Free Changeling by Delia Sherman Page B

me.
    â€œListen,” I said. “We’re going to move very slowly to the side of the stage and then we’re going to slip behind that cage and crawl along the wall to the nearest door and then we’re going to go through it.”
    â€œThen will I wake up?”
    â€œMaybe,” I said cautiously. “You can’t tell until you’ve tried.”
    I was surprised at how calm I sounded. I envied the fairy changeling her belief that the biting, scratching, screaming bogeymen were just a bad dream.
    We edged nearer the naughty children. When we got close, the ones by the bars started grabbing at us and begging us to rescue them.
    It was horrible. If my dress hadn’t been magic, they would have torn it right off me. Their hands were hot and sticky against my arms and face, and I had to keep pinching them to make them let go. The fairy changeling went into a panic, scratching and slapping and screeching, “Do not touch me! I do not like to be touched!” at the top of her lungs. Luckily, the naughty children were already making so much noise that the bogeymen didn’t hear her.
    Breaking free from the last of the clutching hands, I jumped down from the stage and crouched panting against the wall. Eloise’s bear pile was a lot more terrifying when you were right down in it. A lot more dangerous, too. A barbed tail whipped at my shoulder. A clawed hand nicked my knee. I was too scared to move.
    With one last “Do not touch me!” the fairy changeling tumbled from the stage, picked herself up, and scurried off along the wall like a frightened squirrel. I ran after her, dodging fighting bogeymen and a hail of dried-out raisins, toward a strange glimmer—not a sign, exactly, but something like the shadow of a sign. I was almost even with it when I cannoned into a large, warty, chartreuse- green bogeyman.
    â€œHey, you guys, look!” the bogeyman shouted. “The naughty children are escaping!”
    The noise got, if possible, louder. Carlyle’s mind-voice exploded in my head: Stop them! Stop them! I leapt for one of the mirrored panels and pushed. It swung open onto a whistling darkness.
    The fairy changeling was behind me, her hands over her face, screaming. I grabbed her wrist.
    â€œDo not touch me!” she wailed, and wrenched herself free.
    A lot of Folk don’t like to be touched—leprechauns, for instance, who have to give up their gold if you catch them. The Pooka, who had made a study of catching things that don’t want to be caught, told me you have to grab Folk from behind, pinning their arms if possible.
    This isn’t as easy as it sounds, particularly when you’re in a hurry and scared out of your mind, but I managed to get a grip and drag my fairy twin backwards through the door. I could see the kanji sign now, and under it, another sign that read, “Carlyle Hotel/Madison Avenue.” We were on a narrow platform beside a formless roar. It took me a breath to realize that we were in a Betweenway station.
    I’d never ridden the Betweenways.
    As I hesitated on the platform, I could hear a ruckus that sounded a lot like three hundred bogeymen, plus Eloise, trying to get through a narrow door at once. Nothing ventured, as the Pooka often said, nothing gained.
    I stepped backwards onto the Betweenways, pulling the changeling with me.

CHAPTER 9

    SOMETIMES THE LONG WAY AROUND IS THE BEST WAY HOME.
    Neef’s Rules for Changelings
    Â 
 
 
The Betweenways are a magic transportation system the Folk use to get around New York. Astris had always told me that they were dangerous for mortals and it took a long time to learn to use them safely. Folk always know exactly where they want to go and can’t be distracted. But mortals have to concentrate very hard on their destination to keep from riding around forever or until they starve to death and blow away, whichever comes first. She’d promised to take me for my first