The Stolen Child

• C H A P T E R 1 •

Don't call me a fairy. We don't like to be called fairies anymore. Once upon a time, fairy was a

perfectly acceptable catchall for a variety of creatures, but now it has taken on too many associations.

Etymologically speaking, a fairy is something quite particular, related in kind to the na-iads, or water

nymphs, and while of the genus, we are sui generis. The word fairy is drawn from fay (Old French fee),

which itself comes from the Latin Fata, the goddess of fate. The fay lived in groups called the faerie,

between the heavenly and earthly realms.

There exist in this world a range of sublunary spirits that carminibus coelo possunt deducere

lunam, and they have been divided since ancient times into six kinds: fiery, aerial, terrestrial, watery,

subterranean, and the whole class of fair-ies and nymphs. Of the sprites of fire, water, and air, I know

next to nothing. But the terrestrial and underground devils I know all too well, and of these, there is

infinite variety and attendant myth about their behavior, custom, and culture. Known around the world by

many different names—Lares, genii, fauns, satyrs, foliots, Robin Goodfellows, pucks, leprechauns,

pukas, sidhe, trolls—the few that remain live hidden in the woods and are rarely seen or encountered by

human beings. If you must give me a name, call me hobgob-lin.

Or better yet, I am a changeling—a word that describes within its own name what we are bound

and intended to do. We kidnap a human child and replace him or her with one of our own. The

hobgoblin becomes the child, and the child becomes a hobgoblin. Not any boy or girl will do, but only

those rare souls baffled by their young lives or attuned to the weeping troubles of this world. The

changelings select carefully, for such opportunities might come along only once a decade or so. A child

who becomes part of our soci-ety might have to wait a century before his turn in the cycle arrives, when

he can become a changeling and reenter the human world.

Preparation is tedious, involving close surveillance of the child, and of his friends and family. This

must be done unobserved, of course, and it's best to select the child before he begins school, because it

becomes more compli-cated by then, having to memorize and process a great deal of information

beyond the intimate family, and being able to mimic his personality and his-tory as clearly as mirroring his

physique and features. Infants are the easiest, but caring for them is a problem for the changelings. Age

six or seven is best. Anyone much older is bound to have a more highly developed sense of self. No

matter how old or young, the object is to deceive the parents into think-ing that this changeling is actually

their child. More easily done than most people imagine.

No, the difficulty lies not in assuming a child's history but in the painful physical act of the change

itself. First, start with the bones and skin, stretching until one shudders and nearly snaps into the right size

and body shape. Then the others begin work on one's new head and face, which require the skills of a

sculptor. There's considerable pushing and pulling at the cartilage, as if the skull were a soft wad of clay

or taffy, and then the malicious business with the teeth, the removal of the hair, and the tedious

re-weaving. The entire process occurs without a gram of painkiller, although a few imbibe a noxious

alcohol made from the fermented mash of acorns. A nasty undertaking, but well worth it, although I

could do without the rather complicated rearrangement of the genitals. In the end, one is an exact copy

of a child. Thirty years ago, in 1949, I was a changeling who became a human again.

I changed lives with Henry Day, a boy born on a farm outside of town.

On a late summer's afternoon, when he was seven, Henry ran away from home and hid in a hollow

chestnut tree. Our changeling spies followed him and raised the alarm, and I transformed myself into his

perfect facsimile. We grabbed him, and I slipped into the hollowed space to switch my life for his. When

the search party found me that night, they were happy, relieved, and proud—not angry, as I had

expected. "Henry," a red-haired man in a fireman's suit said to me as I pretended to sleep in the hiding

place. I opened my eyes and gave him a bright smile. The man wrapped me in a thin blanket and carried

me out of the woods to a paved road, where a fire truck stood waiting, its red light pulsing like a

heartbeat. The firemen took me home to Henry's parents, to my new father and mother. As we drove

along the road that night, I kept thinking that if that first test could be passed, the world would once again

be mine.

It is a commonly held myth that, among the birds and the beasts, the mother recognizes her young

as her own and will refuse a stranger thrust into the den or the nest. This is not so. In fact, the cuckoo