The Child Thief Read online

  Peter’s playful smile returned, and his voice fairly danced with mischief. “Oh, there’s lots to see. Lots to do. Adventure awaits. Follow me and I’ll show you.”

  Nick shook his head. “No, Peter, I’m not about—”

  “Shhh!” Peter jabbed a finger to his lips, his face suddenly hard, squinting into the dark. “The Flesh-eaters, they’re coming. Time to go.”

  Nick crossed his arms. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  Peter shrugged, turned, and headed quickly up the beach toward the woods.

  Nick stood alone, staring down the dark shore. “Bullshit,” he whispered. “It’s all bull—” He caught movement far down the beach, several hunched shapes picking their way toward him. “Oh shit.” He glanced at the mist, at its swirling tendrils. “Fuck.” He kicked the sand and, to his horror, found himself hustling up the beach after the pointy-eared boy.

  PETER PUT A finger to his lips. This time, Nick didn’t have to be told twice. He got quiet, dead quiet, barely daring to breathe as they pushed their way up the muddy path and into the trees.

  The woods were still and silent, no creaking insects, no croaking frogs, as though the very land was dead. The heavy silence amplified their every step as the mud sucked at their feet. They plodded onward, snaking their way around weedy bogs, sinkholes, and across a few shallow, slow-running creeks. The air was heavy with the smell of stagnant water, mud, mold, and decay. The overcast sky provided only a faint greenish glow to help Nick stumble his way over the roots, rocks, and brambles. He could just make out the tortured shapes of the trees looming above them, their leafless branches—like tormented hands—seemed to be reaching for him as they passed. Nick did his best to avoid touching the trees, as their bark felt soft, yielding, more like flesh than bark.

  A low bellow rolled out from the woods ahead of them. Peter ducked down against the twisted trunk of a fallen tree and Nick slipped up next to him. Both boys peered through the tangle of roots searching the shadows ahead. From somewhere behind them came another bellow. “Barghest,” Peter whispered and slid out his long knife.

  Barghest? Nick thought. Okay, great. Flesh-eaters, now barghest. What the hell’s a barghest?

  In a clearing, not twenty yards up the trail, Nick spotted a pair of orange, glowing eyes. A dark, hunched shape about the size of a wolf crept out of the shadows. It crawled on all fours, stood up on its hind legs, and began to sniff the air. From behind them came the slapping of feet tracking through mud. The sound grew steadily closer. Nick allowed himself to slowly turn his head and saw another set of eyes moving their way. He instinctively pressed himself further into the overhanging roots and ground his teeth as he fought the urge to cut and run. The dark shape moved past them, sliding by so close that Nick could’ve reached out and touched it, so close that he could actually smell it—a musty smell like an old, wet carpet.

  The shape joined with the other in the clearing and a moment later a third arrived. One by one all three of them turned their orange eyes toward Nick. Cold mud oozed between Nick’s fingers as he clutched the wet earth, afraid to even blink.

  Somewhere far away another howl echoed across the swamp, almost human. All three of the shapes tilted back their heads and answered, and Nick felt the sound in his very bones. He struggled to control his breathing. Every ounce of him wanted to run, wanted to get as far away from that sound as he could. He felt Peter’s hand on his shoulder—strong and steady.

  Finally the three shapes shuffled away.

  Peter waited a long time before he stood up, and they continued down the trail.

  PETER HEARD THE gurgling of Goggie Creek and let out a silent sigh of relief. The Flesh-eaters would never dare follow them this far.

  He crouched on the bank and put his hands in the fast-moving water. “This water’s safe to drink,” Peter said, and began slurping down large handfuls. He splashed his face, glad to wash away the residue of the city. He hated the city, hated all the concrete, the noise, the stink of exhaust and garbage, but worse than all that, the city was full of men-kind—men-kind and all their cruelty and brutality.

  He glanced at Nick. The kid was holding up pretty good. He’d done well in the Mist. Peter had been sure he’d lost him, and yet the boy had found him on his own. Peter couldn’t remember any other child doing that. This boy showed spunk, showed promise. Just the kind of child the Devils are looking for, Peter thought. This one just might live awhile.

  Peter watched the boy drink. It had been a long night and the boy looked worn out, exhausted. Good, Peter thought, a deep sleep will make things easier.

  “Up ahead’s a good spot to rest,” Peter said.

  Nick nodded and they moved on.

  THE TWO OF them lay between a cluster of boulders on a makeshift bed of straw. Peter stared up at the overcast night sky. “I miss the stars.”

  Nick yawned. “Maybe it’ll clear up soon.”

  “No,” Peter said. “The Mist is eternal. The Lady protects Avalon, but at the cost of our dear moon and stars.”

  “Avalon?” Nick said. “I thought that was in Britain somewhere.”

  “Used to be,” Peter said.

  “What’d you mean?”

  “Oh, you’ll see.”

  “Sure, okay,” Nick mumbled and closed his eyes.

  Peter watched the boy until he was sure Nick was fast asleep, then rose, slipping silently out from the boulders. There below him a giant tree grew out from the cliff base; a single tendril of gray smoke wove its way through its craggy limbs. A solid round door was set into the trunk, thick iron spikes protruding from its planks; above the door hung a toothless human skull atop a thigh bone.

  Peter rapped on the door three times; a moment later, the peephole slid open; one slanted eye peered out at him.

  “I bring fresh blood,” Peter said and grinned.

  PART II

  Deviltree

  Chapter Four

  Goll

  It will all end soon, the child thief thought as he moved steadily through the forest, back toward the shore, back toward the Mist. Nick’s with the Devils now. His fate is in their hands. What will happen, will happen. He slid from shadow to shadow, stopping frequently to listen, to watch, trying to keep his mind focused on the danger and away from what he had done, what he had left to do, because thinking about it didn’t change it. Thinking about it only led to distraction, and out here, on their part of the island, distraction would get you killed.

  Peter came to the edge of the thicket and scanned the beach. There, waiting for him, floated the Mist. He could hear it calling, taunting him. Grimacing, he broke cover and started forward when he caught voices. The child thief ducked back and dropped behind a thick knot of roots. Five shadows sat against a chunk of driftwood not thirty paces away—Flesh-eaters!

  Fool, Peter silently cursed himself. You almost walked right into them. He’d allowed the Mist to distract him. Stupid. He reached instinctively for his sword and remembered he only carried his knife.

  One of them stood, his tattered shirt fluttering in the breeze. “There they be.”

  Peter followed his gaze; a line of dark figures came marching around the cove, easily forty or fifty of them. He couldn’t remember seeing so many out at once, not since the galleons first arrived. What are they up—His blood went cold; even in the dark he had no problem recognizing a tall silhouette; there was no missing the wide-brimmed hat with that ratty feather. The Captain. Peter clutched his knife.

  The faintest glow of dawn touched the low clouds as the Captain tromped his way up to the others.

  “Well?”

  “Found some tracks, aye, but that be all. Tracks come right out of the mist, they do.”

  “It’s him,” the Captain said, scanning the tree line. “The devil boy.”

  “Think so, do ya?”

  “Who else?”

  “Ya want we should search the wood?”

  The Captain shook his head wistfully. “We’ve no time this day.” He patte
d his sword. “But mark my word, I shall make a trophy of his head yet.”

  The line of shadowy figures halted behind the Captain. Peter felt sure every eye was on him. He shuddered and managed to press himself closer to the ground, hoping they couldn’t hear the thudding of his heart. Their hunger was insatiable—every day they took more, every day they burned and murdered their way closer to the heart of Avalon. Some boldly wore the bones of the dead around their necks. How much blood will it take to make them stop? How many more children must die?

  The Captain turned to the line. “Who called a halt?” he shouted. “Move your pockmarked asses. We’ve much work to do.”

  The dark figures trudged on; as they passed, Peter caught sight of two large barrels being hauled along. What’s the Captain up to now? He felt his chest tighten. He glanced back the way he’d come. I should go back. Should warn them. He dug his nails into his palm. No, there’s no time. I have to bring more children. Just have to be quick, have to get back before the Captain lays all to waste.

  THE CHILD THIEF slipped from the scrub even before the last Flesh-eater passed. He dashed from one piece of driftwood to the next, broke free from the last bit of cover, and sprinted toward the waves. The Mist rolled up to greet him, seemed to almost dance in anticipation like a dog awaiting a feeding.

  Peter’s face tightened. All things come with a price. No one knows that better than I. He fought to clear his mind, knowing he’d never make it through the Mist otherwise, took a deep breath, and entered the swirling vapor.

  The sounds from the beach died in the suffocating silence, even his own thoughts felt muffled. He stood stock-still as he searched for the Path—finding the Path, walking between the worlds, was one of his gifts. “There,” he whispered, spotting the tenuous thread of gold sparkles as it drifted across the grayness.

  Peter caught up with the Path and followed, moving quickly, and sooner than he would’ve liked found himself staring at the Nike high-top. He stopped. Keep moving, he told himself. Keep moving or you’ll be as dead as the rest of them. But he heard Nick’s words: “If I’d fallen behind, would I still be out there? Wandering around, screaming your name until I died?” Peter wondered how long the boy in the high-tops had screamed his name. The boy? The child thief laughed at himself, an ugly, contemptuous laugh. The boy had had a name. Jonathan. And Jonathan was among the Sluagh now wasn’t he? Peter thought. “Well what of it?” he whispered bitterly. Whose fault is that? Am I to blame because he hadn’t listened? It’s better this way, he told himself, better to let the Mist sort them out…the weak from the strong. Peter kicked the high-top. Everything comes with a price. Everything. Some things just cost more than others.

  Chimes rang from somewhere far away, then muffled laughter and children singing; the Mist began to stir.

  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.