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The Stolen Child(101)

By:Keith Donohue


Dark hair flying behind her, a young girl emerged from the firs, ran like a goat down the sloping

face, as thin and lissome as the breeze. From that dis-tance she looked unreal, as if woven from the mist.

She stopped when she saw us standing there, and though she did not come close, she was no stranger.

We peered at each other across the water, and the moment lasted as briefly as the snapping of a

photograph. There and gone at the same time. She turned toward the waterfall and ran, vanishing

beyond in a haze of rock and evergreen.

"Wait," Tess cried. "Don't go." She raced toward the girl.

"Leave her," I hollered, and chased down my wife. "She's gone. It looks like she knows her way

around this place."

"That's a helluva thing, Henry. You let her go, out here in the middle of nowhere."

Eddie shivered in his damp clothes. I swathed him in the blanket and sat him on the sand. We

asked him to tell us all about her, and the words tumbled out as he warmed up.

"I was on an adventure and came to the big rock at the edge. And there she was sitting there. Right

behind those trees, looking out at the waves. I said hi, and she said hi. And then she said, 'Would you

like to sit with me?' "

"What is her name?" Tess asked.

"Ever heard of a girl called Speck? She likes to come here in winter to watch the whales."

"Eddie, did she say where her parents were? Or how she got all the way out here by herself?"

"She walked, and it took more than a year. Then she asked where was I from, and I told her. Then

she asked me my name, and I said Edward Day." He suddenly looked away from us and gazed at the

rock and the falling tides, as if remembering a hidden sensation.

"Did she say anything else?"

"No." He gathered the blanket around his shoulders.

"Nothing at all?"

"She said, 'How is life in the big, big world?' and I thought that was funny."

"Did she do anything ... peculiar?" I asked.

"She can laugh like a seagull. Then I heard you started calling me. And she said, 'Good-bye

Edward Day,' like that. And I told her to wait right here so I could get my mommy and dad."

Tess embraced our son and rubbed his bare arms through the blanket. She looked again at the

space the girl had run through. "She just slipped away. Like a ghost."

From that moment to the instant our plane touched down at home, all I could think about was that

lost girl, and what bothered me about her was not so much her mysterious appearance and

disappearance, but her familiarity.

When we settled in at home, I began to see the changelings everywhere.

In town on a Saturday morning for a haircut with Edward, I grew flus-tered by a towheaded boy

who sat waiting his turn, quietly sucking a lollipop as he stared, unblinking, at my son. When school

resumed in the fall, a pair of twins in the sixth grade spooked me with their uncanny resemblance to each

other and their ability to finish each other's sentences. Driving home from a band performance on a dark

night, I saw three children in the cemetery and wondered, for a moment, what they might be plotting at

such a late hour. At parties or the odd evening out with other couples, I tried to work in veiled

references to the legend of the two feral girls and the baby-food jars, hoping to find someone else who

believed it or could confirm the rumors, but every-one scoffed when I mentioned the story. All children,

except my own boy, became slightly suspect. They can be devious creatures. Behind every child's bright

eyes exists a hidden universe.

The quartet's album, Tales of Wonder, arrived by Christmas, and we nearly wore out the groove

playing it over and over for our friends and family. Ed-ward loved to hear the dissonance of violins

against the steady cello line and the crashing arrival of the organ. Even anticipating its arrival, the

movement was a shock no matter how many times one listened to the album. On New Year's Eve, well

after midnight, the house quiet as a prayer, a sudden blast of my song startled me awake. Expecting the

worst, I came downstairs in my pajamas, wielding a baseball bat, only to find my son bug-eyed in front

of the speakers, hypnotized by the music. When I turned down the volume, he began to blink rapidly and

shake his head as if awakened from a dream.

"Hey, pardner," I said in a low voice. "Do you know how late it is?"

"Is it 1977 yet?"

"Hours ago. Party's over, fella. What made you put on this song?"

"I had a bad dream."

I pulled him onto my lap. "Do you want to tell me about it?" He did not answer but burrowed

closer, so I held him tighter. The last drawn-out note resounded as the song lapsed into silence, so I