The Stolen Child

The audience rose as one when the last notes of the organ expired, and they clapped and stomped for us. When I turned from the window to the thundering of friends and family, I scanned the faces in the crowd. I was almost one of them. Tess had lifted Edward to her side to join in joyful bravos, and caught off guard by their exuberance, I knew what must be done.

By writing this confession, Tess, I ask for your forgiveness so that I might make it all the way back to you. Music took me part of the way, but the final step is the truth. I beg you to understand and accept that no matter what name, I am what I am. I should have told you long ago and only hope it’s not too late. My years of struggle to become human again hinge upon your belief in me and my story. Facing the boy has freed me to face myself. As I let go of the past, the past let go of me.

They stole me away, and I lived for a long, long time in the forest among the changelings. When my time to return came at last, I accepted the natural order. We found the boy Day and made the change. I did my best to ask his forgiveness, but perhaps the child and I are too far gone to reach each other anymore. I am no longer the boy I was once upon a time, and he has become someone else, someone new. He is gone, and now I am Henry Day.





? CHAPTER 36 ?

Henry Day. No matter how many times uttered or written, those two words remain an enigma. The faeries had called me Aniday for so long that I had become the name. Henry Day is someone else. In the end, after our months of watching him, I felt no envy for the man, only a sort of restrained pity. He had become so old, and desperation bowed his shoulders and marked his face. Henry had taken my name and the life I could have lived, and let it run through his fingers. How passing strange to settle on the surface of the world, bound to time and lost to one’s true nature.

I went back for my book. Our encounter outside the library spooked me, so I waited overnight, and before dawn, through the cranny, I slid into the old darkened room and lit a single candle to show the way. I read my story and was satisfied. Tried to sing the notes of Henry’s song. Into one bundle went my manuscript, papers from when I first arrived, and the letter from Speck; and into another, Henry’s score. The last of these I planned to leave at his corner table. Our mischief over, the time had come to make amends. Above me, glass crashed, as if a window broke and shattered. An obscene exclamation, a thud to the floor, then the sound of footsteps approaching the hidden trapdoor.

Perhaps I should have run away at the first chance. My emotions drifted from dread to excitement, a sensation not unlike waiting at the door long ago for my father’s daily return from work to wrap me in his arms, or those first days in the forest when I expected Speck to show up suddenly and relieve my lonesomeness. No such illusions with Henry Day, for he would doubtless not befriend me after all these years. But I did not hate him. I planned my words, how I would forgive him, present his stolen music, give him my name, and bid him farewell.

He sawed away at the carpeting to figure out how to get into the crawlspace, while I paced beneath, pondering whether to come to his aid. After an eternity, he found the door and swung it back on its hinges. A spotlight flooded in from above, like sunshine piercing a dark forest. A perfect square separated our two worlds. All at once, he stuck his head in the frame and peered into the blackness. I darted over to the opening and looked him straight in the eyes, his nose not six inches from my own. The sight of him disconcerted me, for no sign of kindness or recognition marked his features, no expression but raw disgust, which twisted his mouth into a snarl, and rage beat out of his eyes. Like a madman, he clambered through the hole into our world—a torch in one hand, a knife in the other, a coil of rope unspooling across his chest—and chased me into the corner. “Keep your distance,” I warned. “I can send you from this world in a single blow.” But he kept coming. Henry said he was sorry for what he was about to do and lifted the lantern above my head, so I ran right past him. He threw the fire at my back.

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