ceremony, I half expected that when the double doors opened to the daylight there would be a retinue of
changelings waiting to take me away. I did my best to forget my past, to dismiss the thought that I was a
fraud.
At the reception, my mother and Uncle Charlie were the first to greet us, and they had not only
paid for the party but even made us a gift of a hon-eymoon in Europe. While we were away in Germany,
they would elope to-gether, but that afternoon it was passing strange to see him where Bill Day should
have been. Nostalgia for my father was fleeting, for we were leaving behind the past and claiming life. So
much would change over the next few years. George Knoll would leave town a few weeks after the
wedding to wan-der across the country for a year, and he ended up in San Francisco, running a
sidewalk bistro with an older woman from Spain. With no Coverboys, Oscar would buy a jukebox that
fall, and the customers would still flock in for drinks and pop music. Jimmy Cummings took my old job
behind the bar. Even my baby sisters were growing up.
Mary and Elizabeth brought their latest boyfriends, a couple of long-haired twins, to the reception,
and at the center of the party, Uncle Charlie regaled the crowd with his latest scheme. "Those houses up
on the ridge are only the beginning. People are not merely going to move out of the cities; they're going
to be moving as far away as they can. My company is sitting on a gold mine in this county."
My mother sidled up to him, and he put his arm around her waist and rested his hand on her hip.
"When I first heard about the trouble up in the woods and sending in the National Guard, well, my
first thought was that when the government was through, land would be dirt cheap."
She laughed so willingly at his pun that I flinched. Tess squeezed my arm to prevent me from saying
what I was thinking.
"Country living. Moderately priced, safe and secure, perfect for young couples looking to start a
family." As if on cue, he and my mother stared right at Tess's belly. Already they were full of hope.
Feigning innocence, Elizabeth asked, "How about you two, Uncle Charlie?"
Tess squeezed my bottom, and I let out a tiny whoop just as Jimmy Cummings stepped up to
speak. "I wouldn't want to live up there, man."
"Of course not, Jimmy," Mary said. "After all you went through in those woods."
"There's something up there," he told the party. "Did you hear the ru-mor about those wild little girls
they found the other night?"
The guests began to drift off in pairs and start new conversations. Since his rescue of young Oscar
Love, Jimmy had acquired a reputation for tiresome repetitions of the story, exaggerating details until it
became a tall tale. When he launched into another yarn, he was bound to be dismissed as merely
an-other storyteller, desperate for attention. "No really," he said to the few of us remaining. "I heard the
local fuzz found these two girls, 'bout six or seven, I hear, who had broken into the drugstore in the dead
of night and smashed everything in sight. The cops were scared of those girls, said they were spooky as
a pair of cats. Man, they could barely speak a word of English or any language known to man. Put two
and two together. They were living up in the woods—remember that place I found Oscar? Maybe there
are others up there. Put your mind around that. Like a whole lost tribe of wild children. It's a trip, man."
Elizabeth was staring at me when she asked him, "What happened to them? Where are those two
girls?"
"Can't confirm or deny a rumor," he said, "and I didn't actually see them with my own two eyes, but
I don't have to. Did you know the FBI came and took 'em away? To Washington, DC, and their secret
labs, so they could study them."
I turned to Oscar, who stood slack-jawed, listening to Jimmy. "Are you sure you want this boy
tending bar for you, Oscar? Seems like he's been hit-ting the bottle a bit too much."
Jimmy came right up to my face and said sotto voce, "Know the trouble with you, Henry? You lack
imagination. But they're up there, man. You better freakin' believe it."
During the flight to Germany, dreams of changelings interrupted what sleep I could manage on the
airplane. When Tess and I landed in damp and overcast Frankfurt, we had two different expectations for
our honeymoon. Poor thing, she wanted adventure, excitement, and romance. Two young lovers
traveling through Europe. Bistros, wine and cheese, jaunts on motorbikes. I was looking for a ghost and
evidence of my past, but all I knew could be written on a cocktail napkin: Gustav Ungerland, 1859,
Eger.
Immediately bewildered by the city, we found a small room in a pension on Mendelssohnstrasse.