The Stolen Child(73)

proclaim it home. Anyone else would have taken one look at such devastation and passed by with a

shudder. Barren as the moon, the land-scape lacked all feeling, and I did not see, until we were nearly

upon it, the fissure in the rock. One by one, my cohorts squeezed through the crack and were swallowed

up in stone. Moving from the bright heat of Indian summer into the dankness of the entranceway felt as

sudden as a dive into a cold pool. A. my pupils dilated in the dimness, I did not even realize to whom I

ad-dressed my question: "Where are we?"

"It's a mine," Speck said. "An old abandoned mineshaft where they dug for coal."

A pale glow sparked forth from a newly lit torch. His face a grimace of odd, unnatural shadows,

Béka grinned and croaked to us all, "Welcome home."

• C H A P T E R 2 3 •

I should have confessed to Tess at the start, but who knows when love be-gins? Two contrary

impulses pulled at me. I did not want to scare her away with the changeling story, yet I longed to entrust

all my secrets to her. But it was as if a demon shadowed me everywhere and clamped shut my mouth to

hold in the truth. She gave me many opportunities to open my heart and tell her, and I came close once

or twice, but each time I hesitated and stopped.

On Labor Day we were at the baseball stadium in the city, watching the home team take on

Chicago. I was distracted by the enemy runner at second base.

"So, what's the plan for The Coverboys?"

"Plan? What plan?"

"You really should record an album. You're that good." She attacked a hot dog thick with relish.

Our pitcher struck out their batter, and she let out a whoop. Tess loved the game, and I endured it for

her sake.

"What kind of album? Covers of other people's songs? Do you really think anybody would buy a

copy when they can have the original?"

"You're right," she said between bites. "Maybe you could do something new and different. Write

your own songs."

"Tess, the songs we sing are not the kind of songs I would write."

"Okay, if you could write any music in the world, what kind would you write?"

I turned to her. She had a speck of relish at the corner of her mouth that I wished to nibble away.

"I'd write you a symphony, if I could."

Out flicked her tongue to clean her lips. "What's stopping you, Henry?

I'd love a symphony of my own."

"Maybe if I had stayed serious about piano, or if I had finished music school."

"What's stopping you from going back to college?"

Nothing at all. The twins had finished high school and were working. My mother certainly did not

need the few dollars I brought in, and Uncle Charlie from Philadelphia had begun to call her nearly every

day, expressing an interest in retiring here. The Coverboys were going nowhere as a band. I searched

for a plausible excuse. "I'm too old to go back now. I'll be twenty-six next April, and the rest of the

students are a bunch of eighteen-year-olds. They're into a totally different scene."

"You're only as old as you feel."

At the moment, I felt 125 years old. She settled back into her seat and watched the rest of the

ballgame without another word on the subject. On the way home that afternoon, she switched the car

radio over from the rock sta-tion to classical, and as the orchestra played Mahler, she laid her head

against my shoulder and closed her eyes, listening.

Tess and I went out to the porch and sat on the swing, quiet for a long time, sharing a bottle of

peach wine. She liked to hear me sing, so I sang for her, and then we could find nothing else to say. Her

breathing presence beside me, the moon and the stars, the singing crickets, the moths clinging to the

porch light, the breeze cutting through the humid air—the moment had a curious pull on me, as if recalling

distant dreams, not of this life, nor of the forest, but of life before the change. As if neglected destiny or

desire threatened the illusion I had struggled to create. To be fully human, I had to give in to my true

nature, the first impulse.

"Do you think I'm crazy," I asked, "to want to be a composer in this day and age? I mean, who

would actually listen to your symphony?"

"Dreams are, Henry, and you cannot will them away, any more than you can call them into being.

You have to decide whether to act upon them or let them vanish."

"I suppose if I don't make it, I could come back home. Find a job. Buy a house. Live a life."

She held my hand in hers. "If you don't come with me, I'll miss seeing you every day."

"What do you mean, come with you?"

"I was waiting for the right time to tell you, but I've enrolled. Classes start in two weeks, and I've