Author's Note: Thanks for the reviews! I've given Jay the surname of an old friend of mine who was originally from Kerala in India. Re: Vivian's bad knitting: yes, I noticed that awful home-made scarf Noah was wearing...

4: Lost Boy

Jay had to thump the side of the hot-drinks vending-machine to make it work. "I hope the rest of the equipment here's not in the same state!" he said, watching the sludgy-looking coffee splutter into the plastic cup.

"It's horrible, anyway!" Kevin grimaced as he drank. He'd never yet known a hospital waiting-room where you could get a decent coffee. "I wonder how much longer they'll be?"

"If he hadn't made it, they'd have been out sooner," his boss observed.

Another twenty minutes passed before a door swung open and a white-coated doctor emerged: a slight, dark, sharp-faced woman.

"So, you're the guys who saved the boy at the Wildlife Preserve?"

"We are: I'm Chief Ranger George, and this is Ranger Lupinski."

"Pleased to meet you; I'm Dr Morelli. Under the circumstances, you did well with that chest-drain!"

"How is 'Red Riding Hood'?"

"Stable," she answered (not suspecting that this was the first time that word had ever been used of her patient). "We've fixed up the ribs and stopped the internal bleeding: the lung should heal. Thankfully, no other bones are broken. Bad bruising, mild concussion. And his shoulders are cut pretty badly: nothing dangerous, but - a bit messy."

"You're telling me!" Kevin mumbled under his breath: his and Jay's uniforms were stained from tending the boy. The spines stitched into the back of his red robe had torn him across the shoulder-blades, and when Jay had rolled him on to the stretcher...

"Any ID on him?" Jay inquired.

"Nothing formal," she said. "Just name-tapes in his clothes."

"Ralph Lauren or Calvin Klein?" he quipped, trying to alleviate the tension: hospitals made him edgy and gloomy.

She laughed. "Hardly! Just the sort schoolkids have! According to these, he's Noah Percy. We're contacting the police to see if he's been reported missing, and to trace his folks. I guess you'll be wanting to speak to the police about him, too – about trespassing?"

Jay hesitated before replying. "Um, no... No. Bringing charges, publicity - that might encourage more kids to try to get in. The Foundation's not keen on that. There's unique plant life in there, endangered wildlife..."

"Besides, when he wakes up, he should've learned his lesson," added Kevin.

The doctor smiled wryly. "That's true enough: it'll certainly be a while before he's playing games again! We'll be keeping him sedated until he can breathe unaided. Shall we call you, to keep you updated on his progress?"

Both Rangers nodded, and Jay gave her his card.

"I'll let you know when he's well enough for visitors."

The Percys had brought Noah's rocking chair inside from the porch: now it stood forlorn beside the fire. Edward Walker was leaning on the back of it as Robert's voice droned on, flat with despair.

"It was easy to keep my tools out of reach when he was smaller. Never thought he'd get so much taller than me... Never thought he'd find my knife..."

Vivian, beside her husband on the settle, was clutching a worn stuffed toy she had knitted for Noah when he was a baby. She had meant it to be a teddy-bear, but it more closely resembled a rabbit. (She was a prolific, but less than competent knitter.) It had just turned out all wrong somehow. Like her boy, she thought: her beautiful, damaged son who had never outgrown his toys. His bedroom was still cluttered with the painted wooden animals Robert had carved for him over the years. She had not the heart yet to put them away, to entomb them in the black box.

"- Sometimes it was as if he were playing hide-and-seek with us: he'd try to make us chase him deeper into the forest instead of back home," Robert went on. "I only wanted to stop him, to frighten him - But I never thought..."

"What do you mean ?" asked Walker.

"The animals: as a warning to him, to all the children. I was so afraid for him... I thought one or two would send the message; but no, he was still wandering off..."

Vivian looked up, startled: she had suspected nothing, feared even that it had been Noah's work – though how could it have been, given his short attention-span, his sensitivity? And she had tucked him into bed herself, the evening of Kitty and Christop's wedding-party. "You? You, Robert? Not him?"

"I wanted to keep him safe, Vivian! I was terrified we would lose him, he was getting so adventurous, so bold in exploring... I spoke with Tom Clack: he and Susan were so worried... While Vivian and I went to Kitty's wedding... But the costume – The floorboards wouldn't stay down level - That must have been how he realised... I'm so sorry..."

"I do realise how hard this is for you," Walker said. "But – it is, in truth, a mercy: a blessed release, under the circumstances."

Vivian's fingernails dug deep into the toy's misshapen little body. Alice Hunt still has her son, she thought bitterly; you still have your daughter, your daughter who killed my son...

"But you promised us a decent burial for him," Robert said reproachfully.

The other man shook his head. "I am so sorry: the coyotes... I-I do not wish to say more, you understand? Victor and August will confirm it. There was nothing anyone could have done: nothing."

Lies, all lies: concealing lies, consoling lies. And still the rocking chair was empty.

Noah did not like being dead, not really. It had taken some days before he realised that he was dead - days of quiet drowsiness, not fully aware of his changed surroundings. Gradually he realised that he was lying in a warm bed, in a bright room that smelled like pine-trees in damp weather. People dressed in white - many of them women - would appear out of nowhere, wafting through the white curtains that surrounded him. They had no wings, but he was fairly sure that they were angels, like Pastor Nicholson talked about at the meeting-house. Sometimes they were kind: keeping him clean and comfortable, and gently bathing and dressing his wounds. At other times, they poked and prodded and stuck him with needles and tubes – painful, despite the general dulling of his senses. But then, he had hurt Lucius and had stolen a Creature's skin from where they had hidden the other animals', so he figured that this was his punishment.

It hurt when they took the tubes away, too. His throat felt dry, raw; he tried to cough, but almost passed out because of the pain in his side. They gave him some water to drink. He lay quiet and still - more still than in his whole life, because his body was so tired and sore.

Later (he was unsure of the passing of time, for it never seemed to get completely dark), one of the angels, a plump one with a brown face and hair like a black lamb's, washed him, and shaved him with a strange kind of razor, nothing like the one Papa used on him at home.

Then she held up the mirror before him: "There! That looks better, don't it?"

He recognised his own face, wan and narrow amid long brown hair, but said nothing.

She then began checking the dressing on hisright side, over the wound where one of the tubes had been. He tried to push her hands away.

"Keep still, honey! You'll tear your stitches!"

"I want to go home," he muttered, his voice hoarse.

"When you're better."

"No, now!" He struggled up on one elbow, but she held him back. "Fed up being dead - don't like it!"

She smiled. "Dead? You're not dead - you're in hospital."

He looked at her blankly: what and where was 'hospital'?

"Don't you remember? You had an accident in the forest."

He recalled running after Ivy, trying to catch her, then the ground giving way beneath his feet... "I fell down a hole. And I died."

"You fell, and bumped your head, and hurt your ribs and shoulders. But your friend told the Park Rangers, and they found you and brought you here. You're real lucky!"

He did not know what 'Park Rangers' were, and he certainly did not feel very lucky.

"You're Noah Percy, is that right?"

His eyes narrowed: "Who said?"

"It's written inside your clothes."

"Oh. Mama did that."

Something in his child-like speech and expression confirmed to the nurse Dr Morelli's speculations soon after his admission: that he had a learning impairment of some kind. It had not been simply the name-tapes sewn into his clothing, although that seemed odd enough in a young man who was past school-age. But 'R' and 'L' painted inside his shoes...?

"My name's Verna Trent; I've been looking after you," she said. "Do you live with your Mama?"

"Yes. And Papa."

"And where do you live?"

"Our village."

"But what's it called?"

He had to think about that for a couple of minutes. "Covington."

"No, honey," Verna corrected him gently, "that's where you were found: Covington Woods."

"Where I fell down the hole."

"That's right. But you don't live there."

"'Course we don't live in a hole," he answered, his green-gold eyes wide in earnest. "We live in a house."

"I mean, there's no village there. It's a wildlife park - just full of animals. Remember? You shouldn't have been there, but you were dressed up and playing a game."

His thin face brightened into a smile, and he waved his hands feebly. "Yes! Yes! Playing games! The Stump Game! I want to go back home and play!"

"Yes, but first you must rest and get strong. And we need to tell your Mama and Papa that you're safe, but we can't, because we don't know where they live."

"But I told you!" he frowned. "Told you!"

She sighed. "Never mind! I shouldn't be getting you to talk too much yet, anyway. I'll let the doctor know you're properly awake!"

She patted his hand, and disappeared through the curtain.

The doctor: that would be Dr Crane, coming to take him home, he thought. He felt much happier now, and nestled into the pillow.

To be continued: Noah makes more new friends and a few discoveries...