by M Sawyer
Drew scowled at the messy sidewalk. “I told Mom I’d sweep this up after my brother mowed yesterday, and I forgot. So I’m doing it now. It’s not working very well. Anyway, where are you going?”
“Library.”
“Oh,” Drew said. “Can I come with you? I might have to wait until this dries anyway, and I have some books to take back.”
Nolin shrugged. The tips of her ears grew hot, and her stomach backflipped. Drew ran inside, carrying the broom like a lance as he charged the house. The screen door banged, and he disappeared inside, leaving Nolin alone, unsure what to do.
A minute later, Drew scampered down the front steps with a few books under his arm. He jogged toward her, his sneakers squeaking in the grass. His brown hair stuck out in all directions.
“Mom said I can go,” he said breathlessly. “She’s cool.”
Nolin nodded, not sure what to say. They walked. Drew made heroic attempts to keep the conversation moving.
“Have you read these?” he asked, showing her his books: Maniac McGee and Tuck Everlasting.
“My teacher read both of those to us last year when I was in the fourth grade,” Nolin said. “I enjoyed them.”
“Oh yeah, you skipped a grade, didn’t you? You must be really smart.”
Nolin shrugged again. “I think they just didn’t know what to do with me.”
If Drew found this strange, he didn’t show it. He bobbed along with his bouncy walk. “Did you get in fights in the fourth grade too?”
“Sometimes.”
Drew kicked a crab apple. It bounced down the sidewalk ahead of them. “Well, you fight really good. I’ve never seen a girl punch like that. Not even my sisters.”
Nolin cracked a small smile. “Do you have a lot of sisters?”
“Four of them,” he said. “And two brothers. I’m the youngest.”
Nolin couldn’t imagine so many people living in one house. “I don’t have sisters or brothers,” she said.
“Well you can have some of mine. It can be really fun, but most of the time my house is noisy and smells like perfume and there’s not enough space. I share a room with my brother Mark. He’s fourteen and he’s nice. He’s really messy, though. I mean, I’m pretty messy too, but at least my mess stays on my side of the room. Mark gets so mad when I shove all his stuff back to his side.”
How can someone talk so much? Nolin wasn’t annoyed; she was just used to silence, parents who didn’t talk enough.
“Isn’t it nice, though, to have other people to talk to and play with?” she asked. “You probably never get lonely.”
Drew shook his head. “Nope, I definitely don’t get lonely. I love them all, but girls are just...crazy sometimes.”
Nolin laughed. “Crazy?”
“Yeah. They take forever in the bathroom, they like to watch movies that make them cry, and they eat all the ice cream when their boyfriends do stupid stuff. They don’t all live at home, though. My oldest sister doesn’t live with us. But she comes over a lot and then they all get out their nail polish and talk all night long and keep me awake.”
They turned the corner. Nolin could see the giant willow in front of the library.
“If you need peace and quiet, you should come here,” Nolin said. “It’s always quiet. This is where my dad takes me when I get suspended. I don’t walk home until I’d normally get home from school. It never fools my mom, though. I think she watches for me to get off the bus.”
“Your dad wants you to lie?”
Nolin smiled grimly. “My mom gets upset easily. He doesn’t want her to get any more worked up than she already is. She always knows, though, and she gets upset anyway.”
“Oh yeah, I’ve heard about your mom...” He immediately turned red. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that...I mean, I haven’t heard much. Just that she has...you know...problems.”
Nolin crossed her arms over her chest. “I know better than anyone else about her problems, thank you.”
“I’m really sorry.” Drew’s cheeks flushed pink. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I don’t know what I’m talking about; I’ve never met her. I shouldn’t talk about things I don’t know.”
The brewing anger in Nolin’s stomach cooled a little. “It’s okay,” she said. “I know people talk about her.”
It was true. She often felt the neighbors’ eyes when she left for the bus stop every morning, heard the whispers of teachers about her “troubled” mother and her “unfortunate” situation. Words like “crazy” and “loony” had floated around her classes and the playground since kindergarten. Once or twice, she’d heard hushed whispers of “the incident” among some of the older teachers. She wasn’t sure what they meant.
“They don’t know what they’re talking about either,” Drew said. “People just get bored and like to gossip. Don’t listen to any of it. I shouldn’t. I won’t listen to them again.”
They walked in silence, Nolin kicking rocks with each step. She could almost hear Drew’s mind working, searching for a grip on the conversation. He cleared his throat, like a car shifting gears.
“If I got suspended, Mom would whup my butt. I’d be scrubbing toilets and pulling weeds till my hands fell off. That’s not even counting what Dad would do.”
“My parents don’t do much,” Nolin said. “My mom stays in her room and Dad goes to work. I clean, though. I guess it’s a good thing I get suspended or the house would never get clean.”
Drew chuckled uneasily. “Do you get lonely?”
The question caught her off guard. She thought for a moment, still treading around the cracks and worms on the sidewalk. The willow tree grew closer. Its vines reached for them fluidly, like they were underwater.
“Yes, I do.”
“No brothers or sisters, your dad goes to work, and your mom stays in her room. You don’t have any friends at school.”
“Most people don’t want to be my friend. I don’t really want to be their friend either.”
“Why not?”
“Because they don’t care about anyone except themselves. They don’t like anyone who’s not like them. They’re boring and mean and I don’t want to be friends with people like that. I’d rather be alone.”
“Not all people are like that. You could play with me at recess. We can make you some friends.”
Nolin shrugged again.
“You shrug a lot.”
“I don’t have anything to say.”
They crossed the street to the library. Nolin paused under the willow to reach up and touch the vines.
“What are you doing?” Drew asked.
“I like to feel things.”
“Why?”
Nolin thought, running the smooth leaves through her fingers. “It just makes me feel alive, because those things are living. I don’t feel so alone.”
Drew reached up and took a vine in his hand, running his thumb over one of the soft leaves. He smiled, crinkling the corners of his eyes and revealing large front teeth. “This feels cool.”
“I like to climb this tree,” Nolin said. “Sometimes I’ll take a book up here.”
Drew smiled. “I’ve never read a book in a tree before.”
Nolin laughed softly. “Most people haven’t. Let’s go get a book, and I’ll show you.”
As they came up the walk, Ms. Savage’s face appeared in one of the windows. Her red lips parted; maybe she was just surprised to see Nolin with someone who wasn’t her father, but a child her age. A friend maybe. She smiled. Nolin smiled back.
Chapter 8
SPRAWLED OUT ON her bed, Nolin finished Act One of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Her mind stretched, struggling to translate the musical phrases into everyday language, pausing after nearly every couplet until she began to understand. The wordless part of her comprehended those artful phrases, though she couldn’t have fully explained them. It was like learning a new language.
Helena’s unrequited love fascinated her. Why did she pursue such a love when Dem
etrius obviously despised her? She saw it over and over again in books; characters torturing themselves, pining for the love of someone who would never love them.
Does love just makes people miserable?
I love Mom, she thought. They never write about that kind of unrequited love.
She shook her head and began Act Two.
Finally, the fairies! She was done reading about humans for now. As a fairy named Puck conversed with a fellow fairy in Shakespeare’s musical words, the language filled her like cool water. Then her eyes snagged on a term she didn’t recognize.
Changeling.
Puzzled, she scanned the footnotes. “A child exchanged for another by fairies or goblins.”
Nolin’s eyes fell on a castoff drawing of her mother’s, that was taped to the wall, one that Melissa had let her keep. It was a tree surrounded by skinny, elfish children with long fingers, their faces devious and frightening.
Changeling.
The word stuck in her mind like the name of an old friend she’d almost forgotten but might not have liked much. She whispered the word to herself. A strange mixture of emotions brewed inside her. Nervousness prickled her stomach. Excitement fluttered like wings in her chest; dark, hot dread bubbled in the pit of her gut. Her eyes locked on one of the children in the drawing, peeking around the trunk of the tree with a devilish grin. Before, she’d thought the elfish children in the drawing were funny, interesting, harmless. Now they scared her.
Melissa had never talked about that illustration, whether it was for a specific story or if she’d just drawn it for fun. Nolin decided to ask her sometime, if she ever had a good day.
The bed creaked as she stood up on the mattress. The light of the full, bright moon blazed through the window and lit the room pale blue. Long shadows of the trees mingled with Nolin’s shadow on the floor and walls. Her shadow, the slight figure with the mass of wild hair, reminded her of the children in the drawing.
She ripped the drawing off the wall, jumped off the bed with a thud, and stuffed the drawing in her dresser drawer.
***
Night. The Shadow’s favorite time.
She waited by the edge of the woods as she did every night, watching for the lights in the house to go out. Nolin’s light went out first. The light in the living room where Paul stayed up to read burned late into the night. Eventually, it went out too.
When the house was finally dark, the Shadow inhaled the scent of the night, the aroma of their slumber on the air. She turned from the home and trekked deep into the woods. Her mind wandered, but her body knew the way through the subtle paths, around each exposed root and rock, every tuft of grass on the forest floor. She weaved around trees and slithered below fallen logs.
The massive black tree hid itself behind a cover of tight trees and mossy boulders, half-fallen, holding itself to the ground with five thick roots, leaving a spacious hollow underneath.
Home.
One of the few places in the world that felt anything like home. A place to hide, wait, and dream.
She crept between the roots into the soft bed of leaves and grass beneath the trunk to the bed of leaves below.
The Shadow inhaled and twined her fingers around a thin branch growing from a root of the ancient tree. She laid back into the leaves and inhaled the fresh, earthy air. Her hand tingled all the way up her arm and into her head, tickling her temples as if insects were crawling around her hairline.
Voices whispered. Thoughts that were not hers floated through her mind. There weren’t many left. She knew some of them. Others were unfamiliar, other goblins unknowingly living as humans. There seemed to be fewer and fewer each time. She hushed them out, sorting through the babble with her eyes closed.
On the edge of the babble were the familiar, jagged thoughts of Melissa, jolting like wounded animals. The Shadow pushed them out. They hurt. If she let them, those thoughts would poison her, stain her mind until she’d be nothing more than a heap of torment, just like Melissa.
No, she needed her mind sharp, clear. She forced Melissa’s ragged pain out and focused on the gentle trill of Nolin’s mind drifting off to sleep.
Nolin’s mind was imagination, hope edged sharply with worry, fear, and guilt that threatened to seep into the Shadow’s own heart. She hardened herself like ice. These were not her thoughts, not her feelings. She was an observer. She could feel what she chose. The Shadow forced her breathing to stay soft as she settled into Nolin’s mind. She had a message to send; one she’d sent many times before.
The Shadow thought of the woods, picturing the Claw Tree in her mind clearly. Nolin’s thoughts flared like a cat bristling in fear. Ripples of anxiety shot through the Shadow’s body. She breathed deeply. This wasn’t hers.
The Shadow’s thoughts raced, though she tried to slow them. Images flashed through her mind, propelled by the fear and anger of years past. Her brain burned behind her forehead.
She pressed images out of her mind until there was nothing but the Claw Tree. The message. Nolin knew the way. She has to, the Shadow thought. She wasn’t sure if the desperation she felt was hers or the feelings of another whose thoughts flowed through the tree.
Nolin’s mind would filter the images like tinted glass. The Shadow felt it along the edges of Nolin’s thoughts, her draw to the forest.
Soon, she would come.
***
She was a tree.
Nolin reached to the sky with branches instead of arms. The swishing material on her head was not hair, but leaves. The canopy of the woods twisted, swirling like the dark clouds above them. Grasses tickled her trunk. She forgot everything about herself: her name, her family, her past. She danced happily in the wind, her strong roots twining deep into the earth. She couldn’t remember feeling such peace. Being a tree felt natural, like she’d been born a seed and spent her whole life growing out of the ground.
When she remembered she was a person and not a tree, she suddenly stood on two legs. She reached with two arms instead of branches. Her spray of leaves had become her wild, curly hair. She closed her eyes with her arms out, willing herself to stretch taller and become one of the trees again.
Nearby, something rustled in a bush.
Twigs and tiny green leaves twitched violently. Whatever was hiding sounded terrified. Perhaps it was trapped. Nolin moved closer, instinctively crouching, making no sound. The bush shook. The creature inside it shrieked—an oddly human sound. Tension rippled through her muscles. The thing screeched again. Nolin reached out to the thrashing bush, her heart leaping with anticipation.
An icy hand fell on her shoulder.
With a gasp, she spun around to meet two liquid black eyes framed by a mane of wild dark hair, a red mouth set in a hard line.
Nolin’s eyes shot open. Roaring wind rushed over her, filling the bedroom with the scent of the woods. She scrambled to her knees to close the window above her bed.
The rustling sound again—a frightened squeak.
The sound was inside the house.
Her toes gripped the carpet as she padded toward the door. A sense of déjà vu overtook her as she reached to push it open, like reaching for the thrashing bush in her dream. Her shoulders tightened, waiting for the hand on her shoulder.
Her fingers brushed the cold wood. The door swung open.
Shadows danced in the hallway, flickering in the yellow glow of the night-light. The sound was louder now, coming from her mother’s room. Melissa was thrashing in her bed, Nolin realized.
“Melissa?” Nolin whispered. She crept to her mother’s door with the caution of a thief. “Melissa?”
Another sound inside the room. Whispering.
Was Melissa talking to herself? Nolin strained to hear what was going on behind the door. A low, menacing whisper, words Nolin didn’t understand.
“Melissa?” she called again, louder. She took a breath before turning the knob and pushing the door open.
The whispering stopped. Though the room was dark, Nolin could se
e her mother’s narrow form under the comforter, rolling back and forth. Melissa whimpered, a pitiful sound that turned Nolin’s blood to ice.
Her father wasn’t there. He’d warned Nolin to never wake Melissa from her dreams, to let them play out on their own. Nolin desperately wanted to run inside, shake her mother awake, and end whatever terrors gripped her sleep.
A soft whistle blew downstairs; her body coiled back like a compressed spring. She backed out of the room and realized someone had turned on a downstairs light. The whistle stopped. Someone coughed downstairs.
It was just her father and the teakettle. Nolin let out the breath she didn’t realize she held. Her raw nerves jangled as she forced her heartbeat to slow.
Nolin decided to leave her mother to her fitful sleep. She’d have to come out of it on her own, like her father said. Nolin felt both wide-awake and exhausted. Tea sounded nice. She went downstairs.
Her father poured hot water into a mug, steam rising in ghostly curls. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days.
Nolin stopped at the bottom of the stairs, not wanting to startle him. He hadn’t noticed her yet. “Dad?” she whispered. Humming to himself, he added a teabag to his mug.
“Dad!” she called in what she thought was her inside voice. It came out at a volume her teacher would have scolded her for if she’d used it in the classroom. Her father jerked, eyes wide and mouth gaping open. Then his face scrunched in pain as hot water sloshed out of the mug.
“Ow! Son of a...Nolin! Don’t do that!” he ran his hand under cold water in the sink. Nolin’s stomach twinged, the familiar feeling that she’d done something wrong.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Did it burn you badly?” she scampered to his side and peeked over the counter to see his hand in the sink.
“No, it’s fine,” he grunted. Nolin shrank back to dab the spilled water with a dishtowel. Paul sighed and turned off the faucet, shaking his hand dry. “You couldn’t sleep either, huh?”
Nolin nodded. She wiped his mug and paused to look at the picture of the Grand Canyon printed on it. “Did you really get this at the Grand Canyon?” she asked.
