The Stolen Child(102)

reached over and shut off the stereo.

"Daddy, do you know why I put on your song? Because it reminds me."

"Reminds you of what, Edward? Our trip out to California?"

He turned to face me until we looked eye-to-eye. "No. Of Speck," he said. "The fairy girl."

With a quiet moan, I drew him closer to me, where I could feel in the warmth of his chest the

quickening of his heart.

• C H A P T E R 3 2 •

Speck loved to be by moving water. My strongest memory is of her animated by the currents,

empathetic to the flow. I saw her once, years ago, stripped to the skin, sitting with her legs tucked

beneath her, as the water rolled around her waist and the sunshine caressed her shoulders. Under normal

circumstances, I would have jumped and splashed in the creek with her, but struck by the grace of her

neck and limbs, the contours of her face, I could not move. On another occasion, when the townsfolk

shot off fireworks in the night, we watched the explosions upriver, and she seemed more enchanted by

the waterflow than by the loud flowering in the sky. While the people looked up, she watched the light

reflecting on the ripples and the sparks as they hissed on the surface. From the beginning, I had guessed

where she had gone and why, but I did not act upon that intuition because of a fundamental lack of

courage. The same fears that had prevented me from crossing at the riverbend also made me break off

the search and come back to camp. I should have followed the waters.

The path to the library never seemed as long and foreboding as on the night of my first return. The

way had changed since we had parted. The for-est thinned around its edge, and rusty cans, bottles, and

other refuse littered the brush. None of us had visited in the years since she left. Books lay where we had

left them, though mice had nibbled the margins of my papers, left their scat in our old candleholders and

coffee mugs. Her Shakespeare was lousy with silverfish. Stevens had swollen with dampness. By dim

candlelight, I spent the night restoring order, pulling down cobwebs, shooing crickets, lingering over what

she had once held in her hands. I fell asleep wrapped in I he musty blanket that had long ago lost her

scent.

Vibrations above announced the arrival of morning. The librarians started their day, joists creaking

under their weight and the patterns of their routines. I could picture their goings-on: checking in, saying

hello, settling at their stations. An hour or so passed before the doors opened and the humans shuffled in.

When the rhythm felt normal, I began to work. A thin film of dust covered my papers, and I spent most

of that first day reading the bits and pieces in order, tying the loose pages with entries in McInnes's

journal. So much had been left behind, lost, forgotten, and buried after we had been driven away the first

time. Reduced to a short pile, the words documented time's passage with deep gaps and yawning

silences. Very little existed, for in-stance, from the early days of my arrival—only a few crude drawings

and pathetic notes. Years had gone by without mention. After reviewing all the files, I understood the

long chore ahead.

When the librarians left for the evening, I popped open the trapdoor underneath the children's

section. Unlike on other forays, I had no desire to pick out a new book, but, rather, to steal new writing

supplies. Behind the head librarian's desk lay the treasure: five long yellow pads and enough pens to last

the rest of my life. To introduce a minor intrigue, I also reshelved the Wallace Stevens that had been

missing.

Words spilled from the pen and I wrote until my hand cramped and pained me. The end, the night

that Speck left, became the beginning. From there, the story moved backward to the point where I

realized that I had fallen in love with her. A whole swath of the original manuscript, which is thank-fully

gone, was given over to the physical tensions of being a grown man in a young boy's body. Right in the

middle of a sentence on desire, I stopped. What if she wanted me to go with her? I would have pleaded

for her to stay, said that I lacked the courage to run away. Yet a contrary idea pulled at my conscience.

Perhaps she never intended for me to find out. She had run away because of me and knew all along that

I loved her. I put down my pen and wished Speck were there to talk with me, to answer all the

unknowables.

These obsessions curled like parasites through my brain, and I tossed and turned on the hard floor.

I woke up in the night and started writing on a clean pad, determined to rid my mind of its darkest

thoughts. The hours passed and days drifted one into the other. For the next six months, I divided myself

between the camp and the library, trying to piece together the story of my life to give to Speck. Our