Harvest of Changelings (23 page)

Hazel looked up from her spelling book when everyone had settled down. Russell, still scowling, looked intent on his morning work. Malachi had finally secured all his books beneath his desk and it looked like he was doing math. Hazel could tell by the red cover of his book. Was he the boy she had seen in her dreams in the country of the dragon and the white trees? She couldn't be sure—not of that or anything else now.

The morning had been bad for Hazel. She had turned around from the water fountain to find Russell White standing directly behind her, glaring, with his arms folded across his chest. Jeff Gates stood a little behind him, tugging at Russell's arm. Russell shrugged
him off. Hazel took a step backward. Russell scared her. Hazel had looked frantically up and down the hall. Where were all the teachers? The teacher's assistants?

“Why are you wearing a headband, Hazel? Huh? Are you trying to make fun of me and Jeff? Is that it, you little goody-goody teacher's pet? Hazel, will you please take this to the office? Hazel, your story was sooo good I want you to read to the class. Take it off,” Russell ordered and reached out to jerk the headband off.

“No, Russell, don't,” Hazel cried, stepping back even further until she was pressing against the water fountain. “I'm not making fun of you. I promise. Leave me alone. I didn't even know y'all were going to wear them today. Leave me alone; I have to go to the bathroom.” The girls' bathroom door was right behind Russell, a few feet away. He wouldn't follow her in there, would he? Or maybe she should just make a break for the classroom. Mrs. Collins was probably there, or Mrs. Perry. She should have caught a ride with her grandfather, skipped the bus, gotten to school sooner.

“Russ, leave her alone. Hazel's all right. C'mon,” Jeff had said and jerked Russell's arm again. Hazel ran when Russell turned away from her, as fast as she could down the hall. She didn't look back until she got to the door. Mrs. Hoban, a second grade teacher's assistant, was talking to Russell. She could see Mrs. Hoban wagging her finger in Russell's face.

Hazel looked away from Russell quickly, before she made eye contact and took out her math book. At least numbers were a constant; they didn't change. Not like her ears had. And Russell, too, she had thought. He hadn't been mean to her for over a week. When school started Russell had picked on her almost every day: her hair, her size, her glasses, being Mrs. Collins's pet. Hazel had wanted to kill him. Then he had gotten into really big trouble and there had been the trailer fire and Miss Findlay; Russell had been suspended for a week. When he came back he seemed like a different boy. Until today.

Twenty-eight plus forty-four would always be seventy-two. She wrote the answer neatly on her paper. And today was computer lab day and for the first time ever she dreaded going. All her dreams of the other place began with the computer and the Worldmaker game and the Valley of the Alexzeli—but that was the computer at home. It would be different at school; it had to be.

 

Mrs. Perry started taking the class down the hall to the computer lab in the middle of the morning. She had everybody count off by fives and Hazel's group, the ones, went first. She reached into her book
bag to take out two new math games her grandfather had given her. She knew the class's games would be boring and she also knew Mrs. Perry wouldn't care.

“I like seeing a young girl stretch her mind,” Mrs. Perry had said when Hazel first asked if she could bring computer games from home. “I wish I had someone like your grandfather when I was coming along.”

What would Mrs. Perry say if Hazel told her that sometimes she wished her grandfather—and grandmother—were different? She did love the computer games, but still, they were only another way for her to be invisible.

Hazel got into line and sighed. There was Russell; three people up—how did he get to be a one? She liked it better when they went by math or reading groups. Maybe he had gone back to his new quiet self and would leave her alone. Anyway, she thought, Mrs. Perry could handle Russell and a lot better than Mrs. Collins could. Hazel could see the relief plain and visible on Mrs. Collins's face as the students passed her going out.

Hazel chose the computer farthest away from everybody else, especially Russell. She didn't want a partner. Besides, they wouldn't get her grandfather's games anyway. When she sat down in the hardbacked little chair, the computer blinked on. What? No, someone had to have left it on. Behind her she heard Mrs. Perry telling Russell how proud she was that he was behaving so well lately.
She didn't see him stop me at the water fountain
, Hazel thought, and started to slide her diskette into the A drive. A claw snagged it and pulled it in with a quick pop.

Hazel froze, blinked, and then slowly looked around the room. Everybody was doing what they were supposed to be doing. She poked her finger into the A drive. No claw, but when she touched the little A drive slot again, the room became instantly silent. Whatever Russell said back to Mrs. Perry and whatever the two girls two computers away were arguing about was lost. Hazel couldn't hear them, nor could she hear the hum of the computer in front of her. There was no mathematics game menu on the screen—and she heard a loud tearing noise. The screen, the pale green cinderblock walls, the school, was ripped away.

Hazel stood at the edge of the meadow, a few steps out of the forest of white glowing trees. The tall meadow grass brushed against her legs, as the wind made the meadow into a green sea. She could and did reach up to touch a low branch over her head, pull off a leaf, and press it to her cheek. And there, wings outstretched, gliding down over the trees to the grass, was a flying horse. Hazel watched
and waited, her arms crossed, the leaf in one hand, as the horse landed a few yards in front of her. It pawed the grass and bent to take a mouthful. Then it lifted its head, folded down its wings, and came to her. Hazel kept very still until the horse was so close she could feel its warm breath. She touched its nose with the tips of her fingers and then let it eat the leaf out of her hand. Then the horse nuzzled, blowing more warm horsy air on her face until Hazel laughed.

“Put your hand in my mane and walk with me,” the horse said. “I want you to talk and walk with me—but I will do most of the talking.” Hazel nodded and wrapped part of the horse's thick, silvery-grey mane around her hand.

The horse talked for a long time. It talked about dreams and gates and time and space being like a house with many rooms. Dreams removed the walls between the rooms and let one remember what was forgotten. Dreams let souls travel.

“I don't understand what you mean—is this a dream or it is real? Where are we?” Hazel asked.

“Elfhome. Faerie. Tir Mar, the Great Land. Tir Na n'Og, the Summer Country—this place has many names. Think of your house at home—you have your room and your grandparents another and a room to eat in and to cook in, yes?”

“But I can just get up and walk into other rooms at home. And I was sitting in front of a computer at school—just, just a little while ago. And before, when I met the dragon, I was in my bedroom.”

“The machine is a dream-gate. The story you are telling yourself is the one I am telling you and the one the dragon told you.”

“I don't get it.”

“Hazel, wake up; wake up, honey. Earth to Hazel, come in, Hazel, over,” Mrs. Perry said.

Hazel jumped. Her computer mouse fell and banged against the metal desk leg. Mrs. Perry was standing right behind her. Hazel looked up at the woman, feeling dazed and flushed. On the screen in front of her was the math game's menu. The cursor blinked at Hazel, a tiny, amber eye at the bottom of the screen. The other kids giggled. Russell hee-hawed like a donkey.

“Russell, that's enough. Y'all line behind Tommy and go on back to the room. Tommy, tell Mrs. Collins to send the next group in about ten minutes,” Mrs. Perry said and turned back to Hazel. “Hazel Richards, do you mean to tell me you have just been sitting here sleeping the entire time? Russell, go on, and mind your own business. Hazel-honey, do you feel all right?”

Right now she wanted to curl up in Mrs. Perry's lap, snuggle up, inhale the sweet scent of the vanilla or lilac hand lotion, and tell her
everything so Mrs. Perry would stroke her hair and tell her it was all going to be all right. She knew she could never do that with her grandmother. Hazel shrugged; Mrs. Perry would never believe her —and neither would her own grandmother, for that matter.

“Hazel? Are you not feeling well? It's not like you to sleep in class.”

“I'm fine, Mrs. Perry, really I am. I'm just—really tired; I couldn't sleep last night. I'll be all right.” If Mrs. Perry wasn't going to take Hazel into her lap, couldn't she just go away? Hazel's head felt thick and heavy, as if she had gotten a really bad head cold.

“Insomnia? That explains it, because you don't look fine and you certainly aren't acting fine. Go on to the health room and lie down for a minute. Maybe you're coming down with something. I'll be up in a minute and take your temp. Is your grandmother at home today? Never mind, now go on—don't try and argue with me—go on. I'll be there directly.”

Hazel nodded and got up. Maybe Mrs. Perry was right. Maybe she was sick.
Hazel
,
you aren't sick. That is what I am trying to tell you. You are not sick and you are not crazy
.
Dreams are real
. Hazel stopped in the middle of the hall and looked around. Where had that voice, the winged horse's voice, come from? She could hear Mrs. Perkins's voice coming from the open library door. She was reading a story. The phone was ringing in the school office, just up the hall. Behind her Hazel could hear Mrs. Perry moving chairs in the computer lab. The horse's voice seemed to have come right out of the wall beside her.

Hazel
?

Now Hazel could see the winged horse. And Mrs. Perkins holding her book and the kindergartners sitting on the floor in front of her. She saw the meadow and the white grass. The tall grasses stirred and rippled from the warm breeze. The white trees moved, their leaves whispering. The kindergarten teacher sat at a table, her head bent over papers. Hazel laid her hand on the nearest wall. It was made of solid, smooth, yellow cinder blocks. But when she pushed, she felt her hand go through the wall until she felt the hard, white wood of a tree. Hazel jerked her hand back and there, like a huge scar, was a glowing white streak. Beneath her feet, shifting and moving, as if reflections in water, were grass, earth, flowers, and the tiled floor.

Hazel
?

“Hazel? Are you all right? I thought I told you to go to the health room. Hazel? Can you hear me?”

Mrs. Perry and the winged horse were standing in the same space
and they were speaking at the same time. The horse's wings rose and fell, and for a moment, Mrs. Perry looked winged, and did Hazel see the woman's grey hair rise and fall in the wing-made breeze? The skin in the palm of her hand glowed even brighter. Hazel cried out and reached for the horse's mane, for Mrs. Perry's hand, and fell and fell and fell.

 

“She's waking up now. Normal pulse and blood pressure and her heart sounds fine. How are you feeling, Hazel?”

Hazel opened her eyes and looked into the face of a strange woman. Hazel lay flat on her back and the dark-haired woman was leaning over her. The woman who was wearing a white coat, like a doctor—she
was
a doctor, Hazel realized—holding a stethoscope to Hazel's chest. Hazel closed and reopened her eyes. She wasn't in school—in the doctor's office? A hospital, she decided. She was lying in a hospital bed, with long rails on either side. A crisp, white sheet covered her up to the waist.

“Grand-dad? Grandma?”

“We're right here,” her grandmother said, moving into view. Her grandmother was wearing one of her work smocks, dusty with clay and spattered with paint and glaze. Brown clay made smudges on her forehead and cheeks. Behind her grandmother was her grandfather. He looked like he had been in his lab. He had on a white coat and his IBM ID dangled from one pocket.

“Mrs. Richards, Dr. Richards. If you could both step out with me for a moment,” the doctor said, and Hazel watched her grandparents follow the doctor out. The doctor was a loud talker. “She's going to be all right, but I would like to keep her overnight. This afternoon we'll run those tests I told you about. It's really unusual for a healthy nine-year-old to pass out like this and stay out for so long. I'll be right back with the forms for you to sign.”

“What was she talking about?” Hazel asked slowly after the doctor had left, and her grandparents had come back into the room. A long, yellow curtain hung from runners on the ceiling. One side of the bed was a little table with a pitcher of water and a small box of Kleenex. Beyond the table Hazel could see out a window into a parking lot. A TV looked down at her from the opposite wall. “How did I get here?”

“Haze,” her grandmother said, with a rare use of a diminutive for Hazel, as she reached down awkwardly to stroke her hair, “we're in Wake County Hospital, not too far from your school. You came here on a field trip last year, remember? I was with you.”

“You felt sick at school—don't you remember?” her grandfather said, walking around to stand on the opposite side of the bed. “You were in the computer lab and you fell asleep and—” He stopped and looked at her grandmother.

“Go ahead, Hawthorne, you tell her.”

“Haze, you may have had a seizure. Remember the boy in your class last year who was epileptic? The doctor wants to give you some medical tests to see if you really did have a seizure. You passed out again in the hall and you didn't wake up until now.”

Hazel remembered the boy. Charlie Baggott had fallen out of his seat in the middle of science. His whole body started jerking and twitching and his eyes rolled back in his head. A lot of kids screamed and ran. An ambulance came, with a siren, and quick people shouting directions at each other. Everybody talked about it for days.