The danger of being exposed by such a person is great
Henry spent most of his time locked away in a room, reading books or playing a booming organ, scrawling notes on lined paper. His wife lived in the margins, working on her home, every day driving away and returning hours later. Onions thought that a telltale unhappiness weighed heavily on the woman’s mind, for when she was alone, she often stared into the distance, as if to extract from the air the answer to her unuttered questions. The boy, Edward, was ideal for the change, alone and distanced from the rise and fall of life, caught up in his own thoughts, and wandering through his parents’ house as if looking for a friend.
Waking in the middle of a full-moon night, I overheard Béka and Onions whispering about the boy. Cozy in their den, they expected a degree of privacy, but their conspiracy hummed along the ground like the faraway sound of an approaching train.
”Do you think we’d be able to, ourselves alone?” Onions asked.
”If we can catch him at the right moment. Perhaps when the father is distracted or drowning out every known sound on that infernal organ.”
”But if you change with Edward Day, what will happen to me?” Onions said, never more plaintive. I coughed to alert them to my presence and walked over to where they huddled, feigning sleep, innocent as two newborn kits. They might be brazen enough to try, and I resolved to keep closer watch and crack any plots before one might hatch.
In the past, the faeries refused to spy on one who had quit the tribe. The changeling was left alone, forgotten, and given a chance to live out his human life. The danger of being exposed by such a person is great, for after they make the change, they grow to resent their time among us and fear that other humans will discover their dark secret. But such concerns, once great, became less important to us. We were disappearing. Our number had diminished from a dozen to a mere six. We decided to make our own rules.
I asked them to find my mother and sisters, and at Christmas they were discovered at last. While the rest of us dozed, Chavisory and Luchóg stole away to town, which glowed with blinking lights as carolers sang in the streets. As a gift to me, they decided to explore my boyhood home, hoping to find missing clues that might give my past more meaning. The old house stood in the clearing, not as solitary as it had once been. Nearby farms had been sold off one by one, and the skeletons of new houses rose in all directions. A handful of cars parked in the drive led them to believe that a celebration was taking place at my former house, so they crept to the windows to see the assembled crowd. Henry Day, his wife, and their son were there. And Mary and Elizabeth. At the center of the festivities, a gray-haired woman sat in an easy chair by a sparkling fir tree. Her mannerisms reminded Luchóg of my mother, upon whom he had spied many years ago. He climbed a nearby oak and leapt from its outstretched limbs to the rooftop, scrambling over to the chimney, its bricks I still warm to the touch. The fire below had gone out, making it easier for him to eavesdrop. My mother, he said, was singing to the children in the old style, without instrumentation. How I would have loved to hear her again.
”Give us a song, Henry,” she said when they were through, “like you used to do.”
”Christmas is a busman’s holiday if you play the piano,” he said.” What’ll it be, Mom? ‘Christmas in Killarney’ or some other blather?”
“Henry, you shouldn’t make fun,” said one of the daughters.”‘Angels We Have Heard on High,’” said an unfamiliar, older man who rested his hand on her shoulder.
