need a ride? You'll catch your death of cold."
I remembered to make my voice understandable—a single stroke of fortune on that miserable day.
"No, thank you, ma'am. I'm going home."
"Don't call me 'ma'am,'" she said. She had a blonde ponytail like the woman who lived in the house
we had robbed months before, and she wore a crooked smile. "It's a nasty morning to be out, and you
have no hat or gloves."
"I live around the corner, thank you."
"Do I know you?"
I shook my head, and she started to roll up her window.
"You haven't seen a little girl out here, have you?" I called out.
"In this rain?"
"My twin sister," I lied. "I'm out looking for her. She's about my size."
"No. I haven't seen a soul." She eyed me closely. "Where do you live? What is your name?"
I hesitated and thought it best to end the matter. "My name is Billy Speck."
"You'd better go home, son. She'll turn up."
The car turned the corner and motored off. Frustrated, I walked toward the river, away from all the
confusing streets and the chance of another human encounter. The rain fell in a steady drizzle, not quite
cold enough to change over again, and I was soaked and chilled. The clouds obliterated the sun,
mak-ing it difficult to orient myself, so I used the river as my compass, following its course throughout the
pale day and into the slowly emerging darkness. Frantic to find her, I did not stop until late that night.
Under a stand of ever-greens crowded with winter sparrows and jays, I rested, waiting for a break in
the weather.
Away from the town, all I could hear was the river lapping against the stony shores. As soon as I
stopped searching, the questions I had kept at bay began to assault my mind. Unanswerable doubts that
would torment me in quiet moments for the next few years. Why had she left us? Why would Speck
leave me? She would not have taken the risk that Kivi and Blomma had. She had chosen to be alone.
Though Speck had told me my real name, I had no idea of hers. How could I ever find her? Should I
have kept quiet, or told all and given her a reason to stay? A sharp pain swelled behind my eyes,
pinching my throbbing skull. If only to stop obsessing, I rose and continued to stumble through the wet
darkness, finding nothing.
Cold, tired, and hungry, I reached the bend in the river in two days' walk. Speck had been the only
other person from the clan who had come this far, and she had somehow forded the water to the other
side. Sapphire blue, the water ran quickly, breaking over hidden rocks and snags, whitecaps flash-ing. If
she was on the other side, Speck had crossed by dint of courage. On the distant shore, a vision
appeared from my deep mad memories—a man, woman, and child, the fleet escape of a white deer, a
woman in a red coat. "Speck," I railed across the waters, but she was nowhere. Past this point of land,
the whole world unfolded, too large and unknowable. All hope and courage left me. I dared not cross,
so I sat on the bank and waited. On the third day, I walked home without her.
I staggered into the camp, exhausted and depressed, hoping not to talk at all. The others had not
worried for the first few days, but by the end of the week, they'd grown anxious and unsettled. After
they built a fire and fed me nettle soup from a copper pot, the whole story poured forth—except for the
revelation of my name, except for what I had not said to her. "As soon as I realized she was gone, I
went to look for her and traveled as far as the river-bend. She may be gone for good."
"Little treasure, go to sleep," Smaolach said. "We'll come up with a plan. Another day brings a
different promise."
There was no new plan or promise the next morning or any other. Days came and went. I read
every tense moment, every crack and creak, every whis-per, every morning light as her return. The
others respected my grief and gave me wide berth, trying to draw me back and then letting me drift
away. They missed her, too, but I felt any other sorrow a paltry thing, and I resented their shadowy
reminiscences and their failure to remember properly. I hated the five of them for not stopping her, for
taking me into this life, for the wild hell of my imagination. I kept thinking that I saw her. Mistaking each
of the others for her, my heart leapt and fell when they turned out to be merely themselves. Or seeing the
darkness of her hair in a raven's wing. On the bank of the creek, watching the water play over stone, I
came upon her familiar form, feet tucked beneath her. The image turned out to be a fawn pausing for a
rest in a window of sunshine. She was everywhere, eternally. And never here.
Her absence leaves a hole in the skin stretched over my story. I spent an eter-nity trying to forget