The Stolen Child (33 page)

The crowd in the pews was transfixed by the small orchestra, and I am quite sure that had anyone spotted me looking through the window, they would have rushed past the altar and out into the churchyard. So I had the rare chance to study their faces from afar, recognizing at once Henry’s wife and son, Edward, in the front row. Thank goodness I had convinced Béka and Onions to leave that child alone. Most of the other people were strangers to me. I kept hoping to see my sisters, but, of course, they are still ageless children in my memory. An older woman, holding her fingers against her lips as she listened, seemed to glance my way once or twice, and when she did so, she reminded me of my mother, the last I shall see of her. Some part of me desired to crawl through the opening and run to her, to feel her hand against my cheek, to be held, to be known by her, but my place is not among them. Goodbye, my dear, I whispered to her, sure that she could not hear, but hoping that somehow she understood.

Henry kept smiling and playing, and like a book the music told a story that seemed, in part, a gift—as if, in our only common language, he was expressing what beat in his heart. Some sorrow, perhaps, some remorse. It was enough for me. The music carried us in two directions, as if above and below; and in the interludes, the spaces between the notes, I thought he, too, was trying to say goodbye, goodbye to the double life. The organ breathed and laid sound upon sound, and then exhaled into silence. “Aniday,” Luchóg hissed, and I shrank from the window to the ground. A beat or two, and the crowd burst like a thunderstorm. One by one, we faeries rose and disappeared into the falling darkness, gliding past the gravestones and back into the forest, as if we had never been among the people.

H
aving made amends with Henry Day, I am ready to leave come tomorrow. This version of my story has not taken nearly as long to re-create. I have not been concerned with putting down all the facts, nor a detailed explanation of the magic, as far as I understand such things, of the people who lived in secret and below. Our kind are few, and no longer deemed necessary. Far greater troubles exist for children in the modern world, and I shudder to think of real and lurking dangers. Like so many myths, our stories will one day no longer be told or believed. Reaching the end, I lament all those lost souls and those dear friends left behind. Onions, Béka, Chavisory, and my old pals Smaolach and Luchóg are content to remain as they are, indifferent children of the earth. They will be fine without me. We all go away one day.

Should by chance any of you see my mother, tell her I cherish her every kindness and miss her still. Say hello to my baby sisters. Kiss their chubby cheeks for me. And know that I will carry you all with me when I leave in the morning. Heading west as far as the waters to look for her. More beats than blood in the heart. A name, love, hope. I am leaving this behind for you, Speck, in case you return and we somehow miss each other. Should that be so, this book is for you.

I am gone and am not coming back, but I remember everything.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to Peter Steinberg and Coates Bateman. I am also happily indebted to Nan Talese, Luke Epplin, and everyone at Doubleday, to Joe Regal and the redoubtable Bess Reed. To Melanie for her insightful reading and suggestions and for years of encouragement. To all my children.

For their advice and inspiration, Sam Hazo, David Low, Cliff Becker, Amy Stolls, Ellen Bryson, Gigi Bradford, Allison Bawden, Laura Becker, and Sharon Kangas. And for the swift kick at Whale Rock, thank you to Jane Alexander and Ed Sherin.

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s
Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection
inspired the journal article on the anthropological roots of the changeling myth.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Keith Donohue
lives in Maryland, near Washington, D.C. For many years, he was a speechwriter at the National Endowment for the Arts, and now works at another federal agency.
The Stolen Child
is his first novel.

FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, JANUARY 2007

Copyright © 2006 by Keith Donohue

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2006.

Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Excerpt from “Night” from
The Blue Estuaries
by Louise Bogan, © 1968.

Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Donohue, Keith.

The stolen child / Keith Donohue.— 1st ed.

p.                    cm.

1. Doubles—Fiction. 2. Pianists—Fiction. 3. Changelings—Fiction. 4. Kidnapping victims—Fiction. 5. Identity (Psychology)—Fiction. 6. Germany—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3604.O5654S76 2006

813'.6—dc22                                                                                                                                                2005053828

www.anchorbooks.com

eISBN: 978-0-307-38693-9

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