CHAPTER 16
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When a gun goes off on a cold winters day, the retort echoes through the forest for miles around and every living creature stops to look and listen. The first gunshot of hunting season startled and put the faeries o. Scouts fanned out along the ridge, searg fe or camouflage vests or hats, listening for the trudge of men seeking out deer, pheasant, turkey, grouse, rabbit, fox, or black bear. Sometimes the hunters brought their dogs, dumb aiful— mottled pointers, feathery setters, blueticks, blad-tans, retrievers. The dogs could be more dangerous than their owners. Unless we masked our st along every path, the dogs could smell us out.My great fear iing out alone is the eeting up with a stray or worse. Years later, when we were fewer in number, a pack of hunting dogs picked up our trail and surprised us at rest in a shady grove. They raced our way, a stream of flashing sharp teeth and howling menace, and we moved as one by instinct, scrambling toward the safety of a bramble thicket. With each stride we took ireat, the dogs gaiwo in pursuit. They were an army with knives drawn, h a primal battle cry, and we escaped only by sacrifig our bare skin to the tangle of thorns. We were lucky wheopped at the edge of the thicket, fused and whimpering.
But on this winter day, the dogs were far away. All we heard was the yelp, the random shot, the muttered curse, or the kill. I once saw a duck fall out of the sky, instantly ging from a stretched-forward silhouette to a pinwheel of feathers that landed with a clap oer. Poag had disappeared from these hills and valleys by the middle of the decade, so we had to worry only during the hunting season, which corresponded roughly with the late fall and winter holidays. The brightness of trees gave way to bareness, then to bitter cold, and we began to listen for humans in the glens and the crack of the gun. Two or three of us went out while the other faeries hunkered down, buried beh blas under a coat of fallen leaves, or in holes, or hid in hollow trees. We did our best to bee unseeable, as if we did . The early arrival of night or drippi days were our only respite from the tense boredom of hiding. The odor of our stant fear mingled with the rot of November.
Back to back to ba a triangle, Igel, Smaolach, and I sat watch upon the ridge, the m sun buffered by low dense clouds, the air pregnant with snow. Ordinarily, Igel wanted nothing to do with me, not sihat day years before when I nearly betrayed the by trying to speak with the man. Two sets of footsteps approached from the south; one heavy, crashing through the brush, the other soft. The humans stepped into a meadow. An air of impatience hung about the man, and the boy, about seven ht years old, looked anxious to please. The father carried his shotgun, ready to fire. The sons gun was broken apart and awkward to carry as he struggled out of the brush. They wore matg plaid jackets and billed caps with the earflaps down against the chill. We leaned forward to listen to their versation iillness. With practid tratiohe years, I was now able to decipher their speech.
"Im cold," said the boy.
"Itll toughen you up. Besides, we havent found what we came for."
"We havent even seen one all day."
"Theyre out here, Osk."
"Ive only seen them in pictures."
"When you see the real thing," said the man, "aim for the little buggers heart." He motioned for the boy to follow, and they headed east into the shadows.
"Lets go," said Igel, and we began to trail them, keeping ourselves hidden at a distance. When they paused, we paused, and at our sed such stop, I tugged on Smaolachs sleeve.
"What are we doing?"
"Igel thinks he may have found one."
We moved oing agaihe quarry paused.
"One what?" I asked.
"A child."
They led us on a circuitous route aloy pathways. No prey appeared, they never fired their ons, and they hadnt said more than a few words. Over lunch, they maintained an unfortable silence, and I could not uand how these two were of any i at all. The sullen pair headed back to a green pickup parked on the slope beside the road, and the boy stepped into the passengers side. As he crossed the front of the truck, the father muttered, "That was a fug mistake." Igel scrutihe pair with savage iy, and as the truck pulled away, he<bdi>９９ｌｉb?</bdi> read out the lise plate numbers, itting them to memory. Smaolad I lagged behind Igel as he marched home, i on his private ruminations.
"Why did we track them all day? What do you mean, he found a child?"
"Them clouds are ready to burst." Smaolach studied the darkening sky.
"You smell it ing."
"What is he going to do?" I yelled. Up ahead, Igel stopped in his tracks and waited for us to catch up.
"How long have you been with us, Aniday?" Igel asked. "What does your stone dar say?"
Ever sihat day wheurned on me, I had been wary of Igel, and had learo be deferential. "I dont know. December? November? 1966?"
He rolled his eyes, bit his lip, and tinued. "Ive been looking and waiting since you arrived, and its my turn now and that boy may be the one. When you and Speck are in town with your books, keep a for that green truck. If you see it again, or the boy or the father, let me know. If you have the ce to follow them and find where he lives oes to school, or where the father works, or if he has a mother, sister, brother, friend, you let me know."
"Of course I will, Igel. Id be happy to spy on him at the library."
He bade Smaolach to walk with him, and I brought up the rear. A bitterly freezing rain began to fall, and I ran the last few moments to escape from being drehe warren excavated by Igel and Luchóg over the years proved an ideal shelter on such blustery nights, although most of the time claustrophobia forced me out. The cold and damp drove me into the tunnels, and with my palms I felt along in the darkness until I sehe presence of others.
"Whos there?" I called out. No answer, only a furtive muffled sound.
I called out again.
"Go away, Aniday." It was Béka.
"You go away, you old fart. Ive just e in from the rain."
"Go back the way you came. This hole is occupied."
I tried to reason with him. "Let me pass by, and Ill sleep somewhere else."
A girl screamed and so did he. "She bit my damn finger."
"Who is there with you?"
Speck shouted out in the darkness. "Just go, Aniday. Ill follow you out."
"Vermin." Béka cursed a her go. I reached out in the darkness and sh<cite></cite>e found my hand. We crawled back to the surface. Stinging rain gathered in her hair and flatte against her skull. A thin layer of ice caked over her head like a helmet, and the drops collected on our eyelashes and streamed down our faces. We stood still, uo say anything to each other. She looked as if she wished to explain or apologize, but her lips trembled aeeth knocked and chattered. Grabbing my hand again, she led me to the shelter of aunnel. We crawled in and crouched o the surface, out of the rai not in the cold earth. I could not stand the silence, so I yammered on about the father and son we had followed and Igels instrus. Speck took it all in without speaking a word.
"Squeeze out that water from your hair," she said. "It will dry faster that way and stop dripping down your nose."
"What does he mean, he found a child?"
"Im cold," she said, "and tired and sid sore. t we talk about this in the m, Aniday?"
"What did he mean that hes been waiting since I got here?"
"Hes . Hes going to ge places with that boy." She pulled off her coat. Even in the darkness, her white sweater threw baough light to allow me a better sense of her presence.
"I dont uand why he gets to go."
She laughed at my é. "This is a hierarchy. Oldest to you. Igel makes all the decisions because he has seniority, as to go ."
"How old is he?"
She calculated in her mind. "I dont know. Hes probably been here about one hundred years."
"Youre kidding." The number nearly fried my brain. "How old are all the others? How old are you?"
"Will you please let me sleep? We figure this out in the m. Now, e here and warm me up."
In the m, Sped I talked at length about the history of the faeries, and I wrote it all down, but those papers, like many others, are in ashes now. The best I do is re-create from memory what we recorded that day, which was far from truly accurate to begin with, since Speck herself did not know the full story and could merely summarize or speculate. Still, I wish I had my notes, for the versation was years ago, and my whole life seems to be nothing more than restrug memories.
That my good friends could one day leave profoundly saddened me. The cast of characters, in fact, stantly revolves, but so slowly over time that they seemed perma players. Igel was the oldest, followed by Béka, Blomma, Kivi, and the twins, Ragno and Zanzara, who came late in the eenth tury. Onions arrived in the auspicious year of 1900. Smaolad Luchóg were the sons of two families who had emigrated from the same village in Ireland in the first decades of the tweh tury, and Chavisory was a French adian whose parents had died in the great influenza epidemic of 1918. Besides myself, Speck was the baby, having been stolen as a four-year-old in the sed year of the Great Depression.
"I was a lot youhan most of the others when I made the ge," she said. "Except for the twins. From the beginning, there have been twins in this line, and theyre impossible to take unless very young. And we ake babies. Too much trouble."
Vague memories stirred the sauy thoughts. Where had I known twins before?
"Luchóg named me, because I eck of a girl when they snatched me. Everyone else is ahead of me in line for the ge, except you. Youre the bottom of the totem pole."
"And Igel has been waiting for his turn for a whole tury?"
"Hes seen a dozen make the ge and had to bide his time. Now were all in line behind him." The mention of such a wait caused her to shut her eyes. I leaned against a tree trunk, feeling helpless for her and hopeless for myself. Escape was not a stant thought, but occasionally I allowed myself to dream of leaving the group and rejoining my family. Dejected, Speck hung her head, dark hair c her eyes, her lips parted, drawing in air as if each breath was a chore.
"So what do we do now?" I asked.
She looked up. "Help Igel."
I noticed that her once-white sweater was fraying at the collar and the sleeves, and I resolved to look for a replat as we searched for the boy.
In glowing red letters, the sign out front read OSCARS BAR, and alone i behind the building, Béka found the hunters green pickup. He and Onions jumped into its bed and rode, ued by the drunken driver, to the mans house out in the try. She laughed when she read the name off the mailbox: LOVES. They memorized the location, sharing the good news with us later that night. With the information in hand, Igel set in motion our reaissand assigned shifts of teams to watch the boy and his f<bdi></bdi>amily to learn their movements and habits. He instructed us to pay close attention to the boys character and demeanor.
"I want a detailed at of his life. Does he have any brothers or sisters? Uncles or aunts? Grammy and Gramps? Does he have any friends? What sort of games does he play? Any hobbies or spare-time activities? Find all there is to know about his relationship with his parents. How do they treat him? Is he ined to daydream? To wander about by himself in the woods?"
I transcribed his words in Mess position book and wondered how we might uake such a task. Igel walked over and stood in front of me, glaring down at my scribbling.
"You," he said, "will be our scrivener. I want a plete record. You are to be his biographer. Everyone else tell Aniday what they learn. Dont e pesterih every detail. Wheory is plete, you tell it. This will be the most perfect ge in our history. Find me a new life."
Before I saw the child again, I felt as if I knew him as well as myself. Chavisory, for instance, found out that h<bdi>..</bdi>e was named after his uncle Oscar. Smaolach could do a passing imitation of his voice, and Kivi had applied an unknown calculus to plot out his height, weight, and general body type. After years of mere self-preservation and maintehe faeries industry aion to the task bordered on the fanatic.
I was assigo watch for him at the library, but I rarely bothered to look for him there, and it is by ce that he appeared at all. His mother had dragged the poor child along a him alone on the small playground out front. From my hiding place, direct observation was impossible, so I watched his refle in the plate-glass windows across the street, which distorted his appearance, making him smaller and somehoarent.
The dark-haired, beetle-browed boy sang quietly to himself as he climbed up and swooshed off the slide over and ain. His nose ran, and every time he mouhe stairs hed wipe the snot with the back of his hand, then wipe his hand on his greasy corduroys. Wheired of the sliding board, he sauntered over to the swings to pump and pull himself into the clear blue sky. His blank expression never ged, and the song under his breath never faltered. I watched him for nearly an hour, and in that whole time, he expressed absolutely ion, tent to play aloil his mother came. A thin smile creased his face when she arrived, and without a word he jumped down from the swing, grabbed her hand, and off they went. Their behavior and iion baffled me. Parents and children take such everyday moments franted, as if there is an endless supply.
Had my parents fotten me pletely? The man who cried after me that long-ag surely had been my father, and I resolved to go see him, my mother, and my baby sisters one day soon. Perhaps after we had abducted the poor misfortunate bastard from the playground. The swing stopped, and the early June day faded. A swalloeared, chasing is in the air above the iron bars, and all of my desires were tipped by the wings as the bird scissored away into the milky dusk. I felt sorry for the boy, although I khat ging places was the natural order. His capture would mean Igels release and one more step toward the head of the line for me.
The child was an easy mark; his parents would barely be aware of the ge. He had few friends, caused her excitement nor alarm as a student, and was so ordinary as to be almost invisible. Ragno and Zanzara, who had taken residen the familys attionths, reported that aside from peas and carrots, the boy ate anything, preferred chocolate milk with his meals, slept on rubber sheets, and spent a lot of time in the living room watg a small box that let one know when to laugh and how to schedule bedtime. Our boy was a good sleeper, too, up to twelve hours at a stret <var>藏书网</var>weekends. Kivi and Blomma reported that he liked to play outdoors in a sandbox by the house, where he had set up an elaborate tableau of small plastic dolls in blue and gray. The doleful fellow seemed satisfied to go on living life as it is. I envied him.
No matter how we pestered him, Igel refused to hear our report. We had been spying on Oscar for over a year, and everyone was ready for the ge. I was running out of paper in Mess book, and one more dispatch from the field would not only be a waste of time, but a waste of precious paper as well. Haughty, distracted, and burdened by the responsibilities of leadership Igel kept to himself, as if he both yearned for and fli the possibility of freedom. His normally stoic disposition ged to a general peevishness. Kivi came to dinner oh a red welt under her eye.
"What happeo you?"
"That son of a bitch. Igel hit me, and all I asked him was if he was ready. He thought I meant ready to go, but all I meant was for dinner."
No one knew what to say to her.
"I t wait till he leaves. I am sid tired of the old crab. Maybe the new boy will be nice."
I stood up from the meal and stormed through the camp, looking fel, resolving to front him, but he was not to be found in his usual places. I poked my head into the entranceway of one of his tunnels and called out, but no answer. Perhaps he had go to spy on the boy. Nobody knew where he might be found, so I spent several hours walking in circles, until g upon him alone down by the river, where he was staring at his refle in the broken surface of water. He looked so alohat I fot my anger and quietly crouched down beside him.
"Igel? Are you all right?" I addressed the image oer.
"Do you remember," he asked, "your life before this life?"
"Vaguely. In my dreams, sometimes my father and mother and a sister, or maybe two. And a woman in a red coat. But no, not really."
"I have been gone so long. Im not sure I know how to go back."
"Speck says there are three choices but only one ending for us all."
"Speck." He spat out her name. "She is a foolish child, almost as foolish as you, Aniday."
"You should read our report. It will help you make the ge."
"I will be glad to be rid of such fools. Have her e see me in the m. I dont want to talk to you, Aniday. Have Béka make your report."
He stood up, brushed dirt from the seat of his pants, and walked away. I hoped he would disappear forever.
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