Falling In (11 page)

“So the people around here, they don’t have any idea?” Isabelle asked. “I mean, who you are?”

“They know that I’m Grete the Healer,” Grete replied. She sighed. “But I suppose that’s not what you mean. Do they know I’m the witch? The so-called witch? Of course not. I’d be dead in the ground if they did.”

Isabelle grabbed Grete’s wrist. “You have to tell them! Otherwise it will go on forever!”

“What do you think I’m talking about, girl?” Grete looked as though she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “I know it must be told. And now you’re here to do the telling. You’re the only one I can trust to get the job done, child of my child that you are. If you don’t, you’re right—it will go on forever. I’ll be dead and gone, and they’ll go on believing that there’s a witch in the woods
eating their babies. The stories get worse with every generation.”

Isabelle took a deep breath. If she could put an end to the fear and the running just by standing up and telling the truth, she supposed she ought—

“I think you ought to be strung from the highest tree.”

Hen stood in the middle of the kitchen, still clutching her bundle of roots. “You’ve had a good life all these years, making your potions and brews, while the rest of us have been running off into the woods, thinking death was riding on our tails. It’s a horrible thing you’ve done, not coming forward.”

Grete stared stonily into the air for a few moments before she replied. “I hoped that by being a healer, I could make up for some of it. Hoped I could even things out. Because”—and here she turned toward Hen, looked her in the eye—“I wasn’t willing to die. Not for a minute, not for something that happened by accident. Do you blame me, Hen?”

Hen threw the dried plants to the floor, where
they disintegrated into pieces and crumbs. “I don’t blame you,” she snarled, barreling past Isabelle toward the back door. “But I won’t ever forgive you either.”

The door slammed behind her. Grete sat down at the table, looked up at Isabelle. “You’ll do it, won’t you, Isabelle? Tell the other children?”

Isabelle swallowed hard. She nodded. “I should go talk to Hen first, though.”

“Go,” Grete told her, rubbing her face with her hands. “Go see about Hen.” She looked up at Isabelle, her eyes rimmed in red. She opened her mouth as if she had more to say, but the only thing she said was, “Go. Now.”

How many hours had Hen trailed Isabelle on the path north? How many hours had Hen been muttering and mumbling about the kind of trouble she was going to be in, the way she’d let the children run off on their own, what could she have been thinking about, wasn’t Mam going to boil over when she found out, and for what? For
what?
Hen kept asking the trees and the birds and the air. So that Hen could help a killer make her potions?

“She’s not a killer,” Isabelle chirped in a singsong voice from time to time. “She’s a healer.”

“’She’s a healer,’“
Hen mocked back. “Oh, is she? Seems to me she admitted to at least one killing. I’d
wager there are more she’s not confessed. Old liar, that one is.”

Isabelle could only shake her head and sigh. Occasionally she rolled her eyes. From time to time she tried to put herself in Hen’s shoes. She’d be angry too, wouldn’t she? After years and years of being terrified, sent running from home whenever the wind blew in a rumor of a witch nearby?
What kind of nightmares these kids must have,
Isabelle thought. Witchy, baby-eating nightmares. She shuddered.

On the other hand, Hen
was
talking about Isabelle’s grandmother, which Isabelle was pretty sure violated a bunch of etiquette rules. Besides, Isabelle was just now getting to enjoy the idea of having a grandmother, and quite frankly, Hen was spoiling things.

“You don’t have to follow me,” Isabelle told Hen around hour three of their trek. “There’s probably another path you could go on, a shortcut through the woods or something.”

“I know all about your shortcuts,” Hen sputtered.
“Shortcut to a troll’s bridge, most likely. Or an ogre’s den. No, I’ll keep to this path, if it’s all the same.”

“Fine,” Isabelle said. “Whatever.”

There were all sorts of things Isabelle was eager to think about, if only Hen wasn’t behind her grumbling. Her mother, for one. Just wait until Isabelle told her! She figured her mom would need to be trained how to use whatever gifts she had. What if Isabelle could help her communicate telepathically with Grete? Then the two of them could have mother-daughter conversations in their minds, and maybe Isabelle could join in. Isabelle was determined to develop whatever magical powers she had. She had to have some, right? She and her mom could check out some books from the library, start doing research online, learn how to put their magic to use—

“Old spotty-faced cow,” Hen muttered.

—do some sort of exercises for increasing their mind-reading abilities. And Isabelle would really like to dig deeper into how to make books write and rewrite themselves. She thought this might have some
practical applications when it came to writing essays for school. You could start out with an essay on, say, “The Person Who Has Affected Me the Most in My Life,” and it might morph into “What I Want to Do to Change the World,” and then “World Peace: Is It Possible?” Isabelle thought if she figured out the trick, she might only have to write one essay for the rest of her education career—

“Wart-nosed, one-eyed toad,” Hen continued.

—not that Isabelle hated to write, she just wished her teachers would come up with better topics. Although she had to admit, if she was ever asked to write an essay on “Grandparents, Why They Matter,” she’d have a ton to say. But who would believe her? Well, as long as her mom believed—

“Ring-butted, red-eared, snip-snouted hyena,” Hen added.

But Isabelle was getting ahead of herself. First, the kids in the camps. Safe to assume they’d respond exactly the same way Hen had? Isabelle supposed so. But as long as they believed Isabelle, that was all
that mattered. They could go home, stay home, grow up, raise families. Sooner or later they’d forget all about Grete—

“Ought to chase the dirty worm-eater with sticks and rocks.”

—or maybe they wouldn’t. If Hen, who had admired Grete and had certainly at one time had fond feelings for her, was back there snorting and bleating about beating Grete with sticks and rocks, then Isabelle might have a real problem on her hands. What if the kids at the camp wanted to do worse to Grete than just throw rocks at her?

Isabelle felt in her pocket. Before they’d left, Grete had taken her aside and handed her a small pouch. “If you get in a bad spot, this can help. You just sprinkle it on the ground. It calms folks, soothes their feelings.”

Isabelle looked at Grete, tilted her head to one side. “Is this a potion? I thought you said you weren’t a witch.”

“It’s not a potion, and I’m not a witch.” Grete sounded as though she was running out of patience
with Isabelle. “It’s spores from a kind of fungus that grows in the far woods. There’s nothing of the black cat about it.”

Fingering the bag now, Isabelle wondered. Couldn’t Grete be just a little bit more magical than she was admitting? If so, Isabelle hoped she’d cast a spell on the kids at the camp, turn them into peace-loving hippies who believed in hugs, not homicide.

“Black-souled baby killer.”

Okay. Enough was enough.

Isabelle turned around. “What babies? Name one baby.” She put her hands on her hips. “Do you know one single baby from your village?”

Hen thought a moment. “Not from Corrin, no,” she admitted finally. “But there are stories from Greenan and Drumanoo. Many a babe has gone missing from Greenan and Drumanoo.”

“See?” Isabelle was pleading now, wanting Hen back on her side. Wanting to be friends again. “Don’t you see? There are no missing babies. Only one missing child, and that was an accident that happened fifty years ago. There’s no witch, Hen! No witch!”

Hen frowned. “You don’t have to be
the
witch to be
a
witch, now, do you? I wouldn’t wonder if you turned out to be a witch too, dropping in from another world the way you have, called here by your witch of a grandmother.”

Isabelle decided to try another tack. Shifting her pack from her left shoulder to her right, she began walking again. “So we’ve never talked very much about my world, have we, Hen?” She threw out the question like she was lobbing a softball toward home plate. “It’s never really come up much.”

“I didn’t know until this morning you were from another world, miss.” Hen’s tone was bitter, but she caught up with Isabelle and walked beside her. “Oh, I knew you were from someplace else, but I’d thought it was some province outside of the County of the Five Villages. Didn’t know you’d dropped in from the clouds or wherever it is you’re from.”

“The way I got here was through my school,” Isabelle said, deciding to ignore anything Hen said that was even a little sarcastic or unfriendly. “Through a door. I opened the door and fell down
here—well, to the school in Greenan, to be precise. Which sounds odd and strange and unusual, I know.”

“Not that strange,” Hen muttered, kicking up a cloud of dust from the path.

“What was that?” Isabelle wasn’t sure she’d understood.

“I said, it’s not that strange,” Hen repeated, more clearly this time. “I’ve heard stories. Falling in, they call it. You’re not the only one who’s ever done it.”

Isabelle sighed and continued. “Anyway, I was very happy that I had—fallen in. Because life at my school was the tiniest bit lonely. But since I’ve been here, I haven’t felt lonely at all, not with you and Grete—”

“I don’t care to hear the witch’s name,” Hen snapped.

“She’s not a witch—,” Isabelle started to protest, then stopped herself. “Fine. You and my grandmother. So that’s been nice. Nobody was ever very nice at my school. I tried to make friends, but I wasn’t very good at it. Now I think it’s because I’m a half changeling—”

“Hush, miss!” Hen hissed from behind her. Isabelle,
thinking that Hen was protesting that there was no such thing as a half changeling, and believing she could make a reasonable case that there was, turned to argue. But when she did, she saw that Hen was peering into the woods, one hand raised in Isabelle’s direction, as if to stop any words that might be about to tumble out of Isabelle’s mouth.

Hen, still looking left and right, edged closer to Isabelle. “We’re being followed,” she whispered. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s that witch grandmother of yours either.”

In a flash, Hen scooped up a rock from the ground and pitched it into the woods. “I see ya, ya old cow!”

But the voice that yelped from behind the bushes was not that of an old cow or a young bull or any farmyard animal, and it was most certainly not that of Grete the Healer.

No, from the sound of it, it was the voice of a boy.

Wait a second.

Make that two boys.

Isabelle pointed at the redheaded boy as soon as he stepped out from behind a bush. “You’re Samuel. From Greenan.” She pointed at the other, taller boy. “And you’re the rat-faced boy, but I never heard your name.”

The rat-faced boy sneered at her. “And you’re the witch’s girl.” He turned to Samuel. “I told you that’s what was going on back there. See how she knows who we are without even asking? Witchy indeed.”

“She knows who I am,” Samuel corrected him. “She thinks you’re a rat.”

Hen stepped forward. “If you’re from Greenan, what are you doing here?”

“And how’s that your business?” Rat Face asked,
reddening. “We’ve the right to be here, whether you think it or not.”

Samuel ignored his friend. “We’ve been checking up on that one.” He waved his hand toward Isabelle. “Followed her when she left Greenan, tracked the both of you down Corrin way.”

“We’ve had our eye on you, witch girl,” Rat Face added.

“Just the first couple of days,” Samuel corrected. “Followed your tracks to Corrin, watched the goings-on for a bit, and came back. Not much to see, unless leaf gathering interests you. Doesn’t me, much. When we didn’t catch sight of the witch, we wondered if she hadn’t moved farther south and these woods were safe again for roaming. That’s why we’re out and about today. Our fishing gear’s in the bush over there.”