Chapter 28 CHAPTER 28

The most merciless thing in the world is love. When love flees, all that remains is memory to compensate. Our friends were either going or gone, their ghosts the best our poor minds could conjure to fill loves absence. I am haunted to this day by all those who are missing. Losing Kivi, Blomma, Ragno, and Zanzara proved heartbreaking for Speck, too. She went about her tasks grim and determined, as if by staying busy she could keep phantoms at bay. After the disaster in the mine, we deposed Beka with his consent, and the diminished clan elected Smaolach our new leader. We lived above ground for the first time in years, bound to one small clearing in the forest by Chavisorys immobility. The impulse to go back home ate at us all. Five years had passed since we had left our camp, and we thought it might be safe to return. The last time anyone had seen our former home, the grounds had been denuded, but surely new growth had began—where black ash had been, saplings should be inching up amid the wildflowers and fresh grass. Just as nature reclaims its ruins, the people, too, would have forgotten about that boy lost in the river and the two faeries found in the market . Theyd want life to remain as they thought it had been.

With it safe to travel again, Luchog, Smaolach, and I set out, leaving the other three behind at our makeshift camp to watch over Chavisory. Although the wind blew cold that day, our spirits quickened at the prospect of seeing our old haunts again We raced like deer along the trails, laughing as one passed the other. The old camp shimmered in our imaginations as a promise of bright redemption. Climbing the western ridge, I heard distant laughter. We slowed our puce, and as we reached the lip, the sounds below piqued our curiosity. The valley came into view through the broken veil of tree limbs and branches Rows of houses and open lawns snaked and curled along ribbons of neat roadways. On the exact spot where our camp had been, five new houses faced an open circle. Another six sat on either side of a wide road cut through the trees. Branching off from that trail, more streets and houses flowed down the sloping hill to the main road into town.

"Be it ever so humble," Luchog said. I looked far ahead and saw bustling activity. From the back of a station wagon, a woman unloaded packages tied up with bows. Two boys tossed a football. A yellow car, shaped like a bug, chugged up a winding road. a radio talking about the Army-Navy game, and a man muttering curses as he nailed a string of lights beneath the eaves of his roof. Mesmerized by all I saw, I failed to notice as day gave way to night. Lights went on in the homes, as if on sudden signal. "Shall we see who lives on the ring?" Luchog asked. We crept down to the circle of asphalt. Two of the homes appeared empty. The other three showed signs of life: cars in the driveways, lamplit figures crossing behind the windows as if rushing off on vital tasks. Glancing in each window, we saw the same story unfolding. A woman in a kitchen stirred something in a pot. Another lifted a huge bird from the oven, while in an adjoining room a man stared at minuscule figures playing games in a glowing box, his face flushed in excitement or anger . His next-door neighbor slept in an easy chair, oblivious to the noise and flickering images.

"He looks familiar," I whispered. Covered to his toes in blue terrycloth, a young child sat in a small cage in the corner of the room. He played distractedly with brightly colored plastic toys. For a moment, I thought the sleeping man resembled my father, but I could not understand how he could have another son. A woman walked from one room into the other, and her long blonde hair trailed behind like a tail. She scrunched up her mouth into a bow before bending down and whispering something to the man, a name perhaps, and he looked startedled and slightly embarrassed to be caught sleeping. When his eyes popped open, he looked even more like my father, but she was definitely not my mother. She flashed a crooked smile and lifted her baby over the bars, and the child cooed and laughed and threw his arms around his mothers neck. I had heard that sound before. The man switched off the console, but before joining the others, he came to the window, cleared a circle with his two hands against the damp panes, and peered out into t he darkness. I do not think he saw us, but I surely had seen him before.

We circled back into the woods and waited until the moon was high in the night sky and most of the lights popped off goodnight. The houses in the ring were dark and quiet. "I don't like this," I said, my breath visible in the violet light. "You worry your own life away like a kitten worries a string," Smaolach said. He barked, and we followed him down to the cul-de-sac. Smaolach chose a house with no car in the driveway, where we were not likely to encounter any humans. Careful not to wake anyone, we slipped inside easily through the unlocked front door. A neat row of shoes stood off to the side of the foyer, and Luchog immediately tried on pairs until he found a fit. Their boy would be dismayed in the morning. The kitchen lay in sight of the foyer, through a small dining room. Each of us loaded a rucksack with canned fruits and vegetables, flour, salt, and sugar. Luchog jammed fistfuls of tea bags into his trouser pockets and on the way out copped a package of cigarettes and a box of matches from the sideboard .In and out in minutes, disturbing no one.

The second house—where the baby in blue lived—proved stubborn. All of the doors and downstairs windows were locked, so we had to shimmy under the crawlspace and into a closetlike room that sheltered a maze of plumbing. By following the pipes, we eventually made our way into the interior of the house, ending up in the cellar. To make ourselves quieter, we look off our shoes and tied them around our necks before sneaking up the steps and slowly opening the door to the kitchen. The room smelled of remembered bread. While Smaolach and Luchog raided the pantry, I tiptoed through the rooms to locate the front door and an easy exit. On the walls of the living room hung a gallery of photographic portraits that read mainly as uninteresting shadows, but as I passed by one, Illuminated by a white shaft of moonlight, I froze. Two figures, a young mother and her infant child, lifted to her shoulder to face the camera. The baby looked like every other baby, round and smooth as a button. The mother did not stare directly into the lens but watched her son from the corners of her eyes. Her hairstyle and clothing suggested another era, and she, with her beguiling smile and hopeful gaze, appeared hardly more than a child with a child. She lifted her chin, as if preparing to burst out laughing with joy at the babe in arms. The photograph triggered a rush of chemicals to my brain. Dizzy and displaced, I knew, but could not place, their faces. There were other photographs—a long white dress standing next to a sha dow, a man in a peaked cap—but I kept coming back to the mother and child, put my fingers on the glass, traced the contours of those figures. I wanted to remember. Foolishly, I went to the wall and turned on the lamp.

Someone gasped in the kitchen just as the pictures on the wall jumped into clarity. Two older people with severe eyeglasses. A fat baby. But I could see clearly the photograph that had so entranced me, and beside it another which disturbed me more. was a boy, eyes skyward, looking up in expectation of something unseen. He could not have been more than seven at the time the picture was taken, and had the snapshot not been in black) and white, I would have sooner recognized his face . For it was mine, and me, in a jacket and cap, eyes awaiting—what? a snowfall, a tossed football, a V of geese, hands from above? What a strange thing to happen to a little boy, to end up on the wall of this unfamiliar house. The man and woman in the wedding picture offered no clues. It was my father with a different bride.

"Aniday, what are you doing?" Luchog hissed. "Hush those lights." A mattress creaked overhead as someone got out of bed. I snapped off the lights and scrammed. The floorboards moaned. A womans voice muttered in a high, impatient tone. "All right," the man replied. "Ill go check, but I didnt hear a thing." He headed for the upper staircase, took the steps slowly one by one. We tried the back door out of the kitchen but could not figure out the lock. "The damned thing wont budge," Smaolach said. The approaching figure reached the bottom landing, switched on the light. He went into the living room, which I had departed seconds earlier. Luchog fussed with a rotating bar and unlocked the deadbolt with a soft click. We froze at the sound.

"Hey, who's there?" the man said from the other room. He padded our way in his bare feet. "Fuck all," said Smaolach, and he turned the knob and pushed. The door opened six inches but hung fast by a small metal chain above our heads. "Lets go," he said, and we changed to squeeze through the gap one by one, scattering sugar and flour behind us. I am sure he saw the last of us, for the man called out "Hey" again, but we were gone, racing across the frosty lawn. The floodlight popped on like a flashbulb, but we had passed its circle of illumination. From the top of the ridge, we watched all his rooms light up in sequence, till the windows glowed like rows of jack-o-lanterns. A dog began to yowl madly in the middle of the village , and we took that as a sign to retreat home. The ground chilled our bare feet, but, exhilarated as imps, we escaped our treasures, laughing under the cold stars.

At the top of the ridgeline, Luchog stopped to smoke one of his purloined cigarettes, and I looked back one last time at the ordered village where our home used to be. This is the place where it had all happened—a reach for wild honey high in a tree, a stretch of roadway where the car struck a deer, a clearing where I first opened my eyes and saw eleven dark children. But someone had erased all that, like a word or a line, and in that space wrote another sentence. The neighborhood of houses appeared to have existed in this space for ages. It made one doubt ones own story. "That man back there," I said, "the sleeping one. He reminded me of someone."

"They all look alike to me," Luchog said. "Someone I know. Or knew." "Could it be your long-lost brother?" "I havent one." "Perhaps a man who wrote a book you read in the library?" "I do not know what they look like." "Perhaps the man who wrote that book you carry from place to place?" "No, not McInnes. I do not know McInnes." "A man from a magazine? A photograph in the newspaper?" "Someone I knew." "Could it be the fireman? The man you saw at the creek?" He puffed on his cigarette and blew smoke like an old steam engine. "I thought it might be my father, but that cant be right. There was that strange woman and her child in the blue suit." "What year is it, little treasure?" Luchog asked. It could have been 1972, although in truth, I was no longer sure. "By now, you must be a young man near the end of thirty years. And how old was the man in the picture window?" "Id guess about the same." "And how old would his father be?" "Twice that," I said, and smiled like an idiot. "Your father would be an old man by now, almost as old as I am." I sat down on the cold ground. So much time had passed since I had last seen my parents; their real age was a revealed mystery. Luchog sat down beside me. "After awhile, everyone forgets. I cannot paint you a picture of my dear youth. The old memories are not real—just figures in a fairytale. My mammy could walk right up to me this very minute and say , Sonny-boy, and I would have to say, Sorry, I dont know you, lady. My father may as well be a myth. So, you see, in a way, you have no father or mother, or if you did , you wouldn't know them any longer, nor they you, mores the pity." "But the fellow falling asleep in the armchair? If I try hard, I can recall my fathers face." "Might as well be anyone. Or no one at all." "And the baby?" "Theyre all one to me. A bother with no teeth but all the time hungry. Cant walk, cant talk, cant share a smoke. You can have them. Some say a changelings best bet is a baby—theres less to learn—but thats moving backward across time. You should be going forward. And heaven help us if we ever had a baby to look after for a whole century." "I do not want to steal any child. I just wonder whose baby that is. What happened to my father? Where is my mother?" To make it through the cold season, we nickeled ten blankets and a half-dozen childrens coats from the Salvation Army store, and we ate small meals, subsisting mainly on weak teas brewed from bark and twigs. , we often did not stir at all, but sat alone or in clumps of two or three, dripping wet or stone cold, waiting for the sun and the resumption of our lives. Chavisory grew stronger by and by, and when the wild onions and first daffodils appeared, she could take a few steps with bracing assistance. Each day, Speck pushed her one painful pace forward. When she was well enough for us to move, we fled that miserable dungheap of memories. more suitable hidden home near water, a mile or so north of the new houses. On windy nights, the noises from the families carried as far as our new camp, and while not as secluded, it afforded us adequate protection. As we dug in that first day, restlessness swept over me. Smaolach sa t down beside me and draped an arm across my shoulders. The sun was falling from the sky. "Ni mar a siltear a biteear," he said. "Smaolach, if I live to be a thousand years, Ill never understand your old language. Speak English to me." "Are you thinking of our friends, late and lamented? Theyre better off where they are and not suffering this eternal waiting. Or is there something else on your mind, little treasure?" "Have you ever been in love, Smaolach?" "Once and only once, thank goodness. We were close, like every mother and son." "Luchog said my mother and father are gone." "I dont remember much of her. The smell of wool, maybe, and a harsh soap. Mint on the breath. A huge bosom upon which I laid my ... No, thats not right. She was a rake of a woman, all skin and bones. I dont recall." "Every place we leave, part of me disappears." "Now ... my father, there was a strapping fellow with a big black mustache curled up at the ends, or maybe it was my grandfather, come to think of it. Was a long time ago, and Im not really sure where it was or when." The darkness was complete. "Thats the way of life. All things go out and give way to one another. Tisnt wise to be too attached to any world or its people." Mystified by Smaolachs philosophy, I tottered off to my new bed, turned over the facts, and looked at what crawled beneath. I tried to picture my mother and father, and could not recall their faces or their voices. Remembered life seemed as false to me as my name. These shadows are visible: the sleeping man, the beautiful woman, and the crying, laughing child. But just as much of real life, not merely read about in books, remains unknown to me. A mother croons a lullaby to a sleepy child. A man shuffles a deck of cards and deals a hand of solitaire. A pair of lovers unbutton one another and tumble into bed. Unreal as a dream. I did not confess to Smaolach the reason for my agitation. Speck had all but abandoned our friendship, withdrawing into some hard and lonesome core. Even after we made the move, she devoted herself to making our new camp feel like home, and she spent the sunlit hours teaching Chavisory to walk again. Exhausted by her efforts, Speck fell into a deep sleep early each night. She stayed in her burrow on cold and wet March days, tracing out an intricate design on a rolled parchment, and when I asked her about her drawing, she stayed quiet and aloof. Early mornings, Id see her at the western edge of camp, clad in her warmest coat, toughy shoes on her feet, pondering the horizon. I remember approaching her from behind and placing my hand on her shoulder. For the first time ever, she flinched at my touch, and when she turned to face me, she trembled as if shaking off the urge to cry. "What's the matter, Speck? Are you okay?" "Ive been working too hard. Theres one last snow on the way." She smiled and took my hand. "Well steal off at the first flurries." When the snow finally came days later, I had fallen asleep under a pile of blankets. She woke me, white flakes gathering in her dark hair. "Its time," she whispered as quietly as the delicate susurrus through the pines. Speck and I meandered along familiar trails, taking care to be hidden, and waited at the edge of the forest nearest the library for dusk to arrive. The snowfall obscured the sun's descent, and the headlights of the few cars on the road tricked us into going too soon . We squeezed into our space only to hear footfall overhead as the librarians began to close for the night. To stay warm and quiet, we huddled beneath a blanket, and she quickly fell asleep against me. The rhythm of her beating heart and respiration, and the heat from her skin, quickly lulled me to sleep, too, and we woke together in pitch black. She lit the lamps, and we went to our books. Speck had been reading Flannery OConnor, and I was wading in deep Water with Wallace Stevens. But I could not concentrate on his abstractions, and instead stared at her between the lines. I had to tell her, but the words were inadequate, incomplete, and perhaps incomprehensible—and yet nothing else would do. She was my closest friend in the world, yet a greater desire for more had accompanied me around for years. I could not rationalize or explain it away for another moment. Violent Bear It Away. A bent arm propped up her head, and she was lying across the floor, her hair obscuring her face. "Speck, I have something to tell you." "Just a moment. One more sentence." "Speck, if you could put down that book for a second." "Almost there." She stuck her finger between the pages and closed the novel. She looked at me, and in one second my mood swung from elation to fear. "I have been thinking for a long, long time, Speck, about you. I want to tell you how I feel." Her smile collapsed. Her eyes searched my relentless gaze. "Aniday, " she insisted. "I have to tell you how—" "Don't." "Tell you, Speck, how much I—" "Please, don't, Henry." I stopped, opened my mouth to form the words, and stopped again. "What did you say?" "I don't know that I can hear that right now." "What did you call me?" She covered her mouth, as if to recapture the escaped name. "You called me Henry." The whole story unraveled in an instant. "Thats me, Im Henry. Thats what you said, isn't it?" "I'm so sorry, Anime." "Henry. Not Anime. Henry Day." "Henry Day. You weren't supposed to know." The shock of the name made me forget what I had planned to tell her. Myriad thoughts and emotions competed in my mind. Images, solutions to assorted puzzles and riddles, and unanswered questions. She put down her book, crossed the room, and wound me in her embrace. For the longest time, she held on to me, rocking and soothing my fevered imagination with the lightest touch, caressing away the chaos. And then she told me my story. The story told in these pages was all she could remember. She told me what she knew, and my recollections of dreams, visions, and encounters filled in the rest. She told me why they kept it all secret for so long. How it is better not to know who you really are. To forget the past. Erase the name. All this revealed in a patient and heavenly voice, until everything that could be answered was answered, no desire left unsatisfied. The candles burned out, we had talked so long, and into darkness the conversation lasted, and the last thing I remember is falling asleep in her arms. I had a dream that we ran away that night, found a place to grow up together, became the woman and the man we were supposed to be. In the dream, she kissed my mouth, and her bare skin slid beneath my fingertips. blackbird sang. But in the morning, she was not where I expected her to be. In our long friendship, she had never written a single word to me, but by my side, where she should have been, lay a note in her handwriting . Every letter is etched in mind, and though I will not give it all away, at the end she wrote, "Goodbye, Henry Day." It was time for her to go. Speck is gone.