Just when you think you know somebody, Isabelle thought, fighting the panic rising inside of her. “But why wouldn’t you believe Samuel?”
Elizabeth eyed Isabelle coldly. “You’re both strangers to me. And you’ve got witchy gifts, don’t you?”
Isabelle’s mouth fell open. “But so do you! You knew that my mom misses me!”
“It’s what you wanted to hear,” Elizabeth said with a shrug. “Anybody could have guessed that about you.”
As the two girls were talking, the other children had gathered behind Elizabeth, and they now formed a small army. Isabelle didn’t know if she could defend herself against them. She thought suddenly of the packet of spores Grete had given her before she’d left for the camp. Where was it? She’d carried it back with her, she was almost positive.
Elizabeth moved toward Isabelle. “I want to see this witch for myself. And I want you to get out of my way.”
Isabelle stood where she was. She looked past Elizabeth to the others. “You look a lot better, Luke,” she said. “How’s your head feel?”
“Ah, ya know, pretty good an’ all,” he told her. He started to say something else, but Elizabeth glared at him and he shut his mouth.
“Cornelia?” Isabelle called to the little girl who’d once thought she was her dearest friend Dorie. “Did you drink your tea before you left camp?”
Cornelia nodded, then looked down at the ground. The branch she carried wasn’t much, more like a twig. Isabelle tried to imagine her using it to kill Grete. Ridiculous. Preposterous. Absolutely ridiculous—
In a flash, Elizabeth was trying to push past, butting Isabelle sideways with her shoulder. Isabelle barely managed to stay on her feet. She had to think fast. How could she stop this girl and her stick and all the other kids and their sticks? She needed a stick—no, a tree, a forest—
“She’s sick!” she cried out in desperation. “If you go in there, you’ll wake her up!”
Rat Face came and stood beside her. “Like that’ll stop this lot,” he muttered under his breath, but shoulder to shoulder with Isabelle he helped make a wall against the invaders. “Why can’t you leave an old woman be?” he said to the others. “She’s half-dead inside there.”
“Like you were, remember?” Isabelle pleaded. “If she’s a witch, how could she be so sick? Hen’s in there giving her tea, just like we gave tea to you to bring down your fevers. Remember?”
“Has she got a fever, then?” a boy who looked about nine asked. “Does she have what we had?”
Jacob stepped forward. “Actually, I poisoned her. Completely by mistake. Didn’t mean to; it just happened.”
“You poisoned her because you knew she was a witch,” Elizabeth hissed.
“Nah, I was trying to make a pie. Wasn’t trying to put poison in it. Read the label wrong, is all.” Jacob looked embarrassed. “Honest mistake, anybody could make it.”
Luke raised his hand. “Could we see her? I mean, not to kill her or nothing. Just to see how she is? ‘Cause I never heard of a witch being sick. Feel sorry for her, if it’s true. I ain’t never felt so bad in my life, way I did with that fever.”
“Put down your sticks, and I’ll take you inside,” Isabelle told everyone. “But you have to be quiet. She needs to sleep.”
“I slept for days and days when I was sick,” Sugar said, making it sound like it had been years since she’d had the fever. “And I never heard of a witch who got sick either.”
“Witches don’t get sick,” said Isabelle, reaching out one hand to Luke and the other to Cornelia, who’d dropped her pitiful twig in the grass. She didn’t know if this was true or not, but it made sense. “That’s how we know Grete’s not a witch.”
“Or if she is, she’s a nice one,” Jacob said affably.
Isabelle turned and gave him the finger across the throat sign. Cut it out, she mouthed. Ix-nay on the itch-way.
Jacob might have had trouble with labels, but pig Latin he read without any problem. He nodded at Isabelle and mimed zipping his lips.
Rat Face held out his hand to Elizabeth. “Branch, please. No weapons past the front gates.”
With great reluctance, Elizabeth handed him her stick. “But leave it on the porch,” she ordered. “I might need it later.”
Entering Grete’s room, the children lined up quietly against the walls. Hen sat in the chair next to the bed, cooling Grete’s forehead with a damp cloth. Samuel stood on the other side of the bed, holding a steaming mug. When Hen saw everyone, she held a finger to her lips.
“She’s very ill. You mustn’t disturb her,” she whispered. “I don’t think she’d care if you looked at her a bit, though.”
Samuel put the mug down on the table and went to stand next to Elizabeth. He crossed his arms over his chest, giving the distinct impression that he wasn’t in a mood for any funny business. Try messing with Grete, he appeared to be saying, and I’ll mess you about before you get a chance.
“She’s awful pale,” Luke whispered, and several of the other children nodded.
“Hope they put honey in her tea,” another one added. “It goes down better with honey.”
After a few minutes, Isabelle motioned everyone outside. They gathered on the porch. Isabelle glanced around. All the sticks were gone. When she looked at Jacob, he winked and nodded toward the side of the house.
“Do you believe me now, that she’s not a witch?” Isabelle asked the kids gathered around her. “That real witches don’t need people like Hen and me to nurse them back to health?”
Most of them nodded. Isabelle looked at Elizabeth and was surprised to see she had tears in her eyes.
“Wish someone had been there for my mam,” the girl whispered. “But no one would come. They didn’t want to get what she had. Only Da would help, and he died too.”
Sugar walked across the porch and stood next to Elizabeth. “Grete’s not a witch, you know,” she said. “You shouldn’t have told everyone to bring sticks.”
Elizabeth swiped her hand across her eyes. “I thought it would help, having her dead.”
“It wouldn’t have, though,” said Sugar.
“No,” Elizabeth agreed. “It wouldn’t have.”
“Why don’t you all sit down, and I’ll fix us some breakfast?” Isabelle suggested, and the children settled themselves on the porch, in the rockers, and on the steps. Turning to go inside, she was surprised to find Jacob on her heels. “What are you doing?”
“I’ll help ya with breakfast,” Jacob told her. “I’m good in the kitchen. Just ask Grete in there.”
Isabelle closed her eyes. Laugh or cry? How to choose?
She took a deep breath, shook her head.
She laughed.
42
It was decided they would have lemon balm soup for lunch, and it was further decided that Isabelle would gather the lemon balm, just to prove she could.
“She’ll learn yet,” Grete said, leaning over to the woman in the rocking chair next to her on the porch. “Not everyone’s like your Hen, practically born knowing.”
The woman nodded but didn’t reply. Isabelle admired how Grete was taking her time with Hen’s mother—Dreama—pointing out in quiet ways that Hen had gifts that shouldn’t go to waste. Hen’s mother never said anything other than “Aye” or “Is that so?” in response, if she responded at all, but Isabelle thought she could see the seeds Grete was planting slowly taking root in Dreama’s mind.
Isabelle set out toward the back of the cottage, to the shady patch behind the woodpile. Lemon balm, unlike most herbs, she’d learned during her nightly studies, could flourish in the shade, and Isabelle thought she knew where a clump of it might be growing.
In the three weeks since the night Grete almost died, Isabelle had become a studier of plants, a student of botany, a one-woman memorizer of every herb that ever bloomed, just as she’d promised herself she would. True, she lacked Hen’s natural talents, and after a half hour or so of reading about sneezeweed or moneywort or swee
t woodruff, her eyes grew heavy and drool collected on the pages of the books Grete had given her to study. But Isabelle was determined. She could learn this stuff.
She found the patch of lemon balm where she remembered it to be and began gently extracting leaves from the stems and placing them in her basket. Lemon balm had a minty scent that Isabelle found exceedingly pleasant. Maybe her job here would be to garden. Grete was so weak now, she would definitely need help digging and weeding and planting new plants in the spring, collecting seeds from the plants in the fall. Isabelle the Gardener. It had a nice ring.
First, though, the lemon balm, and then the making of the soup. Well, Jacob would want to do that, and Isabelle guessed that would be okay, even though right now her mission was to be indispensable, and what was more indispensable than someone who could make a delicious bowl of soup? Besides, after the poisoning, could you really trust Jacob by himself in the kitchen? But he would insist, trying as hard as he could to make up for almost killing Grete.
Hen called to Isabelle from the kitchen as she walked inside with the basket of leaves. “Mam says we’ll be going after lunch. She doesn’t want to leave Callou watching the wee ones too long, and besides, there’s chores to be done.”
“You want to go down to the creek tomorrow?” Isabelle asked as she laid the basket down on the counter by the sink. “I need to start learning about mushrooms.”
“If there’s time,” Hen replied. “Grete has some packages she needs to be made up. There’s a rough cough going round in the village.”
Isabelle began rinsing off the herbs. Maybe Jacob wouldn’t want to cook today, and she could have the job to herself. She needed to prove herself necessary, useful, a part of the big picture.
She could still see Grete’s face when Isabelle had told her the night before what she’d decided: She wasn’t going back to the other world. Grete’s left eyebrow had risen up halfway to her hairline, as though she wondered at the wisdom of Isabelle’s decision.
“You sure you wouldn’t miss your mother, girl?” she’d asked, readjusting the blanket on her lap so that it more fully covered her knees. “And that she wouldn’t be missing you if you never returned?”
“I’d miss her,” Isabelle had said plainly, already regretting that she wouldn’t be able to tell her mother that she was a changeling and potentially a magical being. “But I think you need me more than she does.”
“Hmmm,” had been Grete’s murmured reply, and Isabelle hadn’t pressed the matter further. She had armloads of arguments she’d reasoned out each night in bed, how Grete was old and weak now and needed her help. If she went back, who would cook for Grete? Tend to her herbs, dry them and package them? Hen and Jacob would help, but for how long?
Besides, maybe Isabelle could go home later, when Grete was better, steadier on her feet. Maybe by then she’d have figured out the tricks for moving back and forth between the two worlds. Maybe she could bring her mom back with her. Family reunion!
The fact was, Isabelle couldn’t bear to let Grete out of her sight for long. The palms of her hands got clammy and her legs started to itch.
“I’ve got a balm that will fix that,” said Grete when Isabelle confessed it made her nervous to be away from her. “Settle you right down.”
“I’ll settle down when I see you totally and completely well,” Isabelle told her grandmother.
“That will take some time, girl,” Grete told her. “And all the while your life is passing you by, and your mother’s, too.”
But Isabelle stood firm. She would stay. Grete needed her.
She carried the lemon balm to the cutting board and began to chop the stems into small pieces she would simmer for the soup. As if by magic, Jacob appeared at her side. “Let me do that,” he said, reaching for the knife. “Grete says she needs you on the porch.”
Isabelle wiped her hands on a rag and went outside. Hen’s mother was standing as though ready to go. “I want to send Hen and Dreama home with some nice spring potatoes,” Grete told Isabelle. “I’ve got a basket in the cellar, more than you and I can eat before they begin to sprout.”
Isabelle started to frown—she’d rather cook than haul loads of potatoes—but quickly turned up the corners of her mouth. She was Isabelle the Useful and Necessary, and she would do what she was told, even if only two days earlier Hen had found a black snake curled in the corner of the cellar catching a nap.
The cellar was cool and smelled vaguely like a laundry room—damp and earthy and clean in spite of itself. The door clicked closed behind her as Isabelle carefully made her way down the rickety steps. She reached for a light switch and then remembered that she was in a land without light switches or electricity or Animal Control people who would come round up errant snakes from the basement upon request. Holding on to the railing, she felt each step with her toe before putting her whole foot down.
The cellar was dimly lit by light streaming through a small window. Ah, there were the potatoes, basking in a little spot of sun in the middle of the room, and not a snake to be seen. Isabelle breathed a sigh of relief and hoisted the basket to her hip. She held again to the railing and made her way up the steps. Balancing carefully on the top step, she reached out and twisted the doorknob.
It was stuck.
Do not get irritated, Isabelle told herself, trying the doorknob again. Be cheerful. Everyone loves a cheerful girl with a basket full of potatoes. The doorknob refused to budge. She tried it again. No luck.
She knocked on the door. “Jacob! Hen! The door is stuck!”
Nothing.
The darkness from the basement’s dim corners began to creep up the steps behind her. The floor issued a slight hissing noise (or so it seemed to Isabelle), as though not just one snake but a whole battery of snakes had gathered at the foot of the stairs.
Isabelle dropped the basket and pounded at the door. “Let me out of here!” she yelled, not caring any longer if she sounded irritable or angry or unpleasant. “Please, somebody, let me out!”
And then: The door opened.
Isabelle let out a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness,” she said—
—and Isabelle Bean fell back out.
43
“I’m sorry, Isabelle, jeez! I was just joking around!”
Charley Bender stood in front of the nurse’s closet, a look of dismay on her face. “Are you scared of the dark? I totally apologize if you are. Really, it was just a joke. And you were only in there for, like, five seconds.”
Five seconds?
Isabelle took a deep breath before exiting the closet. She needed to collect herself. She didn’t want to cry. She was sure this was a mistake after all, a silly blip that Grete could fix, no problem—
Five seconds?
“I’m okay,” she said finally. “I’m just a little claustrophobic.”
Charley sat down at the nurse’s desk and rested her foot on the edge of the trash can. “Oh, me too. My friend Deirdre has this bathroom in her basement that’s maybe the size of a refrigerator. I can’t make myself use it. I start getting hives.”
Isabelle sat down in the chair next to the door. She needed to steady herself, to readjust. She looked down at her feet and saw that her red boots were as shiny as they’d been when she first fell in.
And then, beneath the soles, she felt the buzz again. Was it coming from down below? Was Grete calling her back? Was something wrong, somebody sick? Was the buzz coming from the camps? But how could that be? The kids had all gone home.
No, Isabelle realized, looking across the room.
It was coming from Charley Bender.
“How’s your ankle?” asked Isabelle. Even from where she sat, she could see the swelling underneath Charley’s sock.
“It hurts,” Charley admitted. “It hurts a lot.”
“I could get you some ice from the cafeteria,”
Isabelle offered. She stood up. “It would probably take down the swelling.”
“That would be great.” Charley sou
nded grateful, and Isabelle noticed there were tears just beneath the surface of her voice. “I don’t know if that nurse is ever going to get here.”
“I kind of know a lot about first aid,” Isabelle told her. “My grandmother taught me.”
“All my grandmother ever taught me was to play bridge.” Charley smiled at Isabelle. “Pretty boring.”
Isabelle nodded. “I’ll be right back.”
She left the nurse’s office and turned in the direction of the cafeteria. As she walked down the long corridor, thoughts drifted out into the hallway from underneath doorways and followed her. Isabelle could feel them coming up from behind. She could make out bits and pieces of words. She knew she had a lot of work to do.
Maybe she wouldn’t have time to miss everything she’d left behind.
44
I still hear children’s thoughts from time to time, but mostly it’s Grete’s thoughts I hear, old woman thoughts, arthritic thoughts, thoughts that think they’re forty years younger than they actually are. She needs help weeding the garden or putting together a packet of goldenseal powder, and it distresses her that she can’t do her job as well as she used to. I hear the distress, and then it stops. That’s when I know Hen has arrived.
I wish I could hear Hen’s and Samuel’s thoughts, but I can’t. I’m a half changeling. My gifts are limited.
In fact, I’m afraid they’re fading into nothingness.
So, yes, you’ve probably seen me and my mom, a relatively normal pair, a woman nearing sixty and her daughter about to graduate from high school, a little strange-looking, maybe, a silver strand of other-worldliness barely visible along their spines, but nothing too out of the ordinary about either of us as we walk through town and knock on doors, pull on the handles, poke our heads hopefully inside.
It was hard at first to convince my mom to come look, as you might imagine. It took some doing. A lot of storytelling. This story, as a matter of fact.
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