The Stolen Child

by Keith Donohue

  He was solemn-eyed, listening intently to the music. During the dance of the third movement, I saw the pouch slung over his shoulder, as if he were preparing for a journey. The only language available to us was the music, so I played for him alone, forgot myself in its flow. All through the movement, I wondered if anyone else in the church had seen that strange face in the window, but when I looked for him again, there was nothing but black night. At the cadenza, I realized he had left me alone in the world and would not return.

  The audience rose as one when the last notes of the organ expired, and they clapped and stomped for us. When I turned from the window to the thundering of friends and family, I scanned the faces in the crowd. I was almost one of them. Tess had lifted Edward to her side to join in joyful bravos, and caught off guard by their exuberance, I knew what must be done.

  By writing this confession, Tess, I ask for your forgiveness so that I might make it all the way back to you. Music took me part of the way, but the final step is the truth. I beg you to understand and accept that no matter what name, I am what I am. I should have told you long ago and only hope it’s not too late. My years of struggle to become human again hinge upon your belief in me and my story. Facing the boy has freed me to face myself. As I let go of the past, the past let go of me.

  They stole me away, and I lived for a long, long time in the forest among the changelings. When my time to return came at last, I accepted the natural order. We found the boy Day and made the change. I did my best to ask his forgiveness, but perhaps the child and I are too far gone to reach each other anymore. I am no longer the boy I was once upon a time, and he has become someone else, someone new. He is gone, and now I am Henry Day.

  • CHAPTER 36 •

  Henry Day. No matter how many times uttered or written, those two words remain an enigma. The faeries had called me Aniday for so long that I had become the name. Henry Day is someone else. In the end, after our months of watching him, I felt no envy for the man, only a sort of restrained pity. He had become so old, and desperation bowed his shoulders and marked his face. Henry had taken my name and the life I could have lived, and let it run through his fingers. How passing strange to settle on the surface of the world, bound to time and lost to one’s true nature.

  I went back for my book. Our encounter outside the library spooked me, so I waited overnight, and before dawn, through the cranny, I slid into the old darkened room and lit a single candle to show the way. I read my story and was satisfied. Tried to sing the notes of Henry’s song. Into one bundle went my manuscript, papers from when I first arrived, and the letter from Speck; and into another, Henry’s score. The last of these I planned to leave at his corner table. Our mischief over, the time had come to make amends. Above me, glass crashed, as if a window broke and shattered. An obscene exclamation, a thud to the floor, then the sound of footsteps approaching the hidden trapdoor.

  Perhaps I should have run away at the first chance. My emotions drifted from dread to excitement, a sensation not unlike waiting at the door long ago for my father’s daily return from work to wrap me in his arms, or those first days in the forest when I expected Speck to show up suddenly and relieve my lonesomeness. No such illusions with Henry Day, for he would doubtless not befriend me after all these years. But I did not hate him. I planned my words, how I would forgive him, present his stolen music, give him my name, and bid him farewell.

  He sawed away at the carpeting to figure out how to get into the crawlspace, while I paced beneath, pondering whether to come to his aid. After an eternity, he found the door and swung it back on its hinges. A spotlight flooded in from above, like sunshine piercing a dark forest. A perfect square separated our two worlds. All at once, he stuck his head in the frame and peered into the blackness. I darted over to the opening and looked him straight in the eyes, his nose not six inches from my own. The sight of him disconcerted me, for no sign of kindness or recognition marked his features, no expression but raw disgust, which twisted his mouth into a snarl, and rage beat out of his eyes. Like a madman, he clambered through the hole into our world—a torch in one hand, a knife in the other, a coil of rope unspooling across his chest—and chased me into the corner. “Keep your distance,” I warned. “I can send you from this world in a single blow.” But he kept coming. Henry said he was sorry for what he was about to do and lifted the lantern above my head, so I ran right past him. He threw the fire at my back.

  The lantern glass broke and a blaze spilled out like water over a pile of blankets, and the wool smoldered and burned, flames racing straight for my papers. We faced each other in the smoldering light. As the fire roared and burned brighter, he rushed forward and picked up all the papers. His eyes widened at the sight of his score and my drawings. I reached for the book, anxious only for Speck’s letter, and he threw it into the corner for me to retrieve. When I turned around, Henry Day was gone, and his weapons—the rope, the knife, the iron bar—were on the floor. The trapdoor banged closed, and a long, thin crack opened overhead. The flames burst upward, brightening the room as if sun bore through the walls.

  On the ceiling a picture began to emerge in the intense light. In the ordinary darkness, the surface lines seemed nothing more than random cracks and pockmarks in the foundation, but as the fire reached more fuel, the outlines flared and flickered. The shapes puzzled me, but once I perceived the pieces, the whole became apparent: the ragged East Coast of the United States, the fishlike contours of the Great Lakes, the broad and empty plains, the Rockies, and on to the Pacific. Directly above my head, the black brushstroke of the Mississippi divided the nation, and somewhere in Missouri, her trail crossed the river and raced west. Speck had marked her escape route and drawn a map of the trail to follow from our valley to the western ocean. She must have worked alone in the dark for months or years, arms arched to the ceiling, chipping away at the stone or painting with a rough brush, not showing a soul, hoping for the day her secret would be discovered. Around the outline of the country, she had etched and painted on that rough concrete a constellation of drawings invisible these many years. Hundreds of inscriptions, primitive and childlike, images laid over other images, each story told on top of its ancestor. Some of the drawings looked ancient, as if a prehistoric being had been here and left memories like paintings on a cave wall: a flock of crows lighting from a tree, a brace of quail, deer at a stream. She had drawn wildflowers, oxlips, violets, and thyme. There were creatures from her dreams, horned men with rifles and fierce dogs. Sprites and imps and goblins. Icarus, Vishnu, the angel Gabriel. Others as modern as cartoons: Ignatz throws the brick at Krazy Kat, Little Nemo slumbers in Wonderland, Koko jumps out of the inkwell. A mother with a child in her arms. A pod of whales arcing through the waves. Spirals roped into knots, a garland knitted from morning glory vines. The pictures unwrapped themselves in the dancing flames. The temperature rose as in an oven, but I could not save myself from her wild designs. In the darkest corner, she had painted a left hand and a right hand, thumbs overlapping. Her name and mine in a dozen fonts. Two figures raced over a hill; a boy with his hand caught in a beehive; a pair of readers sat back to back on a mountain of books. On the ceiling above the entrance to the outer world, she had carved Come with me and play. The fire sucked in the oxygen, and the rush of air caught my heart and blew it open. I had to leave.

  I studied Speck’s passage west, hoping to commit it to memory. Why had I never before thought to look up? A cinder popped and flew like the devil up under my eyelid. Smoke and heat filled the room, so I gathered McInnes’s book and a few other papers and ran to the exit, but my bundle would not fit through the crack. Another pile of blankets ignited, sending a wave of heat that knocked me to my knees. I tore open the package, scattering papers to the floor. Close at hand were Speck’s letter and a few stray childhood drawings, which I pressed against my chest; then I squeezed through the opening and into the fresh night.

  The stars had come out and the crickets were fiddling madly. My clothing smelled of s
oot, and many of the pages had been scorched at the edges. The ends of my hair had been singed off, and every inch of bare skin throbbed, red, as if sunburned. Pain shot through the soles of my bare feet with each step, but I knew enough to get away from a burning building, dropping a few more pages at the door as I ran toward the woods. The library groaned once, and then the floor collapsed upon the grotto and thousands of stories went up in flames. From a green hideaway I heard the sirens of the fire engines coming to fight the bonfire. Tucking the papers into my shirt, I started the long trip home, remembering the mad look in Henry’s eyes and all that had been lost. In the complete darkness, fireflies flashed their semaphores of longing.

  Speck made it, I am sure, from here to there, and lived on a rocky shore, the bright Pacific her daily companion as she gathered mussels and clams and crabs from tidal pools, slept on the sand. She would be brown as a berry, her hair a tangle of knots, her arms and legs strong as ropes from swimming in the sea. In one long breath, she would exhale the story of her journey across the country, the pines of Pennsylvania, the cornfields and wheatfields and soybeans of the Midwest, sunflowers of Kansas, up the steep pitch of the Divide, summer snow in the Rockies, Painted Desert beyond, and finally ocean in view, oh joy! And then: What took you so long? And I would give her my story, this story and Henry Day’s, until in her arms again I slept. Only through imagining could I bear the pain. Such a dream drew me homeward step by tortured step.

  The other faeries took kind care of me upon my return to camp next morning. Onions and Béka scoured the woods for balm to soothe my blistered feet. Chavisory limped off to the cistern and drew a jug of cool water to quench my thirst and wash the ash from my skin and hair. My old friends sat beside me to hear the adventure and to help me salvage my literary remains. Only a few scraps from the past survived to prove that it had once existed. I told them all I could remember about Speck’s map on the ceiling and the art she had left behind, hoping to store it in the collective consciousness of the tribe.

  “You’ll simply have to remember,” said Luchóg.

  “Rely upon the mind, for it is a complicated machine inside your skull,” Smaolach said. “I can still recall exactly how I felt when I first saw you.”

  “What the memory loses, imagination re-creates.” Chavisory had been spending far too much time with my old friend.

  “Sometimes I don’t know whether life’s strange turns happened or I dreamed them, or if my memory remembers what is real or the dream.”

  “A mind often makes its own world,” said Luchóg, “to help pass the time.”

  “I’ll need paper. Do you remember when you first got me some paper, Luchóg? That kindness I’ll never forget.”

  From memory, I transferred Speck’s map on the ceiling to the back of her letter, and in the weeks that followed, I asked Smaolach to find me a detailed map of the country and any book he could about California and the Pacific Ocean. She might be anyplace along the northern coast. There was no certainty that I would find her in the large, wide land, but the possibility sustained me as I began again. My feet healed as I sat quietly in our camp, writing every day outdoors while the heat of August gave way to the cool weeks of early autumn.

  As the maples flamed to yellow and red, and the oaks to crispy brown, a strange sound drifted now and again from the town and over the hills to our camp. Emanating from the church on still nights, the music arrived in starts and fits, broken now and again by other sounds—traffic on the highway, crowds roaring at Friday night football games, and the chatter of noise that intrudes upon modern life. Running like a river, the music forked through the forest and spilled down from the ridge into our glen. Entranced by the sudden sound, we would stop to listen, and mad with curiosity, Luchóg and Smaolach set out to find its source. They came back breathless with news one late October night.

  “Stay just a short while, a stoirín, and it will be ready.”

  By the light of the fire, I was lashing a leather strap to my travel pouch. “And what will be ready, my friend?”

  He cleared his throat, and when he still did not get my attention, he coughed again, but louder. I looked up to see him grinning and Luchóg holding an unrolled poster almost as big as himself. All but his hands and feet had disappeared behind the broadside.

  “You have it upside down, Luch.”

  “Surely you can read it any which way,” he complained, and then he righted the poster. The concert at the church was scheduled for two days hence, and I was struck by not only the title but, underneath it, a small woodcut engraving of two figures in flight and pursuit.

  “Which one is the faery, and which is the child?”

  Smaolach considered the artwork. “No matter what you think, you’re just as likely to be right as wrong. But you’ll stay for the symphony? Composed by Henry Day, and him playing the organ as well.”

  “You can’t miss that,” Luchóg argued. “Another day or two, and the journey is just as long.”

  We footed our way through the dark forest, a last bit of mischief together, taking bold delight in coming close yet not being seen. On the night of the concert we hid in the graveyard as the people filed into the church, and the opening notes of the symphony soared through the windows and echoed among the stones. The prelude announced his grand themes, ending in a long solo on the organ. He played beautifully, I’ll admit, and we were drawn closer, rising one by one from behind the gravestones to stand next to the church windows. Béka wrapped his arms around Onions, and whispered in her ear. When she began to laugh at his joke, he clamped a hand against her mouth till she sputtered for breath and then kept still. Chavisory mimed the role of conductor, her hands tracing arcs and waves in the sky. My old cronies, Luchóg and Smaolach, leaned against the church wall and smoked, staring at the night stars.

  Cinching my bag across my shoulders—I carried my book in it everywhere now—I made my way around to a rear window and dared look in. Henry had his back to the audience and rocked as he played the organ, fierce concentration written on his face. When he closed his eyes and moved in time with the rise and fall of the notes, he was lost. The strings alone took up the next measures, and he saw me through the window, but the peaceful look never left his face. Henry was transformed, younger than before, more like a man than a monster. I would think on him no longer and soon be gone, but whether or not he realized I intended to leave, I can never know.

  The crowd in the pews was transfixed by the small orchestra, and I am quite sure that had anyone spotted me looking through the window, they would have rushed past the altar and out into the churchyard. So I had the rare chance to study their faces from afar, recognizing at once Henry’s wife and son, Edward, in the front row. Thank goodness I had convinced Béka and Onions to leave that child alone. Most of the other people were strangers to me. I kept hoping to see my sisters, but, of course, they are still ageless children in my memory. An older woman, holding her fingers against her lips as she listened, seemed to glance my way once or twice, and when she did so, she reminded me of my mother, the last I shall see of her. Some part of me desired to crawl through the opening and run to her, to feel her hand against my cheek, to be held, to be known by her, but my place is not among them. Goodbye, my dear, I whispered to her, sure that she could not hear, but hoping that somehow she understood.

  Henry kept smiling and playing, and like a book the music told a story that seemed, in part, a gift—as if, in our only common language, he was expressing what beat in his heart. Some sorrow, perhaps, some remorse. It was enough for me. The music carried us in two directions, as if above and below; and in the interludes, the spaces between the notes, I thought he, too, was trying to say goodbye, goodbye to the double life. The organ breathed and laid sound upon sound, and then exhaled into silence. “Aniday,” Luchóg hissed, and I shrank from the window to the ground. A beat or two, and the crowd burst like a thunderstorm. One by one, we faeries rose and disappeared into the falling darkness, gliding past the gravestones and back into
the forest, as if we had never been among the people.

  Having made amends with Henry Day, I am ready to leave come tomorrow. This version of my story has not taken nearly as long to re-create. I have not been concerned with putting down all the facts, nor a detailed explanation of the magic, as far as I understand such things, of the people who lived in secret and below. Our kind are few, and no longer deemed necessary. Far greater troubles exist for children in the modern world, and I shudder to think of real and lurking dangers. Like so many myths, our stories will one day no longer be told or believed. Reaching the end, I lament all those lost souls and those dear friends left behind. Onions, Béka, Chavisory, and my old pals Smaolach and Luchóg are content to remain as they are, indifferent children of the earth. They will be fine without me. We all go away one day.

  Should by chance any of you see my mother, tell her I cherish her every kindness and miss her still. Say hello to my baby sisters. Kiss their chubby cheeks for me. And know that I will carry you all with me when I leave in the morning. Heading west as far as the waters to look for her. More beats than blood in the heart. A name, love, hope. I am leaving this behind for you, Speck, in case you return and we somehow miss each other. Should that be so, this book is for you.