The Stolen Child(121)

and into the fresh night.

The stars had come out and the crickets were fiddling madly. My clothing smelled of soot, 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 li-brary groaned once, and then the floor collapsed upon the grotto and

thou-sands 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 de-tailed 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 sus-tained 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 Oc-tober 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 hold-ing 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