Deceptions (Cainsville 3)

"No." Patrick's tone was sharp and the look in his eyes made Gabriel blink. "Please. I'm not trying to trick you. I don't have a solution, but I can provide one answer."

He pulled out a book, and as he did, the worn leather mended under his fingers, becoming whole and smooth. He set the book on the desk and flipped through it, too fast to see what was written, and when he did slow, the ink seemed to shift and slide, the words illegible. He skimmed back two pages and stopped. His forefinger zoomed down the page, and the words stopped moving, but that didn't help--they were in Welsh.

He straightened and tapped a line. "There. It doesn't say the name of the condition, but I'm sure it's the right one. Spina bifida is a failure of embryonic completion, correct?" When I wasn't fast enough answering, he said, with some impatience, "The fetus doesn't fully form."

"Right." I moved up beside him and looked down at the page. It was handwriting, neat and precise. While the ink no longer moved, it seemed to shimmer, a kaleidoscope of color that drew me closer still, gaze fixed on the words.

"Which makes it one of a small host of conditions--" he began.

The words parted, ink flying from the page, sailing up around me as the blank hole on the page collapsed in on itself, pulling me with it. A flash of white, as if I'd fallen through the book itself. I hit the ground, my hands outstretched, grass beneath my fingers.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

I expected to see the meadow again. Instead, I stared at a chimera head. I lifted my head. I was sitting outside the park behind the diner.

"Please. Please, just listen."

A woman leaned on the park railing. She wasn't more than fifty but looked older, wearing a shapeless housedress, her hair streaked with gray, the style as formless as her outfit. A white-haired couple was walking past the park. Though they had their backs to me, I only needed to see their stance to recognize them. Ida and Walter. They were dressed smartly in a style only found in vintage shops these days. The seventies would be my guess, and a glance down the walkway, at a huge boat of a car passing along Main, seemed to confirm it.

Ida and Walter turned to the woman.

"You can help him," the woman said. "I know you can."

Ida's voice was kind but firm. "No, dear. There's nothing--"

"I won't tell anyone," the woman cut in quickly. "I'll say it was a miracle from God. I won't even know what you do. I'll walk away and leave him with you."

Ida moved to the fence, her hands resting on the woman's. "You are mistaken. Whatever you think you know--"

"Nothing. I know nothing. But I sense . . . I can tell . . . You're special. You can fix him. Please."

"Special? Perhaps. But can you imagine that if we knew how to heal a child, we would not readily do it?"

"Can you do anything? If he could just walk. Please. With a limp or with a cane. My grandson h

as no other impairment--no mental or physical defect. If you could just ease his--"

"We cannot," Ida said. "Or we would."

The woman staggered back, her face crumpling, and I saw a boy in the swing, one of those meant for infants, though he was at least five. His rail-thin legs were bare and I could see the white of a diaper. Our eyes met, and the ground opened again, and I tumbled through.

I saw others as I fell. Other children. Other times. Other places. A toddler with half-formed arms. A teenage girl on crutches. A young boy with some form of hydrocephalus. And then, again, I hit the ground. Only it wasn't grass this time, but rough-hewn wood. I faced a small window without glass. The wall looked odd--like wood lattice, the spaces between filled with a clay-like substance. Wattle and daub. The phrase jumped from the back of my mind.

Behind me, a man spoke in a language I didn't recognize. As I turned, though, his words started coming clear, first one or two in a sea of babble, then fully English, heavily accented, forcing me to struggle to understand him, my mind latching on to words like a swimmer catching hold of a pool ladder, pulling herself up from the water.

"--changeling child."

I looked around a wattle-and-daub house that was little more than a shack. The voices came from a second room.

"Your true daughter was stolen by the fair folk," the same voice continued. "This twisted monstrosity--"

"--is my child," a woman said. "My child. Ask the midwife. There was something amiss from the start. A lump on her back. She is afflicted, to be sure, but she's not a changeling. She came from me. From my womb."

"I understand your distress," the man said. "But this is no human child."

"She's my daughter," the woman said.

"She's not mine." Another man. His voice raw and bitter. "She looks nothing like me."