CHAPTER 14
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Looking far ahead oh, I spied her returning to camp, which set my mind at ease. She appeared betweerees, moving like a deer along the ridgelihe i at the library had left me eager to apologize, so I took a shortcut through the forest that would allow me to cut her off along her route. My mind buzzed with the story of the man in the yard. I hoped to tell her before the important parts vanished in the fusion. Speck would be mad, rightfully so, but her passion would mollify any anger. As I drew near, she must have spotted me, for she took off in a sprint. Had I not hesitated befiving chase, perhaps I would have caught her, but the rough terraied speed. In my haste, I snagged my toe on a fallen brand landed facedown in the dirt. Spitting leaves and twigs, I looked up to see Speck had already made it into camp and was talking with Béka."She doesnt want to speak with you," the old toad said upon my arrival, and clamped his hand on my shoulder. A few of the elders—Igel, Ragno, Zanzara, and Blomma—had sidled o him, f a wall.
"But I o talk to her."
Luchóg and Kivi joihe others. Smaolach walked toward the group from my right, his hands ched and shaking. Onions approached from my left, a menag toothsome smile on her faine of them encircled me. Igel stepped ihe ring and jabbed a fi my chest.
"You have violated our trust."
"What are you talking about?"
"She followed you, Aniday. She saw you with the man. You were to avoid any tact with them, yet there you were, trying to unicate with one of them." Igel pushed me to the ground, kig up a cloud of rotten leaves. Humiliated, I quickly sprang bay feet. My fear grew as the others hollered iives.
"Do you know how dangerous that was?"
"Teach him a lesson."
"Do you uand we ot be discovered?"
"So he wont fet again."
"They could e and capture us, and then we will never be free."
"Punish him."
Igel did not strike the first blow. From behind, a fist or a club smashed into my kidneys, and I arched my back. With my body thus exposed, Igel punched me squarely in the solar plexus, and I hunched forward. A line of drool spilled from my ope９９ｌｉb?n mouth. They were all upo once like a pack of wild dogs bringing down wounded prey. The blows came from all dires, and initial shock gave way to pain. They scraped my face with their nails, ripped hunks of hair from my scalp, sank their teeth into my shoulder, drawing blood. A ropy arm choked my neck, shutting off the flow of air. I gagged a my ge rise. Amid the fury, their eyes blazed with frenzy, and sheer hatred twisted their features. One by ohey peeled off, sated, and the pressure lessened, but those who remained kicked at my ribs, tauntio get up, snarling and growling at me to fight back. I could not muster the strength. Before walking away, Béka stomped on my fingers, and Igel delivered a kick with each word of his final admonition: "Do not talk to people again."
I closed my eyes and stayed still. The sun shone down through the branches of the trees, warming my body. My joints ached from the fall, and my fingers swelled and throbbed. One eye ainted blad blue, and blood oozed from cuts and pooled beh plum bruises. My mouth tasted of vomit and dirt, and I passed out in a rumpled heap.
Cool water on my cuts and bruises startled me awake, and my first vision was of Speck bent over me, wiping the blood from my face. Directly behiood Smaolad Luchóg, their faces pinched with . Drops of my blood left a red pat Specks white sweater. When I tried to speak, she pressed the wet cloth to my lips.
"Aniday, I am so sorry. I did not want this to happen."
"Were sorry, too," Smaolach said. "But the law has a ruthless logic."
Chavisory poked out her head from behind Specks shoulder. "I took no part in it."
"You should not have left me, Aniday. You should have trusted me."
I sat up slowly and faced my tormentors. "Why did you let them?"
"I took no part," Chavisory said.
Luchóg k beside Sped spoke for all. "We had to do it, so that you will not ever fet. 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 e into the house. I have been there before."
"Doesnt matter who he was," said Smaolach. "Father, mother, sister, brother, your Aunt Fannys uncle. None of that matters. Were your family."
I spat out a mouthful of dirt and blood. "A family does up one of its own, even if they have a good reason."
Chavisory shouted in my ear, "I didnt even touch you!" She danced spirals around the others.
"We were following rules," said Speck.
"I dont w>..</a>ant to stay here. I want to go bay real family."
"Aniday, you t," Speck said. "They think yohese past ten years. You may look like youre eight, but you are almost eighteen. We are stu time."
Luchóg added, "Youd be a ghost to them."
"I want to go home."
Speck fronted me. "Listen, there are only three possible choices, and going home is not one of them."
&quht," Smaolach said. He sat down on a rotting tree stump and ted off the possibilities on his fingers. "One is that while you do not get old here, net deathly ill, you die by act. I remember one felloent 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."
"Acts 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 o a very hungry grizzly? A man die by any ce 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 disce that sort of attitude, mind you, for we need you here to help us find the 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 be lonely with a dozen friends beside you."
"If you go that way, youre more likely to meet with a singular fate," Luchóg said. "Suppose you fell in a ditd could up? Then where would you be?"
Said Smaolach, "Them fellows usually succumb, dont 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 oo find the ae, the cowslip or the boiled frogs eggs."
"Besides, where would you go thats aer 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 ge."
Speck looked beyooward the treeline. "Thats the third way. You find the right child oher side, and you take her place."
"Now youre fusing the boy," said Smaolach. ?"First, you have to find a child, learn all about him. All of us watd study him. From a distance, mind."
"It has to be somebody who isnt 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. "Id stay away from boys with dogs. Dogs are born suspicious."
"You have to know enough," Speck said, "so you make people believe you are one of them. A child of their own."
Carefully rolling a cigarette, Luchóg said, "Ive betimes thought that Id look for a large family, with lots of kids and so on, and then pick the one in the middle that nobodyll miss or notice theyre gone for a bit. Or if I fet 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 arent having so many babies."
"Id like to be a baby again," said Chavisory.
"Once you have made the choice," said Smaolach, "we go in and grab the child. He or shes got to be alone, or youll be found out. Have you ever heard the tale of them ones in Russia or thereabouts, where they caught the lot of them stealing a tiny Cossack lad with pointy teeth, and them Cossacks took all our boys of the woods and burnt them up to a crisp?"
"Fire is a devil of a way to go," said Luchóg. "Did I ever tell you of the faery geling caught snooping around the room of a girl she wished to replace? She hears the parents e in, and leaps in the closet, making the ge right there in the room. At first, the parents thought nothing of it, when they opehe door and there she laying in the dark. Later that day, the real girl es home, and what do you think? Theres the two of them side by side, and our friend would have made it, but she had learned how to speak like the little girl. So the mother says, Now whie of you is Lucy? and the real Lucy says, I am, and the other Lucy lets out a squawk to rais<mark>藏书网</mark>e the dead. She had to jump out the sed-floor window and start all ain."
Smaolach looked perplexed during his friends story, scratg his head as if trying to recall an importaail. "Ah, theres a bit of magic, of course. We bind up the child in a web and lead him to the water."
Spinning on her heels, Chavisory shouted, "And theres the intation. You mustnt fet that."
"In he goes like a baptism," Smaolach tinued. "Out he es, one of us. o leave except by one of three ways, and I would not give you my shoes for the first two."
Chavisory drew a circle in the dust with her bare toe. "Remember the German boy who played the piano? The one before Aniday."
With a short hiss, Speck grabbed Chavisory by the hair and pulled the poor creature to her. She sat on her chest and threw her hands upon her face, massaging and kneading Chavisorys skin like so much dough. The girl screamed and cried like a fox in a steel trap. When she had finished, Speck revealed a reasonable copy of her ow fa the visage of Chavisory. They looked like twins.
"You put me back," Chavisory plained.
"You put me back." Speck imitated her perfectly.
I could not believe what I was seeing.
"Theres your future, little treasure. Behold the geling," laid Smaolach. "Going back to the past as yourself is not an option. But when you return as a ged person to their world, you get to stay there, grow up as one of them, live as one of them, more or less, grow old as time allows, and youll do that yet, when your turn es."
"My turn? I want to go hht now. How do I do it?"
"You dont," Luchóg said. "You have to wait until the rest of us have goheres a natural order to our world that mustnt be disturbed. One ch９9ｌiｂ?ild for one geling. When your time es, you will find another child from a different family than what you left behind. You ot go back whence you came."
"Im afraid, Aniday, youre last in the line. Youll have to be patient."
Luchóg and Smaolach took Chavisory behind the honeysuckle and began to manipulate her face. The three of them laughed and carried on through the whole process. "Just make me pretty again," and "Lets get one of them magazines with the womens pictures," and "Hey, she looks like Audrey Hepburn." Eventually, they fixed her face, and she flew from their clutches like a bat.
Speck was unusually kind to me for the rest of that day, perhaps out of misplaced guilt for my beating. Her gentleness reminded me of my mothers touch, or what I thought I remembered. My own mht as well have been the phantom, or any other fi to be jured. I was fetting again, the distin between memory and imagination blurring. The man I saw, could he be my father? I wondered. He appeared to have reized me, but I was not his son, only a shadow from the woods. In the dead of night, I wrote dowory of the three ways in Mess notebook, hoping to uand it all iure. Speck kept me pany while the others slept. Iarlight, her cares had vanished from her face; even her eyes, usually so tired, radiated passion.
"I am sorry they hurt you."
"It doesnt hurt," I whispered, stiff and sore.
"Life here has its pensations. Listen."
Low in a flyway, an owl swept betweerees, unrolling its wings on the hunt. Speck tehe fine hairs on her arms bristling.
"You will never get old," she said. "You wont have to worry about getting married or having babies or finding a job. No gray hair and wrinkles, h falling out. You wont need a e or a crutch."
We heard the owl desd and strike. The mouse screamed ohen life left it.
"Like children who never grow up," I said.
"The indifferent children of the earth." She let her sentence linger in the air. I fixed my eye upon a siar, hoping to sehe earth or see the heavens move. This trick of staring and drifting with the sky has cured my insomnia many times over the years, but not that night. Those stars were fixed and this globe creaked as if stu its rotation. Eyes lifted, pointing to the moon, Speck sidered the night, though I had no idea what she was thinking.
"Was he my father, Speck?"
"I ot tell you. Let go of the past, Aniday. Its like holding dandelions to the wind. Wait for the right moment, and the seeds will scatter away." She looked at me. "You should rest."
"I t. My mind is filled with noises."
She pressed her fio my lips. "Listen."
Nothing stirred. Her presence, my own. "I t hear a thing."
But she could hear a distant sound, and her gaze turned inward, as if transported to its source.
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