The Stolen Child(92)

it was or when."

The darkness was complete.

"That's the way of life. All things go out and give way to one another. Tisn't wise to be too attached

to any world or its people."

Mystified by Smaolach's philosophy, I tottered off to my new bed, turned over the facts, and

looked at what crawled beneath. I tried to picture my mother and father, and could not recall their faces

or their voices. Remem-bered life seemed as false to me as my name. These shadows are visible: the

sleeping man, the beautiful woman, and the crying, laughing child. But just as much of real life, not merely

read about in books, remains unknown to me. A mother croons a lullaby to a sleepy child. A man

shuffles a deck of cards and deals a hand of solitaire. A pair of lovers unbutton one another and tumble

into bed. Unreal as a dream.



I did not confess to Smaolach the reason for my agitation. Speck had all but abandoned our

friendship, withdrawing into some hard and lonesome core. Even after we made the move, she devoted

herself to making our new camp feel like home, and she spent the sunlit hours teaching Chavisory to

walk again. Exhausted by her efforts, Speck fell into a deep sleep early each night. She stayed in her

burrow on cold and wet March days, tracing out an intricate design on a rolled parchment, and when I

asked her about her draw-ing, she stayed quiet and aloof. Early mornings, I'd see her at the western

edge of camp, clad in her warmest coat, sturdy shoes on her feet, pondering the horizon. I remember

approaching her from behind and placing my hand on her shoulder. For the first time ever, she flinched at

my touch, and when she turned to face me, she trembled as if shaking off the urge to cry.

"What's the matter, Speck? Are you okay?"

"I've been working too hard. There's one last snow on the way." She smiled and took my hand.

"We'll steal off at the first flurries."

When the snow finally came days later, I had fallen asleep under a pile of blankets. She woke me,

white flakes gathering in her dark hair. "It's time," she whispered as quietly as the delicate susurrus

through the pines. Speck and I meandered along familiar trails, taking care to be hidden, and waited at

the edge of the forest nearest the library for dusk to arrive. The snowfall obscured the sun’s descent, and

the headlights of the few cars on the road tricked us into going too soon. We squeezed into our space

only to hear footfall overhead as the librarians began to close for the night. To stay warm and quiet, we

huddled beneath a blanket, and she quickly fell asleep against me. The rhythm of her beating heart and

respiration, and the heat from her skin, quickly lulled me to sleep, too, and we woke together in pitch

black. She lit the lamps, and we went to our books.

Speck had been reading Flannery O'Connor, and I was wading in deep Water with Wallace

Stevens. But I could not concentrate on his abstractions, and instead stared at her between the lines. I

had to tell her, but the words were inadequate, incomplete, and perhaps incomprehensible—and yet

noth-ing else would do. She was my closest friend in the world, yet a greater desire for more had

accompanied me around for years. I could not rationalize or explain it away for another moment. Speck

was engrossed in The Violent Bear It Away. A bent arm propped up her head, and she was lying

across the floor, her hair obscuring her face.

"Speck, I have something to tell you."

"Just a moment. One more sentence."

"Speck, if you could put down that book for a second."

"Almost there." She stuck her finger between the pages and closed the novel.

She looked at me, and in one second my mood swung from elation to fear. "I have been thinking

for a long, long time, Speck, about you. I want to tell you how I feel."

Her smile collapsed. Her eyes searched my relentless gaze. "Aniday, " she insisted.

"I have to tell you how—"

"Don't."

"Tell you, Speck, how much I—"

"Please, don't, Henry."

I stopped, opened my mouth to form the words, and stopped again. "What did you say?"

"I don't know that I can hear that right now."

"What did you call me?"

She covered her mouth, as if to recapture the escaped name.

"You called me Henry." The whole story unraveled in an instant. "That's me, I'm Henry. That's what

you said, isn't it?"

"I'm so sorry, Aniday."

"Henry. Not Aniday. Henry Day."

"Henry Day. You weren't supposed to know."

The shock of the name made me forget what I had planned to tell her. Myriad thoughts and

emotions competed in my mind. Images, solutions to assorted puzzles and riddles, and unanswered