The gangly despot sat above us on a throne made from an empty dynamite crate. He had resisted granting liberties every time we had asked, but perhaps he, too, was brightening as the days were on the mend. “Onions, take Blomma and Kivi with you tonight, but be back before dawn. Stay off the roads and take no chances.” He smiled at his own benevolence. “And bring me back a bottle of beer.”
The three girls rose as one and left without delay. Béka should have read the signs and felt the coming change in his bones, but perhaps his thirst outweighed his judgment. A cold snap rolled over the western hills to meet the warm May air, and within hours a thick fog settled into the woods and clung to the darkness like the skin of a peach. We could see no farther than one giant step ahead, and the invisible cloak stretched between the trees created a general sense of unease about our absent friends.
After the others crawled into the darkness to sleep, Luchóg kept me company at the mine’s entrance in a quiet vigil. “Don’t worry, little treasure. While they cannot see, they cannot be seen. They’ll find a careful hiding place till the sun cuts through this gloom.”
We watched and became one with nothing. In the dead of it, a crashing through the trees awakened us. The noise rose in a single frantic wave. Branches snapped and broke, and an inhuman cry resounded and was swiftly extinguished. We peered into the mist, strained in the direction of the commotion. Luchóg struck a match and lit the torch kept at the mine’s entrance. The twigs sputtered in the damp, caught hold, and burst into light. Emboldened by the fire, we stepped carefully toward the memory of the noise and the faint scent of blood on the ground. Ahead through the mist, two eyes mirrored our torchlight, and their glowing halted our progress. A fox snapped its jaws and carried away its prey, and we walked over to the killing spot. Fanned out like glass in a kaleidoscope, black-and-white-banded feathers lay strewn on the fallen leaves. Struggling with the heavy turkey, the fox bumbled off into the distance, and above us in the trees, the surviving birds huddled together, churring a comfort to one another.
Onions, Kivi, and Blomma still had not returned when I showed Speck the place where the fox had caught the tom. She chose a pair of the larger feathers and knitted them into her hair. “Last of the Mohicans,” she said, and ran whooping into the lightening morn as I gave chase, and so we played away the day. When Speck and I returned late that afternoon, we found Béka angry and pacing. The girls had not come home, and he was torn between sending out a search party or waiting inside the mineshaft.
“What do you mean, keeping us here?” Speck demanded. “You told them be back by dawn. Do you think Onions would disobey you? They should have been back hours ago. Why aren’t we out looking for them?” She divided the eight of us into pairs and mapped out four different approaches to town. To keep him calm, she went with Béka on the most direct path. Smaolach and Luchóg circled around our old stomping grounds, and Ragno and Zanzara followed well-worn deerpaths.
Chavisory and I took an ancient artery, blazed by the Indians perhaps, that ran parallel to the river, bending, dipping, and rising as the water twisted in its course. It seemed more likely that Onions, Kivi, and Blomma had taken another trail with better cover, but we stayed vigilant for any movement or other indications they had passed this way—such as fresh footprints or broken branches. The brush sometimes choked off passage, and we stepped out onto the exposed riverbank for short stints. Anyone driving across the high bridge that linked the highway to the town could have spotted us in the half-light, and I often wondered while on this path what we must look like from so far above. Ants, probably, or little children lost. Chavisory sang and hummed to herself a wordless tune at once familiar and strange.
“What is that song?” I asked her when we stopped to get our bearings. Far ahead in the river, a tug pushed a chain of barges toward the city.
“Chopin, I think.”
“What is Chopin?”
She giggled and twisted a strand of hair around two fingers. “Not what, silly. Who. Chopin wrote the music, or at least that’s what he said.”
“Who said? Chopin?”
She laughed loudly, then covered her mouth with her free hand. “Chopin is dead. The boy who taught me the song. He said it is Chopin’s mayonnaise.”
“What boy is that? The one before me?”
Her demeanor changed, and she looked off in the distance at the receding barges. Even in the dim light, I could see she was blushing.
“Why won’t you tell me? Why doesn’t anyone ever talk about him?”
“Aniday, we never talk about changelings once they are gone. We try to forget everything about them. No good to chase after memories.”