Mrs. Pratt, the doctor’s wife, ushered Sarah upstairs to the second best bedroom to see “the little stranger,” hastily accommodated in a makeshift crib.  Mrs. Pratt went on about the child in nursery-room whispers, her voice squeezed high and girlish from her tight-corsetted body, waving her hands with their accompaniments of lace and floating cambric while Sarah looked at the baby.  She had expected a pudgy infant with a vapid baby’s face, but he was not like that.  Even in sleep the tiny face was narrow, bony, with eyes set deeply below dark arched brows, and large elfin ears.  Above his high, slanting forehead there was a dark thatch of coarse hair; about him altogether an air of strangeness, of slight deformity.  As she looked at him, Sarah felt pity, and that vague wistfulness that sometimes hurt her at the sight of a baby.  Then the child opened his eyes and stared soundlessly up at her, and Sarah felt a shock of familiarity run through her.  They watched each other for a long moment; the baby’s eyes were violet.

“…and so ugly, poor little thing.  Who’s to take care of him is what I want to know, Miss Eamons.  We’ve no provision for this sort of thing; the Doctor and I cannot be expected—after all, I’m not a young woman any more, and my health—“

Sarah turned away from the crib.  “I’d take him, Mrs. Pratt,” she said.  “I’d like to.”

While the ugly child in his crib slept, the ladies went down to the parlor, and Mrs. Pratt gave Sarah the first of many lectures she would hear on the folly of adopting the boy.  What business had a maiden lady, no matter if she was barely thirty and well-to-do, to be raising a child like that, a boy, and a stray, too, parents the Lord knows who?

Sarah heard the words over and over.  Tannesburg had a certain pride in Miss Eamons, living in the old white house settled in acres of green lawn; as they would have protected Sarah from ruffians and outsiders, they now tried to protect her from the baby—only Sarah refused to be protected.  From the first moment, sitting cool and smiling in Mrs. Pratt’s fussy parlor, her determined civility could not be persuaded.

She took the boy home within the week, bought a crib and baby clothes, toys, made arrangements for the daughter of the livery stable to come and help with extra chores at the house.  The boy was christened Joseph.  Sarah spent hours sitting, watching him, playing with him, looking for the flash of something turbulent in his violet eyes.  Two weeks after his discovery, Tannesburg was distracted from the subject of Miss Eamons and her foundling by the incursion of a horseless carriage into the streets; gradually the adoption ceased to be a nine-days’ wonder.

Joe grew slowly, small for his age.  Neither Sarah’s encouragement nor the cook’s ingenuity could fill out his frame or plumpen his narrow face.  His nose grew long and bony, incongruous in a child’s face, and his elfin ears grew larger, pronouncedly pointed.  There was also a deformity, twin ridges of bone parallel to his spine that began just below the shoulder blades.  When he walked, Joe carried himself hunched forward slightly.

Children in the town, even the gentlest of them, called him names.  It might have been expected: his odd looks and violet stare were disconcerting; his voice was harsh and croaking.  Sooner or later someone would give in to the temptation to play a trick on the dummy, taunt him, make him cry.  When he was old enough to start at school the teasing briefly became worse, and Joe returned from school every day bruised and dirty and stubbornly silent.  Just when Sarah thought she would have to do something, take steps, the boy learned an odd knack for effacing himself, avoiding the troublemakers, and the trouble lessened.

Through the fights Sarah had watched, afraid to interfere or even comfort too much.  Even as a very little boy, Joe had a manner that dismissed sympathy; Sarah had recognized that at once; it was something they shared.

Though Miss Eamons and her boy became a commonplace, they were never wholly taken for granted.  Married women from town called at the big white house from time to time to advise her about raising the boy, certain that even the best-intentioned maiden lady could not raise up a boy without guidance.

They came, in complicated afternoon dresses bustled over important figures, carrying parasols and beaded reticules, and balanced teacups as they lectured.  “Boys, Miss Eamons: you can’t wrap them in cotton wool.  My Teddy, for instance—“

They gave her the benefit of their experiences graciously, and if Joe stopped in the parlor for a moment on his way out to play, they smiled generously on him, disconcerted by the tenderness at the corner of Miss Eamon’s mouth and the gentleness of her hand on his hair.  “Children must take their share of lumps, Miss Eamons,” the ladies would tell her when he had left.  “You can’t be too easy with them just because…”

The ‘just because” would drift off uncomfortably, and after a little while the ladies would finish their tea and go, between discomfort and virtue.  Sarah Eamons was a maiden lady; what did she know about raising boys?  And such an odd boy.  It must be such a quiet life for the child.  Neither of them would have recognized Sarah Eamons an hour later, running in lunatic circles across the lawn near the wood, playing a ruleless game of catch-as-catch-can with Joe, laughing, breathless, until Joe reached up to overbalance her, knocking her to the ground.

“Mama?”  He circled back, just out of reach, to where Sarah lay gasping, a splash of white linen on the grass.  For just a moment his eyes were dark and serious, alarmed.  “Mama, are you all right?  I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“You can’t wrap your Mama up in cotton wool, Joey,” she sputtered, laughing.  Sarah got shakily to her feet again.  “But I do think it’s time for dinner.”

By the time they reached the house, hand in hand, Sarah was listening to a story of Joe’s; when Carrie, one of the hired girls, met them on the sun porch, they unclasped their hands as if by mutual consent, and Sarah sent him off to clean up for dinner.

In the evenings they sat on the sun porch at the back of the old house if it was warm, with Joe by Sarah’s feet, leaning against her chair, near enough so that she could touch his shoulder as they talked, so that he could turn and bump his forehead against her knee, his awkward caress.  When the weather turned cold, they moved indoors and sat together on an old red davenport, reading together, inspecting picture books of English castles, Russian mosques, French cathedrals with vaulted ceilings and odd carved figures guarding the downspouts and doorways.  Sometimes Joe made up stories for Sarah’s benefit, or she would talk about growing up, about her parents, about waiting for something special that had never come.

Once he asked Sarah why she had never married.  She thought seriously before she replied; her answers to his questions were always considered.  She and Joe were sitting that evening on the sun porch, washed with sounds; clatter of the hired man carrying coal for the new patent furnace; a rattle of supper dishes from the kitchen; a bird’s call from the woods; the silvery click of Sarah’s knitting needles.  She was making a scarf for the boy; bright blue wool spilled down the front of her long white skirt.  On the faded Oriental rug at her feet, Joe sat playing a game with twigs and stones.  Sarah looked up at last, past the barn toward the trees that hemmed the north edge of the lawn.  She smiled and admitted, “I suppose I never thought the last man who asked me would be the last man who asked me.”

The boy accepted the logic of that.  “There were lots of them that asked; didn’t you like any of them?”  He clicked two stones against each other so that one jumped into the air and was lost in Sarah’s skirts.

“Oh, well, like.  I liked some of them.  But not one of them specially,” she explained, still watching the border of wilderness.  “They’d come on Sunday to take me buggy riding, or sometimes sit right here on the porch with me, watching the sunset.”

“And?”  The boy looked up at Sarah, frankly trying to reconcile her with a woman fifteen years younger, a Miss Eamons with beaux and a flirtatious manner.

“And nothing, love.  As soon as the sun set Carrie would rattle dishes inside and they’d realize that it was dusk, and me a single lady with no chaperone, and they’d do what was proper and take their leave.”  Sarah’s eyes dropped from the woods to her knitting, from green to blue.  “No one ever stayed past dusk,” she murmured, more for herself than for the boy.

At her feel Joe nodded again and returned to his game.  Sarah, looking down at his stooped shoulders and narrow head, smiled and returned to her knitting.  It was as if, she thought, they had to know each other very well, as if each was learning the other even when they were quiet; then it was as if they were hermits, sharing the silence companionably, watching, waiting.

When he was eleven or so, Sarah noticed that the bony ridges on Joe’s back were getting larger.  The skin over them was stretched tight and dry, patchy red.  Sarah swallowed a quick taste of panic; the thought came from nowhere: So soon?  She sent for Dr. Pratt.

The doctor examined Joe, teased him gently about his thinness, saying over his shoulder, “What’s the matter, Miss Eamons?  Don’t you feed this boy more than once a week?”

Sarah tried to joke back, her voice wavering over the words.  “Feed him?  Dr. Pratt, Joseph has two hollow legs. If you saw him at table!”

Joe sat pliantly under the doctor’s prodding hands, grinned a shy grin that was overshadowed by that beaky nose, and said nothing.

When the examination was done, they left Joe to dress; Sarah took the doctor out to the sun porch and sent for iced tea.  Then she turned to him, and her eyes were dark-circled and afraid.  

“Boy really could use a few extra pounds, Miss Sarah,” Dr. Pratt began easily.  “He hasn’t complained of any pain?  The skin around the—ah—affected parts seems irritated.”

“I’ve seen him scratching at it,” Sarah agreed.  “But he hasn’t said anything.  Doctor, what’s happening to him?”

Dr. Pratt paused uncomfortably, as if he were genuinely at a loss.  “Miss Sarah, I can’t tell you what I don’t know.  We don’t know who his folks were, if this condition is congenital, anything like that, and I’ve never even heard of anything quite like your Joe’s case.  All I can say is to wait.  He’s sound, healthy—that is, except for…well, you know as well as I do that the boy’s not…altogether normal.  This may be part of the course of his, uh, his condition.”

“All we can do is wait,” Sarah repeated dully.

“It’s the only answer I have right now,” the doctor agreed unhappily.  “You might put some lotion on the bumps to sooth the itch.”

Carrie brought the iced tea, and Sarah and Dr. Pratt sat quiet, sipping.  When the doctor rose and Sarah had paid him, she offered to have the hired man take him back to town in the buggy, but he refused, insisting the walk would do him good.  By the time Joe had appeared, half a cookie in his hand and his smile lined with crumbs, Sarah had calmed down a little and could smile at him.

“It’s all right, Mama.  I’m fine,” Joe told her, and patted her hand awkwardly. 

Sarah kept herself from gripping his hand, clutching at him.  “You’re fine, but too skinny.  Where do you keep all the cookies you eat?” she teased, but inside the voice repeated, So soon?

After that, Sarah kept a jealous, distant watch on the boy, unwilling to encroach on his freedom but fearful, terrified of the change she knew in her bones was coming soon.  Where the intuition came from, she could not have said, and gradually, as time went by and nothing seemed to happen, she began to scoff at her fears, relaxed and let the tension ease from her.  It would be a shame, she reasoned, to hem Joe round just to ease her own mind.

She was awakened from deep sleep one night by shrieks.  Joe’s screams, high and unnatural, like the coarse screech of a crow.  Sarah was out of her bed in a minute, trailing her night wrapper around her as she ran.  Outside his room the two hired girls stood, hands fluttering near their mouths in mingled fear and curiosity.  “Don’t sound like nothing human,” Bess was saying.

“I’m sure it’s just a nightmare,” Sarah said hurriedly.  “Go on to bed.  If I need you, I’ll ring.”  She did not stop to argue.

Joe was tangled up in his bedclothes, whimpering and crying.  His skin was fiery hot to touch, and dry; when she turned him over Sarah saw that the bony ridges on his back were enlarged, breaking the skin in places.  Sarah left Joe just long enough to send Bess for Dr. Pratt.  Then she went back to Joe’s room, bathed his forehead in cool water, and held him trying to calm his cries.

The doctor was not much help.  He looked at the boy, gave Sarah a powder to bring the fever down, and shook his head, angry at his own helplessness.  “I don’t know how to fight this.  It must have something to do with his back, but I’m damned—excuse me, Miss Sarah.  I don’t know what to tell you except to wait and do the things we can do for a fever: give him the powder when he gets restless, a spoonful in water.  And send someone for me if he seems to get worse.”

Sarah nodded dumbly and went back to Joe’s bed.

The fever lasted through the night and into the next day, and the white house was filled with Joe’s harsh cries.  The hired girls and the cook and the hired man felt sorry for Miss Eamons and the boy, but kept as far from the room as they could.  Joe began to murmur incoherently sometime that afternoon, the same garbled, incomprehensible sound over and over.  Sarah sat by him holding one bony hot hand in her own, changing the dampened cloths on his forehead, watching him and wishing she could reach him, talk the language of his fever to him.  At nightfall he was still delirious, showing no sign of change for good or bad.  Bess tapped at the door and persuaded Sarah to take a bite of supper, but she would not leave the boy.  A tray was brought upstairs to her.

Toward midnight it seemed to Sarah that Joe was quieter, a little less restless; he cried out less frequently.  In the silences she had time to realize how tired she was’ her eyes were gravelly red and her head hurt with a dull, pounding ache.  When it seemed that Joe was sleeping, really asleep, Sarah went down to the kitchen for a few minutes to make herself tea, a tisane for her headache.  There was a certain comfort in measuring white willow bark, chamomile, and cloves into the pot, adding hot water and smelling the rich, calming odor that rose up from the warm teapot in her hands.  She took the pot and a china cup with her on a tray.

Joe’s door was open.  Sarah frowned and cursed herself for carelessness, worrying about the draft.  Then she saw: Joe was gone.

“Oh, God.”  She stood in the doorway, unable to move, the tea tray still in her hands.  “No, God, please.”  Upstairs?  Downstairs?  Somewhere along the hall?  Then she heard the scratchy pad of bare feet on the polished boards of the hall floor and felt a draft.  He was at the front door.

Sarah dropped the tea tray and ran for the stairs, took them two at a time.  When her shawl caught on something, she pulled at it angrily and a small table crashed down behind her; a vase broke.  Sarah ran blindly down the stair, out the door, calling Joe’s name.

He was a pale blur in the moonlight, making his way across the smooth darkness of the lawn toward the north woods.  As he walked he was talking, still in gibberish, and his hands flew up in gestures to an unseen listener.

Sarah followed after him.  The smooth kid of her slippers skidded on the damp grass and she kicked them off, running barefoot across the lawn, aware of the chill and the brass taste of fear in her mouth.  She called to Joe over and over, but the words were jolted as she ran, lost in the darkness, unintelligible.  He was almost in the woods; Sarah did not realize at first that he had stopped walking.  His small pajamaed body was framed against the dim trees as he waited for her.  When she reached him, Sarah was out of breath, unable for a moment to do more than gather him into her arms.  For the first time in hours, his skin was cool to touch.

“Mama,” his croaking voice broke the silence.  “Mama, look.”

Then Sarah looked into the edge of the wood and saw.  First the eyes, a dull violet glitter in the dark.  The same jolt that had gone through her years before when she first saw the baby in Dr. Pratt’s spare bedroom went through her again.  Sarah held her boy closer to her, rocking him slightly, crooning, “Baby, baby, it’s all right.  Joey, come back to the house.  It’s all right.”

The boy squirmed in her arms, twisted around to face the waiting shadows.  Sarah thought she saw more eyes, more indistinct figures deeper in the woods.

“They’ve come to get me,” Joe said simply.

Her heart contracted.  Sarah shut her eyes tightly for a moment.  “Shhh, baby,” she whispered, and stroked his long cheek.  Like an answer, the creature in the shadows stepped forward into the moonlight and spoke to Joe in a grating stream of language.

“Mama, he’s kin of mine.  They’re my people.”  Joe’s voice was full of wonder, joy; the words said at last and of course.  They cut Sarah to the quick.

She looked at the creature.  Tall it was, taller than a man, with a slanting forehead and heavy brow that shadowed his glittering eyes.  The creature’s body was broad and muscular, his face long and narrow, his nose more like a beak; his ears were large and sharply pointed, twisting an inch or so above his head.  Behind him there was a rustle of movement; wings, Sarah realized.  Huge, powerful wings that sprang, she was certain, from bony ridges that ran parallel to his spine.

“What does it want?” She asked at last, although she knew.

“The creature broke into harsh speech again.  Joe listened, seemed to understand.

“His name is Hreu, Mama.  He’s come for me.  It’s time.  Do you see?”

So soon, Sarah thought.

“They are my kin.  I never belonged here, except to you, but I’m one of them.”  Joe raised one hand ruefully and gestured over his shoulder at the reddened, bony lumps on his own back.  “They’ll know how to take care of me, Mama,” he added softly.   He was still holding her hand tightly.

Sarah stared ahead of her at the creature, her mouth set like pale stone.  “They will take care of you?  Where were they when you were a baby?  Where were your kin when you were left in the woods?  Joey—“ she tightened her grasp on his hand.  “It’s too soon.  It’s not time yet.”

“It’s time, Mama.  It’s how they do, leaving the babies to be found and raised up by others.  When the change comes, they know, and they come to get them.  It’s my turn now.”

Sarah dropped down to her knees, holding the boy, and suddenly it was as if he were the adult and she the child.  He spoke to her slowly, in a considered manner, with inexorable reason.  “I love you.  But this is so strong.  I can’t not go with them.  I have to, Mama.  They’re my people.”  In those words Sarah heard echoes of years of taunts and bruises.

Then Joe giggled, a high, giddy sound.  “In another year I’ll look like Hreu.  You couldn’t explain that in town, not wings!”

Briefly he looked like any ordinary little boy, his face lit with mischief.  A profound sorrow washed over Sarah; it took her a moment to control her voice.  “I won’t ever see you again.”

Joe stopped giggling.  He looked at Hreu, struggled with broken syllables and his own vehemence, then turned back to Sarah.  “Come with us, Mama.  Hreu says you can, if you want.  There aren’t many of us left, but enough.  You could come.”  In the dark his eyes flickered back and forth, from Sarah in the moonlight to Hreu in the shadows.  “Please come.”

For a moment Sarah played with the possibility.  Standing in the chilly night air with dew on her feet, she thought of her years of waiting for the flash of difference that would conquer her, the flash she had seen in Joe’s eyes and in Hreu’s.  Joe was right.  Hreu was right: she could not keep her boy with her any longer.  At best he would become a prisoner in her house; at worst he might be killed by the people of Tannesburg.  She thought yearningly of flight, of adventure, of Joe’s voice lingering over the words “my people,” making even Sarah an alien.

Very slowly, very deliberately, she said, “If you have to go, go with my blessings, Joseph.”  Her voice said darling, baby, little one, sweetheart.  “I couldn’t go with you; I’d only slow you down.  You’ll be learning so much, growing up.”  Sarah drew a shaking breath and looked over Joe’s head in to Hreu’s violet eyes.  Did they understand what they did to the people left behind?  “I love you, baby.”

He flung his arms around her neck, tight, and hung on for a long moment, his narrow cheek pressed against hers.  “I love you too, Mama.  I won’t forget you, I promise I won’t….”

It was Sarah who pushed him away, gently.  There were tears on his face when he turned to follow Hreu and disappear into the wilderness.

Sarah was discovered by the cook the next morning, huddled on the steps in the kitchen, the hem of her road still damp, ruined with dirt and dew.  She was so deeply asleep that the cook was afraid and sent for Dr. Pratt, seeing to it that Miss Eamons was wrapped in blankets and settled in a chair by the fire.  When Sarah woke, surrounded by the ruddy concerned faces of the cook and the maids, she began to cry, huge, gasping sobs that echoed softly hoarsely in the kitchen.

“Sweet lord, the boy’s died in the night.”  The cook sent Bess upstairs to see, and in a few minutes the girl was back, as pale as Sarah, to report that Joe was gone; his bedclothes all twisted up and the door wide open.  Sarah wept, unhearing.

Dr, Pratt and the cook pieced together what must have happened, the boy’s delirium and fevered escape, Miss Eamons's waking and fruitless pursuit.  The doctor did what he could; left laudanum for her, and went home to tell his wife.

The forms were observed.  Advertisements were placed in the papers, letters to the sheriffs of neighboring counties—but nothing more was heard of Joseph Eamons, and he was at last regarded as dead, gone as mysteriously as he had come twelve years before.  Through the fall and winter, Miss Eamons did not mix with her neighbors, and it was said she took the boy’s death far too hard, and he only an orphan and not even real kin.  Still, people were kind to her and solicitous.  Through her veil of grief, Sarah came to realize this and was distantly grateful.

When spring came, she began to go about more, started concerning herself with church work and the library committee.  She was again the handsome Miss Eamons, crisp and deliberate in her lawn dresses and cashmere shawls, her civility careful but warm.  Only once did she break the calm, when a well-meaning lady from the Women’s Auxiliary suggested that Sarah might adopt another boy.  Then her smile disappeared and there was only bleak anger when she spoke.  “They are not like dolls, Mrs. French.  You do not replace one with another.”

No one mentioned the idea to her again.

In May, when it was warm enough to spend afternoons on the sun porch, Sarah took her knitting there and sat, looking out at the empty green of the lawn.  One afternoon as she sat, Carrie appeared.  A man had called and was asking to see her.

“What is his name, Carrie?”

“He says it’s Mercier, ma’am.”  Carrie struggled with the pronunciation.  “He’s from clear up in French Canada.  Should I show him in?”

Her curiosity piqued, Sarah nodded.  Carrie returned with a tall man, dressed in a light summer wool suit.  He was middle aged, handsome in a quiet sort of way; his red-brown whiskers brushed the collar of his shirt when he smiled.  About his eyes there was a look of tiredness, and something more than tiredness in their expression.

His voice was low, attractively accented.  “Miss Eamons?  Thank you for seeing me.  I realize it may seem strange to you, a man you don’t know—you will understand. I think.  I read your advertisements.”

It took Sarah a moment to remember.  “Advertisements?” she repeated blankly.

“Yes, ma’am.  And I have been in Tannesburg for a few days, asking questions.  I hope you do not mind this, but I think you are the person who can help me.  I had a daughter.”

Something in the way he said it made Sarah really look at him for the first time.  “I see,” she said slowly.  “Mr. Mercier, may I offer you some tea?”

He nodded gratefully, and Sarah rang for another cup.  By common consent they spoke idly about the weather until Carrie returned with the teacup and hot water.  When she was gone, Mrs. Mercier began his explanation.  “Adele, my daughter, was an unusual little girl.  We adopted her, my wife and I, when she was only a few weeks old.  A foundling discovered near our village.  When my wife died, Adele and I became even closer, all in all to each other, you would say.  Then, about eighteen months ago, she was taken ill, dreadfully so.  I lost her.”

“You lost her,” Sarah repeated deliberately, considering.

“I lost her,” he agreed.  “She was different from other children, Miss Eamons.  Adele was—“

“Thin and bony with a funny voice and a nose too big for her face,” Sarah said, conscious of a mounting excitement.  “Am I right, Mr. Mercier?”

He smiled, not happily but as if he had found a resting place after a very long journey.  “You are right, Miss Eamons.  When she left, I didn’t let go easily.  I tried to follow after her.”

“Did you ever find—“

“No.  I’m sorry, Miss Eamons, I never did.  But Adele told me before she left that there were others, other children like her, other people like me and you who raised children and loved them and lost them.  I have been searching for someone like you since I knew she was lost to me.”

They talked quietly for a long time.  The sun set, and they sat in the lavender twilight, still talking, while Carrie rattled dishes noisily in the parlor, trying to remind Sarah that it was past the hour when a gentleman could sit unchaperoned with a maiden lady.  Finally, Sarah asked Mr. Mercier if he would like to stay for dinner.

He smiled and glanced toward Carrie’s officious silhouette in the parlor window.  “Not tonight, I think.  But I would like to come back again, if you will permit me to.”  He rose and gathered up his hat and stick.

“Tomorrow.  Please.”  Sarah urged.  For the first time in months, her smile was generous and touched her eyes.  “We have a lot to talk about.”

He took his leave, and Carrie saw him to the front door.  From the sun porch Sarah could dimly see him on the path and then on the road, walking toward Tannesburg.  When he was out of sight, Sarah sat down again, thinking of Joe without pain for the first time in months.  Cuckoos, Mercier had called Joe’s people, for the bird that left its young to be raised up in other nests.   Cuckoos, a sign of spring.

It was warm enough, but Sarah did not sit outside long.  Dinner would be ready shortly.  Paul Mercier would be back in the morning.

© 1984  Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction