Wizard World 1: Changeling

III

In lands mythical to one another, the days passed.

When the boy was six years old, it was noted that he not only attempted to repair anything that was broken about the place, but that he quite often succeeded. Mel showed her husband the kitchen tongs he had mended.

"As good as Vince could have done at the smithy," she said. "That boy's going to be a tinker."

Marakas examined the tool.

"Did you see how he did it?" he asked.

"No. I heard his hammering, but I didn't pay him much heed. You know how he's always fooling with bits of metal and such."

Marakas nodded and set the tongs aside.

"Where is he now?"

"Down by the irrigation ditch, I think," she answered. "He splashes about there."

"I'll walk down and see him, tell him he was a good boy for mending that," he said, crossing the room and lifting the latch.

Outside, he turned the corner and took the sloping path past the huge tree in the direction of the fields. Insects buzzed in the grasses. A bird warbled somewhere above him. A dry breeze stirred his hair. As he walked, he thought somewhat proudly of the child they had taken. He was certainly healthy and strong--and very clever....

"Mark?" he called when he had reached the ditch.

"Over here, Dad," came a faint reply from around the bend to his right.

He moved in that direction.

"Where?" he asked, after a time.

"Down here."

Approaching the edge, he looked over, seeing Mark and the thing with which he was playing. It appeared that the boy had placed a smooth, straight stick just above the water's surface, resting each of its ends loosely in grooves among rock heaps he had built up on either side; and at the middle of the stick was affixed a series of squarish--wings?--which the flowing water pushed against, turning it round and round. A peculiar tingle of trepidation passed over him at the sight of it--why, he was not certain--but this vanished moments later as he followed the rotating vanes with his eyes, becoming a sense of pleasure at his son's achievement.

"What have you got there, Mark?" he asked, seating himself on the bank.

"Just a sort of--wheel," the boy said, looking up and smiling. "The water turns it."

"What does it do?"

"Nothing. Just turns."

"It's real pretty."

"Yeah, isn't it?"

"That was nice the way you fixed those tongs," Marakas said, plucking a piece of grass and chewing it. "Your mother liked that."

"It was easy."

"You enjoy fixing things and making things, making things work---don't you?"

"Yes."

"Think that's what you'd like to do for a living some day?"

"I think so."

"Old Vince is going to be looking for an apprentice down at the forge one of these days. If you think you'd like to learn smithing, working with metals and such--I could speak with him."

Mark smiled again.

"Do that," he said.

"Of course, you'd be working with real, practical things." Marakas gestured toward the water-spun wheel. "Not toys," he finished.

"It isn't a toy," Mark said, turning to look back at his creation.

"You just said that it doesn't do anything."

"But I think it could. I just have to figure what--and how."

Marakas laughed, stood and stretched. He tossed his blade of grass into the water and watched the wheel mangle it.

"When you find out, be sure to tell me."

He turned away and started back toward the path.

"I will ..." Mark said softly, still watching it turn.

When the boy was six years old, he went into his father's office to see once again the funny machine Dad used. Maybe this time--

"Dan! Get out of here!" bellowed Michael Chain, a huge figure, without even turning away from the drawing board.

The little stick figure on the screen before him had collapsed into a line that waved up and down. Michael's hand played across the console, attempting adjustments.

"Gloria! Come and get him! It's happening again!"

"Dad," Dan began, "I didn't mean--"

The man swiveled and glared at him.

"I've told you to stay out of here when I'm working," he said.

"I know. But I thought that maybe this time--"

"You thought! You thought! It's time you started doing what you're told!"

"I'm sor--"

Michael Chain began to rise from his stool and the boy backed away. Then Dan heard his mother's footsteps at his back. He turned and hugged her.

"I'm sorry," he finished.

"Again?" Gloria said, looking over him at her husband.

"Again," Michael answered. "The kid's a jinx."

The pencil-can began rattling atop the small table beside the drawing board. Michael turned and stared at it, fascinated. It tipped, fell to its side, rolled toward the table's edge.

He lunged, but it passed over the edge and fell to the floor before he could reach it. Cursing, he straightened then and banged his head on the nearest corner.

"Get him out of here!" he roared. "The kid's got a pet poltergeist!"

"Come on," Gloria said, leading him away, "We know it's not something you want to do...."

The window blew open. Papers swirled. There came a sharp rapping from within the wall. A book fell from its shelf.

"... It's just something that sometimes happens," she finished, as they departed.

Michael sighed, picked things up, rose, closed the window. When he returned to his machine, it was functioning normally. He glared at it. He did not like things that he could not understand. Was it a wave phenomenon that the kid propagated--intensified somehow when he became upset? He had tried several times to detect something of that sort, using various instruments. Alway unsuccessfully. The instruments themselves usually--

"Now you've done it. He's crying and the place is a shambles," Gloria said, entering the room again. "If you'd be a little more gentle with him when it starts, things probably wouldn't get so bad. I can usually head them off, just by being nice to him."

"In the first place," Michael said, "I'm not sure I believe that anything paranormal really happens. In the second, it's always so sudden."

She laughed. So did he.

"Well, it is," he said finally. "I suppose I had better go and say something to him. I know it's not his fault. I don't want him unhappy. ..."

He had started toward the door. He paused.

"I still wonder," he said.

"I know."

"I'm sure our kid didn't have that funny mark on his wrist."

"Don't start that again. Please. It just takes you around in circles."

"You're right."

He departed his office and walked back toward Dan's room. As he went, he heard the sounds of a guitar being softly strummed. Now a D chord, now a G... Surprising, how quickly a kid that age had learned to handle the undersized instrument... Strange, too. No one else in either family had ever shown any musical aptitude.

He knocked gently on the door. The strumming stopped.

"Yes?"

"May I come in?"

"Uh-huh."

He pushed the door open and entered. Dan was sprawled on the bed. The instrument was nowhere in sight. Underneath, probably.

"That was real pretty," he said. "What were you playing?"

"Just some sounds. I don't know."

"Why'd you stop?"

"You don't like it."

"I never said that."

"I can tell."

He sat down beside him and squeezed his shoulder.

"Well, you're wrong," he said. "Everybody's got something they like to do. With me, it's my work." Then, finally, "You scared me, Dan. I don't know how it happens that machines sometimes go crazy when you come around--and things I don't understand sometimes scare me. But I'm not really mad at you. I just sound that way when I'm startled."

Dan rolled onto his side and looked up at him. He smiled weakly.

"You want to play something for me? I'll be glad to listen."

The boy shook his head.

"Not just now," he said.

Michael looked about the room, at the huge shelf of picture books, at the unopened erector set. When he looked back at Dan, he saw that the boy was rubbing his wrist.

"Hurt your hand?" he asked.

"Uh-uh. It just sort of throbs--the mark--sometimes."

"How often?"

"Whenever--something like that--happens."

He gestured toward the door and the entire external world.

"It's going away now," he added.

He took hold of the boy's wrist, examined the dark dragon-shape upon it.

"The doctor said it was nothing to worry about--no chance of it ever turning into anything bad...."

"It's all right now."

Michael continued to stare for several moments. Finally, he squeezed the hand, lowered it and smiled.

"Anything you want, Dan?" he asked.

"No. Uh... Well--some books."

Michael laughed.

"That's one thing you like, isn't it? Okay, maybe we can stop by a bookstore later and see what they've got."

Dan finally smiled.

"Thank you."

Michael punched his shoulder lightly and rose.

"... And I'll stay out of your office, Dad."

He squeezed his shoulder again and left him there on the bed. As he headed back toward his office, he heard a soft, rapid strumming begin.

When the boy was twelve years old he built a horse. It stood two hands high and was moved by a spring-powered clockwork mechanism. He had worked after hours at the smithy forging the parts, and on his own time in the shed he had built behind his parents' place, measuring, grinding and polishing gears. Now it pranced on the floor of that shed, for him and his audience of one--Nora Vail, a nine-year-old neighbor girl.

She clapped her hands as it slowly turned its head, as if to regard them.

"It's beautiful, Mark! It's beautiful!" she said. "There's never been anything like it--except in the old days."

"What do you mean?" he said quickly.

"You know. Like long ago. When they had all sorts of clever devices like that."

"Those are just stories," he said. Then, after a time, "Aren't they?"

She shook her head, pale hair dancing.

"No. My father's passed by one of the forbidden places, down south by Anvil Mountain. You can still see all sorts of broken things there without going in--things people can't make anymore." She looked back at the horse, its movements now slowing. "Maybe even things like that."

"That's--interesting..."he said. "I didn't realize--and there's still stuff left?"

"That's what my father said."

Abruptly, she looked him straight in the eye.

"You know, maybe you'd better not show this to anybody else," she said.

"Why not?"

"People might think you've been there and learned some of the forbidden things. They might get mad."

"That's dumb," he said, just as the horse fell onto its side. "That's real dumb."

But as he righted it, he said, "Maybe I'll wait till I have something better to show them. Something they'll like...."

The following spring, he demonstrated for a few friends and neighbors the flotation device he had made, geared to operate a floodgate in the irrigation system. They talked about it for two weeks, then decided against installing it themselves. When the spring runoff occurred--and later, when the rains came--there was some local flooding, not too serious. They only shrugged.

"I'll have to show them something even better," he told Nora. "Something they'll have to like."

"Why?" she asked.

He looked at her, puzzled.

"Because they have to understand," he said.

"What?"

"That I'm right and they're wrong, of course."

"People don't usually go for that sort of thing," she said.

He smiled.

"We'll see."

When the boy was twelve years old, he took his guitar with him one day--as he had on many others--and visited a small park deep in the steel, glass, plastic and concrete-lined heart of the city where his family now resided.

He patted a dusty synthetic tree and crossed the unliving turf past holograms of swaying flowers, to seat himself upon an orange plastic bench. Recordings of birdsongs sounded at random intervals through hidden speakers. Artificial butterflies darted along invisible beams. Concealed aerosols released the odors of flowers at regular intervals.

He removed the instrument from its case and tuned it. He began to play.

One of the fake butterflies passed too near, faltered and fell to the ground. He stopped playing and leaned forward to examine it. A woman passed and tossed a coin near his feet. He straightened and ran a hand through his hair, staring after her. The disarrayed silver-white streak that traced his black mop from forehead to nape fell into place again.

He rested the guitar on his thigh, chorded and began an intricate right-hand style he had been practicing. A dark form--a real bird--suddenly descended, to hop about nearby. Dan almost stopped playing at the novel sight. Instead, he switched to a simpler style, to leave more attention for its movements.

Sometimes at night he played his guitar on the roof of the building where birds nested, beneath stars twinkling faintly through the haze. He would hear them twittering and rustling about him. But he seldom saw any in the parks--perhaps it was something in the aerosols--and he watched this one with a small fascination as it approached the failed butterfly and seized it in its beak. A moment later, it dropped it, cocked its head, pecked at it, then hopped away. Shortly thereafter, the bird was airborne once again, then gone.

Dan reverted to a more complex pattern, and after a time he began singing against the noises of the city. The sun passed redly overhead. A wino, sprawled beneath the level of the holograms, sobbed softly in his sleep. The park vibrated regularly with the passage of underground trains. After several lapses, Dan realized that his voice was changing.