The Stolen Child(119)
from the corner of my eye, I could see only Oscar as he tapped and tensed the baton.
From the very first notes, I was determined to tell the story of how the child is stolen and replaced
by someone else, and yet both the child and the changeling persist. In place of the usual distance and
separation from the audi-ence came a sense of connection through performance. They were stilled,
hushed, expectant, and I could feel two hundred pairs of eyes watching. I concentrated to the point
where I could let go and play for them rather than satisfy myself. The overture teased out the symphony's
four movements: awareness, pursuit, lamentation, and redemption, and at the moment when I lifted my
hands from the keys and the strings took up the pizzicato to indicate the arrival of the changelings, I felt
his presence nearby. The boy I could not save. And as Oscar waved me in for the organs interplay, I
saw the child through an open window. He watched me play for him, listened to our music. As the
tempo slowed in the second movement, I took more chances to watch him watching us.
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 re-turn.
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 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.
• C H A P T E R 3 6 •
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 watch-ing him, I felt no envy for the man, only a sort of restrained pity. He had
be-come 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 crawl-space, while I paced