embarrassment, for my body was naked under the covers. The whole scene felt like a waking dream or
as if I had died and had been born again.
They pointed at me and spoke with excitement. At first, their language sounded out of tune, full of
strangled consonants and static. But with careful concentration, I could hear a modulated English. The
faeries approached cautiously so as not to startle me, the way one might approach a fallen fledgling or a
fawn separated from its doe.
"We thought you might not make it."
"Are you hungry?"
"Are you thirsty? Would you like some water?"
They crept closer, and I could see them more clearly. They looked like a tribe of lost children. Six
boys and five girls, lithe and thin, their skin dusky from the sun and a film of dust and ash. Nearly naked,
both males and females wore ill-fitting shorts or old-fashioned knickerbockers, and three or four had
donned threadbare jerseys. No one wore shoes, and the bottoms of their feet were calloused and hard,
as were their palms. Their hair grew long and ragged, in whirls of curls or in knots and tangles. A few of
them had a complete set of original baby teeth, while others had gaps where teeth had fallen out. Only
one, who looked a few years older than the rest, showed two new adult teeth at the top of his mouth.
Their faces were very fine and delicate. When they scrutinized me, faint crow's feet gathered at the
corners of their dull and va-cant eyes. They did not look like any children I knew, but ancients in wild
children's bodies.
They were faeries, although not the kind from books, paintings, and the movies. Nothing like the
Seven Dwarfs, Munchkins, midgets, Tom Thumbs, brownies, elves, or those nearly naked flying sprites
at the beginning of Fanta-sia. Not little redheaded men dressed in green and leading to the rainbows
end. Not Santa's helpers, nor anything like the ogres, trolls, and other monsters from the Grimm Brothers
or Mother Goose. Boys and girls stuck in time, ageless, feral as a pack of wild dogs.
A girl, brown as a nut, squatted near me and traced patterns in the dust near my head. "My name is
Speck." The faery smiled and stared at me. "You need to eat something." She beckoned her friends
closer with a wave of her hand. They set three bowls before me: a salad made from dandelion leaves,
watercress, and wild mushrooms; a hill of blackberries plucked from the thorns before dawn; and a
collection of assorted roasted beetles. I refused the last but washed down the fruit and vegetables with
clear, cold water from a hollowed gourd. In small clusters, they watched intently, whispering to one
another and looking at my face from time to time, smiling when they caught my eye.
Three of the faeries approached to take away my empty dishes; another brought me a pair of
trousers. She giggled as I struggled beneath the reed blanket, and then she burst out laughing as I tried to
button my fly without revealing my nakedness. I was in no position to shake the proffered hand when the
leader introduced himself and his cronies.
"I am Igel," he said, and swept back his blonde hair with his fingers. "This is Béka."
Béka was a frog-faced boy a head taller than the others.
"And this is Onions." Dressed in a boy's striped shirt and short pants held up by suspenders, she
stepped to the front. Shielding her eyes from the sun with one hand, she squinted and smiled at me, and I
blushed to the breast-bone. Her fingertips were green from digging up the wild onions she loved to eat.
When I finished dressing, I pulled myself up on bent elbows to get a bet-ter look at the rest of them.
"I'm Henry Day," I croaked, my voice raw with suffering.
"Hello, Aniday." Onions smiled, and everyone laughed at the appella-tion. The faery children began
to chant "Aniday, Aniday," and a cry sounded in my heart. From that time forward I was called Aniday,
and in time I forgot my given name, although on occasion it would come back part of the way as Andy
Day or Anyway. Thus christened, my old identity began to fade, much as a baby will not remember all
that happened before it is born. To lose one's name is the beginning of forgetting.
As the cheering faded, Igel introduced each faery, but the jumble of names clanged against my ears.
They walked away in twos and threes, disap-peared into hidden holes that ringed the clearing, then
reemerged with ropes and rucksacks. For a moment, I wondered whether they planned to tie me up to
be baptized yet again, but most of them took scant notice of my panic. They milled about, anxious to
begin, and Igel strode over to my bedside. "We're going on a scavenger hunt, Aniday. But you need to
stay here and rest. You've been through quite an ordeal."
When I tried to stand up, I met the resistance of his hand upon my chest. He may have looked like