The Stolen Child(58)

every step was new yet familiar, and I expected to be startled by something sudden, but it was as quiet

as a deep sleep. There was nothing in the woods, no sign of my past, scant life beyond the growing trees

and plants, the occasional stir of the inscrutable tiny animals hidden in the rot and decay. I stumbled upon

a small creek gurgling over stones, meandering nowhere. Suddenly very thirsty, I dipped my hands into

the water and drank.

The current rolled over a bed dotted with stones and rocks. On the surface, the stones were dry,

dull, and impenetrable, but at the waterline and below, the water changed the stone, revealing facets and

extraordinarily rich colors and infinite variety. Millennia of interplay had worn and polished the rocks,

made them beautiful, and the stones had changed the water as well, al-tered its flow and pace, made

turbulent its stilled predisposition. Symbiosis made the creek what it was. One without the other would

change everything. I had come out of this forest, had been there for a long, long time, but I also lived in

the world as a very real person. My life as a human and my life among the changelings made me what I

was. Like the water and the rock, I was this and that. Henry Day. As the world knows him, there is no

other, and this rev-elation filled me with warmth and pleasure. The rocks along the bottom of the creek

suddenly appeared to me as if a line of notes, and I could hear the pattern in my head. Searching my

pockets for a pencil to copy it down before the notes disappeared, I heard a stirring among the trees

behind me, footsteps racing through the brush.

"Who's there?" I asked, and whatever it was stopped moving. I tried to make myself short and

inconspicuous by crouching in the culvert cut by the creek, but hiding made it impossible to see the

source of danger. In the ten-sion of anticipation, sounds that had gone unnoticed became amplified.

Crickets sang under rocks. A cicada cried and then went silent. I was at odds whether to run away or

stay and capture the notes in the water. A breeze through the leaves, or something breathing? Slowly at

first, the footsteps re-sumed, then the creature bolted, crashing through the leaves, running away from

me, the air whispering and falling quiet. When it had departed, I con-vinced myself that a deer had been

startled by my presence, or perhaps a hound that had picked up my scent by mistake. The disturbance

unnerved me, so I quickly traced my way back to the clearing. I was the first one there, fifteen minutes

ahead of our planned rendezvous.

George arrived next, face flushed with exertion, his voice less than a rasp from calling for the boy.

He collapsed in exhaustion, his jeans emitting puffs of dust.

"No luck?" I asked.

"Do you think? I am dragging and didn't see a damn thing. You don't have a square on you?"

I produced two cigarettes and lit his, then mine. He closed his eyes and smoked. Oscar and Lewis

showed up next, similarly defeated. They had run out of ways to say so, but the worry slackened their

pace, bowed their heads, clouded their eyes. We waited for another fifteen minutes for Jimmy

Cummings, and when he failed to appear, I began to wonder if another search party was in order.

At 9:30, George asked, "Where is Cummings?"

The residual twilight gave way to a starry night. I wished we had thought to bring flashlights.

"Maybe we should go back to where the police are."

Oscar refused. "No, someone should wait here for Jimmy. You go, Henry. It's a straight shot, dead

on."

"C'mon, George, go with me."

He raised himself to the standing position. "Lead on, Macduff."

Up the trail, we could see red and blue lights flashing against the treetops and bouncing into the

night sky. Despite his aching feet, George hurried us along, and when we were nearly there, we could

hear the static shout over the walkie-talkies, sense something wrong in the air. We jogged into a surreal

scene, the clearing bathed in lights, fire engines idling, dozens of people mill-ing about. A man in a red

baseball cap loaded a pair of bloodhounds into the back of his pickup. I was startled to see Tess

Wodehouse, her white nurse's uniform glowing in the gloom, embracing another young woman and

strok-ing her hair. Two men lifted a dripping canoe to the roof of a car and strapped it down. Patterns

emerged as if time stood still, and all could be seen at once. Firemen and policemen, their backs to us,

formed a half ring around the back of the ambulance.

The chief pivoted slowly, as if averting his gaze from the somber para-medics invalidated reality,

and told us carefully, "Well ... we have found a body."

• C H A P T E R 1 8 •

Mistakes were made, despite our careful planning. I am troubled to this day by my part, however