Falling In by Dowell Frances O'Roark

Author:Dowell, Frances O'Roark [Dowell, Frances O'Roark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Published: 2010-02-11T22:00:00+00:00

29

Isabelle and Grete were quiet for a long time after Hen went to bed. Finally Isabelle said, “Do you want me to go dig the book out of the trash?”

“No need,” Grete replied. “It’s rewriting itself as we speak. Go stand next to the shelf by the south window and you’ll hear the scribbling. I’ve tried throwing that story away many a time. I even burned it once. And then I’d go to the shelf to pull out what I thought was a book on birds or rose-bushes, but it turned out to be the story again. If I didn’t read it, it filled all the other books on the shelves. So I read it when it appears, and it lets me be for a while.”

Isabelle peered across the yard. Her eyes came to rest on a flowering bush, forsythia maybe, yellow, cheerful buds popping out from its branches, so bright she could see them even in the fading light. She tried to think about a story rewriting itself. Were the words the same every time? Or were there small changes with each new version—the baby wrapped in a pale yellow blanket in one story, and in a lavender one the next time the story was read? Was the baby sometimes a boy, sometimes a girl? Was the baby always Isabelle?

Grete stood up and leaned slightly over the porch railing, as though to smell the pink roses climbing up the latticework. “I lived outside of Greenan when they took the baby—”

Isabelle sat forward in her seat. “The fairies, you mean?”

“I always supposed it was.” Grete looked at Isabelle, her expression somewhere between a grimace and a grin. “Funny thing is, I never believed in fairies. Still don’t know if I do. But how else could the baby have crossed over?”

“Crossed over where?”

“The other world. Your world.”

Isabelle took a deep breath. “Oh, I see. I mean, because it would have had to cross over, right? If it was me, that is. The baby.”

Looking startled, Grete took a step back. “You? Oh, dear—you think that baby was you?”

“Well, yes, I mean, that’s why I’m here, isn’t it?” Suddenly Isabelle didn’t feel quite so sure. “Because I’m a changeling? On my way back to my true home? Which is this house?”

“You? A changeling? Child, the notions that fill your head!” Grete sat down heavily on a chair, the laughter rumbling out of her. “You’re no more a changeling than I’m an ostrich.”

Isabelle stared down at the porch’s broad planks. Her red boots, she noticed, had grown scratched and scuffed after days of wandering through the woods. Her brain felt scratched and scuffed too. Not a changeling? Not the baby in the hammock? Tears formed in the corners of her eyes, but she furiously blinked them away. She’d been so sure! Wasn’t that why the picture had fallen out of the book into her hands? That was what Grete had intended to happen, wasn’t it? So Isabelle would know that Grete was her real

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