He yawned and looked at Chavisory curled into the fetal position. “Right now, I’m going back to bed. Ask me again in the morning, and I’ll help with your book-writing. But now, to my pillow and to my dreams.”
I woke Smaolach and Béka and Onions with the same request and was put off by each in much the same way. Despite my excitement, I drew nothing but tired glares at breakfast the next morning, and only after the whole clan had their fill did I dare ask again.
“I am writing a book,” I announced, “about Henry Day. I know the broad story that Speck gave me before she left, and now I need you to fill in the details. Pretend I’m about to make the change, and give me the report on Henry Day.”
“Oh, I remember you,” Onions began. “You were a baby foundling in the woods. Your mother wrapped you in swaddling clothes and laid you at the greyhound’s shrine.”
“No, no, no,” said Béka. “You are mistaken. The original Henry Day was not a Henry at all, but one of two identical twin girls, Elspeth and Maribel.”
“You are both wrong,” said Chavisory. “He was a boy, a cute, smart boy who lived in a house at the tip of the forest with his mother and father and two baby twin sisters.”
“That’s right,” said Luchóg. “Mary and Elizabeth. Two little curly-tops, fat as lambchops.”
“You couldn’t have been more than eight or nine,” said Chavisory.
“Seven,” said Smaolach. “He was seven when we nabbed him.”
“Are you sure?” asked Onions. “Coulda swore he was just a baby.”
The conversation continued in this fashion for the rest of the day, in contested bites of information, and the truth at the end of the discussion was the distant cousin of the truth at the beginning. All through the summer and into the fall, I peppered them separately and together with my queries. Sometimes an answer, when combined with my prodigal memory or the visual cue of a drawing or a piece of writing, cemented a fact in my brain. Slowly, over time, a pattern emerged, and my childhood returned to me. But one thing remained a mystery.
Before the long sleep of winter, I went off, intent upon climbing the highest peak in the hills surrounding the valley. The trees had shed their leaves and raised naked arms to the gray sky. To the east, the city looked like toy building blocks. Off to the south lay the compact village cut in two by the river. In the west, the riverbend and the big country beyond. To the north, ragged forest, a farm or two hacked out from the trees and stone. I sat on the mountaintop and read, dreamt at night of two Specks, two Days, what we are, what we would be. Save for a flask of water, I fasted and reflected upon the puzzle of existence. On the third day, my mind cleared and let in the answer. If the man who appeared as my father was not my father, who was he? Whom did I meet in the mist? Who was the man by the creek on the night we lost both Igel and Oscar Love? The one who chased us through the kitchen door? He looked like my father. A deer, startled by the snap of my head, bolted through the fallen leaves. A bird cried once; the note lingered, then disappeared. The clouds rolled on and revealed the pale sun. Who had taken my place when they stole me away?
I knew. That man had what had been intended for me. The robber of my name, stealer of my story, thief of my life: Henry Day.
? CHAPTER 33 ?
I had been one of them. My son had met one face-to-face on the other side of the country, and there was no telling to what lengths they would go to follow us. The changelings had come for Edward that night years before, and by going downstairs I had scared them off. But they would be back. They were watching us, waiting for my son. He would not be safe as long as they prowled near our home. Edward would not be safe with them in the world. Once they fixed on a child for the change, he was as good as gone. I could not let Edward from my sight, and took to locking our doors and latching our windows every evening. They circled around my imagination, infected my rest. The piano offered my sole relief. By composing, I hoped to steady my sanity. False start followed false start. I struggled to keep those two worlds separate.
Fortunately, I had Tess and Edward to keep me grounded. A delivery truck pulled into our cul-de-sac on my birthday, and Edward, at the window, shouted, “It’s here, it’s here!” They insisted that I remain in the bedroom with the shades drawn until my gift could be brought into the house, and I dutifully complied, mad with love at my son’s jumpy exuberance and Tess’s sexy, knowing smile. On the bed in darkness, I closed my eyes, wondering if I deserved such love in return, worrying that it might be stolen should the truth ever be revealed.
Edward bounded up the stairs and hammered on the closed door. Grabbing my arm with his two small hands, he pulled me to the studio. A great green bow stretched across the door, and with a curtsey, Tess presented me with the scissors.