The Changeling (6 page)

Thursday, of course, was Brownie afternoon. Safely home in bed, Martha was congratulating herself on the fact that even chicken pox had its good points, when Cath came home with a horrifying story. It seemed that Mrs. Wonburg, leading her troop on a hike to Onowora Park, had stepped on a pork chop and been struck above the left ear by a can of purple paint. Fortunately the can hadn’t been large, but the enamel was “easy-spreading” and “fast-drying.” Mrs. Wonburg was undoubtedly livid.

Martha immediately cast suspicion on herself by bursting into tears, and soon afterwards the can of paint was traced to the Abbotts through Tom’s newly purple bicycle. And so Martha—who refused to implicate Ivy, even though, or maybe because the Abbotts were so sure that Ivy was largely to blame—was permanently expelled from the Brownies.

P
AINTING MRS. WONBURG
put an end to the search for the Monster of Lake Onowora. But he was not forgotten. Martha and Ivy spoke of him often, and once or twice they left a small sacrificial offering from the Abbotts’ freezer for him on the bank of the lake, near the spot where they had first seen his blurry footprints. But they no longer wanted to catch him or even to expose his presence to the rest of the world. It was really more exciting to keep him as a secret; and besides, Martha felt that letting him keep his freedom was the least that she could do for him. She owed him that much.

The first few days after the painting incident were very bad for Martha, while the disgrace of being expelled from Brownies hung heavy over her head. The whole family, except Tom who laughed and laughed, pelted her with questions heavy with bewilderment, concern, indignation and frustration.

“Why, in the name of sanity, would you do such a thing? Not to mention, how?”

“Yeah, Marty,” Tom said under his breath. “How’d you do it? Show me how someday.”

“What I can’t understand,” Cath said, “is how someone who almost flunked kindergarten because she couldn’t learn to tie her own shoes, just two years later could build such a complicated rope snare. There’s more to it than you’re telling.”

But because she was absolutely determined not to tell on Ivy, Martha didn’t dare to offer any explanation at all. She never had been able to convince anybody with an outright lie, so her only defense was to fall back on her reputation as a crybaby. Her answer to every question was tears.

At least it worked. In the face of tears, the Abbotts, none of whom had cried for years and years, felt frustrated and helpless. Then they, being such busy people and having so many other pressing things to take care of, soon forgot about the purple paint problem.

But glad as she was to not be a Brownie, Martha knew, even then, that the Abbotts really meant well when they had enrolled her in the troop. In fact, they were always going out of their way to do something of the sort for her, because everyone was so certain that something needed to be done. The problem was knowing just what to do. With Cath it had been easy. Cath always knew exactly what she wanted, as well as how to get it, and the things she wanted were things the other Abbotts understood, like pretty clothes and a rumpus room in the basement where she could entertain her friends.

But with Martha, no one was ever sure what she wanted, particularly Martha herself. Like gardening. When she was practically a baby, someone, probably Grandmother Abbott, had decided that Martha loved to garden. So, for years and years Martha had worked in Grandmother’s garden and got cute little gardening tools for her birthday; and all the time, Martha secretly wondered how she happened to like gardening at all. Particularly Grandmother’s garden, where everything was so planned and perfect and it was so easy to step on something rare and expensive.

All the other Abbotts seemed to believe the gardening myth absolutely, but they obviously thought that Martha did need something more. Sometimes when she was talking to friends or relatives, Mrs. Abbott described Martha as a “real individualist” in a tone of voice that indicated it was a condition she approved of. But when only Abbotts were around, she often talked about the fact that Martha needed “bringing out.” The Brownies had only been one attempt to “bring Martha out.” Riding lessons were another.

The whole Abbott family was in on the decision to send Martha to riding school. It happened one night at the dinner table not long after the Brownie scandal had finally died down. Mrs. Abbott started the discussion by announcing that she had been talking to Maureen Peters and had heard that little Kelly Peters was starting dancing school. The Peters had lived next door to the Abbotts for as long as Martha could remember, and Kelly and Martha were almost the same age. Kelly was very cute and very dangerous. Ever since nursery school Kelly had played with Martha on the rare occasions when absolutely nobody better was available. The rest of the time, Martha was her favorite prey.

The Abbotts were always encouraging Martha to be best friends with Kelly. Martha would be in her room reading or something, and her mother would stick her head in the door and say, “Marty, sweetheart, it’s too nice a day to spend alone in your room. Kelly and the little Sutter girl are playing hopscotch out on the sidewalk. Why don’t you go out and play, too?”

Because Kelly looked so much like a spun-sugar angel and could act like one when she felt it was necessary, it was useless to try to explain that to approach Kelly when she already had someone to play with was as foolhardy as walking into a whirling buzz saw. If Martha were lucky, Kelly and whoever else was there would only whisper together, leaving her out of everything; but if Kelly was in top form, Martha would be greeted by a dimpled sneer and something like, “Look. Old fatty squirrel face thinks we’re going to let
her
play.”

But no one would believe that, so she just said, “I don’t feel like playing hopscotch today.”

That night at dinner Mrs. Abbott said she thought it would be nice if Martha started dancing school with Kelly. Martha protested, but her mother insisted that she should not be so afraid to try something new, and that she would find it was lots of fun once she got started. Surprisingly it was Cath who came to the rescue.

Cath, of course, was already in dancing school and had been for years. With the authority of all that experience, she explained to her mother that not many girls started as young as seven, and the ones who did were always the ones with lots of
natural
talent. Martha suspected that Cath was really thinking that it would be embarrassing to have her chubby, awkward little sister galloping around looking ridiculous in a leotard, but Martha was grateful anyway. Martha’s mother looked at Martha and sighed.

“Well, it does seem she ought to be involved in something with children her own age.”

That was when Tom, who had taken riding lessons the year before, suggested that maybe Martha could learn to ride. “You’d like that wouldn’t you, Marty?” he said. “You’re always checking out all those books about horses.”

“I don’t know,” Martha said, suddenly uncertain. It was true she had always loved horses, but from a safe distance. “I like to look at horses. But the ones they have at the Onowora Stables are all awfully big. Maybe I could learn somewhere where they have small ones for beginners.”

“Small ones for beginners,” Cath said, rolling up her eyes. “Next she’ll be asking for one with training wheels.”

But horses—with or without training wheels—sounded safer than dancing school with Kelly, so Martha agreed to try. And for once her mother was right. It wasn’t so bad once she got started. Not that the classes themselves were so very great. Riding in formation around a ring with a lot of other kids all dressed alike in boots and jodhpurs wasn’t terribly exciting—at least, not after the initial stage of acute terror was over. But there were compensations.

Martha had always been both fascinated and terrified by horses; and as her terror diminished, her fascination grew. Moreover, it turned out that Ivy loved horses, too; and since Martha had become a bonafide paying member of a riding class, the two felt welcome to just hang around the stables—visiting their favorite horses and breathing in the exciting horsey atmosphere. Sometimes, after Martha became more confident, they saved up their money, with Martha usually contributing the largest part, and rented two old gentle mares for a trail ride up in the hills.

Of course, Ivy had had no riding lessons, but she didn’t seem to need any. She looked pretty funny in her cotton dress and sneakers instead of jodhpurs and boots, with her hair bouncing like black foam around her head; but that didn’t change the fact that she was very much in command of the situation. The horses noticed right away. Things like confidence matter to horses, and they let you know if you don’t have enough of it. Ivy never had any trouble. Martha’s teacher was always saying that riding was simply a matter of confidence and balance, and Ivy just naturally seemed to have lots of both. But it did depress Martha just a little to see Ivy doing so easily what she herself had learned with such difficulty.

“You’re better than I am already,” Martha told Ivy a little sadly on their second or third trail ride.

But Ivy didn’t take any credit. “I probably can’t help it,” she explained. “I suppose I was a cowboy in one of my reincarnations.”

Martha wasn’t too surprised. She already knew that Ivy had definitely been a dancer in another life. Reincarnation had been a new idea to Martha, but Ivy had learned all about it from Aunt Evaline, of course.

“Does your Aunt Evaline really believe all that, about reincarnation?” Martha had asked, but Ivy only shrugged.

“Believe it?” she said. “I don’t know. She told me all about it, but she didn’t mention about believing.”

Even though Martha doubted that she herself had had much riding experience in another life, she gradually became a fairly good rider. And although she didn’t make all the new horseback riding friends her mother had hoped for, Martha, herself was more than satisfied. She lost a little weight for one thing, and she had a lot of fun for another. Maybe the most important gain was a great deal of freedom.

The Abbotts were very enthusiastic about Martha’s new interest in horses. Everybody knows that it’s quite normal for little girls to go through a spell of being absolutely out of their minds about horses. And Martha had been such a strange child, with such odd problems, that it was obviously comforting to see her develop such an appropriate mania. Martha overheard her mother telling someone on the phone, “Oh, Martha? Well, we don’t see too much of her around home these days. She’s going through her horse period. Spends every waking hour at the stables. Oh yes, I quite agree. Very healthy.” She sounded much more comfortable than she sometimes had when people asked about Martha. Martha was glad. And she was also glad that she was being allowed to spend so much time away from home with no questions asked. And since nobody asked, Martha didn’t have to mention that Ivy was spending nearly every waking hour at the stables, too.

Rainy days, however, were a problem. That first winter with Ivy was a fairly dry one, but even so there were times when Martha was not allowed to go either to Bent Oaks Grove or to the stables for two or three days at a time. It was during one of those times that she learned just how incredibly fearless Ivy really was.

Late one Sunday night, when it had rained all weekend and Martha had not seen Ivy since Friday afternoon, Martha was getting ready for bed when she heard a noise outside her window. It was Ivy. Martha opened the window, and Ivy climbed in out of the dark and wet. She sat on the windowsill while Martha put her muddy shoes in the bathtub and brought her a big towel to catch the drips. Martha stared at Ivy, almost speechless with surprise, while Ivy sat down by the furnace outlet to dry herself.

“How did you get here?” Martha finally asked in a whisper, knowing but not believing it—because she knew for certain that nothing in the whole world could make her do it.

“The same way as always,” Ivy said. “Over the trail.”

“But it’s dark out there, and raining,” Martha said, but Ivy only shrugged. With her bushy black hair plastered to her head, she looked tinier than ever, as greatly reduced as a wet Persian kitten. Her eyes, in contrast, had grown even larger. Great dark eyes, full of liquid sparkles, like the eyes of a mermaid or a creature from another world. It occurred to Martha to wonder if Ivy’s swimming eyes were full of rain—or tears.

“Were you really not at all afraid?” she asked.

Ivy buried her face in the thick towel for a moment before she answered. “There’s worse things than dark,” she said, almost in a whisper. Then she shrugged and blew upwards at her wet hair and said, “Besides, sometimes a changeling can see in the dark, just like a cat.” Ivy spent most of that night with Martha, slipping out just at dawn.

Afterwards, that conversation and that night kept coming back to Martha; but she always tried not to think about what Ivy might have meant when she said, “there’s worse things than dark.”

S
PRING CAME AND THE
days at Bent Oaks Grove and at the stables were longer and warmer. At the stables Martha and Ivy had come under the spell of a great love. Her name was Dolly, and she was a very special horse.

A little bit over thirty years old, Dolly still had the remnants of a noble beauty. Even though she had become a little bony and swaybacked, she still had a delicate high-browed face and wise and gentle eyes. She was dead safe with any rider. Not even the most terror-stricken and helpless beginner could tempt her into unruly behavior. As soon as she could decipher what the frozen or spastic little human on her back had in mind, she proceeded to carry out his wishes with a willing obedience that built up the confidence of even the most timid. She was perfectly agreeable to any suggestion—as long as it could be done at a very slow gait. Nothing in the world could make her go faster than a very relaxed trot.

Of course beginners adored her for the first few rides. But most of them, having learned skill and confidence from Dolly, also learned that Dolly was considered a baby’s horse—and to be seen on her was enough to brand the rider as a tenderfoot. So they turned against her and gave their devotion to sidestepping, scatterbrained animals who snorted foolishly at shadows or blowing leaves. But not Martha and Ivy.