Should he grab Russell and run? Pull him off Miss McNeil’s lap? No, that wouldn’t work. There had to be another way to get Russell back. How had he gotten through before—and he had, Jeff realized, broken through the tough, bad boy to find the Russell who was his best friend. Talking? Listening? Was it that simple? It couldn’t be or Jeff wouldn’t be here, inside Russell’s terrified imagination, talking to a long-ago memory in a school that Russell hadn’t seen since he was six.

  He sat down on Russell’s bed, facing Miss McNeil and Russell and the rocking chair. Sunlight poured onto the bed, washing the white spreads and gold oak frame clean and bright. Russell didn’t have a white spread, Jeff thought, and his bed is cast iron. He almost said nothing, but pointing out differences between reality and this other place probably wouldn’t work. This other place didn’t have shadows that came alive and tried to eat people. There was nothing in the room that Jeff thought he could use. The manger, with its Red Fox, the picture of Russell’s mother, the wardrobe. Where had Jeffs imagination hidden him when he needed to hide? Maybe that was it. Maybe Jeff needed to tell Russell he was afraid and how he was leaving his safe place behind. Maybe.