“Now what do you think all that was about?” I ask Toby Potter.
“I don’t know. The last time I saw St. Clare so rattled was when that biographer from England came asking questions about Vera Beecher. Look … there they are on the lawn. It must have something to do with those students.”
I turn back to the French windows and see Ivy St. Clare crossing the lawn with a gesticulating Shelley Drake in tow. Halfway across, just past the copper beech and near the ashes of last night’s bonfire, they meet Chloe Dawson and Clyde Bollinger. Chloe does all the talking, swiping tears away from her eyes. Clyde stands with hunched shoulders, his eyes darting nervously back and forth between the dean and his friend. A small crowd has begun to gather around the quartet. I recognize a few of my students from Folklore and Junior Brit Lit, as well as the Merling twins, who stand off to one side whispering to each other. I also see Hannah Weiss, who is leading a group of new students on a tour of the campus. Then I notice that Sally is one of the students in Hannah’s group.
“That’s my daughter,” I say, turning to Toby Potter, but I find that the little man has disappeared. Well, if he can abandon the party, so can I, I think, slipping through the open glass doors. Sally’s a perfect excuse.
Halfway across the grass I start to wonder if approaching Sally is really such a good idea. She’s talking to an Asian girl who’s wearing an Invader Zim T-shirt—one of Sally’s all-time favorite cartoons. She’d often complained that no one in Great Neck had ever heard of it. I don’t want to barge in if she’s just found a soul mate.
But when I get closer I can see that the color has drained from her face and she’s biting the ends of her hair—two sure signs that she’s upset. I head toward her, unable to stay away.
“Are you okay?” I ask when I reach her. “Has anything happened?”
“Sheesh, Mom! Why would anything be wrong with me?” She shakes her head so hard the damp ends of her hair swing against her face. “Haruko and I are just trying to find out what all the excitement’s about.”
Figuring that this is as close as I’m going to get to an introduction to her new friend, I turn to the girl in the Invader Zim shirt. “Hi, Haruko, I’m Sally’s mom, Meg …”
“Ms. Rosenthal, yeah, I wanted to take your class when I saw you had Neil Gaiman on the reading list, but it was closed out. Maybe next year.”
I smile, immediately liking the girl, and say a little prayer that this year Sally will hang out with smart, polite kids who have something on their minds other than boys and designer clothes. And aren’t into pagan sacrifices either, I think, glancing at the crowd that’s now gathered around the embers of last night’s bonfire. The scene eerily mirrors last night’s festivity, with Chloe at the center making supplicatory gestures toward the stern figure of Ivy St. Clare. The only one missing is Isabel.
“Has anyone seen Isabel Cheney today?” I ask Sally.
She shakes her head. “I heard some girls commenting that she wasn’t at breakfast.”
“She didn’t show up for my classes either. I’d better go talk to the dean.”
I leave Sally and Haruko and approach the little circle gathered around Chloe. “Is this about Isabel Cheney?” I ask. “She wasn’t in class today.”
Ivy St. Clare turns her head toward me and snaps, “Perhaps you should have told someone.”
I open my mouth to defend myself, but Shelley Drake speaks up instead. “Apparently no one noticed the girl was missing until lunchtime. She’s not in her room, she hasn’t gone to any of her classes, and no one’s seen her since she left the bonfire last night … isn’t that right, Chloe?”
Chloe Dawson sniffles and shakes her head. “The last time I saw her was in the apple orchard when we were all chasing her. She was headed into the woods … and … well …” Chloe looks up nervously at the dean.
“The woods behind the Lodge are strictly off-limits,” the dean says.
“That’s right,” Chloe says, widening her eyes exactly as Sally does when she’s lying. “So of course I didn’t follow her. Isabel doesn’t think the rules apply to her.” She looks as if she’s about to start in on a tirade about her rival’s failings, but then she thinks better of it. “You think she could have fallen in the woods and hurt herself?”
I immediately think of the treacherous ravine—Witte Clove—behind Briar Lodge. When my eyes meet Shelley Drake’s I can tell she’s thinking the same thing. “It’s possible,” she says, turning to the dean. “We should start searching the woods now, before it gets dark.”
“Shouldn’t we call the police?” I ask.
The dean looks momentarily startled by my suggestion but then nods. “Yes, of course. I’ll go to my office and do that immediately. But I see no reason to wait for them to start searching. It’s awful to stand by and do nothing. I’m sure the students will want to help look for their friend.”
“Really? I ask, surprised that the Dean would send her teenaged charges into the woods. But then I notice how upset she is and realize she’s probably remembering the days after Lily Eberhardt went missing. After all, she was only a teenager herself at the time. “That drop off the ridge is dangerous,” I point out very patiently. “Another student could get hurt.”
“Meg is right,” Shelley says, once again coming to my defense. “If we do allow the students to take part in the search it should be supervised by adults—at least one for every five students, I think. I’ll be happy to organize the search at the Lodge while you go call the police.” Then, turning to Chloe, she adds, “Why don’t you help me, Chloe? You can show me where you last saw Isabel.”
I see immediately that Shelley’s giving the overwrought girl something to do to help calm her down. And it seems to work. Chloe wipes the tears from her face and takes a long breath. The dean, too, looks calmer and more reassured.
“And you, Meg,” Shelley says before she leaves with Chloe. “You ought to change into long pants before you go, don’t you think?”
I’m about to object but then, remembering the thorn bushes in the woods, decide she might be right. I tell Sally that I’ll be back in twenty minutes and not to start until I get there. No matter what precautions they’re taking I don’t like the idea of her wandering around in those woods without me. Then I take off at a sprint, determined to match—or better—Dean St. Clare’s eleven and a half minutes to the cottage.
I manage to get back to the cottage, change into jeans, and get back to Briar Lodge in a little under half an hour. I’m amazed at how much has been accomplished in that time. At the edge of the forest Shelley Drake is pacing in front of a long line of students and teachers like a general surveying her troops. There’s a teacher or staff person for every five students and each group leader has been given a whistle and a bright pink bandana.
“The bandanas were left over from a breast cancer benefit walk,” Shelley tells me, handing me my bandana and whistle. “Find a couple of students who don’t have a leader and make sure you keep a good eye on them. We can’t afford to lose another one.”
Could we afford to lose the first one? I think, but I keep it to myself. Shelley is clearly harried. Her cheeks are as bright pink as the bandanas and her eyes nervously dart everywhere, as if she could rein in the chaos by sheer willpower. In addition to the students, there are two ambulances parked in front of the Lodge, half a dozen EMT workers, and, holding a German shepherd straining at his leash, a man in camouflage hunting clothes who is talking to Sheriff Reade. A little past where Reade stands I see Sally with her new friend Haruko, Clyde Bollinger, Hannah Weiss, and Chloe Dawson. I look around the crowd for another group to lead. As much as I’d like to keep Sally in my sights, I don’t want to crowd her. But then she looks up and waves me over.
“Why don’t you join our cell?” Clyde asks when I reach the group. “Professor Drake thought it was a good idea for the older students to mix with the new ones because we know the area better.”
“Clyde and I were both in the hiking club last year,”
Hannah adds. “And Chloe wrote a paper on the history of the woods—”
“That doesn’t mean I know my way around them,” Chloe snaps. “We’re not supposed to go in them without a supervised hiking group.”
“I didn’t say you had—” Hannah begins, her voice rising in annoyance. They’re all overtired, I realize, like toddlers who haven’t had their naps, and will soon be squabbling if I don’t interfere.
“Oh look,” I say, “Sheriff Reade is making an announcement.”
Sheriff Reade has mounted an old stone wall to speak to the search parties. One of the EMTs offers him a bullhorn, but he turns it down. I see why when he speaks. He has a deep, authoritative voice that instantly silences all chatter in the line. “We’ve got three hours till nightfall. That means three hours to find this girl. I’m calling all civilian searchers in at dusk. We need to cover as much ground as we can in that time. Proceed directly west toward the ridge with your group leader. At the quarter hour we’ll all stop and call Isabel’s name for one minute, then observe total silence for four minutes.”
“Why?” someone asks. “Shouldn’t we just keep calling?”
“How do you expect to hear her answer if the woods are full of people shouting?” Sheriff Reade asks. “For the rest of the time, keep your voices low. If you find anything—a piece of clothing, an object that might belong to Isabel—blow your whistle once and wait. I’ll find you. If you find Isabel, blow your whistle three times. Remember, stay with your groups and watch your footing. When you reach the ridge, turn back. We’re putting together a climbing team to search there. It’s too dangerous for civilians.”
Reade lifts his left hand up and checks his watch. “I’ve got six-fifteen. Check your watches and make sure that’s what you’ve got.”
I look down at Jude’s old Rolex, still set on Japan time—or, as I’ve been thinking of it, Jude time. Jude would be the first to tell me that it’s more important now to be in sync with the rest of the search party, so I twist the stem until the watch reads 6:15 and push it in. When I look up, I notice Sally staring at me. “Let’s go,” I say. “Let’s find her.”
Although we have three hours of daylight left, the sun is low enough in the western sky to cast our shadows, and the shadows of the trees, behind us. Climbing the ridge I feel as if we are advancing through the ranks of a retreating army: the ghosts of those who have gone before us. It’s an image that can’t help but remind me of the last scene in The Changeling Girl.
The peasant girl looked from the witch, who stood at the edge of the woods holding the handful of dirt that would give her the freedom to return to her old life, to the changeling who stood in the doorway of her old home. As she watched, another figure appeared in the doorway—a man. She recognized the young shepherd who courted her, only he had grown stouter in the year she’d been away. He’d become a prosperous gentleman. He put his arm around the changeling girl and squinted out into the dusk, but he didn’t see his old sweetheart. His eyes were dazzled by the changeling. She’d made him her own, just as she’d made everything in the peasant girl’s old life her own. Only now she had the power to take it all back.
The peasant girl turned to the witch and held both hands out, cupped together. The witch poured the soil into her hands. It was warm and loamy, like soil newly turned for spring planting. It was full of life. Feeling its power in her hands, she knew what she must do.
She lifted her hands up over her head and, twirling in a circle, tossed the soil into the air. Instantly, a wind caught it and carried it into the woods, lifting the cloud into the topmost boughs of the oldest trees and then letting the grains rain down through the branches. The wind sighed and the trees swayed and creaked, sounding like old bones coming to life. The tops of the pines tossed and thrashed like girls drying their hair … and then they were girls, stretching their arms, tossing their hair, and shaking out the cramps in their legs. Dozens of girls.. hundreds … come to life. All the changelings that had been forced into alien shapes for time out of mind, now free to move.
The peasant girl looked at the witch and saw that she was smiling. She was no longer a witch, but a beautiful woman in a long white dress: the queen of the changelings. She held open her arms to welcome all her children back and the peasant girl turned away and began climbing the hill toward the high ridge that marked the boundary of the valley. The sun was setting beyond the ridge, staining the sky rose and violet. The girls who were once trees were black against that light, shadows who passed the peasant girl as she climbed the hill. As they passed her, they reached out their hands to touch her, their fingers grazing her lightly like pine needles brushing against her skin, their voices whispering in her ears in the cadences of the wind, thanking her for setting them free. When she reached the top of the ridge, she had been brushed clean and given all she’d ever need to go out into the world and make a new life. At the top of the ridge, she turned back to wave goodbye, but the woods below her were filled with a dark mist that hid everything below the tree line. She turned and faced the setting sun, the next valley, and her future.
The last picture in the book shows the dark figure of the peasant girl silhouetted against a lilac and pink sky, bravely setting off into the unknown. Although she stands alone, her hair and dress are tossed by invisible breezes that I had always imagined were the voices of the changeling girls whispering their parting wishes to her. Their breath like the touch of white pine needles …
A hand brushing my hand startles me out of the fairy tale and into the reality of our mission in the woods tonight. “It’s seven-fifteen,” Clyde is reminding me. “Time to call.”
I signal to Sally and Haruko, who are on my left while Clyde alerts Chloe and Hannah to the right, and we stop. All around us the quiet woods fill with myriad voices calling Isabel’s name. Then at 7:16 the woods fall silent again. Even the birds, no doubt frightened by our voices, are quiet in the ensuing hush. For four minutes there’s only the sound of the wind sifting through the tops of the white pines. There’s no answering cry.
“If she were out here and conscious she would have answered by now,” Clyde points out as we resume our upward trudge. I’m sure it’s what we’re all thinking as we get close to the top of the ridge: if we don’t find Isabel on this side, she has probably fallen into the clove—and if that’s what happened, how likely is it that she’s still alive?
“Maybe she’s not even in the woods,” Hannah says. “Isabel was a real wuss—she couldn’t even watch a scary movie—I just don’t see her going into the woods.”
“But you saw her go in, didn’t you, Chloe?”
Chloe doesn’t answer right away. Instead she looks down at Clyde’s feet. “Your shoe is untied again,” she says with a long drawn-out sigh and a pained look on her face.
Clyde’s face turns red as he stoops to retie his black Converse high-top. His shoelaces have come untied so many times that I’ve been tempted to tie them in double knots like I used to do for Sally. We’ve stopped in a swatch of golden early evening sunlight that streams through a break in the canopy that was made when the tree Clyde has his foot propped on came down. It must have fallen years ago, because its upturned root plate is furred by moss, making it look like a huge hairy spider—an impression that I imagine would be magnified at night. I don’t envy Isabel if she came this way.
“Come on,” I tell Clyde, “we’ll waste the ten minutes we get to walk. At this rate we won’t make it to the ridge by dusk.”
Clyde drags his foot down from the root and something white flutters in the air. A moth, I think, but when it settles on the ground I see it’s a piece of white cloth. Chloe reaches out and fingers the material before I can stop her.
“It’s the same cloth Ms. Drake used to make our dresses,” she says in a shaky voice.
“It could have been from someone else’s dress,” I say, “but I think I’d better blow the whistle. Sheriff Reade will want to see this.”
I lift the whistle to my mouth. It takes me a mom
ent to find the breath to blow it. We’re only a few hundred feet from the ridge and I’m suddenly afraid of what we will see when we look over it into the ravine. When I do find my breath the whistle sounds like someone shrieking. The woods are unnaturally silent afterward. No one speaks while we wait for Sheriff Reade. Fortunately, he doesn’t take long.
“There he is.” Clyde points up the hill. I look up and see Callum Reade silhouetted against the western sky. Of course, I realize, he’s been patrolling the ridge. He’d want to find Isabel before anyone else. Well, at least now he’ll have a narrower area to search. When Reade reaches us I hold up the piece of torn cloth. As it ripples in the breeze I feel absurdly like a medieval lady saluting her knight. Sheriff Reade takes the cloth from me with all the gravity of a knight accepting his lady’s favors.
I describe how we found it and turn to Chloe to confirm that it’s the same cloth that the dresses were made from. Reade nods and says: “Right. I need you kids to go back down to the Lodge. Tell any teachers you meet to meet me on the ridge—you can use this fallen tree as a landmark—and send all the students back to the Lodge.”
“But why can’t we help?” Chloe cries.
“Because I can’t go fishing anyone else out of the clove. If Isabel’s down there, she could be seriously hurt. We can’t afford to waste any time.”
Chloe looks as if she is going to argue, but Clyde leans down and says something in a low voice. Her eyes widen and I’m afraid we’re in for a scene, but she gets to her feet and meekly follows Hannah and Clyde down the hill. Haruko turns to go, but Sally hesitates—as if she were suddenly unwlling to be parted from me. The thought that she might actually prefer for me to stay with her for once—that she needs me—makes me reluctant to go with Sheriff Reade. I’m about to tell him that I’m going back with my daughter when Hannah comes back up the hill and lays a hand on her arm.