I set out to learhing that could be known about the other Henry Day. My lifes story and its telling are bound to his, and only by uanding what had happeo him would I know all that I had missed. My friends agreed to help me, for by our nature we are spooks a agents. Because their skills had lain dormant sihe botched ge with Oscar Love, the faeries took special delight in spying on Henry Day. Once upon a time, he was one of them.
Luchóg, Smaolach, and Chavisory tracked him to an older neighborhood on the far side of town where he circled round the streets as if lost. He stopped and talked to two adorable young girls playing with their dollies in their front yard. After watg him drive off, Chavisory approached the girls, thinking they might be Kivi and Blomma in human form. The sisters guessed Chavisory was a faery right away, and she ran, laughing and shrieking, to our hiding pla a of blackberry stalks. A short time later, our spies spotted Henry Day talking to a woman who seemed to have upset him. When he left her old house, Henry looked haunted, a in his car for the loime, head bent to the steering wheel, shoulders heaving as he sobbed.
"He looked knackered, as if the woman sapped his spirit," Smaolach told us afterward.
"I noticed as well," said Luchóg, "that he has ged of late, as if he is guilty of the past and worried of the future."
I asked them if they thought the older woman had been my mother, but they assured me she was somebody elses.
Luchóg rolled himself a smoke. "He walked in one man, came out another."
Chavisory poked at the campfire. "Maybe there are two of him."
Onions agreed, "Or hes only half a man."
Luchóg lit the cigarette, let it dangle from his lower lip. "Hes a puzzle with one piece missing. Hes a tockless clock."
"Well pick the lock of his brain," Smaolach said.
"Have you been able to find out more about his past?" I asked them.
"Not much," said Luchóg. "He lived in your house with your mother and father, and your two little sisters."
"Our Chopin won lots of prizes for playing music," said Chavisory. "Theres a tiny shiny piano on the mantel, or at least there was." She reached behind her bad held out the trophy for us to admire, its facade refleg the firelight.
"I followed him to school one day," said Smaolach. "He teaches children how to play music, but if their performance is any indication, hes not very good. The winds blow harsh and the fiddlers ot fiddle."
We all laughed. In time, they told me many more stories of the man, but large gaps existed iale, and singular questions arose. Was my mother living still, or had she joined my father uhe earth? I knew nothing about my sisters and wondered how they had grown. They could be mothers themselves by now, but are forever babies in my imagination.
"Did I tell you he saw us?" Luchóg asked. "We were at our old stomping grounds by his house, and I am sure that he looked right at Chavisory and me. Hes not the handsomest thing in the world."
"Tell the truth," Chavisory added, "hes rather fearsome. Like when he lived with us."
"And old."
"And wearing out," said Smaolach. "Youre better off with us. Young always."
The fire crackled and embers popped, floating up in the darkness. I pictured him snug in his bed with his woman, and the thought reminded me of Speck. I trudged bay burrow, trying to find fort in the hard ground.
In my sleep, I climbed a s