The Stolen Child(39)

candles stood like lines of soldiers in glass cups. A coinbox rattled with pennies when I tapped my nails

against its metal face, and spent matches littered the empty spaces. I struck a new match against the

rough plate, and a small flame erupted like a fingersnap. At once, I regretted the fire, for I looked up and

saw a woman's face staring down at me. I shook out the light and crouched beneath the rail, hoping to

be invisible.

Panic and fear left as quickly as they had come, and what amazes me now is how much flows

through the mind in such a short space of time. When I saw her eyes looking down on me, I

remembered: the woman in red, my schoolmates, the people in town, the people in church, Christmas,

Easter, Hal-loween, the kidnapping, drowning, prayers, the Virgin Mary, and my sisters, father, mother.

I nearly had solved the riddle of my identity. Yet as quickly as it takes to say "Pardon me," they

vanished, and with them, my real story. It seemed as if the eyes of the statue flickered in the match light. I

looked upon the enigmatic face of the Virgin Mary, idealized by an anonymous sculptor, the object of

untold adoration, devotion, imagination, supplication. As I stuffed my pockets with candles, I felt a pang

of guilt.

Behind me, the great wooden doors at the center entrance groaned open as a penitent or a priest

entered. We zipped out through the side door and zigzagged among the gravestones. Despite the fact

that bodies lay buried there, the cemetery was not half as frightening as the church. I paused at a

gravestone, ran my fingers over the incised letters, and was tempted to light a match to read the name.

The others leapt over the iron fence, so I scurried to catch up, chasing them across town, until we were

all safely beneath the library. Every close call thrilled us, and we sat on our blankets giggling like children.

We lit enough candles to make our sanctuary shine. Smaolach crawled off to a dark corner and curled

up like a fox, his nose buried under a cloaking arm. Speck and I sought out the brightness, and with our

latest books, we sat side by side, the scrape of turning pages marking time.

Ever since she had introduced me to this secret place, I loved going to the library. Initially, I went

for the books first encountered in my childhood. Those old stories— Grimm's Fairy Tales and Mother

Goose, picture books like Mike Mulligan, Make Way for Ducklings, and Homer Price—promised

another clue to my fading identity. Rather than help me recapture the past, the stories only alienated me

further from it. By looking at the pictures and reading Aloud the text, I had hoped to hear my mother's

voice again, but she was gone. After my first few visits to the library, I shelved such childish things and

never again looked at them. Instead, I embarked upon a journey mapped by Speck, who chose, or

helped me choose, stories to hold my adolescent interest: books like The Call of the Wild and White

Fang, tales of adventure and derring-do. She helped me sound out words I could not decipher and

explained characters, symbols, and plots that ran too wild or deep for my imag-ination. Her confidence,

as she moved through the stacks and countless novels, inspired me to believe in my own ability to read

and imagine. If not for her, I would be the same as Smaolach, filching comic books like Speed Carter or

the Adventures of Mighty Mouse from the drugstore. Or worse, not reading at all.

Cozy in our den, she held on her lap a fat volume of Shakespeare, the type set in a minuscule font,

and I was midway through The Last of the Mohicans. The flickering candlelight conspired with the

silence, and we only interrupted each other's reading to share a casual delight.

"Speck, listen to this: 'These children of the woods stood together for several moments pointing at

the crumbling edifice, and conversing in the unintelligible language of their tribe.'"

"Sounds like us. Who are these people?"

I held up the book to show her its cover, the title in gilt letters on a green cloth. We receded back

into our stories, and an hour or so passed before she spoke again.

"Listen to this, Aniday. I'm reading Hamlet here and these two fellows come in. Rosencrantz and

Guildenstern. Hamlet greets them: 'Good lads, how do ye both?' And Rosencrantz says, 'As the

indifferent children of the earth.' And Guildenstern says, 'Happy in that we are not over-happy. On

Fortune's cap we are not the very button.' "

"Does he mean they were unlucky?"

She laughed. "Not that, not that. Don't go chasing after a better for-tune."

I did not understand the half of what she said, but I laughed along with her, and then tried to find

my place again with Hawkeye and Uncas. As morning threatened and we packed our things to go, I told

her how much I had enjoyed what she had read to me about Fortune.