The Stolen Child(14)

last human person I was to encounter for more than a dozen years. The tail-lights zigzagged over the hills

and through the trees until there was no more to see.

We retreated back to camp in a cross silence. Halfway home, Luchóg advised, "You mustn't tell

anyone about what happened tonight. Stay away from people and be content with who you are." On the

journey, we created a necessary fiction to explain our long absence, invented a narrative of the wa-ters

and the wild, and once told, our story endured. But I never forgot that secret of the redcoated woman,

and later, when I began to doubt the world above, the memory of that bright and lonely meeting

reminded me that it was no myth.

• C H A P T E R 5 •

Life with the Day family acquired a reassuring pattern. My father would leave for work before any

of us stirred from our sleep, and that golden waking hour between his departure and my march to school

was a com-fort. My mother at the stove, stirring oatmeal or frying breakfast in a pan; the twins exploring

the kitchen on unsteady feet. The picture windows framed and kept away the outside world. The Days'

home had long ago been a work-ing farm, and though agriculture had been abandoned, vestiges

remained. An old barn, red paint souring to a dark mauve, now served as a garage. The split-rail fence

that fronted the property was falling apart stick by stick. The field, an acre or so that had flushed green

with corn, lay fallow, a tangle of brambles that Dad only bothered to mow once each October. The

Days were the first to abandon farming in the area, and their distant neighbors joined them over the

years, selling off homesteads and acreage to developers. But when I was a child, it was still a quiet,

lonesome place.

The trick of growing up is to remember to grow. The mental part of becoming Henry Day

demanded full attention to every detail of his life, but no amount of preparation for the changing can

account for the swath of the subject's family history—memories of bygone birthday parties and other

intimacies—that one must pretend to remember. History is easy enough to fake; stick around anyone

long enough and one can catch up to any plot. But other accidents and flaws expose the risks of

assuming another's identity. For-tunately we seldom had company, for the old house was isolated on a

small bit of farmland out in the country.

Near my first Christmas, while my mother attended to the crying twins upstairs and I idled by the

fireplace, a knock came at the front door. On the porch stood a man with his fedora in hand, the smell of

a recent cigar mixing with the faintly medicinal aroma of hair oil. He grinned as if he recognized me at

once, although I had not seen him before.

"Henry Day," he said. "As I live and breathe."

I stood fixed to the threshold, searching my memory for an errant clue as to who this man might be.

He clicked his heels together and bowed slightly at the waist, then strode past me into the foyer, glancing

furtively up the stairs. "Is your mother in? Is she decent?"

Hardly anyone came to visit in the middle of the day, except occasion-ally the farmers' wives

nearby or mothers of my schoolmates, driving out from town with a fresh cake and new gossip. When

we had spied on Henry, there was no man other than his father or the milkman who came to the house.

He tossed his hat on the sideboard and turned to face me again. "How long's it been, Henry? Your

mama's birthday, maybe? You don't look like you've grown a whisker. Your daddy not feeding you?"

I stared at the stranger and did not know what to say.

"Run up the stairs and tell your mama I'm here for a visit. Go on now, son."

"Who shall I say is calling?"

"Why, your Uncle Charlie, a-course."

"But I don't have any uncles."

The man laughed; then his brow furrowed and his mouth became a se-vere line. "Are you okay,

Henry boy?" He bent down to look me in the eye. "Now, I'm not actually your uncle, son, but your

mama's oldest friend. A friend of the family, you might say."

My mother saved me by coming down the stairway unbidden, and the moment she saw the

stranger, she threw her arms into the air and rushed to embrace him. I took advantage of their reunion   to

slip away.

A close call, but not as bad as the scare a few weeks later. In those first few years, I still had all my

changeling powers and could hear like a fox. Prom any room in the house, I could eavesdrop on my

parents during their un-guarded conversations, and overheard Dad's suspicions during one such pillow

talk.

"Have you noticed anything odd about the boy lately?"

She slips into bed beside him. "Odd?"

"There's the singing around the house."

"He's a lovely voice."