Away from the town, all I could hear was the river lapping against the stony shores. As soon as I stopped searching, the questions I had kept at bay began to assault my mind. Unanswerable doubts that would torment me in quiet moments for the next few years. Why had she left us? Why would Speck leave me? She would not have taken the risk that Kivi and Blomma had. She had chosen to be alone. Though Speck had told me my real name, I had no idea of hers. How could I ever find her? Should I have kept quiet, or told all and given her a reason to stay? A sharp pain swelled behind my eyes, pinching my throbbing skull. If only to stop obsessing, I rose and continued to stumble through the wet darkness, finding nothing.
Cold, tired, and hungry, I reached the bend in the river in two days’ walk. Speck had been the only other person from the clan who had come this far, and she had somehow forded the water to the other side. Sapphire blue, the water ran quickly, breaking over hidden rocks and snags, whitecaps flashing. If she was on the other side, Speck had crossed by dint of courage. On the distant shore, a vision appeared from my deep mad memories—a man, woman, and child, the fleet escape of a white deer, a woman in a red coat. “Speck,” I called across the waters, but she was nowhere. Past this point of land, the whole world unfolded, too large and unknowable. All hope and courage left me. I dared not cross, so I sat on the bank and waited. On the third day, I walked home without her.
I staggered into the camp, exhausted and depressed, hoping not to talk at all. The others had not worried for the first few days, but by the end of the week, they’d grown anxious and unsettled. After they built a fire and fed me nettle soup from a copper pot, the whole story poured forth—except for the revelation of my name, except for what I had not said to her. “As soon as I realized she was gone, I went to look for her and traveled as far as the riverbend. She may be gone for good.”
“Little treasure, go to sleep,” Smaolach said. “We’ll come up with a plan. Another day brings a different promise.”
There was no new plan or promise the next morning or any other. Days came and went. I read every tense moment, every crack and creak, every whisper, every morning light as her return. The others respected my grief and gave me wide berth, trying to draw me back and then letting me drift away. They missed her, too, but I felt any other sorrow a paltry thing, and I resented their shadowy reminiscences and their failure to remember properly. I hated the five of them for not stopping her, for taking me into this life, for the wild hell of my imagination. I kept thinking that I saw her. Mistaking each of the others for her, my heart leapt and fell when they turned out to be merely themselves. Or seeing the darkness of her hair in a raven’s wing. On the bank of the creek, watching the water play over stone, I came upon her familiar form, feet tucked beneath her. The image turned out to be a fawn pausing for a rest in a window of sunshine. She was everywhere, eternally. And never here.
Her absence leaves a hole in the skin stretched over my story. I spent an eternity trying to forget her, and another trying to remember. There is no balm for such desire. The others knew not to talk about her around me, but I surprised them after an afternoon of fishing, bumbling into the middle of a conversation not intended for my ears.
“Now, not our Speck,” Smaolach told the others. “If she’s alive, she won’t be coming back for us.”
The faeries stole furtive glances at me, not knowing how much I had heard. I put down my string of fish and began to shave the scales, pretending that their discussion had no effect on me. But hearing Smaolach gave me pause. It was possible that she had not survived, but I preferred to think that she had either gone into the upper world or reached her beloved sea. The image of the ocean brought to mind the intense colors of her eyes, and a brief smile crossed my face.
“She’s gone,” I said to the silent group. “I know.”
The following day we spent turning over stones in the creek bed, gathering the hiding newts and salamanders, to cook together in a stew. The day was hot, and the labor took its toll. Famished, we enjoyed a rich, gooey mess, full of tiny bones that crunched as we chewed. When the stars emerged, we all went to bed, our stomachs full, our muscles taxed by the long day. I awoke quite late the next morning and drowsily realized that she had not once crossed my mind when we were foraging the previous day. I took a deep breath. I was forgetting.
Speck’s presence was replaced by dullness. I would sit and stare at the sky or watch ants march, and practice driving her out of my mind. Anything that triggered a memory could be stripped of its personal, embedded meanings. A raspberry is a raspberry. The blackbird is a metaphor for nothing. Words signify what you will. I tried to forget Henry Day as well, and accept my place as the last of my kind.