Harvest of Changelings Read Online Free PDF Page A

left, except the melted glassy earth, the burnt grass, and a fine ash, of either Valeria or the Fomorii. The police and fire department arrived to find Ben still lying in the flowerbed, the grass still on fire, the gravel and asphalt, molten. At least, Ben thought, they had something to do. A paramedic helped him up into a barrage of questions. All he could think to say, since the taxi hadn’t been considerate enough to explode, was ball lightning. The police, at least, kept the neighbors at bay.
    â€œThere’s not a cloud in the sky. Ball lightning?” a sergeant asked, one eyebrow raised.

    Ben nodded, and repeated his story and told them again and again he had no idea where the taxi driver had gone. Finally they left, and Ben repeated his story to the handful of neighbors still up, and then, shaking his head, no more, enough, went back into the house, and sat down on the couch. He couldn’t do anything else. He couldn’t think, talk; he could barely breath. When Malachi started crying, he was finally able to move. The clock on the dresser said three-thirty. He didn’t turn on a light; he didn’t need to. The baby glowed. Something new hung from the crib mobile Jack had given them, a slender, silver-grey necklace with one dangling charm. Putting Malachi on his shoulder, Ben held the charm in his hand. It was also silver-grey, heavy, and shaped like a star, a small star with twelve points.
    By then Malachi was yelling so loud, Ben could have used him to guide in airplanes at RDU. Leaving the charm to dangle on the mobile and rubbing the boy’s back, Ben went into the kitchen. There, on the table, inside what looked like a nest of light, was a bottle. Ben carefully put his hand through the light-nest and it faded away, as if someone had blown it out, as he pricked up the still-warm bottle. He knew it was Valeria’s own milk—one from the precious few bottles she had left. He went back into the bedroom to the rocking chair and sat down, yawning, with Malachi in the crook of his arm. He looked up at Ben as he sucked noisily, with golden eyes, from her mother’s family, Valeria had said.
    â€œI think you have my nose,” Ben whispered.
    Ben knew that eventually he would have to cry. He knew it wasn’t going to be easy to raise an infant alone. For the first time he was glad Emma had left him money. Mrs. Carmichael was going to be shocked when he asked for paternity leave.
    Father Mark would help; so would Jack.
    Malachi was asleep. Ben gently slid the nipple out of his mouth and wiped the milk off his chin. He stood up very slowly and carried the baby back to the crib. He put him down and, after covering him, stepped back, and in the early morning shadows of the room, Ben watched his son sleep. As Malachi breathed, the light around him vibrated, contracting and expanding. Ben moved closer and put his hand on the baby’s head and curled his golden hair around his fingers: warm ribbons of light. In a month or so, Valeria had told him, Malachi would stop glowing. He would be like any human baby then, at least until puberty. Ben wished then that he had thought to have a family picture made, to put on his desk, where Emma’s had sat. With his free hand, he flipped his fingers at the charm and started it swinging back and forth over his son’s head.

    Ben did weep, eventually.
    And Ben raised his son as best he knew how, with the help of those friends who loved him, and Malachi, who was always small, was a good boy, and he and his father lived happily together for ten years.
    Then everything changed.

I
Tuesday, May Eve, 3D April-Wednesday, Beltaine 1 May 1991
    Malachi Lucius Tyson
    M ALACHI CLOSED HIS EYES. MISS WINDLEMERE read the poem, surely the most boring poem in the English language, in her clear and precise and completely flat voice, draining any and all feeling out of the words, if there had been any in the first place, until only the moral was left. Malachi was