The Child Thief

This got Peter moving, almost running, keeping his eyes forward, keeping to the path.

“It will all end soon,” he whispered.

THE SPONGY GROUND gave way to asphalt and the Mist began to thin. The sun could be seen crawling up behind the buildings, and the sounds of the awakening city echoed down the long avenues of South Brooklyn. The Mist slid back into the sea, its swirling, sparkling mass dissipating, leaving Peter standing alone.

The child thief pulled his hood up and headed toward a distant cluster of bleak tenant buildings. A sign, covered in graffiti, proclaimed the complex to be the pride of the Brooklyn City Housing Commission. Peter understood none of the political implications of that sign, but he knew about slums and ghettoes; such squalid, impoverished places had always been fertile hunting grounds. The buildings were larger now, the accents and dress different, but the faces were the same destitute faces of centuries ago: the despair of the forgotten old, and the grim hostility of the futureless young. A breeding ground for troubled youth, sometimes too troubled. But time was short and Avalon needed more children; he would take his chances.

The child thief entered the housing complex through the back alleyways, sticking to the shadows, his keen senses alert for the dispirited and desperate, the abandoned and abused, for the lost child. Because lost children needed someone to trust, needed a friend, and Peter was good at making friends.

He shimmied up a drainpipe and dropped onto a balcony cluttered with garbage bags. He situated himself beneath a rain-sodden sheet of plywood and waited for the boys and girls to come out and play. As he waited, an odor permeated his nostrils, every bit as offensive as the sour rot of the garbage. It was the musky smell of grown-ups: their sweat, their gastric utterances, their dandruff-ridden scalps, greasy pimple-pocked skin, wax- encrusted ears, hemorrhoid-infested rumps. He wrinkled his nose. It hadn’t changed since the day he was born— over fourteen hundred years ago.

He could vividly recall that day: the crushing pressure as his watery sanctuary strove to eject him, fighting to remain, a feeling not unlike drowning, sliding from his mother’s womb, cold hard hands clamping about his legs and tugging him into the world, the blurry, dazzling brightness, the numbing cold, the shock as someone slapped him across his bottom, the fury and frustration as he wailed at the blurry blob holding him, and their booming laughter.

Then he was wiped down and passed to other hands, gentle, caressing hands that crushed him against warm, milk-swollen bosoms. Someone covered him in a blanket heated by the fireside and he began to suckle. The milk had been sweet, and the woman had begun to hum a soft lullaby. Peter fell into the sweetest sleep he would ever know.

The smells of grown-ups had not been offensive then, not when mixed with the spice of that large, communal roundhouse: the smoky aromas from the great fireplace, salted meats and honey mead, roasted potatoes and boiled cabbage, the musty scent of the two wolfhounds, stale bedding hay, the sharp tang of fresh-cut spruce hanging from the ceiling beams. But what made it all so harmonious to his nostrils was the ever-pervasive smell of his mother, that warm, sweet milk smell that to him would always be the smell of love.

His eyes were amber then, with only the faintest specks of gold, and his ears—though oddly shaped—had yet to develop their pointed tips. Other than a particularly lush head of reddish hair, he looked like any other cupid-faced newborn.

Peter wintered the first several weeks of his life either in his mother’s arms or in the great wicker basket by the hearth. His mother’s face was lost to him now, but not her grass-green eyes, nor the glow of her bright red hair.

His mother was never far, singing to him while she wove wool and mended tunics with her two golden- haired sisters. He slept away most of his day, dreamily watching his large family go about their daily routines: the two men and oldest boy leaving before dawn to hunt, the younger boys tending the sheep and gathering wood, the old bent man and his old bent wife going about their chores as long as the daylight would allow. At sunset the hunters would return, and with the thick stone walls between them and the winter wind, the family would gather around the rough-hewn oak table for their evening meal.

Day after day, Peter lay there watching and listening. Before long, he could make out words, then whole sentences. When he was three weeks old, he understood most everything said around him.

Each night, before dinner, his mother would nurse him, wrap him in his blanket, and leave him in the large basket near the hearth to sleep while the family ate. But Peter didn’t sleep; he watched and listened as they laughed and joked, cursed and argued, encouraged and consoled, as they shared the good and the bad of their days. And when they would laugh, he would smile, and the tiny specks of gold in his eyes would sparkle, for the sound of their mirth was a sweet song to his ears.

One night, on the evening of his seventh week in the world, Peter decided he was done just watching, that he wished to join in. So he kicked his legs free of the blanket, sat up, and climbed over the side of his basket. His legs gave out from under him and he landed on his bare bottom with a solid thump. What’s wrong with my legs, he wondered; it had never dawned on him that he couldn’t yet walk. Everyone else could. He pulled up onto wobbly legs and steadied himself on the rim of the basket. He looked out across the room. Suddenly the table seemed a long way off.

He took a tentative step, fell, pulled himself up and tried again. This time he didn’t fall. He took another step, another, then let go of the basket and began to waddle his way across the room. By the sixth and seventh step he was toddling toward the table, his face rapt in concentration.

The old man spotted him first. His jaw hung open in mid-chew and a clump of potato rolled out of his mouth and bounced off the table. The old lady frowned and swatted the old man. He let out a cry and jabbed a bony finger at Peter.

They all turned in time to see the naked infant stroll up to the table.

Peter, delighted to have his family’s full attention, put his small, chubby hands on his hips and grinned boldly—the gold flecks in his eyes now positively gleaming. When no one spoke, when no one did more than let out a high-pitched wheeze, Peter asked, “Can I join you?” But this being the first time he’d put words together, it came out more like “an I oin ouu?”

He frowned at the odd sound of his own voice. The words hadn’t come out right and the alarmed and astonished looks confronting him confirmed this. His tiny brow furrowed and he tried again. “Can I join you?” he said, much clearer. Then, with confidence, he said, “Can I join you? Can I?”

He looked expectantly from face to face. Surely that was right? Yet still they stared at him with those wide, startled eyes. If anything, he thought, they look more alarmed than before—angry even. His smile faltered and all at once he needed his mother, needed her badly, needed the reassurance that only her soft bosom and warm arms could provide. He put his arms out and took a step toward her. “Mama,” he called.

His mother stood up, knocking her chair over, her hands clutched at her mouth.

Peter stopped. “Mama?”

Fear—it was on all their faces. But there was more than fear on his mother’s face. Her eyes glared at him, as though accusing him of some horrible deed. What did I do? Peter wondered. What did I do?

The old lady leaped up, brandishing a large wooden spoon. “CHANGELING!” she cried. “GET IT OUT OF HERE!”

“NO!” his mother cried. She shook her head. “He’s no changeling! It’s HIS baby. The one from the woods.” She looked around at them, her eyes wild and desperate. “Now, do you see? Now do you believe?”

No one was listening to her; all their eyes were on Peter.

“KEEP IT AWAY FROM THE CHILDREN!” the old woman cried.

The old man herded the younger children away from the table, pushing them to the back of the room as far away from Peter as he could.

Peter’s mother grabbed the old woman’s sleeve. “Stop it! Stop it! Peter’s no changeling, Mama. I wasn’t lying. He took me—the forest spirit.” She pointed at Peter. “The forest spirit gave me that child.”

The old woman stared at Peter’s mother in horror. “No, child, don’t speak of it. Never speak of it.” She shook her daughter. “It is not yours. Do you understand me? It’s a changeling.” The old woman glared at Peter.