The Kidnappers by Cris Aboobaker
Teenagers Ritchie and Donald abduct a pair of children, intending to return them for a reward, but they chose the wrong kids to mess with.
Selver and the bee held each other in thrall. He stood transfixed in the tall meadow grass, elbows raised as the tiny yellow stunt plane banked and dove around him. The bee was soon joined by others, a humming circus of elliptical orbits around Selver's fair hair and slender limbs. Mom and Dad had told him to keep an eye on Hannah, who was playing with one of her dolls nearby. But his mind was consumed by communion with the bees.
So absorbed, he was startled when the buzzing bees dispersed and two swooping, yellow haired teenage boys were upon him. They grabbed Selver by his elbows and picked up Hannah, chivvying, "Let's go, let's go." One moment Selver was standing in the high timothy grass; the next he and his sister had been taken, over the hill and out of sight of Mom and Dad who were chatting with friends on a park bench below the meadow.
Panting, open-mouthed, in the grip of his captor, Selver turned to Hannah as she was hustled along in the other boy's arms. She looked annoyed but not frightened, perhaps too young, at five years old to Selver's ten, to know something bad was happening. Hanging onto her doll, she squinted up at the boy holding her as if he were a big cousin intruding on her play.
"Okay, we got them," said the smaller boy, holding Hannah. "Now what, Donald?"
"Be cool Ritchie, we'll figure it out," said Donald.
"Leave us alone!" cried Selver, his knotted face holding back a flood of tears.
Ritchie dropped Hannah to the ground and rubbed his shoulders. Her little white shoes were scuffed with dirt. She smoothed her polka dotted dress and angled her head to one side in a way Selver knew as the signal for a coming tantrum.
"Everyone calm down," said Donald, holding Selver by the arm.
"No!" said Hannah and kicked dirt in his direction. The dust cloud hovered longer than it should have, surrounding the four of them for a moment in an unearthly veil. Selver's eyes met Hannah's.
"Tell her to behave," said Donald, his hand tightening its grip on Selver's shoulder.
"Hannah, please Hannah," said Selver.
They stood at the mouth of a pebbled trail that wound through thickets of oak and hickory trees, a vestigial patch of Long Island Forest buried within the confines of a New York City park. Though within earshot of Woodhaven Boulevard traffic, these woods had secrets, as Selver and Hannah knew. Once, when their parents thought they were playing in the meadow, they snuck in and looked around, holding hands for safety.
"Here's what's going to happen," said Donald. "We're going to hang out quietly for a while, then bring you back to your parents and say we found you lost in the woods. You'll go along with the story, and your parents will pay us for bringing you back. See?"
"It's crazy. They won't pay us and we'll end up in jail. Like Dad," muttered Ritchie.
The boys were clearly siblings, long limbed with matching mops of dirty blond hair. Donald's chin sported downy fuzz. Ritchie's face was smooth; he could not be more than fifteen.
"Shut up Ritchie. I'm showing you how to make a few bucks. Stick with me," said Donald, affecting the harsh croak of endless whiskey bottles he could not yet, at his age, have drunk, and packs of cigarettes he could not yet have smoked.
No longer in motion, the boys looked smaller to Selver and less frightening. The threatening grip on his shoulder was weak compared to his dad's. He reached out for Hannah's small, moist hand. "Our parents will come for us and you'll be in big trouble," he said.
"Think you're tough now," said Donald, pushing Selver in the back, causing him to stumble for a step down the trail.
"Don't you push my brother," said Hannah, squatting on plump little girl haunches like an enraged frog about to spring.
"Take her," said Donald, and they all entered the woods.
You may think of New York City as the most citified place on earth. But its towers and highways were built over glacier-gouged hills, forests, fens and sinuous waterways, tended for millennia by native people whose voices you can still hear if you listen. Wildness lives around its edges and in its heart where these children and their childish kidnappers were headed.
The sun, which had been bright on the meadow, fell behind clouds; a damp breeze blew through the trees with the scent of mid-summer rain. Traffic sounds faded. Donald kept pushing Selver along the path, a hand on his back. Selver's tearfulness congealed into anger that grew each time Donald shoved him. Ritchie picked Hannah off the ground to carry her, but her weight became more difficult on the rocky path. She deliberately swung her legs, slapping her heels against his shins.
"Stop, damn it stop," said Ritchie, in Hannah's ear, as he dragged her along. Of the four, Ritchie was now closest to tears.
If they continued on this trail for half a mile or so it would take them to Forest Park Lane, a winding, sparsely trafficked road within the park, removed from the busy hum of the main boulevard. Beyond the lane was an old bandshell, where concerts were held in better days, but now unused and decaying. The teens had this destination in mind. Hiding behind the bandshell was the most likely place for the children to be sequestered, for a time. Selver's palms tingled as he strategized for himself and his sister, waiting to reach the road, a place they might run, get away, or shout for help from adults to bring this nightmare to an end.
But ten minutes passed, and more, as they forged ahead; the skies grew darker, the forest thick around them. The path was strewn with rocks and boulders; it narrowed, with undergrowth brushing their ankles on either side. No roadway appeared, only denser thickets of trees. Selver's eyes narrowed. He and Hannah had been in these woods, further than their parents would have allowed, but not this far. What was this place? Hannah's eyes, like great brown moons, glowed at him out of the shadows.
It was hard for Selver to explain about Hannah. He didn't understand himself. The day she was born he had been with his parents' friends, Cathy and Tim, being looked after while Dad was with Mom in the hospital. Walking down a hallway, the light above him became unbearably bright for an instant. He looked up, but the bulb was normal again. A moment later, the phone rang; Cathy came loping down the hall, grabbed him, kissed him on the head, and told him he had a baby sister. They laughed and hugged, but he had already known.
When Hannah came home, her eyes wandered, as babies' do, not yet fixed on faces. Except, thought Selver, for my face. Her eyes followed him even more than Mom and Dad. He helped care for her as she grew. She listened to him with the respect due an older sibling, "Big buzza," she called him, as soon as she was able to speak. But he was in awe of her. Her early babble had the melodic rhythms of an unknown language, which he still heard from her as she played. And when she had a fit of temper, he could swear that objects around her moved.
Once he took a favorite stuffed animal from her playpen. Food had spilled on it; he was going to wipe it off. A spasm of anger flashed across her face and he felt the toy rip from his hand. He gave an admonishing look. "Hannah," he said. And it was a lifeless toy again.
Mom and Dad did not see these episodes. As if Selver was special to Hannah, her gifts a secret only he was allowed to see. And, oh, in time, what wonderful and secret things they learned to do together!
The electric train catalogues Selver kept under his bed held his deepest boyhood fantasies. He would lay down, reach for one, flip the pages and gaze with longing at the Northern Pacific steaming through a tunnel, freight cars whipping around curves carrying coal and lumber, boxcars with tiny sliding doors with space inside for imaginary stowaways. He had been told many times that their apartment had no space for things, and they could not afford it. But a boy can always dream.
One afternoon, as he set up their old wooden train set on its tracks, Hannah toddled into his room, black curls hanging over her forehead like miniature antlers. And through some understanding, and an unnamable force, the train steamed along on its own power, little puffs of smoke rising from the engine. Until Mom pushed through the half-open door, slid a strand of black hair behind her ear and said, "What's going on here?" But all she saw was Selver and Hannah, sitting in front of a mute wooden train on its track. She later she told Cathy about how her children were learning to play so nicely together.
Then there was the mouse who came one day through the hole in the baseboard in Hannah's room, who Selver found doing dance moves, whirling about the floor as Hannah giggled. He sat beside her, watching, until she released the poor fellow and he flew back to his hole. "We must always be kind to creatures, Hannah," he said. "We must always be kind."
A friend of Selver's, a boy about his age, once came over to play. He had annoyed Hannah in the past, coming into her space; she closed her eyes and muttered as he came in.
"What's your sister doing?" teased the boy. "Casting spells?"
"I'm her brother and she loves me, so I'm not worried," said Selver. "But you, my friend, better watch your step." They both laughed, but Selver knew he really wasn't joking.
The only adult who seemed to notice these doings was not a living person, but a photograph. Not even a true photograph but an ancient daguerreotype that sat among their other family photos on their living room table. It was of a distant ancestor of Mom's dating back, she said, to the eighteen-hundreds; a copper-colored man with a sharp-featured face, shoulder-length black hair and penetrating eyes. Grandfather, she called him, though he was many generations removed; he had been an Algonquin shaman. For Doris and her husband John were descended from Italian immigrants who settled in New York in the 1890s, but mixed with other peoples along the way.
Selver often caught the eyes of the daguerreotype watching Hannah with, what seemed, a sly expression of joy. Once, he caught Selver's eye and delivered a juicy wink.
The time they had been in the woods had been at Hannah's insistence. Selver protested, took a righteous big brother stand and said Mom and Dad forbid it; we must stay in the meadow. But she pouted, stamped her feet and pulled on his hand. He followed.
Trees covered the sky as they entered, growing taller and darker around them, as if they were bowing to Hannah. If Selver had not been holding Hannah's hand, he might have been frightened. After a few minutes, he pulled her back, she obeyed; the next time his parents looked they were playing in the meadow.
But now, as the woods grew dark and stretched endlessly before them, Selver knew it had something to do with himself and with Hannah. His eyes met hers, and her eyes said yes.
"Where the hell are we," said Donald. "Forest Park Lane should be right here." A stiffer breeze blew through the trees, as if in answer. Ritchie put Hannah on the ground; they stood side by side, noses to the air.
"We are in the witchwood," said Selver. His voice clear and strong. He didn't know where the words came from. His mouth and tongue seemed to move of their own accord.
Donald stopped and looked around. Then he laughed. "You can't scare me with children's stories," he said. "You need to grow up and learn about the real world."
"No, you need to learn about the real world," said Selver.
"We missed the mark; we'll retrace our steps and find the trail that goes down to the road. Take her!" Donald ordered Ritchie, pointing at Hannah, pushing Selver the way they had come.
Hannah shrugged. She waggled her doll at Donald and muttered words that sounded like a foreign tongue. Then she followed, willingly now, with Ritchie bringing up the reluctant rear, keeping his distance from Hannah as if she was a snake about to strike. All but Donald now understood that Hannah was at the heart of what was happening.
Selver walked ahead, with Donald's hand on his back. He had passed through tearfulness and rage into another state, his feet almost floating off the ground with the certainty of power.
After another five minutes of walking the trail, no opening could be seen. No sounds of the city could be heard, only wind in the trees, louder and more insistent, rattling the branches as though the earth was singing. No matter in which direction they walked, it seemed they were going downhill; there was no other direction; it was all one. Now joining the earth's symphony was the sound of water, and the trail came out on the shore of a rushing stream.
Selver stopped short to avoid wetting his shoes. Donald ran into his back, then looked over Selver's shoulder. "What is this? There's no stream in this part of the park," he said, aware of his own voice, high and tremulous against the trees.
"We're not in the park," said Selver.
Hannah and Ritchie came up behind them. They all stared across the stream. A man sat on the other side, shirtless, his back against a tree. He was both old and young, his hair long and dark, his face deeply wrinkled, yet his body was boyish, slim, and smooth as a seal. His shape and movements were like Selver's, his olive skin like Hannah's. Selver knew him; he was the daguerreotype come to life.
"Oh Grandfather," said Hannah, calling out to the elder. The language was unknown to Selver, but he understood.
"My child," said the man. "I am glad you have come. Look, something for you." Hannah squatted to find a bracelet of blue stones between her feet. "Wear it to magnify your power."
"This is my brother," Hannah said to the man, leaning against and smiling up at Selver.
"I know," said the man. "But who are these yellow hairs who would dare take children from their parents?" His voice came like thunder from the sky.
Donald tried to laugh.
"A very bad boy," said Hannah, shaking the bracelet, now on her wrist, at Donald.
Ritchie shrieked. "Oh my God, look at your feet!"
Donald looked down. He tried to scream, but could not. A knot of wood had grown where his Adam's apple used to be. His shoes were torn and broken as growing tree roots poked from what should have been his toes. His arms were immobilized as a cover of bark crept down from his shoulders.
Ritchie threw himself on his knees in the dirt before Hannah. Tears poured from him. "Oh please," he said. "Oh, please don't hurt us. Oh, please let us go," he begged from his heart while touching Hannah's dusty white shoes. Unsure what to do, a little girl with a finger to her chin, she looked at the man across the stream, then at her brother.
Selver nodded.
Hannah waved her plump little arms in the air, holding her doll in one hand, shaking her bracelet with the other. The man dissolved from their sight, as if absorbed into the trunk he was leaning against. The stream narrowed to a muddy puddle trickling between the trees. The trees relaxed as though now napping in the sun. Donald looked down at his shoes; it was as if nothing had happened. Ritchie rose trembling from his knees.
"This way," said Selver, taking Hannah's hand, as they led the shocked and stumbling boys back toward the meadow.
They burst from the woods almost into their father's arms. John had been standing at the line of the forest, shouting, "Selver, Hannah!" Doris beside him saying "Do you think someone took them? Where could they have gone?" Their friends from the benches dotted the area, looking for, calling for the children.
John grabbed Selver, grabbed Hannah, then shook Selver roughly, bellowing, "We told you to stay in the meadow! You scared your mother half to death!" Selver hugged his father, as two bedraggled teenagers emerged from the woods behind him.
John's hand shot out and grabbed Donald's arm. He held it like a vise. "Who the hell are you?"
"No one sir," said Donald.
"What were you doing with my children?"
"We found these boys lost in the woods," said Hannah.
"Yes," said Donald, "Thank you," he said to Hannah.
Then he and Ritchie flooded the air with talk. They waved their hands and explained that they were trying to cut from Forest Park Lane to Park Lane South through the woods, but took the wrong trail. Then they met these nice kids who pointed them this way. Yes, so helpful, you have such lovely children, so glad to have met them, as they continued to talk and back away. Until they were out of John's sight; then they turned their backs and ran like all hell was loose behind them.
"Well," said John, to Selver and Hannah. "No more playing in the park for you this summer. You're staying by the benches where we can watch you." Selver nodded solemnly and made his most obedient face, knowing summer was long and Dad would relent.
Doris bent to the bracelet on Hannah's wrist. "Did you find this in the woods?" Hannah nodded. Doris brushed her hair back from her face, as if she heard a distant voice. But it was nothing, just a string of blue beads.
"I have to pee!" said Hannah.
"I'll take her," said Selver, and they walked together down the path to the park house.
When she came out of the bathroom, he asked, "Did you wash your hands?"
She presented them to him, palm side up.
He sniffed to smelled the soap and kissed them; she giggled and put them over his head.
"We caught two boys today. We never caught boys before. But we let them go," she said.
"It's always better to let them go," said Selver.
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So absorbed, he was startled when the buzzing bees dispersed and two swooping, yellow haired teenage boys were upon him. They grabbed Selver by his elbows and picked up Hannah, chivvying, "Let's go, let's go." One moment Selver was standing in the high timothy grass; the next he and his sister had been taken, over the hill and out of sight of Mom and Dad who were chatting with friends on a park bench below the meadow.
Panting, open-mouthed, in the grip of his captor, Selver turned to Hannah as she was hustled along in the other boy's arms. She looked annoyed but not frightened, perhaps too young, at five years old to Selver's ten, to know something bad was happening. Hanging onto her doll, she squinted up at the boy holding her as if he were a big cousin intruding on her play.
"Okay, we got them," said the smaller boy, holding Hannah. "Now what, Donald?"
"Be cool Ritchie, we'll figure it out," said Donald.
"Leave us alone!" cried Selver, his knotted face holding back a flood of tears.
Ritchie dropped Hannah to the ground and rubbed his shoulders. Her little white shoes were scuffed with dirt. She smoothed her polka dotted dress and angled her head to one side in a way Selver knew as the signal for a coming tantrum.
"Everyone calm down," said Donald, holding Selver by the arm.
"No!" said Hannah and kicked dirt in his direction. The dust cloud hovered longer than it should have, surrounding the four of them for a moment in an unearthly veil. Selver's eyes met Hannah's.
"Tell her to behave," said Donald, his hand tightening its grip on Selver's shoulder.
"Hannah, please Hannah," said Selver.
They stood at the mouth of a pebbled trail that wound through thickets of oak and hickory trees, a vestigial patch of Long Island Forest buried within the confines of a New York City park. Though within earshot of Woodhaven Boulevard traffic, these woods had secrets, as Selver and Hannah knew. Once, when their parents thought they were playing in the meadow, they snuck in and looked around, holding hands for safety.
"Here's what's going to happen," said Donald. "We're going to hang out quietly for a while, then bring you back to your parents and say we found you lost in the woods. You'll go along with the story, and your parents will pay us for bringing you back. See?"
"It's crazy. They won't pay us and we'll end up in jail. Like Dad," muttered Ritchie.
The boys were clearly siblings, long limbed with matching mops of dirty blond hair. Donald's chin sported downy fuzz. Ritchie's face was smooth; he could not be more than fifteen.
"Shut up Ritchie. I'm showing you how to make a few bucks. Stick with me," said Donald, affecting the harsh croak of endless whiskey bottles he could not yet, at his age, have drunk, and packs of cigarettes he could not yet have smoked.
No longer in motion, the boys looked smaller to Selver and less frightening. The threatening grip on his shoulder was weak compared to his dad's. He reached out for Hannah's small, moist hand. "Our parents will come for us and you'll be in big trouble," he said.
"Think you're tough now," said Donald, pushing Selver in the back, causing him to stumble for a step down the trail.
"Don't you push my brother," said Hannah, squatting on plump little girl haunches like an enraged frog about to spring.
"Take her," said Donald, and they all entered the woods.
You may think of New York City as the most citified place on earth. But its towers and highways were built over glacier-gouged hills, forests, fens and sinuous waterways, tended for millennia by native people whose voices you can still hear if you listen. Wildness lives around its edges and in its heart where these children and their childish kidnappers were headed.
The sun, which had been bright on the meadow, fell behind clouds; a damp breeze blew through the trees with the scent of mid-summer rain. Traffic sounds faded. Donald kept pushing Selver along the path, a hand on his back. Selver's tearfulness congealed into anger that grew each time Donald shoved him. Ritchie picked Hannah off the ground to carry her, but her weight became more difficult on the rocky path. She deliberately swung her legs, slapping her heels against his shins.
"Stop, damn it stop," said Ritchie, in Hannah's ear, as he dragged her along. Of the four, Ritchie was now closest to tears.
If they continued on this trail for half a mile or so it would take them to Forest Park Lane, a winding, sparsely trafficked road within the park, removed from the busy hum of the main boulevard. Beyond the lane was an old bandshell, where concerts were held in better days, but now unused and decaying. The teens had this destination in mind. Hiding behind the bandshell was the most likely place for the children to be sequestered, for a time. Selver's palms tingled as he strategized for himself and his sister, waiting to reach the road, a place they might run, get away, or shout for help from adults to bring this nightmare to an end.
But ten minutes passed, and more, as they forged ahead; the skies grew darker, the forest thick around them. The path was strewn with rocks and boulders; it narrowed, with undergrowth brushing their ankles on either side. No roadway appeared, only denser thickets of trees. Selver's eyes narrowed. He and Hannah had been in these woods, further than their parents would have allowed, but not this far. What was this place? Hannah's eyes, like great brown moons, glowed at him out of the shadows.
It was hard for Selver to explain about Hannah. He didn't understand himself. The day she was born he had been with his parents' friends, Cathy and Tim, being looked after while Dad was with Mom in the hospital. Walking down a hallway, the light above him became unbearably bright for an instant. He looked up, but the bulb was normal again. A moment later, the phone rang; Cathy came loping down the hall, grabbed him, kissed him on the head, and told him he had a baby sister. They laughed and hugged, but he had already known.
When Hannah came home, her eyes wandered, as babies' do, not yet fixed on faces. Except, thought Selver, for my face. Her eyes followed him even more than Mom and Dad. He helped care for her as she grew. She listened to him with the respect due an older sibling, "Big buzza," she called him, as soon as she was able to speak. But he was in awe of her. Her early babble had the melodic rhythms of an unknown language, which he still heard from her as she played. And when she had a fit of temper, he could swear that objects around her moved.
Once he took a favorite stuffed animal from her playpen. Food had spilled on it; he was going to wipe it off. A spasm of anger flashed across her face and he felt the toy rip from his hand. He gave an admonishing look. "Hannah," he said. And it was a lifeless toy again.
Mom and Dad did not see these episodes. As if Selver was special to Hannah, her gifts a secret only he was allowed to see. And, oh, in time, what wonderful and secret things they learned to do together!
The electric train catalogues Selver kept under his bed held his deepest boyhood fantasies. He would lay down, reach for one, flip the pages and gaze with longing at the Northern Pacific steaming through a tunnel, freight cars whipping around curves carrying coal and lumber, boxcars with tiny sliding doors with space inside for imaginary stowaways. He had been told many times that their apartment had no space for things, and they could not afford it. But a boy can always dream.
One afternoon, as he set up their old wooden train set on its tracks, Hannah toddled into his room, black curls hanging over her forehead like miniature antlers. And through some understanding, and an unnamable force, the train steamed along on its own power, little puffs of smoke rising from the engine. Until Mom pushed through the half-open door, slid a strand of black hair behind her ear and said, "What's going on here?" But all she saw was Selver and Hannah, sitting in front of a mute wooden train on its track. She later she told Cathy about how her children were learning to play so nicely together.
Then there was the mouse who came one day through the hole in the baseboard in Hannah's room, who Selver found doing dance moves, whirling about the floor as Hannah giggled. He sat beside her, watching, until she released the poor fellow and he flew back to his hole. "We must always be kind to creatures, Hannah," he said. "We must always be kind."
A friend of Selver's, a boy about his age, once came over to play. He had annoyed Hannah in the past, coming into her space; she closed her eyes and muttered as he came in.
"What's your sister doing?" teased the boy. "Casting spells?"
"I'm her brother and she loves me, so I'm not worried," said Selver. "But you, my friend, better watch your step." They both laughed, but Selver knew he really wasn't joking.
The only adult who seemed to notice these doings was not a living person, but a photograph. Not even a true photograph but an ancient daguerreotype that sat among their other family photos on their living room table. It was of a distant ancestor of Mom's dating back, she said, to the eighteen-hundreds; a copper-colored man with a sharp-featured face, shoulder-length black hair and penetrating eyes. Grandfather, she called him, though he was many generations removed; he had been an Algonquin shaman. For Doris and her husband John were descended from Italian immigrants who settled in New York in the 1890s, but mixed with other peoples along the way.
Selver often caught the eyes of the daguerreotype watching Hannah with, what seemed, a sly expression of joy. Once, he caught Selver's eye and delivered a juicy wink.
The time they had been in the woods had been at Hannah's insistence. Selver protested, took a righteous big brother stand and said Mom and Dad forbid it; we must stay in the meadow. But she pouted, stamped her feet and pulled on his hand. He followed.
Trees covered the sky as they entered, growing taller and darker around them, as if they were bowing to Hannah. If Selver had not been holding Hannah's hand, he might have been frightened. After a few minutes, he pulled her back, she obeyed; the next time his parents looked they were playing in the meadow.
But now, as the woods grew dark and stretched endlessly before them, Selver knew it had something to do with himself and with Hannah. His eyes met hers, and her eyes said yes.
"Where the hell are we," said Donald. "Forest Park Lane should be right here." A stiffer breeze blew through the trees, as if in answer. Ritchie put Hannah on the ground; they stood side by side, noses to the air.
"We are in the witchwood," said Selver. His voice clear and strong. He didn't know where the words came from. His mouth and tongue seemed to move of their own accord.
Donald stopped and looked around. Then he laughed. "You can't scare me with children's stories," he said. "You need to grow up and learn about the real world."
"No, you need to learn about the real world," said Selver.
"We missed the mark; we'll retrace our steps and find the trail that goes down to the road. Take her!" Donald ordered Ritchie, pointing at Hannah, pushing Selver the way they had come.
Hannah shrugged. She waggled her doll at Donald and muttered words that sounded like a foreign tongue. Then she followed, willingly now, with Ritchie bringing up the reluctant rear, keeping his distance from Hannah as if she was a snake about to strike. All but Donald now understood that Hannah was at the heart of what was happening.
Selver walked ahead, with Donald's hand on his back. He had passed through tearfulness and rage into another state, his feet almost floating off the ground with the certainty of power.
After another five minutes of walking the trail, no opening could be seen. No sounds of the city could be heard, only wind in the trees, louder and more insistent, rattling the branches as though the earth was singing. No matter in which direction they walked, it seemed they were going downhill; there was no other direction; it was all one. Now joining the earth's symphony was the sound of water, and the trail came out on the shore of a rushing stream.
Selver stopped short to avoid wetting his shoes. Donald ran into his back, then looked over Selver's shoulder. "What is this? There's no stream in this part of the park," he said, aware of his own voice, high and tremulous against the trees.
"We're not in the park," said Selver.
Hannah and Ritchie came up behind them. They all stared across the stream. A man sat on the other side, shirtless, his back against a tree. He was both old and young, his hair long and dark, his face deeply wrinkled, yet his body was boyish, slim, and smooth as a seal. His shape and movements were like Selver's, his olive skin like Hannah's. Selver knew him; he was the daguerreotype come to life.
"Oh Grandfather," said Hannah, calling out to the elder. The language was unknown to Selver, but he understood.
"My child," said the man. "I am glad you have come. Look, something for you." Hannah squatted to find a bracelet of blue stones between her feet. "Wear it to magnify your power."
"This is my brother," Hannah said to the man, leaning against and smiling up at Selver.
"I know," said the man. "But who are these yellow hairs who would dare take children from their parents?" His voice came like thunder from the sky.
Donald tried to laugh.
"A very bad boy," said Hannah, shaking the bracelet, now on her wrist, at Donald.
Ritchie shrieked. "Oh my God, look at your feet!"
Donald looked down. He tried to scream, but could not. A knot of wood had grown where his Adam's apple used to be. His shoes were torn and broken as growing tree roots poked from what should have been his toes. His arms were immobilized as a cover of bark crept down from his shoulders.
Ritchie threw himself on his knees in the dirt before Hannah. Tears poured from him. "Oh please," he said. "Oh, please don't hurt us. Oh, please let us go," he begged from his heart while touching Hannah's dusty white shoes. Unsure what to do, a little girl with a finger to her chin, she looked at the man across the stream, then at her brother.
Selver nodded.
Hannah waved her plump little arms in the air, holding her doll in one hand, shaking her bracelet with the other. The man dissolved from their sight, as if absorbed into the trunk he was leaning against. The stream narrowed to a muddy puddle trickling between the trees. The trees relaxed as though now napping in the sun. Donald looked down at his shoes; it was as if nothing had happened. Ritchie rose trembling from his knees.
"This way," said Selver, taking Hannah's hand, as they led the shocked and stumbling boys back toward the meadow.
They burst from the woods almost into their father's arms. John had been standing at the line of the forest, shouting, "Selver, Hannah!" Doris beside him saying "Do you think someone took them? Where could they have gone?" Their friends from the benches dotted the area, looking for, calling for the children.
John grabbed Selver, grabbed Hannah, then shook Selver roughly, bellowing, "We told you to stay in the meadow! You scared your mother half to death!" Selver hugged his father, as two bedraggled teenagers emerged from the woods behind him.
John's hand shot out and grabbed Donald's arm. He held it like a vise. "Who the hell are you?"
"No one sir," said Donald.
"What were you doing with my children?"
"We found these boys lost in the woods," said Hannah.
"Yes," said Donald, "Thank you," he said to Hannah.
Then he and Ritchie flooded the air with talk. They waved their hands and explained that they were trying to cut from Forest Park Lane to Park Lane South through the woods, but took the wrong trail. Then they met these nice kids who pointed them this way. Yes, so helpful, you have such lovely children, so glad to have met them, as they continued to talk and back away. Until they were out of John's sight; then they turned their backs and ran like all hell was loose behind them.
"Well," said John, to Selver and Hannah. "No more playing in the park for you this summer. You're staying by the benches where we can watch you." Selver nodded solemnly and made his most obedient face, knowing summer was long and Dad would relent.
Doris bent to the bracelet on Hannah's wrist. "Did you find this in the woods?" Hannah nodded. Doris brushed her hair back from her face, as if she heard a distant voice. But it was nothing, just a string of blue beads.
"I have to pee!" said Hannah.
"I'll take her," said Selver, and they walked together down the path to the park house.
When she came out of the bathroom, he asked, "Did you wash your hands?"
She presented them to him, palm side up.
He sniffed to smelled the soap and kissed them; she giggled and put them over his head.
"We caught two boys today. We never caught boys before. But we let them go," she said.
"It's always better to let them go," said Selver.
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