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The Stolen Child(7)

By:Keith Donohue


a six-year-old, but he had the strength of a grown man.

"Where is my mother?" I asked.

"Béka and Onions will stay with you. Get some rest." He barked once, and in a flash, the pack

gathered by his side. Without a sound, and before I could raise a word of protest, they disappeared,

fading into the forest like ghostly wolves. Lagging behind, Speck turned her head and called out to me,

"You're one of us now." Then she loped off to join the others.

I lay back down and fought tears by staring into the sky. Clouds passed beneath the summer sun,

rolling their shadows through the trees and across the faery camp. In the past, I had ventured into these

woods alone or with my father, but I had never wandered so deeply into such a quiet, lonesome place.

The familiar chestnut, oak, and elm grew taller here, and the forest rimming the clearing appeared thick

and impenetrable. Here and there sat well-worn stumps and logs and the remnants of a campfire. A

skink sunned itself on the rock that Igel had sat upon. Nearby, a box turtle shuffled through the fallen

leaves and hissed into its shell when I sat up to take a closer look.

Standing proved to be a mistake and left me woozy and disoriented. I wanted to be home in bed,

near the comfort of my mother, listening to her sing to my baby sisters, but instead I felt the cold, cold

gaze of Béka. Beside him, Onions hummed to herself, intent on the cats-cradle in her busy fingers. She

hypnotized me with her designs. Exhausted, I laid my body down, shiver-ing despite the heat and

humidity. The afternoon drifted by heavily, inducing sleep. My two companions watched me watching

them, but they said nothing. In and out of consciousness, I could not move my tired bones, thinking back

on the events that had led me to this grove and worrying about the troubles that would face me when I

returned home. In the middle of my drowse, I opened my eyes, sensing an unfamiliar stirring. Nearby,

Béka and Onions wrestled beneath a blanket. He was on top of her back, pushing and grunting, and she

lay on her stomach, her face turned toward mine. Her green mouth gaped, and when she saw me spying,

she flashed me a toothy grin. I closed my eyes and turned away. Fascination and disgust clawed at one

another in my confused mind. No sleep returned until the two fell quiet, she humming to herself while the

little frog snored contentedly. My stomach seized up like a clenched fist, and nausea rolled into me like a

fever. Frightened, and lonesome for home, I wanted to run away and be gone from this strange place.

• C H A P T E R 3 •

I taught myself how to read and write again during those last two weeks of summer with my new

mother, Ruth Day. She was determined to keep me inside or within earshot or in her line of vision, and I

happily obliged her. Reading, of course, is merely associating symbols with sounds, memorizing the

combinations, rules and effects, and, most important, the spaces between words. Writing proved more

difficult, primarily because one had to have something to say before confronting the blank page. The

actual drawing of the alphabet turned out to be a tiresome chore. Most afternoons, I practiced with

chalk and an eraser on a slate, filling it over and over with my new name. My mother grew concerned

about my compulsive behavior, so I finally quit, but not before printing, as neatly as possible, "I love my

mother." She was tickled to find that later, and the gesture earned me an entire peach pie, not a slice for

the others, not even my father.

The novelty of going to second grade quickly eroded to a dull ache. The schoolwork came easily to

me, although I entered somewhat behind my class-mates in understanding that other method of symbolic

logic: arithmetic. I still tussle with my numbers, not so much the basic operations—addition, subtrac-tion,

multiplication—as the more abstract configurations. Elementary science and history revealed a way of

thinking about the world that differed from my experience among the changelings. For example, I had no

idea that George Washington is, metaphorically speaking, the father of our country, nor did I realize that

a food chain is the arrangement of organisms of an ecological community according to the order of

predation in which each uses the next, usu-ally lower, members as a food source. Such explanations of

the natural order felt most unnatural at first. Matters in the forest were far more existential. Liv-ing

depended on sharpening instincts, not memorizing facts. Ever since the last wolves had been killed or

driven off by bounty hunters, no enemy but man remained. If we stayed hidden, we would continue to

endure.

Our struggle was to find the right child with whom to trade places. It couldn't be a random

selection. A changeling must decide on a child the same age as he was when he had been kidnapped. I