Changeling (Illustrated) Read Online Free Page A

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