Harvest of Changelings (18 page)

“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.

 

When Russell's stepmother put supper on the table it was still raining—a heavy rain, splattering, splashing on the windows, running off the roof, making waterfalls from the gutters to the ground. The weatherman said on the evening news the rain was probably going to last all night, bringing welcome relief from the August heat. The farmers sure needed it.
I don't care about the farmers
—
now, Jeff won't come
.
He won't come
.
Why would he want to come to my house any
-
way
—

“Eat, Russell. Stop playing with your food,” his father snapped.

Maybe the rain is making him grumpy, too, Russell thought, as he carefully scooped up some mashed potatoes.
Or it is because he and Jeanie have to go over to her folks' house to pick up some baby clothes and meet Jeanie's sister's fiance. Daddy doesn't like Jeanie's folks any more than I do
.

Being grounded did have some advantages. Russell always felt like a caged animal at Jeanie's folks' house, a very small and very neat, too neat, place. Her mother had a cabinet of little china figurines that she was always dusting. Little lace doilies covered the couch and the chairs and were beneath every lamp. Russell had broken a china shepherdess once and the old lady had scowled at him ever since, even though he had apologized a hundred times over. He had even tried to glue the shepherdess back together. Spilling the glue hadn't helped. Maybe that was why she had let Russell in only as far as the porch all summer.

When his father and Jeanie had finally left, Russell started washing the supper dishes, alternating with each plate or cup: he's gonna come, he's not gonna come. He jammed the last one in the drainer, not gonna come. Okay, I'll fix that, he thought and held the plate high over his head. It made a satisfying crash when it hit the floor. Russell thought about dropping a few more but decided sweeping all the pieces wasn't worth the trouble. Or having Jeanie wonder just what was happening to her dishes.

He sat down with
The Lion
,
The Witch
,
and The Wardrobe
in the kitchen. That was the door Russell had told Jeff to use. Maybe Narnia wouldn't be so spooky now, even though it was still raining and a wind was rising.

“
Chapter Fifteen. Deeper Magic From Before The Dawn of Time
.
While the two girls crouched in the bushes with their heads covering
their faces, they heard the voice of the Witch calling out
...
I hope no one who reads this book has been quite as miserable as Susan and Lucy were that night
;
but if you have been
—”

There was a knock and before Russell could jump up, Jeff came in, carrying the crutches and a flashlight and covered from head to toe in a dripping, black poncho. He grinned at Russell, laid the crutches on the floor and pulled the poncho over his head.

“You came; you're here,” Russell said, getting sprayed as Jeff shook out the poncho, surprised at just how happy he was to see the other boy.

“Of course I'm here; I told you I was coming. It was kind of scary coming down here; I hope the Clarks don't check the lump in my bed. Can I hang this up somewhere?” Jeff said.

“Yeah, you did tell—yeah, in my room, upstairs. C‘mon, let's go. And I don't need the crutches anymore, see? Let me put 'em back in the upstairs closet. C'mon. I thought you were going to blink your flashlight three times,” Russell said over his shoulder.

“I forgot. Hurry up, I'm dripping everywhere.”

Russell hesitated at the door to his bedroom before opening it. What would Jeff think of his narrow, little iron cot, his banged-up dresser, and the yard sale lamp and table? And his old wardrobe with the cracked mirror on the inside door, the big, brown rug Russell had found in a dumpster? There was plenty of time for Jeff to turn around and go home.

“Is the door stuck, Russ?” Jeff asked and reached around him to shove the door open. “Where am I going to sleep? Two of us can't fit in your bed; it's too small. Where'd you get this manger scene? You can sit in your window, cool. You have an alarm clock? Great, I have to get back before the Clarks wake up.”