This is something I wrote for a workshop at the Winchester Writers' Conference a few years ago. One of my Facebook friends, Joyce McCombs, a librarian at Delta Junction in Alaska, was wondering whether anyone ever ran away from the circus to have an ordinary life - so Joyce, here is a story just for you!
Changelings
Arabis Elsworth walked
slowly down the road, placing her feet very precisely along the edges of alternate
paving stones. She was in no particular hurry to get home: her father would
still be busy with the after-school drama club, and her mother was hosting a
pottery party in her studio in the basement. Their house would be full of
screaming seven-year-olds and odd, misshapen lumps of clay.
A girl was standing in the front garden of one of the
houses, twirling a long chiffon scarf above her head. Arabis couldn’t remember
having seen her before. Their eyes met.
‘Hello,’ said the girl, still twirling.
‘Hello,’ said Arabis.
‘What have you got there?’ The girl looked at the tie-dye
shoebag slung over Arabis’s shoulder.
‘Tap shoes,’ Arabis replied. ‘I’ve just been to a class.’
‘Can I have a look? What size are they?’
Before Arabis knew quite what was happening, the tap
shoes were out of the bag, and then on the girl’s feet, and she was showing her
some basic steps on the pavement: heel-toe, toe-heel, click twice, heel again.
She wasn’t bad, this girl - her footwork was rather sloppy, which was only to
be expected from a beginner - but there was no need for all that business
waving her arms about and pulling faces.
‘Do you want to come in for a drink?’ the girl said at
last, blowing her fringe out of her eyes. She had long dark hair which needed a
good brush, and her eyes were very blue.
Arabis knew better than to go anywhere with a stranger,
but this girl was about her own age and the house looked tidy and well-kept.
The patch of front lawn was immaculately trimmed, with extremely straight
edges. For once, she decided to take a chance. ‘All right, I will,’ she said.
And then came the question she always dreaded. ‘What’s
your name?’
Arabis began to frame the word. Then, perhaps because it
was turning into such an unusual day, she suddenly said, ‘Ann. My name is Ann.’
Very decidedly, just like that. How easy it was! Why had she never thought of
this before? ‘What’s yours?’
‘Sapphire. Sapphire Wilkinson,’ said the girl, shaking
back her straggly hair. She led the way up their garden path, through the front
door, down the hall and into a neat and tidy kitchen. There, she made two
glasses of orange squash which they drank, looking at each other. Arabis could
hear the sound of a television coming from somewhere else in the house. They
didn’t have one at home: her parents said it stifled creativity.
‘Do you want to come up to my room?’ Sapphire asked.
‘I’ve got loads of costumes you could wear for dancing.’
As they walked back down the hall, a voice called out
from the front room, ‘Susan? Is that you?’
Sapphire pulled a face. ‘Don’t say anything. Come on
upstairs.’
Sapphire’s bedroom was knee-deep in clothes. It was hard
to tell which were dressing-up clothes and which were ordinary weekend ones.
After twenty minutes of trying things on (this was mostly Sapphire), Arabis
asked hopefully, ‘Do you want to go and watch television?’
Sapphire shook her head. ‘It’ll just be one of those
stupid game shows my parents like watching,’ she said, wrapping herself in a
long velvet cloak.
‘I’d better go home, then,’ Arabis said. ‘See you. And
thanks for the drink.’
‘Susan?’ called the voice again as she came downstairs,
and a large, comfortable-looking lady in a cream cardigan looked out of the
front room into the hall. ‘Oh, hello, dear. Are you a friend of Susan’s?’
‘Sapphire’s!’ came a shout from upstairs.
On the television, two teams of people were making up
words out of a series of random letters. Arabis looked longingly at it through
the open living-room door. She loved board games and crossword puzzles: there
was something so satisfying about filling up the squares.
‘Would you like to watch for a while?’ Mrs Wilkinson
said. ‘You’d be very welcome.’
Arabis sat next to Mr Wilkinson on the beige settee.
There was a holder over one arm for the remote control, and pens, and a rolled-up
newspaper. It was lovely - everything you could want was to hand. A dish of
boiled sweets stood on top of a nest of three tables, stacked one under the
other. Arabis could imagine Susan’s mother bringing out the tables, one for
each of them, and the family having their supper together in front of the TV.
Something easy to eat, most probably, like sausages on little sticks and sandwiches
in triangles with the crusts cut off.
She
watched the whole of the word programme with Susan’s parents - who didn’t seem
to mind her being there at all - and afterwards she helped Mr Wilkinson with
his crossword puzzle, and then she had to go home.
‘Come again, dear,’ Mrs Wilkinson said. ‘What’s your
name, by the way?’
Arabis felt she ought to tell the truth this time.
‘Oh, that’s interesting.’ A startled look had come into
Mrs Wilkinson’s eyes.
‘But people sometimes call me Ann,’ Arabis added quickly.
‘Certainly easier to get your tongue around,’ said Mr
Wilkinson, folding up his newspaper for the recycling box.
Arabis found herself calling round at Susan/Sapphire’s
house on her way back from tap class quite often after that, and soon it did
not seem to matter whether Susan was there or not. Sometimes Susan stayed
up in her room, twirling and thumping about, and didn’t even bother to come
downstairs and say hello.
‘Wouldn’t you like to bring your little friend back here
for a change?’ Arabis’s mother, Amber Elsworth, asked her one day. They were
having tea in the pottery studio because her father’s drama group, the Thetford
Thespians, were rehearsing their new play upstairs in the kitchen.
‘I can’t bring Sapphire here,’ Arabis said, balancing a
heavy bowl of stir-fried beansprouts on her lap. ‘It’s too much of a muddle.’
‘Sapphire! What a beautiful name!’ Mrs Elsworth was
delighted. ‘I’m sure she won’t mind a bit of mess.’
Sapphire didn’t. She loved everything about Arabis’s
house, from the Native American dreamcatchers and wind chimes in the front
garden to the authentic Mongolian yurt at the back. She had a second helping of
Quorn and brown rice risotto, and a whole bowlful of Tofu whip, and then she
performed a dance which she had been improvising for the occasion.
Arabis looked at her parents’ delighted faces. She didn’t
feel jealous; it was as though she had brought them a lovely present, and that
made her happy. Quietly she slipped out of the house and made her way over to
Susan’s. There was a programme on television that evening about testing your IQ
which she and the Wilkinsons had planned to watch together. It didn’t finish
till late, so Arabis rang to ask her parents if she could stay over at Susan’s
that night. They said of course, that was fine, and Sapphire might stay with
them (if the Wilkinsons didn’t mind), since she was reading for a part with the
Thetford Thespians.
At first it felt rather strange, sleeping in Susan’s bed.
The next night, Arabis tidied away all the clothes into a large cardboard box
and then the room seemed more like hers. She had popped home after school that
day to collect a few things she needed, letting herself in with the spare key
under the mat. The house had been empty so she’d left her parents a note,
saying that she might stay at the Wilkinsons a little longer as the IQ
programme was on every evening that week and she wouldn’t like to miss any of
the episodes. They could contact her any time, since they knew exactly where
she was.
Some months later, Arabis
was sitting in the Wimpy in town, eating a sizzling steakburger. Amber Elsworth
walked past the window, her arm around Sapphire’s tie-dyed shoulder. Their eyes
met.
‘Eat up, Ann,’ Mrs Wilkinson said. ‘Is something the
matter?’
‘No, nothing.’ Arabis
quickly looked away. Her mother did the same.