Changeling (5 page)

I picked up the flask and sniffed gingerly. The smell that had led me to the kazna peri's clearing curled around my nose—toasty, sharp, exciting. My mouth watered, and I lifted the flask to my lips.

“You don't want to do that,” said the kazna peri around a mouthful of pigeon feathers.

“Why not?”

The kazna peri swallowed. “Drink it now, you won't have it when you want it. And why I'm telling you this instead of letting you waste it, I don't know. I must be getting soft in my old age. New York's not what it used to be, either. In the old days,” it went on wistfully, “my treasure was molten gold, distilled from sunbeams. But you can't get decent sunbeams any more: too much soot.” It sighed and spat out a wing bone. “You can go away now.”

It chomped into the pigeon again, getting feathers and blood and stuff all over its beard.

“Thank you,” I said respectfully, and ran.

CHAPTER 4

 
 
 
I hid the kazna peri's stone flask among the magazines in the window seat. At first, I kept taking it out and shaking it so I could hear the keep-awake sloshing inside, then unstoppering it and sniffing. After a few days, the potion didn't smell as good as it had at first—not bad, exactly, but kind of metallic. There wasn't anybody I could ask whether it could go rotten except the kazna peri, and I wasn't about to do that. So I tried not to think about it.

Instead, I thought about the Solstice Dance, and I thought about how the other mortal changelings got to attend it and I didn't. I thought about how when I'd complained to Astris about how hard it was to be the only mortal around, all she'd said was that I should be glad I was special. And I thought about the “special” Park changelings who had come before me, the ones she'd had such bad luck with.

With all these questions buzzing around in my head, I hardly dared to talk to Astris for fear I'd blurt out the wrong thing. I spent more and more time away from the Castle, hanging out at the Dairy and sitting for hours in Willow Bay with my feet in the Lake. My daily lessons in Folk lore were not as much fun as they used to be.

“Neef, what's wrong?” Astris asked me one morning when things had gone worse than usual.

“Wrong?” I asked, my heart thudding uncomfortably. “I can only remember two ways of outwitting a piskie, that's all. Why do I need to learn three ways anyway? Isn't one enough?”

Astris's whiskers were severe. “Not if the moon's full. And it's not just that. You left three of the most important storm spirits off this list of destructive nature spirits. I haven't seen you this distracted since you were very small.” She fixed me with her ruby eyes, her whiskers quivering with worry. “Whatever's on your mind, pet, you can tell me.”

When I was little, I learned that when I cried, it made the Folk fall over laughing, even Astris. Needless to say, I didn't cry much. Lately, however, I'd been choking up over nothing. Mortified, I got up and went to the kitchen window so I could dry my tears and come up with a story that would answer Astris's question and get me out of the Castle.

“I've got a date with Puck and Ariel,” I said. “They're going to race around the earth. I'm supposed to judge who gets back to the mulberry tree first. They're waiting for me. That's why I'm distracted.”

I didn't really expect Astris to fall for this. Maybe she didn't. Maybe her whiskers were suspicious, but I didn't look at them. I just stood there with my back to her until she said, “Very well, Neef. Go ahead and meet your friends. But I'll expect you to spend the evening on your piskie lore and reviewing the storm spirits as well as the six signs of a demon and the short list of traditional bogeymen. You need to know these things.”

“I know, Astris,” I said. “Thanks.” And I pelted out of the kitchen and across the courtyard as if the Wild Hunt was on my heels. Then I climbed the mulberry tree and stayed there the rest of the day, feeling awful.

After that, Astris pretty much handed over my education to the Pooka. I thought this would be better. He never made me memorize lists or write essays comparing and contrasting the protective spirits from three different Folk lore traditions. He was more into the fun stuff, like catching leprechauns and tricking demons. But he wasn't nearly as patient as Astris, plus I pitched so many fits at him that he threatened to take back his tail hair.

All in all, it was a good thing that the Solstice was getting nearer. The days grew gradually longer and the Folk grew busier and more excited—the way, I realized, they always did twice each year. The water nymphs went on and on about the fancy gowns they were making out of waterweed and leaves. The leprechauns were snowed under with orders for dancing shoes. The clincher was when I saw Folk lined up outside Iolanthe's door, waiting for dancing lessons. One evening I even saw her twirling with an ogre in sweatpants, dodging his clawed feet and yelling, “Lightly, I said. Trip
lightly
.”

When I asked them what was doing, they all pretended they were too busy to talk to me.

Finally it was the day before the Solstice. I still didn't know how Astris put me to sleep every year, and I wasn't completely sure the keep-awake hadn't gone bad. Astris had exploded when I knocked her bowl of cookie dough onto her newly scrubbed floor and threw me out of the Castle until bedtime. I was sitting on the rock overlooking the Turtle Pond, trying to read a rain-swollen copy of a book I'd found under a bush.

It was about all these weird kids who get to be friends because the popular kids hate them, which kind of reminded me of me and the Folk, only without any other changelings to make friends with.

The book stopped suddenly, in the middle of a sentence, leaving all the weird kids' problems unsolved.

I threw the book into the pond, propped my chin on my hands, and watched the sunset gild the windows of the Metropolitan Museum across the meadow. My eye caught a flutter of scarlet crossing Central Park Central toward me.
Oh
, I said to myself.
There's the sandman
.

And then I got it.

The sandman isn't Park Folk. He lives in the City, where his job is to go out into the mortal world every night to put little children to sleep. He and Astris were old friends, and he always visited at Solstice. Being a mortal child, I pretty much fell asleep as soon as I said hello to him and never woke up until morning. I couldn't believe I hadn't figured it out sooner.

There was no time to waste. I jumped up and tore across the courtyard into the Castle and up the spiral stair to my room, where I dug the flask of keep-awake out of the window seat.

The kazna peri's keep-awake potion was cold and oily and tasted like safety pins and old socks. It was all I could do not to spit it out, but I managed to swallow.

The potion hit my stomach like a lighted candle. One minute, I was an ordinary changeling. The next, I was Super Changeling, smarter than your average Genius and very, very, very wide awake.

Just in time, too. Astris was calling me. “Neef. Neef! The sandman's here. Come down and say hello.”

I was tempted to yell down to her that I so didn't care and see what happened next. But now was not the time to start acting weirder than usual. So I yelled, “Coming!” instead.

The next part was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I felt like I could cartwheel all the way down the stairs and into the kitchen, but I didn't want to make Astris suspicious.
One step at a time,
I told myself.
Don't rush
.

“What's wrong with you?” Astris said when she saw me dragging my feet from step to step. “You look like you're about to fall over.”

I thought fast. Really fast. “Tag with the leshii,” I said. “This afternoon. He turns himself into a wolf. I'm pooped.”

Astris gave me a doubtful look. “You'd better go straight to bed, then. But say hello to the sandman first.”

The sandman spread his scarlet cloak with both arms, unveiling baggy turquoise pants and a gold shirt. The colors made my eyes hurt.

He smiled at me sleepily. “Happy Solstice, Neef.”

With the keep-awake fizzing in my head, it took all my self-control to say, “Happy Solstice to you, Sandman,” and allow him to fold the scarlet cloak around me like a tent.

Dream sand settled into my eyes and mouth. I yawned and rubbed my eyes. With that much dream sand around, you just have to yawn, keep-awake or no keep-awake. It wasn't hard to stumble up the stairs, fall on my bed, and curl up with my eyes closed. What
was
hard was keeping them closed and breathing evenly when Astris jumped up on the bed to make sure I was really asleep.

I felt her whiskers twitch across my nose. I couldn't help giving a little snort, but I might have done that even if I had been sleeping.

“Out like a light,” she said. “I thought I smelled coffee on her breath, but I must have been imagining it.”

“Coffee?” The sandman sounded shocked. “Not our little Neef!”

“Not so little anymore,” Astris said. “She's growing up, Morpheus. I know the signs. Soon she's going to do something she shouldn't, and things will get ugly.”

“Well, it hasn't happened yet,” the sandman said cheerfully. “Come on, Astris. I can hear the trees tuning up. We don't want to be late.”

Just to make sure they were really gone, I stayed on the bed with my eyes closed, twitching as the keep-awake threw off the dream sand, listening to the fairy music drifting through my open window, counting as slowly as I could to two hundred.

At about seventy-five, the music pulled me out of bed and over to the nearest window.

With dusk blue among the trees, the dance was just getting started. Folk of all shapes and sizes were dancing on the paths, on the rocks, even up in the sky, where tiny winged fairies and peris floated like dandelion fluff among the Oriental dragons and bright-winged garudas. Fairy lights glittered off polished tusks and scales and horns and jewels. I saw a pair of squirrels prance past, their tails brushed to fluffy boas. A huge black kelpie flashed its gilded hooves. Red Cap's red cap was shiny with fresh blood, and the swan maidens from Lincoln Center wore their swan skins over their white shoulders like feathery cloaks.

The music came from everywhere: fiddles and pipes and quick-beating drums. I leaned out my window so far I almost fell out. I couldn't wait to be down there with the rest of them, do-si-doing with dwarves, cavorting with kobolds, pirouetting with piskies, waltzing with werebears. Maybe—my heart beat faster—maybe even capering with changelings.

I skinned out of my jeans and T-shirt and into my only dress. It was green spidersilk with a floaty skirt and leaves and flowers woven into it, and I'd found it a few days earlier, laid out on a bench in the Shakespeare Garden. I had an idea that the moss woman must have left it for me because of not being able to grant my real wish. It smelled a little of damp leaf mold, but it was the prettiest thing I'd ever worn in my life.

Downstairs, I paused to check myself out in the hall mirror. My hair was its usual explosion of frizzy curls, I was definitely round in the middle, and my legs and feet were not as clean as Astris would have liked. But the spidersilk dress turned me into a woodsy Park fairy.

I ran out into the courtyard. The Shakespeare fairies were dancing gavottes in lace ruffs and doublets and stiff, drum-shaped skirts. Puck winked at me, then whirled away. Had he recognized me, or was he just being Puck? Who cared? I was going to dance in Central Park Central, and nothing was going to stop me.

I edged past the revelers and made it down the steps to the foot of the cliff. I was almost past the Turtle Pond when something caught my leg and hung on tight. Looking down, I saw the Water Rat, almost unrecognizable himself in a black dinner jacket and a red bow tie.

“What are you doing, Mr. Rat?”

“What are
you
doing?”

“Joining the dance,” I said. “Or I will be, if you'll just let go.”

The Water Rat tightened his grip. “Oh, you don't want to do that, youngster. Central Park Central's full of tourists at Midsummer. Giants. Wyverns. Vampires. Much better to observe from a distance. I understand there's an excellent view from the Castle. Shall I take you up?”

“No way,” I said. “This is my first Solstice, and I want to dance.”

“Oh, I'm sure you wouldn't like that at all.”

I was tempted to kick the Water Rat away, but I wasn't that crazy, quite. “Why not?”

“You are a mortal,” he said carefully. “Mortals are delicate, and the Folk get wild as the night wears on. I didn't like to mention it before, but unsupervised mortals can dance themselves to death at a Solstice Dance. You wouldn't want that to happen, would you? Think how upset Astris would be.”