I am the only person who truly knows what happened in the forest. Jimmy's story explained for me the mystery of the drowned Oscar Love and his miraculous reappearance several days later. Of course, it was the changelings, and all the evidence confirmed my suspicion of a failed attempt to steal the child. The dead body was that of a changeling, an old friend of mine. I could picture the face of the next in line but had erased their names. My life there had been spent imagining the day when I would begin my life in the upper world. As the decades passed, the cast of characters had shifted as, one by one, each became a changeling, found a child, and took its place. In time, I had come to resent every one of them and to disregard each new member of our tribe. I deliberately tried to forget them all. Did I say a friend of mine had died? I had no friends.
　　While gladdened by the prospect of one less devil in the woods, I was oddly disturbed by Jimmy's account of little Oscar Love, and I dreamt that night of a lonely boy like him in an old-fashioned parlor. A pair of finches dart about an ironwork cage. A samovar glistens. On the mantelpiece sits a row of leather-bound books gilded with Gothic letters spelling out foreign tides. The parlor walls papered crimson, heavy dark curtains shutting out the sun, a curious sofa covered with a latticed needlework throw. The boy is alone in the room on a humid afternoon, yet despite the heat, he wears woolen knickers and buttoned boots, a starched blue shirt, and a huge tie that looks like a Christmas bow. His long hair cascades in waves and curls, and he hunches over the piano, entranced by the keyboard, doggedly practicing an etude. From behind him comes another child, the same hair and build, but naked and creeping on the balls of his feet. The piano player plays on, oblivious to the menace. Other goblins steal out from behind the curtains, from under the settee; out of the woodwork and wallpaper, they advance like smoke. The finches scream and crash into the iron bars. The boy stops on a note, turns his head. I have seen him before. They attack as one, working together, this one covering the boy's nose and throat, another taking out the legs, a third pinning the boy's arms behind his back. From beyond the closed door, a man's voice: "Was ist los?" A thumping knock, and the door swings open. The threshold frames a large man with outrageous whiskers. "Gustav?" The father cries out as several hobgoblins rush to restrain him while the others take his son. "Ich erkenne dich! Du willst nur meinen Sohn!"
　　I could still feel the anger in their eyes, the passion of their attack. Where is my father? A voice pierces the dream, calling "Henry, Henry," and I awaken to a damp pillowcase and twisted sheets. Stifling a yawn, I yelled downstairs that I was tired and that this had better be good. My mother shouted back through the door that there was a telephone call and that she was not my secretary. I threw on my bathrobe and headed downstairs.
　　"This is Henry Day," I grunted into the receiver.
　　She laughed. "Hi, Henry. This is Tess Wodehouse. I saw you out in the woods."
　　She could not imagine the reasons for my awkward silence.
　　"When we found the boy. The first one. I was with the ambulance."
　　"Right, the nurse. Tess, Tess, how are you?"
　　"Jimmy Cummings said to give you a call. Would you like to meet somewhere later?"
　　We arranged to meet after her shift, and she had me write down directions to her house. At the bottom of the page, I doodled the name: Gustav.
　　
　　
　　She answered the door and stepped straight out to the porch, the afternoon sunlight stippling across her face and yellow sundress. Out of the shadows, she dazzled. All at once, it seems in retrospect, she revealed what I grew to adore: the asymmetrical mottling of the colors in her irises, a blue vein snaking up her right temple that flashed like a semaphore for passion, the sudden exuberance of her crooked smile. Tess said my name and made it seem real.
　　We drove away, and the wind through the open window caught her hair and blew it across her face. When she laughed, she threw back her head, chin to the sky, and I longed to kiss her lovely neck. I drove as if we had a destination, but in our town there was no particular place to go. Tess turned down the radio, and we talked away the afternoon. She told me all about her life in public school, then on to college, where she had studied nursing. I told her all about parochial school and my aborted studies in music. A few miles outside of town, a new fried-chicken joint had opened recently, so we bought ourselves a bucketful. We stopped by Oscar's to steal a bottle of apple wine. We picnicked on a school playground, abandoned for the summer except for a pair of cardinals on the monkey bars, serenading us with their eight-note song.
　　"I used to think you were the strangest bird, Henry Day. When we were in elementary school together, you might have said two words to me. Or anyone. You were so distracted, as if you heard a song in your head that no one else could hear."
　　"I'm still that way," I told her. "Sometimes when I'm walking down the street or am quiet by myself, I play a tune, imagine my fingers on the keys, and can hear the notes as clear as day."
　　"You seem somewhere else, miles away."
　　"Not always. Not now."
　　Her face brightened and changed. "Strange, isn't it? About Oscar Love, that boy. Or should I say two little boys, alike as two pins."
　　I tried to change the subject. "My sisters are twins."
　　"How do you explain it?"
　　"It's been a long time since high school biology, but when an egg divides—"
　　She licked her fingers. "Not twins. The drowned boy and the lost boy."
　　"I had nothing to do with either one."
　　Tess swallowed a sip of wine and wiped her hands with a napkin. "You are an odd one, but that's what I liked about you, even when we were children. Since the first day I saw you in kindergarten."
　　I sincerely wished I had been there that day.
　　"And when I was a girl, I wanted to hear your song, the one that's playing in your head right now." She leaned across the blanket and kissed me.
　　I took her home at sunset, kissed her once at the door, and drove home in a mild euphoria. The house echoed like the inside of an empty shell. The twins were not home and my mother sat alone in the living room, watching the movie of the week on the television. Slippers crossed on the ottoman, her housecoat buttoned to the collar, she saluted me with a drink in her right hand. I sat down on the couch next to the easy chair and looked at her closely for the first time in years. We were getting older, no doubt, but she had aged well. She was much stouter than when we first met, but lovely still.
　　"How was your date, Henry?" She kept her eyes on the tube.
　　"Great, Mom, fine."
　　"See her again?"
　　"Tess? I hope so."
　　A commercial broke the story, and she turned to smile at me between sips.
　　"Mom, do you ever ..."
　　"What's that, Henry?"
　　"I don't know. Do you ever get lonely? Like you might go out on a date yourself?"
　　She laughed and seemed years younger. "What man would want to go out with an old thing like me?"
　　"You're not so old. And you look ten years younger than you are."
　　"Save your compliments for your nurse."
　　The program returned. "I thought—"
　　"Henry, I've given this thing an hour already. Let me see it ............