“East of the creekbed, there was an old chestnut, cracked and dying from the bottom up. An animal had scooped out a large hollow den, and you had to climb inside and see. The humidity and the darkness must have put you right to sleep. I stood outside the whole time, hidden when the searchers almost stumbled upon you. Skittering flashlights led their dark forms as they shuffled like ghosts through the heavy air. They passed by, and soon their calls receded into the distance and then into silence.
“Not long after the people faded away, the faeries ran in from all directions and stopped before me, the sentinel at the tree. The changeling panted. He looked so much like you that I held my breath and wanted to cry. He scrambled partway into the hole, grabbed you around your bare ankle, and pulled.”
She hugged me and kissed me on the top of my head.
“If I changed back,” I asked her, “would I ever see you again?”
Despite my questions, she would not tell me more than she thought I should know, and after a while, we set to picking berries. Although the days bore traits of midsummer, there’s no stopping the tilt of the globe away from the sun. Night came like a sudden clap. We walked back beneath the emerging planets and stars, the pale ascending moon. Half-smiles greeted our return, and I wondered why the thin children of our temporary quarters were not themselves out watching blackbirds, and dreaming their dreams. Porridge bubbled on the fire, and the troupe ate from wooden bowls with wooden spoons, which they sucked clean. We dumped quarts of raspberries from our shirttails, ambrosia escaping from the bruised fruit, and the others scooped them into their mouths, smiling and chewing, staining their lips red as kisses.
The next day, Béka announced he had found our new home, “a place inaccessible to all but the most intrepid humans, a shelter where we would be safe.” He led us up a steep and desolate hill, scrabbling slate and shale from its loose, decaying face, as inhospitable a heap as you’d like to find. No sign of life, no trees or plants of any kind other than a few noxious weeds poking through the rubble. No bird landed there, not even for a moment’s rest, nor any flying insect of any sort, though we would soon find out about the bats. No footprints except our leader’s. Scant purchase for anything larger than our weary band. As we climbed, I wondered what had possessed Béka to scout out this place, let alone proclaim it home. Anyone else would have taken one look at such devastation and passed by with a shudder. Barren as the moon, the landscape lacked all feeling, and I did not see, until we were nearly upon it, the fissure in the rock. One by one, my cohorts squeezed through the crack and were swallowed up in stone. Moving from the bright heat of Indian summer into the dankness of the entranceway felt as sudden as a dive into a cold pool. As my pupils dilated in the dimness, I did not even realize to whom I addressed my question: “Where are we?”
“It’s a mine,” Speck said. “An old abandoned mineshaft where they dug for coal.”
A pale glow sparked forth from a newly lit torch. His face a grimace of odd, unnatural shadows, Béka grinned and croaked to us all, “Welcome home.”
? CHAPTER 23 ?
I should have confessed to Tess at the start, but who knows when love begins? Two contrary impulses pulled at me. I did not want to scare her away with the changeling story, yet I longed to entrust all my secrets to her. But it was as if a demon shadowed me everywhere and clamped shut my mouth to hold in the truth. She gave me many opportunities to open my heart and tell her, and I came close once or twice, but each time I hesitated and stopped.
On Labor Day we were at the baseball stadium in the city, watching the home team take on Chicago. I was distracted by the enemy runner at second base.
“So, what’s the plan for The Coverboys?”
“Plan? What plan?”
“You really should record an album. You’re that good.” She attacked a hot dog thick with relish. Our pitcher struck out their batter, and she let out a whoop. Tess loved the game, and I endured it for her sake.
“What kind of album? Covers of other people’s songs? Do you really think anybody would buy a copy when they can have the original?”
“You’re right,” she said between bites. “Maybe you could do something new and different. Write your own songs.”
“Tess, the songs we sing are not the kind of songs I would write.”
“Okay, if you could write any music in the world, what kind would you write?”
I turned to her. She had a speck of relish at the corner of her mouth that I wished to nibble away. “I’d write you a symphony, if I could.”
Out flicked her tongue to clean her lips. “What’s stopping you, Henry? I’d love a symphony of my own.”
“Maybe if I had stayed serious about piano, or if I had finished music school.”
“What’s stopping you from going back to college?”
Nothing at all. The twins had finished high school and were working. My mother certainly did not need the few dollars I brought in, and Uncle Charlie from Philadelphia had begun to call her nearly every day, expressing an interest in retiring here. The Coverboys were going nowhere as a band. I searched for a plausible excuse. “I’m too old to go back now. I’ll be twenty-six next April, and the rest of the students are a bunch of eighteen-year-olds. They’re into a totally different scene.”