I would not want to be a child again, for a child exists in uncertainty and danger. Our flesh and blood, we cannot help but fear for them, as we hope for them to make their way in this life. After the break-in, I worried about our son all of the time. Edward is not who we say he is because his father is an imposter. He is not a Day, but a changeling's child. I passed on my original genes, giving him the face and features of the Ungerlands, and who knows what other traits leapt the generations. Of my own childhood, I know little more than a name on a piece of paper: Gustav Ungerland. I was stolen long ago. And when the changelings came again, I began to believe they saw Edward as one of their own and wished to reclaim him. The mess they left in the kitchen was a subterfuge for a more sinister purpose. The disturbed photographs on the wall indicated that they were searching for someone. Wickedness hovered in the background and crept through the woods, plotting to steal our son.
　　We lost Edward one Sunday in springtime. On that gloriously warm afternoon, we happened to be in the city, for I had discovered a passable pipe organ in a church in Shadyside, and after services the music minister allowed me an hour to experiment with the machine, trying out what new sounds coursed through my imagination. Afterward, Tess and I took Edward to the zoo for his first face-to-face encounter with elephants and monkeys. A huge crowd shared our idea, and the walkways were crammed with couples pushing strollers, desultory teenagers, even a family with six redheaded children, staggered a year apart, a conspiracy of freckles and blue eyes. Too many people for my taste, but we jostled along without complaint. Edward was fascinated by the tigers and loitered in front of the iron fence, pulling at his cotton candy, roaring at the beasts to encourage them out of their drowsiness. In its black-and-orange dreams, one tiger twitched its tail, annoyed by my son's entreaties. Tess took advantage of Edward's distraction to confront me.
　　"Henry, I want to talk to you about Eddie. Does he seem all right to you? There's been a change lately, and something—I don't know—not normal."
　　I could see him over her shoulder. "He's perfectly normal."
　　"Or maybe it's you," she said. "You've been different with him lately. Overprotective, not letting him be a kid. He should be outdoors catching polliwogs and climbing trees, but it's as if you're afraid of him being out of your sight. He needs the chance to become more independent."
　　I pulled her off to the side, out of our son's hearing. "Do you remember the night someone broke into the house?"
　　"I knew it," she said. "You said not to worry, but you've been preoccupied with that, haven't you?"
　　"No, no, I just remembered, when I was looking at the photographs on the walls that night, it made me think of my own childhood dreams—years at the piano, searching for the right music to express myself. I have been looking for the answers, Tess, and they were right under my fingertips. Today in the church, the organ sounded just like the one at St. Nicholas's in Cheb. The organ is the answer to the symphony. Organ and orchestra."
　　She wrapped her arms around me and pulled herself against my chest. Her eyes were full of light and hope, and in all of my several lives, no one had shown such faith in me, in the essence of who I considered myself to be. I was so in love with her at that moment that I forgot the world and everything in it, and that's when I noticed, over her shoulder, our son was gone. Vanished from the space where he had been standing. My first thought was that he had tired of the tigers and was now underfoot or nearby, ready to beg us to let him in for a group hug. That hope evaporated and was replaced by the horrible notion that Edward had somehow squeezed through the bars and been instantly eaten by the tigers, but a quick glance at their cage revealed nothing but two indolent cats stretched out asleep in the languid sunshine. In the wilderness of my imagination, the changelings appeared. I looked back at Tess and feared that I was about to break her heart.
　　"He's gone," I told her, moving apart. "Edward."
　　She spun around and moved to the spot we had seen him last. "Eddie," she cried. "Where in the world are you?"
　　We went down the path toward the lions and bears, calling out his name, her voice rising an octave with each repetition, alarming the other parents. Tess stopped an elderly couple heading in the opposite direction. "Have you seen a little boy all alone? Three years old. Cotton candy."
　　"There's nothing but children here," the old man said, pointing a thin finger to the distance behind us. A line of children, laughing and hurrying, chased something down a shady pathway. At the front of the pack, a zoo-keeper hustled along, attempting to hold back the children while following his quarry. Ahead of the mob, Edward raced in his earnest and clumsy jog, chasing a blackfooted penguin that had escaped his pen and now waddled free and oblivious, heading back to the ocean, perhaps, or in search of fresh fish. The keeper sprinted past Edward and caught up to the bird, which brayed like a jackass. Holding its bill with one hand and cradling the bird against his chest, the keeper hurried past us as we reached our son. "Such a ruckus," he told us. "This one slips out of the exhibit and off he goes, wherever he pleases. Some things have such a will."
　　Taking Edward's hands in our own, we were determined to never let go.
　　
　　
　　Edward was a kite on a string, always threatening to break free. Before he started schooling, Eddie was safe at home. Tess took good care of him in the mornings, and I was home to watch him on weekday afternoons. When he turned four, Eddie went in with me on the way to work. I'd drop him off at the nursery school and then swing by from Twain when my music classes were through. In our few private hours I taught him scales, but when he bored of the piano he toddled off to his blocks and dinosaurs, inventing imaginary games and companions to while away lonesome hours. Every once in a while, he'd bring over a playmate for the afternoon, but those children never seemed to come back. That was fine by me, as I never fully trusted his playmates. Any one of them could have been a changeling in disguise.
　　Strangely, my music flourished in the splendid isolation we had carved out for ourselves. While he entertained himself with his toys and books, I composed. Tess encouraged me to find my own sound. Every week or so, she would bring home another album featuring organ music found in some dusty used record store. She cadged tickets to Heinz Hall performances, dug up sheet music and books on orchestration and instrumentation, and insisted that I go into the city to work out the music in my head at friendly churches and the college music school. She was re-creating, in essence, the repertoire in the treasure chest from Cheb. I wrote dozens of works, though scant success or attention resulted from my efforts—a coerced performance of a new arrangement by a local choir, or one night on electric organ with a wind ensemble from upstate. I tried everything to get my music heard, sent tapes and scores around the country to publishers and performers, but usually received a form rejection, if anything. Every great composer serves an apprenticeship of sorts, even middle-school teachers, but in my heart, I knew the compositions had not yet fulfilled my intentions.
　　One phone call changed everything. I had just come in the door with Edward after picking him up from nursery school. The voice on the other end was from another world. An up-and-coming chamber quartet in California, who specialized in experimental sound, expressed interest in actually recording one of my compositions, an atonal mood piece I had written shortly after the break-in. George Knoll, my old friend from The Coverboys, had passed along my score. When I called him to say thanks, he invited us to visit and stay at his place so I could be on hand at the recording session. Tess, Edward, and I flew out to the Knolls in San Francisco that summer of '76 and had a great few days with George and his family. His modest cafe in North Beach was the only genuine Andalusian restaurant among a hive of Italian joints, and his stunning wife and head chef did not hurt business, either. It was great to see them, and the few days away from home eased my anxieties. Nothing weird prowling around California.
　　The pastor of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco allowed us an afternoon to record, and the pipe organ there rivaled in tone and balance the ancient instrument I had played in Cheb. The same feeling of homecoming entered me when I pressed the pedals, and from the beginning notes, I was already nostalgic for the keyboard. The quartet changed a few measures, bent a few notes, and after we played my fugue for organ and strings for the seventh time, everyone seemed satisfied with the sound. ............