The Changeling

by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  The force of the yell surprised Martha, herself, and must have scared the kids playing in Falcon’s Roost half to death. Martha yelled again, and down below her the little kids sat staring upwards with their mouths hanging open. Up on the trail Ivy stopped almost in mid-jump to listen. Martha waved again, and then Ivy waved back and began to run faster than ever. In only a minute she was in the grove and swarming up the trunk of Tower Tree, right through Falcon’s Roost and the staring kids, and on up the harder climb to the Lookout.

  When Ivy had pulled herself up the last few feet to the Lookout, Martha scooted over to make room, and for a minute they just sat staring at each other and laughing.

  “Hi,” Ivy said, and the word came out halfway between a gasp for air and a giggle.

  “Hi,” Martha said back.

  Then they sat for another minute before Martha said, “I knew you were coming. I had a feeling and I just looked up and there you were.”

  “I know,” Ivy said. “I knew you’d be here in the grove, too. Do you still come here a lot? Since I’ve been gone, I mean?”

  “Sometimes,” Martha said. “Not nearly as much as I used to. As we used to, I mean.”

  Ivy nodded and looked down around the grove. “We sure used to come here a lot,” she said. “It looks just the same as always.”

  It seemed safest to talk first about the grove and the past and all the things they used to do together, and next they talked about the more recent past and the things they had been doing since Ivy went away. Martha told what there was to tell about the Abbotts, and what it was like at school; and Ivy talked sparingly about where she had been in the almost two years she had been away.

  The Carsons had spent almost a year in Texas, and from there they had moved to an apartment house in Chicago. There had been two months in the summer when Ivy had gone back to Harley’s Crossing to live with her Aunt Evaline. Aunt Evaline had felt well enough in the summer to go home to Harley’s Crossing, and she had sent for Ivy. It had been a wonderful two months. Two wonderful free green months after the gray closed-in-ness of Chicago. They had lived outdoors most of the time, and the woods were beautiful. But then Aunt Evaline had to go back to the rest home, and Ivy went back to Chicago.

  “Chicago?” Martha asked. “What were you doing there? Did your father have a job there?”

  Ivy shrugged. “Something like that. It had something to do with trucks. A guy he met in Texas had something to do with it. There were a lot of trucks, and they were shipping things different places.”

  “They?” Martha asked.

  “My father and my brothers—Max and Randy. I never heard much about it. But after a while Max disappeared, and I guess he went to jail; so what ever they were doing must have had something fishy about it. They never talked about it, or about where Max went, while I was around; but I doubt if he went on a vacation to Florida.” Ivy stopped and waited for Martha to comment, and Martha saw that it was a kind of test.

  So Martha said unconcernedly, “What was it like—living in a big city?” The way she said it meant that it didn’t matter about Max. She had understood what Ivy was asking, and Ivy understood Martha, too. There was nothing new about that. Understanding each other without words was the way it had always been. But Martha felt right way that something was different. The difference was how much it really did matter about Max—to Ivy.

  “It was horrible,” Ivy said. “We lived in an apartment building on the ninth floor.”

  “The ninth floor!” Martha said. It was hard to imagine Ivy living like that, with no place to get away to. “I just can’t imagine you on the ninth floor.”

  “Neither could I. I was about to leave when all of a sudden we came back here.”

  “You were about to leave,” Martha asked. “You mean all by yourself?”

  “Yes, or maybe with Josie. I was going to take her with me. I was planning to run away.”

  “Ivy!” Martha gasped. She could see it all too clearly—Ivy with no one except Josie, with a bundle on a stick, alone in a dark canyon of a city street, where strange figures lurked in doorways and the mouths of narrow alleys brimmed with horrors.

  “Well, I was going to,” Ivy said as fiercely as if Martha had really argued about it. “I almost did. But I didn’t have to because, just in time, we packed up and left. So now the Carsons are back again on the wrong side of Rosewood Hills, and here I am.”

  “Do you think you’ll stay? Very long, I mean?” Martha asked.

  “I don’t know. I think we left last time because my father owed somebody a lot of money. I don’t suppose he’s paid it. He never does.”

  Martha was beginning to feel really shocked and frightened. Not by what Ivy said about owing money, although being in debt was an important sin in the Abbotts’ catechism. It wasn’t any of the things Ivy said about her family—because Martha had always known those things, and worse, about the Carsons. It had more to do with the way Ivy talked about them. Always before, when Ivy talked about the Carsons, it was with a coolness, a kind of distance. It had been almost the same way she talked about the people of the Land of the Green Sky, or Annabelle of the burned-out-house. But now the distance was gone, and Ivy’s face was tight and hot; and suddenly the Carsons seemed much more close and real—and Ivy much more a part of them.

  A question leaped into Martha’s mind. “Hey,” she said, “remember how you used to say you were a changeling? Are you still a changeling?”

  Ivy laughed, stuck out her lower lip and blew upward to untangle a curly wisp of hair from her long eyelashes, exactly the way she always had. “Sure,” she said. “You’re either a changeling or you aren’t.” She grinned wickedly. “Any day now I’m going to fly off on a broom—or maybe I’ll start sprouting horns and a tail and turn into a monster.”

  “You don’t show any signs of it yet,” Martha said. “You look just about the same as you always have.”

  Ivy looked at Martha with her head on one side. “Well, you don’t. You’ve changed.” It sounded like an accusation, and Martha suddenly felt guilty.

  Martha looked down at herself uneasily. She was much slimmer in most places, and quite a bit taller; and except for the retainer, the braces were finally gone from her teeth.

  “Everyone says I look better,” she said.

  “You look pretty,” Ivy said, matter of factly, as if it hardly mattered. “But you’re starting to look grown-up already. Look at that.” She pointed to the front of Martha’s Tee-shirt.

  “Oh that,” Martha hunched her shoulders and grinned sheepishly. “That’s mostly the bra I’m wearing. I borrowed it from Cath.”

  “Oh,” Ivy said. It was a perfectly blank-faced “Oh,” but Martha heard all sorts of questions and judgments in it.

  “Well,” she said defensively, “all the other girls wear them.”

  Ivy only looked thoughtful, but after a minute she said almost fiercely, “I am never going to grow up.”

  “How can you help it?”

  “I can. I’ll just refuse to. You could too if you wanted to.”

  "You mean you think we can really stop growing?"

  “No. We’ll go on growing in some ways I guess. That’s not what counts. Aunt Evaline says that lots and lots of people never grow up. But there are good ways and bad ways to do it.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “I’m not too sure yet. But it has something to do with knowing what you’re doing, I guess. It’s the ones who think they are grown up and aren’t who are really messed up.”

  “And what’s it like if you do it the right way?”

  “Well, it’s like—Aunt Evaline, for instance. And you know who else? Mrs. Smith.”

  “Mrs. Smith?”

  “Sure. There are all sorts of ways you can tell about Mrs. Smith.”

  “Well, she looks pretty old to me.”

  “Oh, you mean her hair’s gray and like that. Well sure, but that’s not what counts. What counts is the way she does things. Don’t you reme
mber how she always does everything almost like it’s a game. And the way she is with animals. Even the way she walks.”

  “The way she walks?”

  “Umm,” Ivy said. “She kind of skips. Even if she doesn’t really, she always seems about to.”

  “Oh yes,” Martha said. “I know what you mean. About Mrs. Smith anyway. But how do you do it? How could we do it?”

  “I’m not sure yet, but I’ve been working on it. One thing, I know it won’t be easy because we’ve waited too long. We’re really too old already. Eleven would have been the best time. Eleven is just about the best age for almost everything.”

  “Well, I guess we’re too late for that,” Martha said.

  “Maybe, unless we can go backward. It might be possible. I’m going to think about it.”

  16

  THE DAY AFTER IVY CAME back, Martha and Ivy met early to go over the old Ridge Trail to the Onowora Stables to see Mrs. Smith. On the way Ivy talked again about the problem of being too old.

  “I’ve been thinking about it,” Ivy said, “and I really believe we ought to do something about it. I mean, there must be some way to keep from letting yourself just go on and on until you wake up someday and find out you’ve turned into an ordinary adult.”

  Martha didn’t know quite what to say. For one thing, she wasn’t absolutely sure that Ivy was serious. She seemed to be, but Martha felt a little uncertain. Ivy had been gone such a long time, Martha felt it was possible that she was out of practice in understanding just what Ivy meant by the strange things she sometimes said. As they walked, Martha watched Ivy carefully for clues.

  They were walking single file along the narrow trail. Ivy was walking ahead, looking back over her shoulder now and then as she talked. She was wearing a very childish dress for an eighth grader—a cotton dress with gathered fullness in rows of faded smocking across the chest. Her feet were bare and dusty, and her hair, in its one thick braid, hung far below her waist. Her small thin face seemed more overpowered than ever by her amazing eyes. Ivy’s eyes had always seemed almost supernatural, but now there seemed to be even more of a difference about them, and Martha was beginning to feel more and more that there was a deep and hidden difference about Ivy, herself. Sometimes it wasn’t there at all, but it flickered up now and then like a flame, burning and angry.

  Halfway along Martha asked, “What’s wrong with being an adult?” and without warning, the flame flared.

  “If you don’t know, there’s no use trying to tell you.”

  They walked on, silently. Martha wanted to say something, but she didn’t know what. Besides, she could tell it wouldn’t do any good as long as Ivy held her head stiff and kicked at the dust with her bare feet. But then suddenly, there was a lizard lying in the trail and Ivy squatted down beside it. Martha went down beside her, and they waited silently for the lizard to move.

  “Do you think it’s dead?” Martha asked.

  Ivy glanced up and her eyes were cool again, but clouded with worry. “I don’t think so. He moved a little as we came up. He’s hurt, though.”

  “Part of his tail is gone,” Martha said. “Something must have tried to catch him, and his tail came off as he got away.”

  Ivy nodded. “Maybe he’s just not over the shock,” she said. She touched him with her finger tip. “He’s very cold. Maybe some sun would help.”

  “Lizards like the sun,” Martha agreed.

  Ivy picked the lizard up gently and carried him to a sunny rock. “There,” she said. “Do you feel any better?” The lizard raised his head and looked at them, and Martha and Ivy looked at each other and smiled.

  “I’ve been thinking about it,” Martha said as they started on, “and I think you’re right about eleven being the best age of all.” It was the truth, too. She had been thinking about it—about how nice things had been when they were eleven—how simple it was then to have a private world like Bent Oaks Grove, and how much easier it was to keep your various worlds apart when you needed to.

  Ivy flicked a grin back at Martha and ran and jumped up onto a dead log.

  “About what’s wrong with grown-ups,” she said, balancing along the log like a tightrope walker, “is that they think they know all the answers.”

  “I know,” Martha said, nodding hard. “They really do.”

  “No they don’t,” Ivy said. “It would be impossible.” She tried to walk out on a narrow branch leading from the main trunk of the dead tree. “Immmm-possible,” she said again as she fell off.

  Martha laughed. “That’s what I meant,” she said. “That they really do think they know all the answers. They think it’s terribly important to know all the answers.”

  “Oh,” Ivy said. She got up off the ground and got back on the trunk of the tree. She started off on the branch again holding her arms out for balance. “The answers aren’t important really,” she said. “What’s important is—is—is—” she stopped because she had reached a very narrow bouncy part and was balancing along it toward where it almost touched a big boulder. She wavered, caught herself, and riding the bounce she jumped from the branch to the boulder. “What’s important is,” she went on as she scrambled up the side of the rock, “what’s important is—” She reached the top and threw up her arms in a gesture of victory. Then she grinned down at Martha with her hands on her hips, “What’s important is—knowing all the questions.” She collapsed then on top of the rock giggling, and Martha scrambled up beside her. They sat there giggling on top of the rock for quite a while, leaning against each other’s backs.

  When they were finally walking along the trail again, Ivy said, “I think that’s part of it, all right.”

  “Of what?”

  “Part of the spell. I’ve been trying to think up a good spell to say to enchant us into never growing up. And that’s going to be part of it. That about knowing the questions.”

  “Know all the questions, but not the answers,” Martha chanted. “Like that?”

  “Yes,” Ivy said. “Just like that. Remember the spell we did to keep you from staying in Florida?”

  “Well, not exactly every word of it. But I remember some of the words. And I remember how it worked! Mr. Millmore. And I remember how you said that was the way with magic—that it never does the thing you expect, that magic is never the same twice.”

  “Hey, that’s some more of it,” Ivy said. “Always different—and never the same.” Ivy stopped and breathed deeply. “We’re almost there,” she said. “I can smell the stables.”

  Martha sniffed. “Me too. Doesn’t it smell great? I think the smell of horses is the most exciting smell in the world. Don’t you?”

  “Ummhuh,” Ivy said and started to run. They ran the, rest of the way down the path to the back fence, and scrambling over it, they went on running, clear to the door of the stables. From there they went very slowly, saying hello to all the old horses with pats and scratches, and introducing Ivy to the new ones that had come since she went away. After the horses, they went looking for Mrs. Smith at the house.

  It turned out that Mrs. Smith was painting somewhere near the lake, so Martha and Ivy decided to look for her there. They were part way through the north pasture when they saw Mrs. Smith standing in front of her easel, far down toward the lake. They ran to the fence, climbed up on it and yelled and waved. As soon as she saw them, Mrs. Smith waved back and started running toward them.

  Ivy looked at Martha significantly. “See what I mean about her?” she said. “Real ordinary adults just don’t run like that.”

  And when Mrs. Smith reached them, she hugged them both at once, without even stopping to wipe her painty hands.

  The three of them walked down to the easel to see what Mrs. Smith was doing. “What do you think of it?” she asked.

  “Is that an old man or a tree?” Martha asked. Mrs. Smith didn’t answer, so she added, “Or both?”

  “Or the ghost of both?” Ivy said.

  “Or the ghost of winter?” Martha said.
<
br />   Mrs. Smith laughed. “I was beginning to wonder, myself,” she said. “Thanks for helping me decide. Have an orange. There’s some in the basket.”

  So they climbed up on the fence and sat eating oranges which smelled just slightly of turpentine, and talked about what they had been doing. That is, Martha and Mrs. Smith did. Ivy said very little, and Martha guessed that she didn’t want to talk about the Carsons, even to Mrs. Smith. Finally Mrs. Smith asked Ivy a direct question.

  “And what have you been doing since you left Rosewood Hills?”

  Ivy shrugged, “Nothing. Nothing much. Waiting mostly. Just waiting.”

  “Waiting?” Mrs. Smith asked, but Ivy didn’t answer, so Mrs. Smith answered for her. “For the future, I guess? What are you planning for the future, Ivy? What are you planning to do when you’re grown-up?”

  Martha started to smile, and then Ivy did, too.

  “Did I say something funny?” Mrs. Smith asked.

  “It’s just that Ivy is never going to grow up. We’ve just been talking about it. Ivy is making a spell so that she will never have to grow up.”

  “Wonderful,” Mrs. Smith said. “I want to hear about that, too. But first I want you to tell me what you are planning to be doing when you are not grown-up, about ten years from now.”

  Ivy nodded. “Okay. I’ll be a great ballet dancer. I’m going to study in a school in New York, and then I’m going to dance all over the world.”

  “She’s already studied some with a lady in Harley’s Crossing who’s a friend of her aunt’s,” Martha said.

  So then Ivy told Mrs. Smith about Mrs. W. who had been a great dancer herself once, and who had some friends in New York that Ivy could live with and study ballet, some day when she was older and had some money for the school.

  “And what are you going to be?” Mrs. Smith asked Martha.

  Martha was thinking about an answer when Ivy said, “Martha is going to be a famous star of stage and screen.”

  “I am?” Martha began to giggle. “It’s the first I’ve heard about it.”