Changeling Read online

  I didn’t understand what she was saying, but apparently the griffin did. “That little doll is not as dumb as she looks,” it crackled. “Come on in.”

  The big doors jerked open, sticking unevenly halfway. Changeling froze, so I grabbed her jacket and hauled her in after me.

  The Producer’s lobby was as grand as the outside of the building, only more so. Acres of plush red carpet! Miles of gilded carving! Hundreds of chandeliers like crystal waterfalls! Mirrors! Paintings! Statues galore! No doors I could see, but there was a long golden staircase that curved gracefully up to a golden balcony. As we crossed the hall toward it, I caught sight of two wild-haired bogles sneaking across the luxurious carpet. One of them looked into my eyes with terrified astonishment. It was not a pleasant moment when I realized that the bogles were Changeling and me.

  The Pooka always said that attitude counts more with Folk than appearance. I threw back my shoulders and marched up those golden stairs like I owned them. At the top, a second griffin flickered and fizzed as if it couldn’t make up its mind whether it was really there or not.

  “The elevator is to your crackle,” the griffin said. “Shake a leg, dolls. The Producer crackle crackle.”

  Luckily, there was only one elevator in sight and only one button on the panel inside. I pushed the button and the door hissed closed, shutting Changeling and me into a mirrored cube. Faced once again with my boglelike reflection, I brushed at my skirt and picked some dried seaweed out of my hair. It didn’t help much.

  The elevator rose slowly, groaning and bouncing like a spider on a thread. I began to worry that the Producer’s buggy computer was about to drop it or dematerialize it or make it go sideways. My reflection turned a delicate green. Changeling’s reflection didn’t change at all.

  There was a soft ding and the elevator quivered to a stop. The doors whooshed open and I stumbled gratefully out into a long hall. At the far end, a third griffin hologram lay across the threshold of a gilded door. The griffin looked about like I felt: You could see the door’s golden curlicues clear though it.

  It got to its feet, flickering madly. “The Producer crackle,” it informed us. “If he finds out that you little crackle are crackle with some cockamamie crackle, he is going to be very crackle crackle.”

  This did not sound promising, but I wasn’t going to turn back now. I glanced at Changeling, who was scowling at the griffin as if she found it offensive. “Let’s get this show on the road,” I said, holding on to my attitude as hard as I could.

  “Your funeral,” the griffin said clearly, and flickered out as the door swung wide.

  Given the Producer’s taste for gold and scarlet, I was expecting his private office to be really special. It was special, all right: dingy gray paint, a speckledy linoleum floor, a beat-up wooden desk, a huge dented gray metal cabinet with double doors, a ratty office chair, a few torn posters tacked to the walls, a cracked leather sofa. The only really colorful things in the room were a toy theatre with red velvet curtains and the Producer himself.

  Except for his clothes, the Producer looked a lot like the troll who lived under Glen Span Arch. He was about twice as tall as me and more than twice as wide, with a head like a fireplug and a mouth like a baby’s and little blue marble eyes. The Glen Span troll, however, wouldn’t have been caught dead in a mustard-colored suit with red checks and a brown fedora pushed to the back of his head.

  The Producer leaned back in the ratty chair and put his two-toned shoes on the beat-up desk. “A little bird tells me you dolls want to talk,” he said. “So talk.”

  I took a deep breath, crossed my fingers behind my back for luck, and said that I’d heard that the Broadway computer was full of bugs. Since my companion and I knew something about computers, we thought we’d drop by and see if we could help him out.

  The Producer of Broadway laughed, showing flat yellow teeth. “Help me out, huh? What kind of a chump do you take me for? Everybody knows dolls are ignorant on the subject of computers. You are lucky I am a Genius with a sense of humor, or I would bop you in the beezer.”

  “Then it’s a good thing I’m not a doll, isn’t it?” I said.

  “You are not a doll?” He squinted his blue marbles at me. “Then what are you? Chopped liver?”

  “A mortal changeling.”

  The Producer laughed. It was not a happy sound. “Are you thinking that is some kind of a recommendation? I am somewhat sore on the subject of mortals at this time. The citizen that sells me this turkey is part mortal himself. He tells the tale that this computer is a mortal-fairy hybrid, only one of its kind, completely resistant to gremlins and theatre critics. He does not mention bugs.” The Producer ground his trollish teeth. “When I find this citizen, I will bite his head off, and then I will close him down so fast he will not know what hit him. That will teach him to sell the Producer of Broadway a turkey, at that.”

  I didn’t remember anything in Macworld about turkeys. I swallowed. “That’s very interesting,” I said weakly.

  The Producer snorted. “That is what they all say. For weeks, there is a parade of nerds and geeks and hackers through my office and every one of them says my problem is ‘interesting.’ I am thinking that ‘interesting’ is Tech Folk talk for ‘kaput.’ I even find this guy who says he is a computer wizard straight from Cyberspace. He is a very strange citizen indeed, just a head and a box and a couple of long, wiggly arms. And what does he do?” The Producer took a bright yellow handkerchief out of his breast pocket and swiped his face with it. “He makes it worse.”

  The only way to kill a troll was to trick him into staying outside until the sun came up, when he’d turn to stone—not really useful in a place where it was always night. And I wasn’t sure sunlight would work on a Genius, however troll-like, even if I wanted to kill him. Which I didn’t.

  “Well, well,” the Producer said. “Your stand-in has found my computer.”

  I spun around to see Changeling poking at the golden curlicues on the toy theatre. To my astonishment, the scarlet curtains parted to reveal a dark screen labeled “Fire Curtain.” I glanced at the Producer to see how he felt about Changeling touching something without asking first.

  Surprisingly, the Producer was grinning happily. “That is one smart little doll. The other guys all look in the cabinet.” He swiveled his chair to the gray metal cabinet behind his desk and yanked open its doors. A bearded head sporting a pointy hat stared back at me with an expression of horrified astonishment: the computer wizard, I guessed. Ranged on the shelves around it were smaller heads, most of them wearing heavy black glasses repaired with duct tape and paper clips.

  “Get it?” the Producer asked.

  I swallowed. “Got it.”

  “Good. I will leave you dolls alone. I cannot stand to watch computer magic. It makes me nervous.”

  When the door had closed behind him, I turned to Changeling. “It’s no use. This is just too dangerous. When the coast is clear, we’ll go look for some stairs and get out of here. I’ll think of some other way to get the ticket.”

  “Why?” Changeling asked.

  If I’d known what a beezer was, I would have bopped hers myself. “Why? Because I don’t want our heads to end up in the Producer’s collection, that’s why.”

  “You said you knew how to fix the computer.”

  “I was wrong.”

  I tiptoed to the office door and cracked it open. The griffin was still lying across it, looking so faded and flickery that I doubted it would be able to stop us. However, the Producer was slouched in a golden chair with his feet on a stool and his hat pulled down over his forehead. His marble-blue eyes met mine.

  “I hope you dolls are not thinking of taking it on the lam,” he rumbled. “Because if you are, I will have to bite your heads off.”

  “Of course not,” I said quickly.

  “Good. Now get back in there.”

  I shut the door softly.

  Changeling had pulled the Mermaid’s Mirror out of her shir
t, and was humming in an absorbed kind of way. “Hey, Changeling,” I said, and nudged her gently with my toe, but she didn’t even notice.

  I wheeled the Producer’s chair over to the toy theatre and sat down.

  Macworld was all about computers with screens and keyboards; the Producer’s computer was a toy theatre. Still, a computer’s a computer, right? I looked for a button labeled ON, but wasn’t surprised not to find one.

  Gingerly, I poked at a golden curlicue. Nothing happened. I poked at another. A panel below the theatre opened and a flat board studded with rows of buttons popped out.

  Eureka! I pulled a curl into my mouth and studied the board. The buttons were marked with tiny faces: a smiling one; a frowning one; two winking, smiling ones (right eye and left eye); two winking, frowning ones (ditto); four with their mouths turned up on one side and one eyebrow raised; and so on and on in tiny, bewildering variation.

  I didn’t like the look of the frowny face. The smiley face, however, seemed inviting. I moved my finger toward it.

  Changeling leaned over my shoulder, so close that her hair tickled my cheek. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  I spat out the curl. “Fixing the computer. Go away, Changeling. You’re making me nervous.”

  She didn’t move. “Do you know what kind of computer this is? What operating system is it running? Do you have the manual?”

  “What’s a manual?”

  “It is dangerous to work on a computer without reading the manual.”

  “It’s dangerous not to work on it. Did you see those heads in the cabinet? Now leave me alone. I have to concentrate.”

  Changeling pulled back, but she didn’t go away. Irritated, I pushed the smiley-face button and held my breath. The fire curtain rolled up slowly. Behind it was a stage, bare of everything but a hideous browny-yellowy thing as big as my fist.

  I looked at the bug; the bug looked back. It had a face like a gargoyle and far too many legs, and its curved mouth parts were busily munching something bright and twitching. I shuddered and turned my attention back to the buttons. There was one with a wavy mouth that looked kind of friendly. I pressed it hopefully.

  The bug swallowed the bright thing, stretched its mandibles in a bored kind of way, and scuttled to the front of the stage. I yeeped, and the door opened.

  “You got a problem in here?” the Producer asked.

  I turned and grinned crazily at him. “No, no. Everything’s fine. Just fine.”

  “Good,” the Producer said darkly, and closed the door.

  I turned back to the stage. The fist-sized bug had been replaced by a whole troop of smaller bugs. I hit a couple of buttons, more or less at random. The first one made the bugs arrange themselves into rows; the second made them march back and forth across the stage. Desperately, I reached for the frowny face.

  Changeling slapped my hand. Hard.

  “Ow! What did you do that for?”

  “You are not approaching the task rationally. You obviously do not know anything about computers at all. You do not even know where to begin.”

  I got up, sending the chair rattling across the floor. “Okay, fine. Let’s approach it rationally. It’s a toy theatre that runs Broadway. Where do you think we should begin?”

  Changeling held up the Mermaid’s Mirror. The silvery surface was filled edge to edge with a complicated diagram.

  “I think we should begin by consulting the manual,” she said.

  I gaped at it, then wheeled the chair back to the theatre for her to sit in.

  Changeling studied the diagram, then punched a winking face and a worried one. The bugs formed a series of concentric spinning circles like an archery target. It gave me an instant headache, but Changeling started to hum happily. She consulted with the Mirror for a while, stared at the buttons, then pressed a surprised face. The bugs changed from yellowy-brown to violent green. She went back to the Mirror.

  I was chewing on my hair again out of sheer nervousness. It tasted terrible. I spat it out. Changeling looked up impatiently. “Go away. You are bothering me.”

  The Producer’s office walls were plastered with posters for plays—A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Wicked and Peter Pan—and framed drawings of actors signed with little hearts and x’s and inscriptions like “With Love and Nibbles” and “Forever Yours” and “For the Big Enchilada.” Judging from the toothy smiles, most of them were vampires.

  When I was bored with the pictures, I turned to the desk. It was piled with scripts and letters from theatre managers complaining about the electrical service and striking gaffers and slow deliveries of nectar to the concession stands. When I’d paged through the scripts, I was out of things to look at—except for the cabinet full of Tech heads, which I’d already seen as much of as I wanted to.

  Beyond the desk, there was a window covered with wooden slats. I found a string hanging down one side and fiddled with it until I got the slats to raise and then I looked out.

  Except when I was dangling from Carlyle’s claws, I’d never been this high up. Broadway sparkled below me like a giant’s necklace—ruby and diamond, emerald and sapphire. From this distance, it looked oddly peaceful. I leaned my forehead against the window and imagined what it might be like to live among Theatre Folk, meeting supernaturals from all over the City, maybe even other mortal changelings. It might be fun. It would certainly be different. I hadn’t seen any trees, for instance, and the lights of Broadway drowned out the stars. The sun, of course, didn’t shine at all.

  Broadway was a nice place to visit, I decided. But I wouldn’t want to live there.

  Three different sets of lights flickered and dimmed, one after another, leaving large black gaps in the twinkling chain. I shivered and turned to see how Changeling was doing.

  Over at the theatre, things looked hopeful: The swarm of bugs on the stage was a lot smaller than it had been. As I leaned over Changeling’s shoulder, though, there was a sudden population explosion. Thousands of huge, gnarly bugs swarmed everywhere, their mouth parts gaping hungrily. They climbed the scarlet curtains, threatening to spill out over the control board and overrun the office.

  I screamed.

  Changeling pushed three buttons at once.

  The bugs disappeared.

  A tiny flashing light darted onto the empty stage, tinkled in an annoyed way, and exited into the wings just as the office door burst open and the Producer barreled in, looking ready to bite off the first head he saw.

  “The bugs are gone!” I yelled. “Everything’s okay now!” But the Producer had already shoved Changeling aside, chair and all, and was staring at the little theatre with horror.

  “This stage is empty!” he growled. “Where are the programs? Where is my data? Where is Broadway?” He glared from me to Changeling, who had rolled all the way to the window. “You chiselers. Biting off your heads is too good for you. I will cook you in a pie. I will have your guts for garters.”

  I gaped at him helplessly, too scared to think. Changeling rubbed her face and yawned. “There is no reason to raise your voice,” she said placidly. “Your computer is rebooting.”

  The Producer eyed her suspiciously. “Rebooting?”

  “Yes. I have debugged it and defragged it and installed an antivirus program. The Hard Drive says to tell you that you are one lucky customer and next time remember to back up your data. Only chumps forget to back up their data. What is a chump?”

  The Producer looked like he’d been bopped in the beezer. “Say again?”

  Changeling repeated what she’d just said, only with a lot more words. To me, it sounded like a foreign language based on English. I don’t know what it sounded like to the Producer. He looked so confused that if it hadn’t been for the gray cabinet, I might almost have felt sorry for him.

  When Changeling finally stopped talking, the Producer shook his head very slowly and said, “I never heard a doll use so many jawbreakers, at that. Give it to me straight: Is my computer busted or not?”

&nb
sp; Seeing that Changeling was about to go through it all again, I said, “No, it’s not busted. It’s as good as new. Better.”

  “That is swell.” The Producer cracked his knuckles like fireworks. “If it is true. I know what you mortals are like. You make things up like crazy. I will test the computer as follows, and if it works, you will get a reward. If it does not work, I will not only bite your heads off, but grind your bones to make my bread. You got that?”

  I nodded.

  The Producer sat down in front of the toy theatre. Suddenly I was horribly sure that the computer wasn’t going to work. He must have felt the same way, because he touched a puzzled-looking face as if it might bite him. We both held our breaths.

  A dwarflike supernatural trudged onto the stage. “What?”

  The Producer let out a whoosh of breath and ordered up a pair of tickets for Wicked, pronto.

  The Tech dwarf trudged off again.

  “See,” the Producer said to me, “the Tech Folk charge many potatoes for computer fixing, but I am thinking, what use are potatoes to a couple of little dolls, except to buy tickets to a show? I propose to you that we cut out the middleman and I reward you with a pair of house seats for Wicked, one for you and one for your stand-in. I understand that little dolls love Wicked more than somewhat.”

  When a Genius offers you a reward, you’re not supposed to tell him you’d rather have something else. But the thought of having to do a trade with Sammy the Scalper inspired me. I told the Producer how kind he was, and how seeing Wicked was truly what every little doll dreamed about, only this fairy I knew was friends with the original Tinkerbell in Peter Pan, and she said it was the best show on Broadway, and I wanted to see it so much, and couldn’t he please, please consider making it a ticket to Peter Pan instead?

  Finally the Producer laughed and said he’d come across with a deuce to the Pan play, and I was a queer duck, at that. But I had plenty of moxie, and he liked that in a little doll.

  While he punched a couple more faces and talked to the Tech dwarf some more, I went to the window. The bright necklace of Broadway sparkled below me, unbroken and unshadowed. I wanted to show Changeling what she’d done, but She was gazing at the computer like someone saying good-bye to a friend.