“I took no part,” Chavisory said.
Luchóg knelt beside Speck and spoke for all. “We had to do it, so that you will not ever forget. You spoke to the human, and if he caught you, you would be gone forever.”
“Suppose I want to go back.”
No one looked me in the eye. Chavisory hummed to herself while the others kept silent.
“I think that might have been my real father, Speck. From the other world. Or maybe it was a monster and a dream. But it wanted me to come into the house. I have been there before.”
“Doesn’t matter who he was,” said Smaolach. “Father, mother, sister, brother, your Aunt Fanny’s uncle. None of that matters. We’re your family.”
I spat out a mouthful of dirt and blood. “A family doesn’t beat up one of its own, even if they have a good reason.”
Chavisory shouted in my ear, “I didn’t even touch you!” She danced spirals around the others.
“We were following rules,” said Speck.
“I don’t want to stay here. I want to go back to my real family.”
“Aniday, you can’t,” Speck said. “They think you are gone these past ten years. You may look like you’re eight, but you are almost eighteen. We are stuck in time.”
Luchóg added, “You’d be a ghost to them.”
“I want to go home.”
Speck confronted me. “Listen, there are only three possible choices, and going home is not one of them.”
“Right,” Smaolach said. He sat down on a rotting tree stump and counted off the possibilities on his fingers. “One is that while you do not get old here, nor get deathly ill, you can die by accident. I remember one fellow who went a-walking a wintry day. He made a foolish calculation in his leap from the top of the bridge to the edge of the riverbank, and his jump was not jumpy enough. He fell into the river, went right through the ice, and drowned, frozen to death.”
“Accidents happen,” Luchóg added. “Long ago, you could find yourself eaten. Wolves and mountain lions prowled these parts. Did you ever hear of the one from up north who wintered out inside a cave and woke up springtime next to a very hungry grizzly? A man can die by any chance imaginable.”
“Two, you could be rid of us,” Smaolach said, “by simply leaving. Just up and saunter off and go live apart and alone. We discourage that sort of attitude, mind you, for we need you here to help us find the next child. ’Tis harder than you think to pretend to be someone else.”
“Besides, it is a lonesome life,” said Chavisory.
“True,” Speck agreed. “But you can be lonely with a dozen friends beside you.”
“If you go that way, you’re more likely to meet with a singular fate,” Luchóg said. “Suppose you fell in a ditch and couldn’t get up? Then where would you be?”
Said Smaolach, “Them fellows usually succumb, don’t they, to some twist in the road? You lose your way in a blizzard. A black widow nips your thumb as you sleep. And no one to find the anecdote, the cowslip or the boiled frogs’ eggs.”
“Besides, where would you go that’s any better than this?” Luchóg asked.
“I would go crazy being just by myself all the time,” Chavisory added.
“Then,” Luchóg told her, “you would have to make the change.”
Speck looked beyond me, toward the treeline. “That’s the third way. You find the right child on the other side, and you take her place.”
“Now you’re confusing the boy,” said Smaolach. “First, you have to find a child, learn all about him. All of us watch and study him. From a distance, mind.”
“It has to be somebody who isn’t happy,” Chavisory said.
Smaolach scowled at her. “Never mind that. We observe the child in teams. While certain people take down his habits, others study his voice.”
“Start with the name,” said Speck. “Gather all the facts: age, birthday, brothers and sisters.”
Chavisory interrupted her. “I’d stay away from boys with dogs. Dogs are born suspicious.”
“You have to know enough,” Speck said, “so you can make people believe you are one of them. A child of their own.”
Carefully rolling a cigarette, Luchóg said, “I’ve betimes thought that I’d look for a large family, with lots of kids and so on, and then pick the one in the middle that nobody’ll miss or notice they’re gone for a bit. Or if I forget some detail or am slightly off in my imitation, nobody is the wiser. Maybe number six of thirteen, or four of seven. Not as easy as it once was, now that mums and dads aren’t having so many babies.”
“I’d like to be a baby again,” said Chavisory.