The Changeling

by Victor Lavalle

  Nothing down the hill but that copse of trees. The night cloaked them in shadows. Only the tops of the trees were vivid, truly visible. Wind off the East River caused the trees to thrash and bend. The trees stood fifty feet tall. Only after watching them directly did he realize the trees were swaying not with the wind but against it. Apollo trembled, and a feeling of disgust flooded his belly. He felt a sudden conviction that someone, something, hid among those trees and was watching him.

  “Did you do what I asked?” Kinder Garten said. “Do I get my Gretta back? My Grace? Where is my family? You were supposed to bring them to me.”

  Apollo walked away from the man in the cage, moving along the line of the TB Pavilion, back toward the library. In fact, he started running. As he moved, he kept throwing glances back toward the trees.

  “I made you a fair offer, Apollo!” Kinder Garten shouted. “This is on your head, not mine!”

  Then the explosions began.

  THE DOCTOR’S COTTAGE tore apart. A moment later two more explosions ripped through the Nurses’ Residence. The sounds of destruction could be heard as far off as Rikers Island, waking the men in the units closer to the northern end of the prison. In the morning they’d swear—to fellow prisoners and guards—that they’d heard bombs on the East River. No one believed them.

  Apollo hardly believed it, and he was right there running along the path back to the courtyard. How had William Wheeler—no, Apollo stopped himself—that wasn’t his name. How had Kinder Garten called in artillery fire? It wasn’t possible. But tell that to the buildings that had been torn to tinder, the ground that quaked beneath Apollo’s feet.

  Apollo heard another thunderous round go off, throaty as cannon fire, but this time he would’ve described it less as an explosion than as a roar. He turned back once, looking over his shoulder quickly, toward the copse of trees. Something passed overhead in the night sky—he could barely discern the size and shape. A missile? A bomb? A military drone? Then there was another explosion. In the library.

  This one brought the roof down.

  No screaming. No shouting. No crying. No screaming.

  Apollo Kagwa ran alongside the Doctor’s Cottage. The bomb had obliterated the dining table where he and Gayl ate macaroni and cheese twenty minutes ago. He sped toward the library. He didn’t understand that he was listening for the screams of children and women until he didn’t hear them. At least if he heard them, it would mean some of them were still alive.

  He reached the library. The explosion had toppled the roof and cracked it in half, but it created an opening in an adjacent wall large enough for him to stoop and step through. He didn’t want to. He wished, for just a moment, there was an adult present. Lacking one of those, he would have to do. He crouched now and stepped into the library. Broken glass scattered across the ground like glitter, brick dust floated in the air, a red mist.

  A missile had hit the library, but more than half the books remained neatly on the shelves. Their spines were spattered with dirt and glass, but otherwise they seemed fine. The other books littered the floor. Among them Apollo found the first of the dead.

  A pair of legs stuck out from beneath one half of the fallen ceiling. They were slim but long, clearly an adult and not a child.

  “Who killed my sister?” a voice asked, hardly a whisper.

  Apollo fell into a crouch as if the sky were going to fall in. Again. He turned and looked up to see Cal, shocked and disheveled. Her sweater hung half off one shoulder, her hair thrown up into spines of fright.

  “I killed my sister,” she said to herself. She swayed on her feet. Maybe she’d been more injured than she looked.

  “She wouldn’t be dead if I hadn’t called her back,” Cal said.

  “That’s Gretta?” Apollo said.

  Now, out past the courtyard, a new sound. Kinder Garten. Calling out in a high-pitched yelp. Maybe they were words, but at this distance it was hard to tell. The distance was the issue though. Kinder Garten didn’t sound far off, like when he’d been in the TB Pavilion. He sounded much closer. As if he’d been freed.

  Cal looked to Apollo and brought three fingers to her lips. Urging him to silence, to calm. Maybe she could see he’d been on the verge of spinning into panic.

  Now Apollo recognized—understood—that besides Gretta’s there were no bodies on the ground. No other victims he could see. No dead children. No other dead women. Cal slapped his elbow sharply, then pointed to the hole in the wall. They slipped through and back out to the courtyard. Now Apollo found the courtyard full.

  Women and children filed out of the Nurses’ Residence with packs on their backs, bags in their hands, all but the youngest children carrying something. The youngest children were all being carried. More astoundingly, even the infants were silent. Had they all survived? They couldn’t have. The population seemed slightly reduced, though Apollo couldn’t say by how much. They moved in two columns. Their postures spoke of exhaustion and fear, but above all there remained great order. They fled in formation. A Special Forces team would’ve admired this level of discipline.

  “I’m not a bad man!” Kinder Garten called out.

  Apollo turned back, some natural reaction, the desire to shout back, to fight back, but Cal slapped him, hard, on the side of his face. He turned to her, and her face had set into a mask of dispassionate discipline. One hand had slipped into the pocket of her sweater. A knife in there? A gun? Apollo believed—knew—that if he’d spoken just then, given away their position, Cal would’ve taken that weapon out of her pocket and killed him. Better that than sacrifice all their lives. He turned away from Kinder Garten’s voice and followed the others once again.

  “Just let me explain myself!”

  The Wise Ones threaded through the woods. They passed the coal storage house, moved between the foundry and the chapel. Where Apollo had seen only dense underbrush and hundred-foot trees, the Wise Ones showed him a path through the shadows. They led him, and he followed. They passed the morgue and reached the old gantry crane and ferry slip. When this island had been in operation, this was where the ferry would dock to unload or take on patients and staff.

  “We’re not going to swim,” Apollo whispered. No one answered him.

  The women and children gathered. This was the first time he’d seen the whole community out like this. They looked too vulnerable here, all exposed. Now he could count them. Nineteen women and eleven kids. That was it.

  Apollo scanned for Gayl and found her quickly. She lay in her mother’s arms, half asleep, nuzzling against her mother’s neck. Her older brother stood at his mother’s side but leaned against her hip, sleeping on his feet.

  New destruction in the courtyard. More explosions, many of the old buildings back there were turning to rubble. These were the sounds of battle, thunder of war. In a way this was good. If Kinder Garten remained occupied back there, it meant he hadn’t realized the Wise Ones were here, at the ferry slip.

  Despite their training, a faint buzz had risen in the crowd. Busy checking bags and soothing children, who were, understandably, losing composure. A child will whine for a snack even as the world is exploding. But what could they do? Nowhere else to go. They had to wait here at the pier.

  “I alone can fix this!”

  Wheeler’s voice caused everyone to go silent again. Even the infants stopped wriggling. Mostly. Now everyone watched the tree line. Sudden understanding: the destruction of buildings had ended, the task complete. Had it really taken so little time?

  What now?

  Then, behind them, a whisper played across the water.

  A Pilgrim 40 Pilothouse Trawler appeared out of the darkness. One of the Wise Ones, a guard in her cloak, stood at the helm. The ship eased to the dock.

  THE CHILDREN WERE brought on board first, but it was the older kids who were at the head of the line, seven- and eight-year-olds pulled up by three guards. The infants came next. The mothers on the pier handed their infants to the seven- and eight-year-olds, who im
mediately took each one to the forward master cabin, the most protected part of the ship. After the children had all gone below, the women tossed in their bags and supplies, one woman to the next, like sandbags. Last the women boarded. Two guards pulled each woman on, and in eight minutes, no more than that, the Wise Ones were ready to go.

  Almost.

  Apollo, Cal, and her twin imperial guards remained on the dock.

  The wind picked up across the water, and the trees near the water’s edge snapped and flapped. Apollo turned toward the tree line, squinted and scanned. For a moment he thought he saw a silhouette of a man…but a man of an unimaginable size. More likely it was only an oddly shaped hill caught by the moonlight and animated by Apollo’s fear. It had to be that.

  “People call us witches,” Cal said quickly. She grabbed Apollo’s hand. “But maybe what they’re really saying is that we were women who did things that seemed impossible. You remember those old stories about mothers who could lift cars when their kids were trapped underneath? I think of it like that. When you have to save the one you love, you will become someone else, something else. You will transform. The only real magic is the things we’ll do for the ones we love.

  “One night I watched Emma out on the water, in her creek boat, paddling across the river, going back out to try and find her son, and I’m telling you, out on the water, that woman? She glowed.”

  Now Cal pulled Apollo backward, toward the trawler. The twins followed alongside. They gripped their maces so tightly, the backs of their hands were red. Apollo put his arms up to be helped onto the trawler, but the guards didn’t pull him in.

  “I’m sorry, Apollo,” Cal said. “You’re not taking this trip. My people are going east. You’re not going with them.” She pointed past the dock to the rocky shoreline fifty yards away, where something small had been tethered.

  “That’s our creek boat,” Cal said. “I’m going to help you get to it.” She gestured for him to shimmy alongside a ledge of dirt; from there he’d be at the rocks that sloped down toward the water.

  Cal turned to her imperial guards. “You two get on board now,” she said.

  Neither woman moved. They stared down at her, their expressions a mask of professional cool but their eyes betrayed fear. “We’re committed to you, Cal. Until the end.”

  Cal touched both women’s faces gently. Then she squeezed their chins so tightly both women winced.

  “This is not Sparta and I don’t give one flying fuck about glory. Every day we stay alive is a day we beat our enemies.” She let go of their chins. “I never met two stronger, smarter women than you. Who’s going to need that strength, me or them?” She pointed toward the trawler where the other guards were making ready to depart.

  The twins dropped their heads.

  Then Cal went on her tiptoes and gave each woman a kiss on the cheek.

  As the pair boarded, Cal walked to the edge of the dock. The adults and a few of the oldest children appeared at the windows of the cabins. The moon highlighted Cal’s tears, the tears of all the Wise Ones on board. She clapped one hand over her mouth to reassert her self-control.

  The trawler’s engine played so faintly, it could hardly be heard over the whipping winds. The boat coasted backward, and the fenders bobbled against the dock, and in a moment the trawler drifted off. Then the engine burbled louder, and the trawler pulled away. Apollo read the ship’s name painted on the stern.

  Merricat.

  He shivered with gratitude, bone-deep relief, that they’d made it off the island. If nothing else it meant Kinder Garten’s threats were at least half empty.

  Cal turned to Apollo and clapped him out of his trance. “Are you still standing there?” she asked. “I thought I told you to get down there.”

  “Why didn’t you go?” he asked. “I hope you didn’t stay for me.”

  “Oh, please,” she said. “Get over yourself.” She seemed chipper when she said this.

  “Then why?” Apollo asked.

  “Someone had to stay here and keep them busy,” Cal explained. “Until they can get some distance.” She put a hand on his shoulder and urged him to move.

  He still looked confused. “But once you’re on the water, why would it matter?”

  Cal looked back to the trees once again.

  “The big one can swim,” she said.

  THEY MOVED QUICKLY but carefully along the earthen ledge, and when they reached the rocks, they scrambled down. As they descended, they saw less and less of the Merricat. The farther the trawler moved, the more cheerful Cal became. They weren’t far from the creek boat, but still high enough that they could see the trees. And then, as casual as you please, Kinder Garten walked out from the shadows. Head to foot he was covered in brick dust. Dust in his hair and all over his clothes. His skin looked speckled and nearly red. He looked like a demon. He walked out on the ferry slip and scanned the water.

  Cal crouched and Apollo crouched, too, but he wasn’t used to the terrain so he fell backward, down the sloping rocks, coming to a stop at the water’s edge. Cal scrambled after him.

  “Apollo?” Kinder Garten called. “Could that be you? Don’t tell me the bitches left you behind!”

  No talking now. Cal shoved Apollo toward the creek boat. The craft was olive green, making it nearly invisible on the dark water. Cal gestured toward the boat and lifted a black aluminum paddle. He reached for it, but she swatted his hand away. She bent low and balanced the paddle half on the rocky ledge and half on the creek boat. She patted his ass, then gestured for him to sit on the paddle. When he did, she waved her hand for him to scoot himself into the little boat.

  “Poor Apollo!” Kinder Garten howled. “Someone’s always abandoning you.”

  From the sound of his voice, Kinder Garten had stalked off in the opposite direction to try and find him, the sound of Apollo’s stumbling hard to trace under the echoing sky.

  Apollo flopped into the creek boat. The small craft lifted four inches out of the water, enough to make Apollo fear it would capsize.

  Cal brought her hand down on the edge of the boat and righted it. She leaned close. “I have to confess,” she whispered. “I have to say this before you go.”

  “Come with me,” Apollo said, grasping the sides of the creek boat as he tried to calm himself. “This thing is small, but we could try to fit.”

  Kinder Garten appeared at the top of the slope. He scanned the water from the rocks. He pointed. “There!” he shouted. “There!”

  He sounded like a master siccing his hound on the prey. Both Cal and Apollo looked up at the man on the rocks. Farther behind him came that thunderous sound, a colossal tearing noise.

  “No,” Cal whispered.

  The sky filled with something, it looked as large as a low flying airplane. Too big to be a man-made missile. It was a tree, going end over end through the air, out across the water.

  A fucking tree.

  “No,” Cal begged.

  The darkness hid the impact, but there was a tremendous splash. Had the boat been hit? Faintly they heard the chug of the boat’s engine.

  Kinder Garten clapped softly, pointed. “Again! There!”

  Cal turned and reached into her sweater pocket. When her hand appeared, it held a gun, a Ruger LCR-22. She aimed it at Kinder Garten. She shot him. Even though they were outside, despite the small caliber of the gun, Apollo’s eyes went out of focus from the terrific blast, the gun’s report. He watched Cal but she seemed to work in slow time. The creek boat bobbled in the water, and Apollo felt his stomach seize as if he would throw up. She fired four times, and on the third pull she grazed him. Kinder Garten didn’t scream. He gurgled and fell back and disappeared from view. Apollo’s ear rattled and throbbed for another moment. He’d been expecting to see another tree fly out overhead, but that didn’t happen. Cal’s gunfire had changed the plan. She’d protected her people again.

  “You know the myth of Callisto?” she asked. “She was a nymph. She had a child by Zeus, and for thi
s she was punished by his wife Hera. Callisto was turned into a bear. Zeus suffered no consequences, of course. The baby grew up to be a great hunter, Arcas. One day Callisto saw Arcas in the woods, and recognizing her child, she wanted to hug him, to speak with him. But all Arcas saw was a great bear attacking. He was about to shoot her with an arrow when Zeus saved them both and turned them into constellations, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. I always saw this as a happy end, as happy as those Greek stories ever get. Callisto got to spend eternity there in the heavens with her child. She could always see him. She would always know he was safe.”

  Cal looked out at the water then caught Apollo’s eyes.

  “I’m tired, and I want to see my little boy again.”

  She handed Apollo the paddle, sat on her butt, and with two feet she pushed him away from the rocks.

  “You have to go to your son’s grave,” Cal said. “You have to see it for yourself so you have no doubts. You won’t be any use to Emma otherwise. Then you have to find your wife.” She trailed off, reached into the other pocket of her sweater, bullet shells gleaming in the moonlight.

  “How am I going to track her down?” Apollo asked.

  “Emma swore Brian was alive. She knew it, felt it. The last time I saw her, she said she’d finally narrowed it down.”

  “To what?” Apollo whispered.

  Cal reloaded her pistol. “She said Brian is in the forest. I’ve thought about that. There’s only one forest in all of New York City.”

  Apollo used the paddle to push off. When he’d drifted backward a few yards, he turned the boat in the water with the paddle. He looked back to see Cal climbing back up the rocks.

  “What are you going to do, Cal?” he called.

  She looked out at him. She appeared calm. “I’m going to show them my claws,” she said. Soon she disappeared over the ridge.

  “Gun!” Kinder Garten shouted. “Get her gun!”