Changeling (12 page)

 
 
 
The elevator hall seemed very empty without the Curator and the Assyrian Lion. “That was thirsty work,” said the Pooka. “Do you know if there's such a thing as a Guinness about the place, at all?”

“I don't know,” I said. “What's a Guinness?”

“It's a soothing potion for overwrought Pookas is what it is, and I'll be wanting a good deal of it very soon, if it's quite convenient.”

He was looking at me with one flying eyebrow raised, waiting for an answer I didn't have. I shrugged.

“You
must
know,” he said severely. “I am clean out of my element, Neef. My nature tells me to wreak whatever havoc may suggest itself. If I can't follow my nature, I must follow you.”

I looked from him to Changeling, balled up behind the potted palm. I'd hoped someone else would take charge now, but it obviously wasn't going to happen. I sighed.

“I don't know what Guinness is,” I told the Pooka, “so Satchel probably won't either. We'll have to go to the cafeteria in the Fountain Court. Pooka, you call the elevator, and I'll get Changeling.”

“Right you are,” said the Pooka. “What is an elevator, for all love, and how does the creature like to be called?”

 
On the ground floor, we were greeted by a small green-black cat, who leaped in as the elevator door opened and wound herself around my ankles.

The Museum guide lists Bastet as an ancient Egyptian bronze coffin for a sacred cat. She insists she's really a goddess, and I guess she ought to know. She's got a narrow, elegant face and bat ears, and I was so glad to see her that I would have picked her up and kissed her if I'd thought she would let me.

“Don't think I've missed you,” she purred, “or care what's been going on or why everybody's talking about you. I'm just here to keep the Old Market Woman company.”

The Old Market Woman was waiting for us out in the hall, her face twisted in a furious snarl. It didn't mean she was angry—that was just how she'd been carved. She's a docent, someone who conducts tours of the Museum. Her specialty is Greek and Roman statuary. She is also my Ancient Greek and Latin teacher.

“
Ave
, Neef,” she said. “
Quo vadis
?”

“To the cafeteria,” I answered. “We're hungry and tired, and the Pooka wants a Guinness. Do you know what a Guinness is?”

The Old Market Woman glared at me, but her voice was calm. “Some kind of barbaric alcoholic drink, I think.”

“I heard the Wild Hunt's in the Museum air space,” Bastet said, popping up between us. “Did you bring it? And what's a pooka doing in the Museum, and why are you wearing a spidersilk dress, and where did the forgery come from, and why did you bring her here?”

I glanced at the corner by the elevator, where Changeling stood stroking the embroidered flowers on her sleeve and humming three notes up, three notes down. I chewed my lip. “I had to. I owe her a life debt.”

“You do?” Bastet's tail quivered eagerly. “Tell! Tell!”

“I'm too hungry.”

“Come eat, then,” the Old Market Woman said. “The Pooka and the forgery, too, of course.”

I'd thought Changeling was still too freaked to be listening, but I was wrong. “I am not a forgery,” she declared. “I am a preadolescent girl.”

Bastet tapped over to her and sat down with her bronze tail around her paws. “You are not a girl,” she told Changeling. “You were made a fairy, but you're not one now—at least, not entirely.”

“That is nonsense,” Changeling said. “People are not made, they are born. And fairies do not exist, except in this dream. You are teasing me, and I do not like it.”

The Old Market Woman turned to me. “Has no one told this changeling what she is?”

“I've
tried
,” I said. “Is it my fault if she doesn't believe me? Can we go eat now? And Bastet—Changeling is under my protection. Could you just please be nice to her?”

“I am a goddess,” Bastet said with dignity. “I don't need to be nice. But I will try to be polite.”

 
According to the Old Market Woman, the Fountain Court is based on the atrium of an ancient Roman house. There are slender columns holding up a vaulted ceiling, and between them is a long, shallow pool. Comma-shaped bronze dolphins dance on the surface of the water, ridden by cheerful bronze boys who tootle softly on double flutes. Art-loving Folk from all over the City sit at little round tables, refreshing themselves with maiden's tears, fresh milk, and other Folk favorites. Astris says the Museum fairy cakes are stale, but I love them anyway.

Today, the Court was almost deserted. The Museum is always open, but on a fine summer night, most Folk have things they'd rather do than play with mortal art.

I found a place to sit. The Pooka drifted off, I suppose to see about the Guinness. Feeling light-headed, I unslung Satchel and asked it politely for a hamburger, medium, with ketchup and no tomato. I got it, too, although Satchel added mushrooms and forgot the ketchup. I took a big bite. And then I realized that I'd lost Changeling again.

I checked out the corners, then thought of looking under the table, and there she was, curled around the pedestal like a plump, flowery dragon. “Are you hungry?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“What do you want to eat?”

“Macaroni and cheese.”

I considered asking her what macaroni and cheese was, decided that might provoke another fairy fit, and told her I'd do my best. The Pooka wandered up with a bowl of Irish stew and a glass of black stuff with foam on top (the Guinness, I guess—it looked nasty), sat down, and devoted himself to making it go away as quickly as possible.

Without much hope, I asked Satchel for macaroni and cheese. It made me wait for a long time, and then it gave me a wedge of cheddar and a hunk of bread and a golden apple. I explained to Changeling that Satchel didn't do macaroni and cheese, and would she settle for cheese and bread?

“I usually have a cheese sandwich for lunch on Monday,” Changeling said. “Is today Monday?”

“What's Monday?”

Changeling stared at me resentfully, then took the cheese, careful not to touch my hand. She sniffed, then nibbled it like a mouse, starting with the pointy end of the wedge. I laid the bread and apple on the floor beside her and went back to my hamburger.

Bastet flowed up onto the table and assumed her favorite pose, tail-around-paws. “I'm ready for your story now,” she said.

“I'm eating, Bastet. Give me a break.”

“You wanted to eat; you are eating. I want a story; I'm listening.”

I took another bite. Bastet watched, unblinking, while I chewed it.

“Story,” she said.

I knew Bastet. She wasn't going to stop pestering me until I did what she wanted. And she wasn't the only one. While I was feeding Changeling, the Old Market Woman had appeared behind me. Also the Assyrian Lion, a Suit of Seventeenth-Century Parade Armor, a Bodhisattva of Infinite Compassion, and a dozen other docents from various periods of art history, all staring at me eagerly.

The Curator seated himself across the table from me.

“I am not at all pleased with having the Wild Hunt infesting my air space,” he said. “They worry the exhibits. They put off visitors to the Museum. I have given you and your curious protégés asylum. You owe me—you owe all of us—an explanation.”

I swallowed the last bite of my hamburger and started to talk.

Usually I like telling stories. I know all the patterns and the traditional plots that tell you what kinds of events usually go between “Once upon a time” and “They lived happily ever after.” But the story of how I brought the Pooka and Changeling to the Metropolitan Museum was full of extra things that tales like “The Twelve Dancing Debutantes” don't have, and no happy ending in sight.

Still, I did my best to make it all fit a fairy-tale pattern. I told my audience how once upon a time, I'd gone to the North Woods on an errand for my godmother and met an old woman under a willow. The old woman, as old women will, revealed forbidden knowledge to me: in this case, the existence of the Solstice Dance. I told how I wanted to go to the dance more than anything in the world, and how I'd bargained with the kazna peri for a keep-awake charm and how I'd fooled Astris and the sandman and how I'd climbed a tree and watched the Folk of New York Between dance under the stars.

When I got to how I saw the other mortal changelings and joined the dance, I glanced over at the Curator. He was shaking his head like he couldn't believe what he was hearing.

“What?” I said. “You asked what happened, and I'm telling you. It's not my fault I broke the geas. The Green Lady set me up.”

“You were curious,” the Curator said sternly. “Mortals can subdue their curiosity through force of will, although they seldom choose to do so. You knew that what you were doing was, at the very least, unwise.”

Overwhelmed by a number of feelings, all of them uncomfortable, I put my head in my hands. There was a little silence, and then Bastet said, “So, what happened next?”

The next part was harder, because it was a different kind of story-pattern from the first part. Besides, I was getting sleepy.

I told them about how Carlyle snatched me. “Then he told me he had a surprise for me and put me in a broom closet. At first, I thought the surprise was a mortal child, and then I realized she was a fairy raised by mortals—a fairy changeling. My twin.” My throat closed up. I coughed and plunged on.

“Fascinating,” the Curator said when I stopped talking.

“You left out a lot,” Bastet complained.

“I'm too tired to talk anymore,” I said. “And my throat's sore.
I'm
not made of bronze, you know.”

The Curator stood up. “Come and rest, then,” he said. “I forget how fragile mortals are.”

Changeling was fast asleep under the table, the last of the bread clutched in her hand. The Assyrian Lion offered to carry us both, so the Pooka hoisted her onto the Lion's back, and I climbed up behind.

The Curator led us to the bedroom of the Palazzo Sagredo, which is one of my favorite rooms in the Museum. All that green brocade and those gilded curlicues always remind me of the Park in summer, with the sun shining down through the leaves. Unfortunately, it's infested with pudgy little boys wearing tiny wings and nothing else. They're called amorini, but I can think of lots of better names for them. Airheads. Motormouths. Busybodies.

I could hear their squeals all the way down the hall.

“Is that the
Assyrian Lion
?”

“Oh, it
is
. Cool!”

“What's
he
doing in this part of the Museum?”

“What's that on his back?”

“That's Neef, you dork. She comes here all the time.”

“Look, guys. Someone's copied her!”

“Cool! Are they going to sell it in the Museum Shop?”

When we got to the door, the Curator held up a hand. “Silence, all of you, and listen well; I have an important task for you. This mortal and her companions are weary. You will watch over them as they sleep.”

“Like guards, you mean? In case anybody tries to get in and steal them?”

“In case any of them tries to get out,” the Curator answered dryly. “Especially the Pooka.”

I waited for the Pooka to make some sarcastic comment, but he was already stretched out in the middle of the rose brocade bed, with Changeling curled beside him like a flower-covered rock. I flopped down on my stomach and hid my face in my crossed arms so I didn't have to watch the amorini watching me. And then I fell gratefully asleep.

CHAPTER 12

 
 
 
I didn't sleep long.

As it turned out, when the Assyrian Lion chased the Wild Hunt out of the Museum's air space, it flew straight to the Green Lady. What was the good of her putting bans on people, the Hunt wanted to know, if the ban didn't hold? Twice the Hunt had chased me, and twice I'd gotten away scot-free, leaving them without so much as a toe to nibble on and laughing at the Lady as I went.

Which is why I was pulled out of a dreamless sleep by the Old Market Woman's husky voice in my ear. “The Green Lady's here,” she murmured. “The Curator has sent for you.”

I groaned. “I'm asleep. Can't the Assyrian Lion deal with her?”