The Stolen Child(61)
"Where were you?" I asked. "Why didn't you come to the river?"
"What happened?"
"We never found it. What happened with Igel?"
"He crawled out and started to cry."
"He cried?" I began helping her pile brush over the tunnel openings.
"Like a baby," she said. "He crawled out dazed, and when he saw that I had stayed behind, he ran
off. He may be hiding nearby still."
We gathered our belongings and joined the others, climbing the ridge, now a band of refugees.
Below us lay a simple clearing that might fool the men, if not the dogs.
"We will never come back," Speck said.
Béka sniffed the air. "Dogs. Humans. Let's go."
Now eleven in number, we raced away, the mournful bays of the blood-hounds echoing through
the hills, drawing nearer and nearer. We could smell them approaching and heard the excited voices of
the men. As the sun set bloodred on the horizon, the searchers came close enough for us to make out
two burly fellows, straining at the leashes, gasping to keep up with the dogs. Stumbling on the trail,
Ragno dropped his pack and scattered his possessions in the leafy debris. I turned to watch him
gathering up his garden spade and saw a red cap flash behind him, the man oblivious to our presence.
Zanzara reached out and grabbed Ragno by the hand, and off we sped to the others, leaving behind
those few clues.
We ran for hours, crossing a creek like a hunted fox to mask our scent, cloaking ourselves at last
behind a tangle of nettles. The sun dipped below the treeline as the sound of the men and dogs faded.
They were circling back. We bivouacked there for the night, laying down our burdens, taking up our
anxi-eties. No sooner had I stashed my papers than Béka strode up to me, his chest puffed out, ready to
command.
"Go back to check when it is safe to return."
"By myself?"
"Take someone with you." He surveyed his charges, then leered at me. "Take Speck."
We waded in the winding creek back toward our pursuers, stopping now and then to listen and
look ahead for trouble. Halfway to the river, Speck hopped out midstream onto a large rock.
"Aniday, do you still want to leave?"
"Leave? Where would I go?"
"Just leave, right now. We could go. I don't know. West to California and stare at the deep blue
sea."
Another noise in the water silenced us. Perhaps a person wading in the stream, or the splashing
dogs as they crossed, or perhaps a deer quenching an evening's thirst.
"You're not going to leave, are you, Speck?"
"Did you hear that?" she asked.
We froze and listened hard. Creeping along through the brush, we care-fully investigated the noise.
A few hundred yards downstream, a most peculiar odor—neither human nor animal, but something in
between. My stomach pained me as we moved along the banks of the water. Around a bend and in the
fading light through the trees, we were nearly upon him before we saw the man.
"Who's there?" the figure said, then ducked down, trying to hide.
"Speck," I whispered. "That's my father."
She stood on her tiptoes and peeked at the crouching man; then she held her finger to her lips. Her
nostrils flared as she breathed in deeply. Speck grabbed my hand and led us away as quietly as a fog.
• C H A P T E R 1 9 •
Despite being underwater for a day, the body was identified as that of young Oscar Love. The
sheet pulled back, the shocking bloat of the drowned, and sure enough, it was him, although the truth is,
none of us could bear to look closely. Had it not been for the strange netting around the waterlogged
corpse, maybe no one would have thought it anything other than a tragic accident. He would have been
laid to rest under two yards of good earth, and his parents left to their private grief. But suspicions were
raised from the moment that they gaffed him from the river. The corpse was transported twelve miles to
the county morgue for a proper autopsy and in-quest. The coroners searched for cause but found only
strange effects. To all outward appearance he was a young boy, but when they cut him open, the
doctors discovered an old man. The weirdness never made the papers, but Oscar later told me about
the atrophied internal organs, the necrosis of the heart, the dehydrated lungs, liver, kidneys, spleen, and
brain of a death-defying centenarian.
The strangeness and sorrow surrounding this discovery were com-pounded by the vanishing act of
Jimmy Cummings. With the rest of the searchers, he had gone into the woods that night but had not
returned. When Jimmy did not show up at the hospital, we all assumed he had gone home early or found
another exit, and not until the next evening did George begin to worry. By the third day, the rest of us