The Changeover (12 page)

"Lolly," said Kate. "Dearest girl!" She started to say something but could not finish it. "Cry if you want to," she said at last. "I do, on and off, all the time."

Only a few hours earlier, Laura had hated Kate for spending a night looking for comfort with Chris Holly, but already her own reaction seemed like that of a child with limited understanding. Confronted by Jacko's great stillness, seeing a ghost of hope haunting the despair in Kate's pale face, all such judgements became insignificant. However, Laura did not cry. The feelings she longed to dissolve with tears were part of the power that might still save Jacko and must be hoarded and invested, not easily spent.

While Kate and Laura stared at Jacko, as if they were looking at some mysterious and tragic work of art, a doctor came in and began to check up on him, and at this moment Laura smelled the unforgettable smells of stale peppermint and decay. She felt her chest and throat heave violently, Kate looked at her anxiously, and she said quickly, "It's all right. He's going to have one of those fits — that's all."

As she spoke Jacko began to bend, but very weakly. She saw, as nobody else apparently did, Carmody Braque look out at her through Jacko's eyes, then grin and vanish.

"Don't you see?" she asked Kate despairingly. "Don't you see ... can't you smell him?"

"How did you know he was going to do that?" the doctor asked.

"I could smell he was going to," she said. "He begins to smell of peppermint."

"My daughter thinks he's possessed," Kate said lightly to the doctor.

"It's not a possession — it's a consumption," Laura said, repeating the diagnosis of Sorry Carlisle. "He smells of peppermint cough-mixture and of going rotten."

"That's strange," the doctor said to Kate. "I think he smells of peppermint at times myself. Sister says she can't smell it and Dr Roper says he doesn't notice anything either. Mrs Chant, I can't accept such a diagnosis, but there's not one thing we've done that's made him better, I must admit. His heart is under a lot of strain from something — some pathological condition no doubt — which I cannot recognize or prescribe any treatment for. The glucose and protein solution probably added to his capacity to last out, but that is all we've been able to do for him. When you've guessed at everything but the one thing, then maybe that one thing is the only possibility you're left with."

"Could I go and telephone?" Laura asked. "There's a telephone in that little waiting room, isn't there?"

She knew by the crackling voice on the end of the 'phone when she finally got through, that she was speaking to old Winter Carlisle.

"Winter ..." she said in a way that was familiar and yet somehow the only way she could claim any power over this old woman who had offered her a strange bargain. "It's Laura Chant. My brother is a lot worse."

"Remember there is a possible solution," said Winter's voice.

"I've got to ask you," Laura said, "and you'll tell me honestly — Sorry says you'll tell me honestly— is there no other way you can think of to save him except what you said last night?"

"I promise by the cup, the sword, the coin and the wand," Winter Carlisle said, her crackling voice committing ancient symbols to modern wires which delivered them through Laura's listening ear into her reasoning mind. Like her brother she was, for a moment, part of a machine.

"Is it hard?" she asked.

"Very hard, but not too hard," Mrs Carlisle replied. "It changes you for ever, but you are changing for ever anyway."

"Is it a bad change?" Laura asked.

"It can be, if people use it badly — but the same can be said of all human changes," Mrs Carlisle replied.

"There's some reason that's nothing to do with Jacko that you want me to do this," Laura said. "There is, isn't there?"

"There is," Winter agreed, "but I wouldn't have suggested it if it hadn't run along with your own necessity."

"Can we do it at once?" Laura asked her last question. "Now!"

There was a silence and then the old voice said, "I think we can — tonight — but you are not to eat anything all day. Tell me, Laura Chant, are you a virgin?"

"Yes," Laura said. "Does it matter?"

"It makes some differences," Winter replied. "It makes it easier to change if you aren't too tied to your present state. There are three of us to help you over, but you are the one that must remake yourself. Don't eat. Food will hold you back."

"I'm not hungry anyway," Laura said. "Is Sorry there?"

"In his study doorway, watching me," Winter replied. "Do you want to speak to him?"

"No. I'll wait and see him tonight," Laura said. "Just give him a wave from me."

She hung up, and was pleased to find she was not shaking or apparently nervous in any way. She turned to meet Chris Holly's curious gaze. He was sitting in one of the waiting room chairs reading a book by Graham Greene and looking at her.

"What are you up to?" he asked. "It sounds like a black mass or something."

"It's nothing like that," Laura said, though she thought it might be a little like one. "It's a private arrangement."

At that moment a shadow loomed in the doorway and a voice spoke.

"Can this he my woolly baa-lamb?" it said. "Oh, Laura — you've grown up."

Laura turned and found herself looking at a man she knew. Just for a fraction of a second he seemed totally familiar, but she could not remember his name or how she knew him, and then realized he was her dark, powerful father, rather heavier than he'd been when she saw him last, wearing clothes she had never seen him wear before, while his second wife, pretty Julia, quite noticeably pregnant, watched him lovingly from a tactful distance.

Before she went back to the Carlisles' that night Laura was allowed to visit Jacko once more.

"Talk to him!" the doctor had said. "Talk to him as much as you like."

So Laura bent over him and whispered, "Jacko — listen Jacko — it's me, Lolly! I'm going now, but I'll be back soon. Hold on a bit longer and I'll save you. Be a good boy, Jacko, and hold on."

She stared at him as if she were going to print his face in her internal sight, so that even when she was far away she would still have him directly before her. She held her expression quite still, but Kate was not deceived.

"Laura, don't suffer so much!" Kate exclaimed wretchedly.

"You don't make sense," Laura replied, "suffering yourself and then telling me not to."

"I'd bear it for you if I could," Kate cried. "In the end, I know I can put up with anything, but I want to protect you."

"Is that why you didn't tell me that Dad was coming?" Laura asked. Kate was silent.

"I wasn't sure he was coming," she said at last. "I didn't want you to be disappointed."

"Disappointed!" exclaimed Laura dangerously. "What's he doing here at all? He scarcely knows Jacko. He didn't even remember his last birthday."

"Lolly — shhh!" Kate said. "He'd have to be a hard-hearted man not to be affected, knowing his little son was so very ill. And Stephen was always affectionate, given half a chance. It was just his bad luck I wasn't content with affection."

"Well, I don't mind about him," Laura said. "I'm not too crazy about Julia because she's going to have a baby and it seems creepy when Jacko's so sick. It's as if he was being replaced even before he's gone."

"Is that why you won't stay with them!" Kate exclaimed.

"It's part of it," Laura answered, for she could not tell Kate about the Carlisle witches and the changeover that loomed ahead of her, the thought of which lay like a black, impenetrable fog, blurring the whole evening.

Her father insisted on driving her back to Garden- dale, and his car purred like an obedient beast through familiar streets made suddenly strange by being seen through the eyes of strangers.

"What a monstrosity!" exclaimed Julia as they went past the Gardendale Shopping Complex. "God! It's a form of pollution. Do they play piped music in it?"

"Only in the Mall," Laura said, thinking the piped music was not so very different from that playing over the car's stereo system. "It's not too bad."

"Sounds awful," said Julia. "Is that where Kate works? Poor Kate." The car moved on, and a few moments later drew up outside the Carlisles' gate.

"That's good timing," said Stephen, for Sorry, warned of her approach by some instinct of his own, was opening the gate.

"I'll get out here," Laura said hurriedly. "Then you won't have to go all the way down the drive."

She knew Julia and her father would be impressed by Janua Caeli, but she did not want them moving into the magic circle of its shadows and trees.

"Who's the boy?" asked Julia slyly.

"Sorensen Carlisle," Laura answered stiffly, and Julia and her father both burst out laughing, as if they now understood something that they had not understood before, and were not only amused but relieved by it.

"He's not a boyfriend. He's a prefect," Laura mumbled.

"I thought there must be some reason why you refused to stay with us," Stephen said. "I thought maybe it was me. Oh well, you're growing up, Baalamb."

"Thank you for bringing me," Laura said to him.

"Don't I get a kiss?" he asked so sadly that she surprised him, and herself too, with a kiss and a warm hug, and smelt his smell, wonderfully preserved in her memory, of tobacco and after-shave lotion.

Julia waved amiably, Laura waved back uncertainly, and then the big car drove off, leaving Laura to watch Sorry close the gate and to walk down the long, dark drive with him, feeling first in him, then in the air, and particularly in the old house ahead of them, a preparatory tension, a wild winding-up for some test that could only be guessed at.

"How's the little brother?" Sorry asked. "And how are things with your mother?"

Laura told him everything she could remember, anxious at being alone with him in the darkness under the trees when he was in such a witchy mood, but he said very little until they came on to the lighted terrace before the front door.

"Let's get back inside — you'll feel safer out of the shadows," he said.

"The worst shadows are in my head," Laura said, and certainly they followed her into the kitchen.

"You're probably a bit faint with hunger," Sorry remarked. "But that's part of the idea. I can't offer you anything to eat, though actually I wouldn't mind a slice of cake myself. That's a pretty dress, Chant. Did I tell you?"

"It's old now," Laura said, "but I still like it. I won't be able to wear it much longer. It's getting too small."

"Not so!" said Sorry. "It's you that's changing, not the dress. You're getting too big for it."

"I can't take credit," Laura said seriously. "It's just a thing that happens."

"Chant— " he exclaimed suddenly. "Cut and run! Go while you still can. Forget your brother, sprint away down the drive, open the gate and get out into real life again. Find some nice boy with a real heart, fall in love, have kids, grow old and die like a real human being, not an imaginary one." But as they stared at each other across the table his mother appeared in the kitchen doorway.

"Don't mind him, Laura," she said. "Sometimes I think all women are imaginary creatures, as Sorry chooses to put it. He doesn't mean that we're simply imagined, you know, but that our power flows out of the imagination, and that's the faculty that makes magicians of all of us. Witches just act upon it with such conviction that their dreams turn into reality. Come with me."

Sorry sighed as Laura moved over to Miryam, who laid a pale hand on her bare arm, gently but compel- lingly.

"Goodbye, Chant!" he said, as if she were going away for a long time. "Sometimes I've thought I might change over too, by going the other way. Sometimes I thought I might use you as a bridge so that I could get back to ..."

"You're forgetting, Sorensen," said his mother. "You've tried that and it didn't work for you. You've no real choice."

"Then I'm saying goodbye to the idea of it," Sorry replied.

"I'll see you on the other side, Chant — or a bit before that, really. I've got a part to play, too. I'll go and psyche myself up for it."

"Sorensen has so many missing pieces," Miryam murmured as she led Laura upstairs, speaking of Sorry as if he were a jigsaw puzzle. "We don't despair that he may remake himself, but for now you are our only concern... you and your changeover. The first part is easy and even pleasant. We'll get rid of all the world that we can."

Laura had a bath, lit by candles as thick as her wrist. In one corner on an iron tray stood a little brazier made in the shape of a black cat. The cat's eyes glowed red and the slow smoke rising from its open mouth smelt not so much sweet as herbal, a little like new-mown hay, but richer and somehow very confusing. In the soft, uncertain light, the bath sometimes seemed to be a pool of water set among slender trees with fiery leaves. The walls of the room came and went, mostly close and damp with steam, but at other times entirely vanishing, giving her unexpected views of plains of grass where wild horses grazed, or yellow sand and red volcanic rocks where lions prowled and yawned, or green jungles haunted by birds of paradise and jaguars. Once she saw a long curve of coastline where fires burned and painted men struggled in the sand, and again from a great height she thought she looked dreamily down on a road like a blue-black weal struck across a green land, crawling with cars like coloured flies.

Miryam helped her out of the water, shaking a few drops from a nuggety little bottle of thick, green glass and rubbing them in her hair. The candles smoked and flared.

"Did the world creep around you? Did it come and go?" she asked in a tense voice.

"Everything kept changing," Laura said, looking at the bathmat under her feet, and felt Miryam relax once more.

"For tonight, this room is a crossways of many lines of space and time," Miryam murmured. "They cross in all of us all the time, these lines, but only the witches and similar people can catch fish on them — strange fish sometimes. Outside, the moon is rising higher— a full moon. You couldn't have chosen a better night, really. I am the Preparer," Miryam went on in a more formal voice, "Sorensen is the Gatekeeper, and Winter will be the Concluder."

She hung chains of silver around Laura's neck and then dropped over her wet head a white, silky shift laced across the breast so that the chains showed beneath it. Laura looked down and thought she was standing on grass and then that she was standing in sand. There were words written upside down in the sand and she turned her head trying to read them, tam htab she read between her feet. The surrender of her will to the scent and the steam and the changing proportions of things made her feel a little light-headed. Miryam brought her a cup that appeared at first to be made of black glass, though its inner surface was shot with dark crimson and kingfisher blue, so she wondered if it was made of black opal or some other semi-precious stone. It was quite empty but Miryam filled it from a tall jug.

"What is it?" Laura asked, for the drink was hot and smelled of several familiar things all at once.

"It's mulled wine," Miryam said. "Heating it destroys the alcohol, you know. You won't get tipsy. Believe me, you'll need all your wits and all your will." She put it on the little table beside them. "Give me your hand!" Laura did as she was told, then tried to take it back again, but Miryam, as quickly and efficiently as a good nurse, pricked the top of her finger with a silver pin and held it over the cup so that a dark drop of blood fell and was lost in the dark wine.

"Ouch!" said Laura indignantly. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Better not to know, I think," Miryam said smiling, watching Laura suck her finger. "Do you suppose the Sleeping Beauty had a moment to suck her finger after she pricked it? And what dreams did she have because of it? She'd never pricked her finger before, so perhaps that was the first time she'd tasted her own blood. As for you, you must travel back into yourself Laura. Don't worry! It's only a little nature magic ... a sprinkle of cinnamon, an orange stuck with cloves, the blood of grapes, the juice of a girl... it will just start you on your journey. So drink it slowly, and make yourself into a woman of the moon."

Laura drank the wine, but it was Miryam's suggestions that filled her head, shooting her full of crimson and kingfisher blue. She thought her drop of blood was trying to find its way back to its proper place and that she must follow it. At the same time, as if hands had been softly but forcibly clapped together behind her eyes, she felt a gentle concussion in her head. Then something like an insistent wind parted the silken curtains of her thoughts and feelings, moved through them, and let them fall together once more and, though she could not name the intruding presence, it had a name and might even have been recognized if she had been expecting it.

"Are you sure it's only mulled wine and a drop of blood?" she asked anxiously.

"Were you touched?" asked Miryam looking up, still smiling but very alert. "It's because you are a halfway girl. It's not the wine so much as something in you that recognizes the signs we are making out here, and signals back. Look at yourself. You could almost be one of us already."

She turned Laura slowly so that she looked into the watery depths of the looking-glass where she saw herself, shadowed and delicate, her wrists and ankles as slender as if she had hollow bird bones and could rise up against gravity, her woolly hair a dark halo, glittering as if touched by gold dust, her eyes like black holes burnt into a smooth, olive face. She licked her lips and would not have been too surprised to see a serpent's tongue flicker between them, but it was her own tongue, surprising because it showed she was solid all the way through and not just a phantom created by Miryam and the night.

"Not that it will be easy for you," Miryam continued. "But for the moment— look— it's a wonderful, mysterious thing to be a girl."

And, looking at her reflection, Laura thought this might be true.

"They don't teach us that in social education," she said, with a slanting smile at her reflection which smiled back obediently.

"Witches came before the simplest societies," Miryam answered, "back in the time when people slept outside under the moon. And the moon crept into their sleeping thoughts and polarized their dreams. You're not a witch yet — only a halfway house, but at this moment the room will accommodate your wish."

Across the space of the city, back through time into the morning, Laura's wish showed her Jacko. He swam in a soft, hazy gap connected with wires and tubes to the body of the hospital. But from this room, in this company, she could see, spreading through him like a blight, the progress of Carmody Braque's possession. It was as if a line of bruises was inching forward across Jacko, discolouring him as it went. She could see how soon and how completely he could be devoured by blackness. Laura looked at Jacko with incoherent love, even as she clenched her teeth at the thought of Carmody Braque.

"No!" said Miryam urgently and made a move that broke the connection. "If he chose this moment to visit your brother, Carmody Braque might become aware of you, and of your plans. It is time for you to begin. We will marry you, if we can, to some sleeping aspect of yourself and you must wake it. Your journey is inward, but will seem outward. I'll give you these— we call them the coins." The discs she placed in Laura's hand were of stone, not metal, worn smooth and thin, engraved with words that Laura could not read.