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We know the boy isn’t ours.

He looks the part – those big brown eyes, the curly black hair, the dimple. We can ignore the height of him as he grows, a height which hasn’t been seen on either side of the tree since, oh, we don’t know how long. We can ignore the way he looks at us, as if he feels we’re off but doesn’t know why.

But we raise him up, we call him ‘Edmund’. We love him. We keep him.

I don’t know if it’s wrong.

~

I birthed Edmund – the one who was – years ago, in the middle of the summer season. Ten months after Wulfric and I set up our house. I didn’t love him straightaways, but Wulfric did, because he was everything a baby should be. He slept peacefully all through the night, fed from me eagerly, cooed, gurgled, laughed. I learned to love him and my daughters with time, but it was hard going.

He grew fat and strong and smart anyway. He loved trailing behind Wulfric or I, trying to move as we did or do the same chores. He laughed as a baby and he did as a toddler, very easily. Oh, he cried too, but he wasn’t that given to tantrums. No more than any other child.

Eventually, I loved him so much that I took him into town, walking him about and showing him off. I must have annoyed many. It was in that time that I noticed the dimple and I showed that off too.

One morning, he disappeared.

We all slept in the same room, my husband, my children and I, and we did so with the window locked shut from the inside. I know I locked it the night before, after everyone else was abed. But when I awoke, it was with the sun shining on my face.

I sat up and I rubbed by eyes, puzzled. Wulfric snored yet and Ida and Bridget breathed softly, knees up to their chests. But no Edmund. His space on the bed was empty, his pillow fat and fluffed.

I’m proud that I didn’t scream. Instead, I shook Wulfric awake and I pointed his eyes to where Edmund should’ve been. Later, much later, he told me that he was proud he didn’t scream either. There’d been a new moon that night, as I remember.

~

Ida and Bridget were told that their big brother had gone on a trip and they were young enough to believe it. Not young enough to not ask when he was coming back and they asked it all the time. You’d think it would get hard to lie to them, but it became easier for me. Not so for Wulfric – every time they asked, he came close to weeping and so it went until the questions slowed and stopped. They forgot about Edmund, see.

In the meanwhile, we searched.

There are woods by our house, in between it and the town. Large woods, where a child could easily get lost and not be found. Or buried, as the case may be. Those we knew were told and those woods were searched completely.

It was I who found the bones, two weeks after the window opened. They were buried shallowly, underneath a tree and by a creek. But here is the odd thing about it: these bones, while they were Edmund’s size, didn’t have a speck of flesh to cling to them. After two weeks! And no marks of the teeth or knives that might have sheared it off.

There was another odd thing about it. The tiny bone fist clutched a ruby. Tightly. I had to pry the fingers open to get it out and when I freed it, I held it up to the sunlight. It glittered.

The body I buried again in the dirt where I found it, leaving a blue marker on top. No one would bother it that way. They’d just assume that someone searched there. I carried on, making a show of looking, the ruby weighing down my coat’s pocket.

~

You ask me now why I didn’t tell and that I can answer. I didn’t know the body was Edmund’s, not for certain; were he dead, the skeleton wouldn’t be so old. And there was Wulfric to think of. He loved the boy even more and had I just told all about it without knowing, he’d break. He needed himself whole and so did the rest of us. So we kept the search up, until the entire forest was covered with the blue markers.

We were told then to hold a wake and were told it more when the sheriffs of five towns looked and looked and found nothing. But we didn’t do as told. That would say that we’d given up and I didn’t know if Wulfric could. And every day that passed, I took that ruby out of my pocket and held it up to the sunlight and I never, ever let Wulfric see it. Or the daughters, for that matter.

A year passed by. The daughters forgot and Wulfric was still sad, but he could hide it better now. We went through most of the anniversary unmarked. The three of them even went to town together, to visit and have treats. While they did, I walked into the woods, ruby in my fist and basket on my arm. I think my mind was to pick fruits.

Instead, my footsteps carried me all the way to that tree by the creek, with a faded blue marker in the dirt between the roots. Things grew on the dirt now, like grass and flowers. I knelt down by it and with the ruby still in hand, I dug with my spare. I dug and dug and dug, to find nothing but more dirt. The ruby kept me from thinking that what I saw almost a year ago was an imagining, but only just.

I held it up, again. And for the space of a blink, the ruby seemed a sapphire, blue and bright, and I felt my hair fly in a wind that wasn’t there.

~

Nothing happened that day. Nothing happened that night. No one made note. Ah, but in the morning, I awoke – not to the unsought warmth of sunshine on my resting face, but to a scratching at the closed window. Like an animal’s claws.

I am curious but no fool. I armed myself and did not open that window. My toes crept on the floor, silent as they could, and my hand reached out, undoing the latch and locks. I did not blink with the light. My toes carried me past the threshold, around the corner.

There stood Edmund, scratching, scratching at the window, fixated on it. Was it Edmund? It looked like our boy. Taller, though. Much taller. He’d grown.

To my shame, I didn’t scream. But no matter the noise I didn’t make, he soon stopped the scratching and turned so slowly to face me. Everything could be seen on that face, as if he could choose from all the feelings in the world but hadn’t settled on the right one. Still fluxing, he stepped forward, one foot in front of the other, slowly, faster, faster, until he reached my knees and buried that face into them. He made no noise either, but I soon felt the wet of his tears through my bedclothes.

What else could anyone do? I knelt down and hugged the boy, letting him weep on my shoulder instead. Whatever weeping I had in me was long spent, but my hands shook and that’s how Wulfric found us later. I don’t know how long ‘later’ was.

~

‘Edmund’ took to life again easily. Too easily.

There should have been questions. There were none. Not from Ida and Bridget, who were expected to ask about this familiar stranger. Even if they remembered the Edmund who was, they would at least ask where he’d been. They never did.

Not from the townsfolk, who were grown and had to remember the scouring of the forest. They weren’t supposed to accept the Edmund of now with a smile and asking of the course of his day and week and had he been good to his mother and father? They were supposed to be astonished. They were supposed to ask how this miracle took hold. They never did.

It’s like he never died. Vanished. And where I once hid that ruby, I now hid a sapphire – just as large, just the same cut. I don’t know when it changed for good.

He’s still such a happy boy, charming everyone. The height could be a fluke. But when either I or Wulfric ask him where he went and what he saw, that smile and dimple are murdered. He trembles, violently. He mouths these words he can’t voice. Then he sobs, just as he did when he first reappeared, quietly, wetly. Press the matter, it just goes on longer. Don’t, it stops. The happy boy returns from the dead.

~

Not long that morning outside the window, I heard of another boy vanishing in the next town over.

His name was Hector, I heard say, and he was of Edmund’s age. Black hair. Brown eyes. Taller than his peers. I dutifully joined in the search and did not make speculation. That colouring was common in these parts and it could be a coincidence. I was still troubled then – why hadn’t anyone talked of the search for Edmund? Was it to spare poor Hector’s parents? I told myself that and that’s what Wulfric told me too. But still. It will not surprise you that Hector was not found.

Sometimes, I wondered if his mother found her own old grave with its own old bones. I don’t think so now and I’ll tell you why.

Six months later, Hector’s mother came to my town. I don’t know the reasons for the visit, but I was there that day and so was Edmund. He’d grown even more, taller and broader, so much that you’d think he’d fed off the sunshine in the manner of plants.
The general store was our destination, for odds and ends we couldn’t grow or make ourselves. A new axe head. Cotton cloth. Oranges. I purchased these and other things and Edmund insisted on carrying more than his fair half. If he found it too much, he never told, through words or other means. As we stepped out, we saw her and she saw us.

Her name is Clementine. A younger woman than I, prettier and more delicate. The last is being fixed. The east from where she comes is softer and each year here gives her a toughness that goes into her bones. She didn’t lose that with Hector. But now, she stood and stared at my Edmund. Edmund stared back.

Now, there was no rush of joy or grief, no exclamations, nothing so dramatic. Just stillness and confusion. Frightened me, it did. So I snapped my fingers to break it.
The stillness leaked out like a sigh. Clementine stopped, shook her head, furrowed her brow at me. She walked away. Edmund grinned and told me a joke he thought up, involving a dog. He couldn’t stop thinking about dogs lately and he’s never subtle.

Years came and went. But not quietly.

~

We smiled and grimaced when Edmund told us how much he liked to draw, oh, very much. Pencils cost, paper costs. Our house is a long ways from where such things are made. But he tried so much to please and did not fuss at all when we gave him a slate and chalk in place.

He went through much chalk, so much that he volunteered to do more and more chores, for us and others, to help pay for all that chalk. That was not the problem. But the things he drew, yes, that was the problem.

First, he drew Clementine. Over and over again, making a more perfect likeness each time. Inviting me to see how much he looked as her and how much he looked as me. I’d sneak behind him and ruffle his hair and he’d grin and erase it. Just as though it were nothing.

Second, he drew a man. Clementine’s husband? I couldn’t say. I’d ruffle his hair and he’d erase.

Third, he drew other women, other men. They were strangers to me, every one.

Fourth, he drew... things. Dark things. Goblins. Demons. Creatures of all sorts. Long, thin hands with claws like a wolf’s. Trees with faces in their knots with roots that strangling everything that lived. Ida and Bridget would see these and wail. Wulfric and I would hold our arms out to them as they wept and they’d shrink away, still shuddering.

The ruby went black when he drew. I carried it with me and I checked, always.

I stole the slate away. He stole it back. He drew in secret from then forwards.

~

On nights with a new moon, he’d sleep nearest to the window, back towards it. He held his arm over the bodies of his sisters and would not let them move ‘til morning.

On other nights, his worst sin was to steal their blankets away in the small hours.

~

Almost a fortnight ago, this occurred:

We all slept in the same room, my husband, my children and I, and we did so with the window locked shut from the inside. I know I locked it before I lay down, after everyone else was abed. But when I awoke, it was with the moon shining on my face.

I sat up and I rubbed by eyes, puzzled. Wulfric snored yet and Ida and Bridget breathed softly, knees up to their chests. But no Edmund. His space on the bed was empty, his pillow fat and fluffed. I screamed, but no one heard. Ida muttered nonsense in her sleep.

My hand reached into the pocket of my bedclothes, groping for the ruby. It met with nothing. Without waking Wulfric – not saying there were no tries made – I slipped my boots on, lit a lantern, and left the cabin. Into the woods, to the tree with the blue marker by the creek.

Edmund kneeled there, bedclothes soiled all over with mud and dirt. A heap of the same piled by his side. His back was to me, so I didn’t see the ruby, but I knew he held it.

“There’s bones here,” he said.

There hadn’t been before.

“But there’s now and there were before there weren’t any and you know that.”

Don’t speak to your mother so harsh!

“Mother? I don’t know if you’re my mother or not. Maybe many are. Maybe many told me not to hog.”

I don’t understand.

“You’re not meant to. But I’m thinking you should return me soon. Let others have their turn.”

I don’t-!

“It’s either me or the daughters,” he said. “But some of us have to go.” He held his hand up, so I could see the ruby. It shone blue in the lantern light, like a sapphire.

We woke the next morning, sunshine creeping through the cracks of the shut window. He bid me good morning. Offered to make us all a breakfast. Could he remember last night? I didn’t think so.

~

But it’ll be the new moon soon enough, the time of backs to window. That’s when I choose, or he chooses for me. I don’t know how he can expect me to. I’ve lost him once and he’s more foolish than I raised him if he thinks a second time is easier.

He’s grown so much – the age where he’s not quite a man but thinks he’s one already. His height is a head more than Wulfric’s and he carries his sisters about under each arm. They laugh themselves hoarse and beg him to do it again. He works hard, is friendly to all. I remember when he – or a boy very like him – was a babe in my arms and I wasn’t much sure whether I liked being a mother at all yet. The remembered pictures are happier than the remembered thoughts.

There is still Ida and Bridget to think of. Not so agreeable, but more witty and not so uncanny. Ida plays with recipes. Bridget plays with words. They like to gather flowers and climb trees until they hurt themselves and skin their knees or elbows or cheeks.

I sit by the door, watching Wulfric haul in firewood. I know I should let him in, tell him of what’s to come, the choosing that must be done. But I stop with my mouth half open. He loves the daughters and he’d choose to keep Edmund.
Two days, two nights. That’s all I have left to raise him up, to call him ‘Edmund’. To love him. To keep him.

It feels wrong.