The Stolen Child(2)

commonly lays its eggs in other birds' nests, and despite its extraordinary size and voracious appetite, the

cuckoo chick receives as much, indeed more, maternal care, often to the point of driving the other chicks

from their lofty home. Sometimes the mother bird starves her own offspring because of the cuckoo's

incessant de-mands. My first task was to create the fiction that I was the real Henry Day. Unfortunately,

humans are more suspicious and less tolerant of intruders in the nest.

The rescuers knew only that they were looking for a young boy lost in the woods, and I could

remain mute. After all, they had found someone and were therefore content. As the fire truck lurched up

the driveway to the Days' home, I vomited against the bright red door, a vivid mess of acorn mash,

wa-tercress, and the exoskeletons of a number of small insects. The fireman patted me on the head and

scooped me up, blanket and all, as if I were of no more consequence than a rescued kitten or an

abandoned baby. Henry's father leapt from the porch to gather me in his arms, and with a strong

embrace and warm kisses reeking of smoke and alcohol, he welcomed me home as his only son. The

mother would be much harder to fool.

Her face betrayed her every emotion: blotchy skin, chapped with salty tears, her pale blue eyes

rimmed in red, her hair matted and disheveled. She reached out for me with trembling hands and emitted

a small sharp cry, the kind a rabbit makes when in the distress of the snare. She wiped her eyes on her

shirtsleeve and wrapped me in the wracking shudder of a woman in love. Then she began laughing in that

deep coloratura.

"Henry? Henry?" She pushed me away and held on to my shoulders at arm's length. "Let me look

at you. Is it really you?"

"I'm sorry, Mom."

She brushed away the bangs hiding my eyes and then pulled me against her breast. Her heart beat

against the side of my face, and I felt hot and un-comfortable.

"You needn't worry, my little treasure. You're home and safe and sound, and that's all that matters.

You've come back to me."

Dad cupped the back of my head with his large hand, and I thought this homecoming tableau might

go on forever. I squirmed free and dug out the handkerchief from Henry's pocket, crumbs spilling to the

floor.

"I'm sorry I stole the biscuit, Mom."

She laughed, and a shadow passed behind her eyes. Maybe she had been wondering up to that

point if I was indeed her flesh and blood, but mention-ing the biscuit did the trick. Henry had stolen one

from the table when he ran away from home, and while the others took him to the river, I stole and

pock-eted it. The crumbs proved that I was hers.

Well after midnight, they put me to bed, and such a comfort may be the greatest invention of

mankind. In any case, it tops sleeping in a hole in the cold ground, a moldy rabbit skin for your pillow,

and the grunts and sighs of a dozen changelings anxious in their dreams. I stretched out like a stick

be-tween the crisp sheets and pondered my good fortune. Many tales exist of failed changelings who are

uncovered by their presumptive families. One child who showed up in a Nova Scotia fishing village so

frightened his poor parents that they fled their own home in the middle of a snowstorm and were later

found frozen and bobbing in the frigid harbor. A changeling girl, age six, so shocked her new parents

when she opened her mouth to speak that, thus frightened, they poured hot wax into each other's ears

and never heard an-other sound. Other parents, upon learning that their child had been replaced by

changelings, had their hair turn white overnight, were stunned into cata-tonia, heart attacks, or sudden

death. Worse yet, though rare, other families drive out the creature through exorcism, banishment,

abandonment, murder. Seventy years ago, I lost a good friend after he forgot to make himself look older

as he aged. Convinced he was a devil, his parents tied him up like an unwanted kitten in a gunnysack and

threw him down a well. Most of the time, though, the parents are confounded by the sudden change of

their son or daughter, or one spouse blames the other for their queer fortune. It is a risky endeavor and

not for the fainthearted.

That I had come this far undetected caused me no small satisfaction, but I was not completely at

ease. A half hour after I had gone to bed, the door to my room swung open slowly. Framed against the

hallway light, Mr. and Mrs. Day stuck their heads through the opening. I shut my eyes to mere slits and

pretended to be sleeping. Softly, but persistently, she was sobbing. None could cry with such dexterity

as Ruth Day. "We have to mend our ways, Billy. You have to make sure this never happens again."

"I know, I promise," he whispered. "Look at him sleeping, though. 'The innocent sleep that knits up