“What if they’re ill?” Rat Face moved so that he was blocking the way into the clearing. “What good will it do us to go near? We’ll only become ill ourselves. There are stories, you know, of fever sweeping through a camp and death following fast behind. If we were to die, who would tell the story of the witch?”
“So you believe us now, do you?” Samuel asked his friend. “Had a change of heart?”
Rat Face shrugged. “Remains to be seen what I believe the case to be. Not enough evidence either way. But something’s amiss here, no denying that.” He turned to Isabelle. “You feel it, don’t you?”
The strange thing: Not only did Isabelle feel it, she could hear it. Which is to say, she found one voice in her head, then another, and another, that were not hers. They toppled over one another—
O I’m so cold o there is a black dog that bites please run I can’t run . . .
The coldest cup of water, Mother, if only you would . . .
I will sit up I will sit up and see about Mazie I will sit up in one more minute . . .
—in a jumble of nonsense that Isabelle recognized from the times she’d been sick with a fever, but the voices themselves were unfamiliar, kids’ voices, kids who needed help now. And on top of them, her own thoughts insisting that she help them.
But her feet wouldn’t move. She was supposed to help these kids and risk getting sick herself? Maybe even die? Was that fair? How would she get home if she died? Who would know what had happened to her?
A tiny voice wound its way above the others in Isabelle’s head, announced itself clearly: Help.
Odd: It was Hen’s voice. No, not exactly. More like Hen’s voice if Hen had been three or four, Hen’s voice made small and weak.
Sugar.
Isabelle sighed. She couldn’t let Sugar die, could she? The little sister of her best friend (even if her best friend didn’t want to be best friends with her)? She didn’t think so. She pushed past Rat Face and began walking toward the clearing.
“We won’t get sick if we wash our hands,” she yelled back to the others, who all looked at her like she was crazy. Haven’t they ever heard of germs? Isabelle thought irritably, and then realized that, no, they probably never had. “Washing cleans the sickness off you if you’ve touched it,” she explained. “It’s something we discovered back where I’m from. It’s not one hundred percent guaranteed, but it seems to help a lot.”
“And maybe if we dance around the mulberry tree three times, we’ll never catch a cold,” Rat Face replied.
“It does sound like foolishness,” agreed Hen halfheartedly.
“It’s science,” Isabelle insisted. “You’ll have to trust me on this one.”
Samuel looked doubtful. “Where’d you say you were from?”
Isabelle pointed vaguely northward. “Up there. From a place where we’ve made a lot of scientific advances. Like vaccinations.”
“Vaccinations?” Samuel asked, sounding interested.
Isabelle nodded, feeling very smart all of a sudden. “Vaccinations are medicine you take so you don’t get sick. And we’ve got antibiotics, which cure you when you do get sick. But one of the most amazing scientific discoveries we’ve made”—and she said “we’ve” as though she herself had been on the research team that made it—“is that if you wash your hands, you get rid of some of the stuff that makes you sick in the first place. Germs go right down the drain.”
“You’re right,” Samuel said, shaking his head. “We’ll just have to trust you.”
Hen took a deep breath. “Don’t have much of a choice, I suppose.”
Rat Face didn’t say anything, but he followed the rest of them into the camp. As they reached the center of the clearing, the voices swarmed thick in Isabelle’s head, like she’d tuned into a hundred radio stations at once. She had to concentrate. Where was Sugar?
It came to her suddenly: near the big tree. Isabelle didn’t know how she knew this, but she did, and she looked around her for the tallest tree at the edge of the clearing. “Sugar’s in there!” she shouted, pointing to the tent beneath the tree.
They ran. It wasn’t much of a tent, a piece of canvas held up by sticks and string. Hen was first in. “Oh, she’s burning up!” she cried. “Sugar, I’m here. Hen is here.”
“Hen!” a little girl’s voice trembled. “I knew you’d come!”
Rat Face pushed Isabelle toward the tent. “Get in, then! See what it’s all about!”
Isabelle crawled through the canvas opening. She found Hen cradling a little girl, bony-thin, dark hair damp with sweat, in her arms. Hen looked up at her. “She’s got a fierce fever. I wish I knew how long it’s been burning in her.”
“Oh, days and days,” Sugar said in a weak voice. “I’m so weary of it, Hen.”
Hen stroked her hair. “What was I thinking, letting you run off? Why must I make a mess out of everything?”
“Where’ve you been, Hen? I’ve been lonesome for you.”
“And me for you, but I’m here, I’m here. Now tell me where Jacob and Artemis and Callou and Pip are, and then we’ll leave you for a bit of sleep.”
“Artie and Callou and Pip are in the next spot,” Sugar said, barely whispering. “Jacob’s gone. We haven’t seen him in ever so long. Almost as long as you, Hen.”
Hen glanced at Isabelle, a frightened look in her eyes. “Where do you suppose he’s gone?”
Isabelle shrugged. “Do you think he’s gone to look for you?”
“Probably. Probably thought I got lost or fell and broke my leg,” she said, and her face seemed to crumble. “How could I be so stupid, not heading straight for the camp when I was supposed to?”
Samuel opened the canvas flap and stuck his head in. “No time for that now. These children are sick nigh unto dying. We got to do something about it. You can have all your terrible thoughts later.”
Hen nodded, and she and Isabelle climbed out of the tent. Samuel gestured toward the other tents. “They’re all sick with the fever,” he reported. “I don’t know if there’s a thing to be done other than to give ‘em water and put cloths on their heads.”
“What’s to be done is to leave this place,” Rat Face said. “What’s the use of us all dying too?”
“There’s got to be something that can bring the fever down.” Isabelle turned to Hen. “Maybe if we found some—I don’t know, some sort of something.” She was sorry now she hadn’t paid closer attention to Grete all those mornings out in the woods. “Do you know?”
“Comfrey tea might do it, or echinacea, if we could find some,” Hen said eagerly, her face brightening. “We’d have to boil the flowers. There’s no time to dry them.”
Rat Face sneered. “You the witch, then? Sounds like it.”
“What if I was one?” Hen faced him full-on, her hands on her hips. “What if I was to put a spell on you right on this spot?”
“Ain’t you the kidder,” Rat Face said, but his face had paled. “Last I heard, there weren’t any witches.”
“Still and no, I’d watch your back all the same,” Hen warned.
It was decided quickly: Rat Face would fill as many buckets and pots as he could find with water from the creek, and Samuel would build a fire for boiling. Hen and Isabelle would search the woods for comfrey, boneset, and echinacea to boil into a tea to bring down the children’s fevers. They would look for witch hazel, too, which Isabelle thought might work as a kind of antiseptic to clean their hands.
“What about your brother, then?” Samuel asked before they set off. “Should one of us go searching for him?”
“No time for it,” said Hen. “Besides, if he left soon after he got here, then maybe the fever hasn’t touched him. Just pray that he’s safe wherever he is.”
“Echinacea looks like purple daisies,” Isabelle said, finally remembering something Grete had taught her. “Boneset is pink and lacy. I don’t remember comfrey, though.”
“Flowers like bluebells, only they’re purple,” Hen reminded her. �
��Triangular, notched leaves. Look for it around the edges of the clearing, in the sunny spots.”
While they searched, the voices continued to sound in Isabelle’s head, frightened voices, feverish voices. Was this her magic? Hearing voices?
Frankly, it wasn’t what Isabelle would have picked. It was too noisy, for one thing. And for another, it was a little disconcerting.
But.
But.
If she could hear voices and thoughts, if this was her magic—
She had magic. She was magical!
She was Isabelle Bean, half changeling.
Just as she’d suspected all along.
35
The children!
There were forty-three of them in all, the oldest a thirteen-year-old boy named Peter, the youngest a toddler everyone called Woogie, though Isabelle was sure that couldn’t be her real name. Not everyone had the fever. A group of twelve who were still well had moved their tents farther into the woods, hoping to be spared. They were led by an eleven-year-old named Elizabeth.
“At first we did what we could,” she told Isabelle and Hen after spying them from her campsite and trailing them through the woods until she felt sure it was Hen from Corrin she’d sighted. Now the three girls sat on rocks at the creek’s edge, pulling petals off the flowers Isabelle and Hen had collected. “Fed ‘em broth, cooled their foreheads. But it didn’t help, and more of us well ones were getting sick. If this is a killing fever, there’s not much help to be given, is there? Unless this medicine works.”
Isabelle could tell by the girl’s voice that she was doubtful. She glanced at Hen, who was determinedly plucking away at the echinacea and bone-set. “It’ll work,” Hen said through gritted teeth. “I’ll make it work.”
“I’ll do what I can to help you,” said Elizabeth. “But I won’t nurse the sick ones anymore. I’ve got two little brothers still well. We don’t have parents, so if I take fever and die, they’re on their own. I’m not a coward, mind you, but I can’t go leaving those boys by themselves. They’re only five and three, and an especially foolish five and three at that.”
“You can help make the teas,” Hen told her. “Isabelle and me will take care of the sick ones.”
They carried the leaves and petals and stems in their skirts to the clearing where Samuel had built the fire and Rat Face was bringing the first pot of water to boil. “Dump it all in the cauldron,” he told them. “We’ll begin our brewing.”
Hen shook her head. “He’s all talk and no brains, that one. We’ll steep the echinacea first, see what a dose of that does to the fever.”
Sugar got the first cup of the tea, twisting this way and that as Hen tried to spoon some of the hot liquid into her throat, but instead spilled it on Sugar’s chin. “Come on, Sugar,” Hen pleaded with her sister, wiping up the mess and trying again. “Take a sip to please Mam.”
Sugar’s eyes widened. “Is Mam here? Oh, I want to see her!”
“You’ll see her soon enough, I promise. Now open your mouth for a sip of tea.”
She looked up at Isabelle. “You best go to the others. Can’t think to tell you where to begin. Just start at one end and work to the other, I suppose.”
And so began the career of Nurse Isabelle Bean. She filled a cup with tea and walked to the far end of the campsite. But after a few steps she heard a child’s voice calling, Now, now, now, I need you now, and it took her one second to realize (a) the voice was coming from inside her head (she supposed she should get used to that); and (b) the voice was from a child in that tent right over—where?—there.
“I’m here, I’m here,” Isabelle called as she entered the tent, careful not to spill the tea she was carrying. A boy of seven or eight was sitting halfway up, his eyes closed.
“Ma, I been calling ya for days and days,” the boy fussed, his words sounding parched, his head rocking this way and that. “My head hurts somethin’ fierce, Ma. I think it’s been cracked on with a hammer.”
“It’s the fever that’s making your head hurt,” Isabelle told him. “And I’ve got just the medicine for you.” She moved next to the boy’s pallet and kneeled down. “You think you can take a sip?”
The boy slowly opened his eyes. “Ya look different, Ma. Not like yourself at all.”
“I’m not your mother,” Isabelle admitted. “I’m Isabelle Bean. And I have some tea for you to drink that will make you feel better.”
The boy rocked back. “Isabelle Bean? Why, who ever heard of such a one as an Isabelle Bean?”
“My mom, I guess.” Isabelle refused to be offended. “And my grandmother, for another.”
“Aye, that’s good!” the boy replied before falling back onto his blanket and shutting his eyes again. He gave a sleepy giggle. “Yer ma and yer granny, they knows who you are, old Isabelle Bean.”
Isabelle put her hand behind his head, lifting it a bit. “Drink this tea now, and later I’ll tell you more funny things, okay?”
The boy obediently opened his mouth and took a sip. “’Tis bitter,” he complained groggily.
“But good for you. Take another sip,” Isabelle urged, and in a minute the cup was drained.
“You’ll come back, won’t you, Isabelle Bean?” the boy called weakly after her as she stood to leave. “My name’s Luke. Pleased ta meet ya and all.”
“I’ll check on you after I see the other kids,” Isabelle promised. “Now you go back to sleep.”
Through the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, Isabelle followed the children’s voices, going to the most urgent ones first, and eventually all of them. The older children did as Isabelle told them, drank the tea in little sips until the cup was empty. The youngest ones struggled and squirmed, but Isabelle found she could distract them with funny little stories—
“Once upon a time, there was a purple man,” she’d begin, and the child’s eyes would widen and she or he’d say, “A purple man, really?” and Isabelle would say, “Take a sip and I’ll tell you more.”
—and the children would open their mouths like little birds, and Isabelle would carefully spoon in the tea. Some of the children called her Mam or Ma, and one little raven-haired girl named Cornelia insisted that Isabelle was Dorie Malone from down Drumanoo way. “Don’t you remember me, Dorie? From Harvest Festival? We played ring-a-levio and Postman’s Knock and won all the prizes.”
“Oh, sure, now I remember,” Isabelle told the girl, smoothing back her hair.
The girl smiled, her eyes unseeing. “Oh, I thought you were the prettiest girl and the dearest thing ever, Dorie.”
And then she fell asleep.
All the while, Isabelle paid attention to the voices. When she was focused on helping a child drink the tea, the voices faded into a hum of a buzz that tickled her brain ever so slightly, but when she left one tent to search out another, the buzz grew louder, the words becoming clear, one voice leaving just enough room for another to be heard.
The buzz. Isabelle remembered now where she’d first heard it. Days ago—weeks ago? years ago?—in Mrs. Sharpe’s classroom, coming up through the floor. She’d thought it had come from the stove in the corner of the room where she’d first met Samuel. But now she realized it had come from the children.
Isabelle looked up at the sky. Was Hangdale Middle School on the other side of all that blue? Were there worlds on top of worlds on top of worlds everywhere you looked?
She thought there probably were.
And then she followed the voices to the next tent.
36
When she was done, Isabelle went to the creek to wash. She dipped her hands in the cool water and splashed it on her face. What time was it? She looked up and saw a handful of stars squinting shyly out of the darkening sky. Seven o’clock, she thought. Maybe eight.
“You’ll be wanting this, I’ll wager.”
Startled, Isabelle turned. Elizabeth was standing on the bank behind her. She climbed down several large rocks and handed Isabelle a bundle of leaves and stems. “It
’s the witch hazel. Hen sent me out looking for it.”
Isabelle carefully tore the leaves and stems into pieces and then rubbed them over her hands and arms. “Where I come from, they call this disinfectant. It gets the sickness off you.”
Elizabeth squatted on the rock and peered at Isabelle. “I met a girl like you once. From the other world, she was, had queer notions, odd shoes, just like you.”
So there had been others, just as Hen said. Isabelle Bean was not the first person to ever fall in.
“Where is she now?”
“Don’t know,” Elizabeth said. “Went home, I reckon. You plan on going home?”
Isabelle turned back to the creek and watched as the water jumped over the rocks in its rush to get downstream. “Sure,” she said. “In a little while.” Now that she knew she definitely had magic, she wanted to spend more time with Grete before she went back, pick up some hints and tips, the basic operating instructions.
“Don’t you miss your folks? I miss my ma and da something fierce, but there’ll be no going home to them until we meet in God’s heaven. If they were still here on this Earth, I’d run home to them this very minute, witch or no.”
Isabelle looked at Elizabeth. She wondered if the girl’s thoughts would start streaming into her head, pouring out her cares and woes. But the only thoughts she heard were her own. Why was that? Was it because there was nothing that Isabelle could do to help Elizabeth? That’s what all the voices had in common, wasn’t it? They all needed help. But there wasn’t anything she could do to get Elizabeth’s parents back.
She stood and wiped her hands on her skirt. “Yeah, I want to see my mom, definitely. We’ve got a bunch of stuff to talk about. When the time’s right, I’ll go back.”
Elizabeth stood too and climbed after Isabelle up the creek bank. “Well, you can’t stay here forever. None of them that fall in do. It’s not your time or place.”
Isabelle considered this. She wanted to go home, but she didn’t like being told she didn’t have options. “Maybe I don’t have a time or a place,” she suggested. “Maybe I’m a floater.”
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