I had a name, although at times Gustav Ungerland was no more real to me than Henry Day. The simple solution would have been to track down Tom McInnes and ask him for more details about what had been said under hypnosis. After finding the article in the library, I tried to locate its author but had no more to go on than the address in the magazine. Several weeks after receiving my letter, the editor of the defunct Journal of Myth and Society replied that he would be glad to forward it on to the professor, but nothing came of it. When I called his university, the chairman of the department said McInnes had vanished on a Monday morning, right in the middle of the semester, and left no forwarding address. My attempts at contacting Brian Ungerland proved equally frustrating. I couldn't very well pester Tess for information about her old boyfriend, and after asking around town, someone told me that Brian was at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, with the U.S. Army, studying how to blow things up. There were no Ungerlands in our local phone book.
　　Fortunately, other things occupied my thoughts. Tess had talked me into going back to school, and I was to begin in January. She changed when I told her my plans, became more attentive and affectionate. We celebrated registering for classes by splurging on dinner and Christmas shopping in the city. Arm in arm, we walked the sidewalks downtown. In the windows of Kaufmann's Department Store, miniature animatronic scenes played out in an endless loop. Santa and his elves hammered at the same wooden bicycle. Skaters circled atop an icy mirror for all eternity. We stopped and lingered before one display—a human family, baby in the bassinet, proud parents kissing under the mistletoe. Our own images reflected on and through the glass, superimposed over the mechanicals' domestic bliss.
　　"Isn't that adorable? Look at how lifelike they made the baby. Doesn't she make you want to have one yourself?"
　　"Sure, if they were all as quiet as that one."
　　We strolled by the park, where a ragtag bunch of children queued up to a stand selling hot chocolate. We bought two cups and sat on a cold park bench. "You do like children, don't you?"
　　"Children? I never think about them."
　　"But wouldn't you want a son to take camping or a girl to call your own?"
　　"Call my own? People don't belong to other people."
　　"You're a very literal person sometimes."
　　"I don't think—"
　　"No, you don't. Most people pick up on subtleties, but you operate in another dimension."
　　But I knew what she meant. I did not know if having a real human baby was possible. Or would it be half human, half goblin, a monster? A horrid creature with a huge head and shrunken body, or those dead eyes peering out beneath a sunbonnet. Or a misery that would turn on me and expose my secret. Yet Tess's warm presence on my arm had a curious tug on my conscience. Part of me desired to unpack the burdens of the past, to tell her all about Gustav Ungerland and my fugitive life in the forest. But so much time had passed since the change that at times I doubted that existence. All of my powers and skills learned a lifetime ago had disappeared, lost while endlessly playing the piano, faded in the comfort of warm beds and cozy living rooms, in the reality of this lovely woman beside me. Is the past as real as the present? Maybe I wish I had told everything, and that the truth had revised the course of life. I don't know. But I do remember the feeling of that night, the mixed sensation of great hope and bottomless foreboding.
　　Tess watched a group of children skating across a makeshift ice rink. She blew on her drink and sent a fog of steam into the air. "I've always wanted a baby of my own."
　　For once, I understood what another person was trying to tell me. With the music of a calliope harmonizing with the sound of children laughing under the stars, I asked her to marry me.
　　
　　
　　We waited until the end of spring semester and were married in May 1968 at the same church where Henry Day had been baptized as an infant. Standing at the altar, I felt almost human again, and in our vows existed the possibility for a happy ending. When we marched down the aisle I could see, in the smiling faces of all our friends and family, an unsuspecting joy for Mr. and Mrs. Henry Day. During the ceremony, I half expected that when the double doors opened to the daylight there would be a retinue of changelings waiting to take me away. I did my best to forget my past, to dismiss the thought that I was a fraud.
　　At the reception, my mother and Uncle Charlie were the first to greet us, and they had not only paid for the party but even made us a gift of a honeymoon in Europe. While we were away in Germany, they would elope together, but that afternoon it was passing strange to see him where Bill Day should have been. Nostalgia for my father was fleeting, for we were leaving behind the past and claiming life. So much would change over the next few years. George Knoll would leave town a few weeks after the wedding to wander across the country for a year, and he ended up in San Francisco, running a sidewalk bistro with an older woman from Spain. With no Coverboys, Oscar would buy a jukebox that fall, and the customers would still flock in for drinks and pop music. Jimmy Cummings took my old job behind the bar. Even my baby sisters were growing up.
　　Mary and Elizabeth brought their latest boyfriends, a couple of long-haired twins, to the reception, and at the center of the party, Uncle Charlie regaled the crowd with his latest scheme. "Those houses up on the ridge are only the beginning. People are not merely going to move out of the cities; they're going to be moving as far away as they can. My company is sitting on a gold mine in this county."
　　My mother sidled up to him, and he put his arm around her waist and rested his hand on her hip.
　　"When I first heard about the trouble up in the woods and sending in the National Guard, well, my first thought was that when the government was through, land would be dirt cheap."
　　She laughed so willingly at his pun that I flinched. Tess squeezed my arm to prevent me from saying what I was thinking.
　　"Country living. Moderately priced, safe and secure, perfect for young couples looking to start a family." As if on cue, he and my mother stared right at Tess's belly. Already they were full of hope.
　　Feigning innocence, Elizabeth asked, "How about you two, Uncle Charlie?"
　　Tess squeezed my bottom, and I let out a tiny whoop just as Jimmy Cummings stepped up to speak. "I wouldn't want to live up there, man."
　　"Of course not, Jimmy," Mary said. "After all you went through in those woods."
　　"There's something up there," he told the party. "Did you hear the rumor about those w............