All the King's Horses (11 page)

‘You know what?’ I said to Colin on the way to the bus stop the next morning. ‘Mom’s afraid Grandpa is going to get worse and worse.’

He stared at me. ‘She
said
that?’

‘Nope. But last night when I said I hoped Grandpa wouldn’t keep on confusing you with Joe and his gang, she looked worried; and this morning, when you came down, she was watching the two of you every minute until he gave you his usual hug; then she looked better.’

‘You mean, she thought he wasn’t going to be able to recognize me ever again?’

‘I think so.’

‘He wouldn’t do that! He just
couldn’t
!’

‘That’s what I said to myself. But then I thought, he’s forgotten just about everything else. Why not us?’

‘Criminy!’ He sat down on his binder, and I sat next to him, gathering my skirt around my knees. Neither of us said anything for quite a while.

‘Think we could get to Faerie if we went to the Ring by ourselves?’ he asked finally.

‘I don’t know. I sort of thought we could only get there with one of Them.’ I pulled my knees a little closer; it was awfully cold. ‘Besides, we don’t really know he’s
in
Faerie.’

‘The heck we don’t! Hob and Lob had instructions to take us somewhere
else
while that Seer was dreaming, right? That means They don’t want us to go to Faerie; and Grandpa
has
to be the reason.’

‘Well, maybe,’ I said. ‘But I wish we had more evidence about what’s going on. What were you going to tell me last night?’

‘Oh yeah.’ He fished a milk penny out of his pocket. ‘Watch this.’ He flipped the penny, slapping it on the back of his left wrist after he caught it. Heads, heads, heads, heads …

‘Hang on,’ I said, ‘let me see that penny.’

‘Sure,’ he said, handing it to me. I looked at it; it was a perfectly ordinary penny.

I took a penny out of my pencil-case. ‘Try it with this one.’

He grinned and started to flip it. Heads, heads, heads, heads …

‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’m impressed. Tell me how you do it.’

‘I’m not doing it. They are.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Well, I don’t, really, but the thing is, it only works on this side of the train tracks.’

‘Come on!’

‘No, let me show you. We’ve got time, if we do it fast enough.’

We raced across the tracks, and he started to flip. Heads, tails, tails, heads.

‘That’s unreal,’ I said.

‘It’s more than that,’ he said. ‘It’s proof.’

‘Of what?’

‘That They have special power in the area between the highway and the tracks, not just in the Ring. Remember the day Mom was bandaging my hand and you were listening? I only told her about renters leaving the house after a week, but there’s more. Joe said the house was haunted and nobody had rented it for three years.’

I stared at him. ‘Holy tomato! And you think it was Them?’

‘Who else could it be?’

‘But They haven’t driven us out!’

‘That’s because of Grandpa, dumbbell! It’s all connected, somehow.’

I thought it over. ‘I guess it’s got to be, but I don’t see how.’

The bus came around the corner, and we ran to get our stuff.

‘You know,’ he said suddenly. ‘We’re never going to get those faeries to give us Grandpa back by ourselves. The whole thing is just too complicated. We need help.’

‘Sure we do. But who would help us?’

‘Mr Crewes.’

‘Don’t be a moron; he’s a scientist.’

‘So am I, and I believe in faeries. And look, when he was driving me home, he said even if I wasn’t in his class, he was always around, and if things got tough, I should call on him for help.’

‘That’s really great of him,’ I said, ‘but he probably just meant—’

The bus stopped, and the door flopped open; Colin smiled at me as he swung in. ‘I’ll tell him tomorrow night when he comes over.’

I wasn’t sure that was such a hot idea, but I was glad Colin had cheered up, so I didn’t argue.
Not
that I could have said much on the bus anyway.

When the doorbell rang the next night, Colin raced to answer it, and he brought Mr Crewes into the living room as if he were a king. Grandpa was pacing around in his usual circle; when he saw Mr Crewes, he looked puzzled.

‘Don’t live here,’ he said.

‘That’s right,’ said Mr Crewes, smiling. ‘I don’t live here. I’m just visiting. But I like your house.’ He looked at the staircase. ‘That’s a magnificent stained-glass window.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, sidling up next to Grandpa. ‘We like it, too. Won’t you sit down? Mom will be right here. And I’ll get you a cup of coffee if you want.’

He sat down on the sofa. ‘That would be great.’

I took Grandpa’s hand. ‘Come on, let’s go get some coffee and cookies.’

‘Cookies,’ he said. And he followed me, just the way I’d hoped.

When we got back to the living room, Mom was downstairs, looking very pretty in a dress she hadn’t worn for a long time, and she and Colin were talking with Mr Crewes. Grandpa put the cookies on the coffee table, but when he and I sat
down,
he kept staring at Mr Crewes.

Suddenly, his face lit up. ‘Boyfriend?’ he asked Mom.

Mom turned bright red. ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘He’s a teacher, and he’s here to talk about the kids’ school.’

But Grandpa just chuckled, and he kept mumbling ‘boyfriend … good, good’ to himself, which made it hard to talk. Finally, Mr Crewes smiled at Mom and leaned forward.

‘You know, Mr O’Brien,’ he said, ‘my dad used to take me to Madison Square Garden to watch the showjumping, and I was thrilled. Now I’m wondering if any of those horses were ones you’d trained.’

Grandpa looked confused, so I chipped in. ‘Sure, you trained horses for the Garden, Grandpa. Remember Easy Does It?’

‘Easy Does It,’ he said, smiling. ‘Good girl, good girl.’

‘She certainly was,’ said Mom, who was more or less the right colour by now. ‘Don’t you have a picture of her?’

‘Picture,’ said Grandpa, glancing at the stairs.

I saw what Mom wanted us to do. ‘Come on, Grandpa, let’s go find it,’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ said Colin. ‘We’ll help you.’

Grandpa stared at Colin and started to frown.
I
thought
Oh no! It’s going to happen again!
but I said quickly, ‘Easy Does It was a great horse! Let’s go find her pictures.’

‘Easy Does It,’ said Grandpa. And he followed us up the stairs and into the room Mom had made into a kind of office for him.

Colin looked over the shelves of trophies, horse books, and albums. ‘Which is the album with Easy Does It’s pictures, Grandpa?’

Grandpa pulled out an album. It wasn’t the right album, but neither of us said so; we just sat on either side of him on the old leather couch that had always been in his cottage and chatted with him about the horses in the pictures and newspaper clippings. After we got to the end, I took down another album and gave it to him; he began to look at it, humming the way he did when he was interested in something. We looked at each other and tiptoed out of the room.

When we got downstairs, Mr Crewes smiled at Colin. ‘I’ve just been telling your mom that Mr Beeker has decided to put you in my class.’

‘Wow!’ said Colin. ‘Can we do physics? Can we do algebra?’

‘Well,’ said Mr Crewes, ‘there are thirty other students in the class who require my attention, but I think we can work something out. Miss Baker said you can spend time in the library on
your
own, if you want.’ He smiled. ‘She likes you; she worked hard on our collection of fairy tales, and you’re the first person who has checked any of them out for a long time.’

‘Fairy tales?’ said Mom in a strange sort of voice.

‘Yeah,’ said Colin uncomfortably. ‘I wanted to …’

‘Mom,’ I said, ‘do you think maybe you should check on Grandpa?’

‘I guess I’d better,’ she said. ‘I’ll get us some more coffee while I’m up.’

Colin didn’t even wait until she was all the way up the stairs; he plopped down next to Mr Crewes on the sofa and started in. ‘About those fairy tales I checked out. It was research. See, Sarah and I know something about Grandpa that no-one else does. It’s hard to explain, because … well … not everybody believes in what we know, but we thought you were the kind of person who would understand.’

‘I’ll certainly try,’ said Mr Crewes. And you could tell he meant it.

‘OK. Do you know what a changeling is?’

He blinked. ‘Er … more or less.’

‘Well, Sarah and I think that’s what our grandfather is. Not our real Grandpa, of course. Just the man you met tonight and on the playground.’

Mr Crewes put down his coffee cup. ‘That’s an interesting hypothesis, Colin, but—’

‘I know it sounds funny,’ said Colin. ‘But what if we could prove there was something strange about this house – something that let the faeries take Grandpa and leave somebody with us? Then would you believe us?’

I wanted to say,
hey, that’s not right – he was sick before we came, so if he’s a changeling, it’s not the house that’s done it
, but Mr Crewes gave me a look that told me to let Colin go on. And to Colin he said, ‘It would have to be very convincing proof.’

‘It is,’ said Colin. He stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out a penny. ‘See, if I flip this anywhere between the railroad tracks and Route 495, it … well, watch.’ He started flipping; Mr Crewes and I leaned forward. Heads, heads, heads, heads, tails … He stopped, staring. Then he flipped it once more. Tails.

He gulped and looked up at Mr Crewes. ‘I’ve done it day after day ever since I first noticed something was weird, and it’s been heads every time.’

Mr Crewes raised his eyebrows. ‘That defies all the laws of probability.’

‘It’s true, though,’ I said. ‘Honest! We did it at the bus stop yesterday, and it came down heads over and over. We both saw it – he isn’t just making it up.’

‘I can see you’re not making it up,’ said Mr Crewes. ‘But probability can act very strangely sometimes.’

‘Not that strangely,’ said Colin. ‘At least, not without help. But I guess …’ He swallowed hard. ‘I guess They only mess around with it for people They know.’

Mr Crewes leaned back. ‘Sometimes scientists have to believe things they can’t prove are true, at least in the initial stages of their research. So I’m willing to listen to your hypothesis that your grandfather is a changeling, if you can tell me why you think so.’

‘Well,’ Colin began slowly, ‘we … I mean, he … I mean …’ All of a sudden he began to cry. ‘He doesn’t even know who I am, sometimes!’ he sobbed. ‘It almost happened tonight, before we took him upstairs! That only makes three times he’s done it, I know – but our real Grandpa would
always
know who I was, and he wouldn’t keep getting worse and worse, and I just can’t stand it, and you’ve
got
to help us, or we’ll never get him back!’

Mr Crewes slid over on the sofa and put his arm around Colin’s shoulders. For quite a while, he didn’t say anything at all, and I began to think maybe I should go away, but then he said, ‘Sometimes, when terrible
things
happen it helps to understand
why
they happen.’

‘Not with this,’ sniffed Colin. ‘There’s no
reason
it should happen. They could make changelings out of a thousand usual people, and nobody would even miss them, but Grandpa’s
famous
, like a king of riders, and he knows stories and songs and poetry, or at least, he did … it just isn’t
fair
!’

Mr Crewes looked across the room very sadly. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to imply it was fair.’

There was an awful silence, and I had no idea how to break it. Fortunately, Mom came back with a pot of coffee, and Colin wiggled out from under Mr Crewes’s arm. ‘Have a cookie,’ he said, picking up the cookie plate and passing it politely to Mr Crewes.

Mr Crewes gave Mom a funny look, but he took a cookie and started talking about Wheelock school, and I sat there, feeling bad for Colin and not really listening, until Colin gave me a ‘wake up!’ kick and I realized Mr Crewes and Mom had started talking about brain research.

‘They say that by the end of the 1960s, we’ll understand a lot more about connections within the brain than we do now,’ Mr Crewes was saying. ‘And even now, there’s good research
being
done on the problem of recognition.’ He looked at Colin. ‘In the meantime, the important thing is to remember that even when he seems not to know you, somewhere in his mind, your grandfather still remembers you, and he still loves you. It’s just that a loose connection in his brain keeps him from recognizing you consistently.’

‘A lot of good
that
does,’ muttered Colin.

Mom made a little noise, but Mr Crewes put up a hand. ‘It does do good,’ he said. ‘It reminds you that the person you’re dealing with is exactly what you said he was: a changeling.’

‘A changeling!’ said Mom. ‘Colin, you should know better than—’

‘– No, no,’ interrupted Mr Crewes gently. ‘It’s a good metaphor. Changelings look just like the person who has been taken, and so do patients with diseases of the brain. The difference is on the inside, where nobody can see it.’ He looked from Mom to Colin. ‘That’s what I meant earlier. Nobody can explain
why
your grandfather should lose his memory. But if you can understand
how
the brain works and what goes wrong with it, it at least gives you a way of dealing with what’s happening. If you want, that’s where we could start in science. I have some books about the brain. They’re pretty technical, but I think if we did some groundwork
first,
you could handle them. Would you like to do that?’

Colin looked down at the floor. ‘Sure.’

Mr Crewes nodded, and that was sort of it. He thanked Mom for coffee, and she thanked him for coming; then he left, and Mom hurried us off to bed.

Colin looked at me as we brushed our teeth. ‘Boy, I really blew it! Now he thinks we just made up the changeling thing to make ourselves feel better, and we’ll never be able to convince him that it’s real.’ He spat into the sink. ‘I’m sorry. I should have let you do it.’

All my life I had been wanting him to say something like that, but the funny thing was, it made me feel just awful. ‘It probably wouldn’t have made any difference,’ I said. ‘If I’d told him what happened, he might have thought we were seeing things, and we’d be even worse off than we are now.’ I stuck my toothbrush back in the rack. ‘We’ll just have take matters in our own hands again. Maybe if we go to the Ring, we can—’