Changeling (Illustrated) Read Online Free

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