The Thief of Always: A Fable

by Clive Barker

‘I am ten,’ he said to himself (having no brothers and sisters he talked to himself a good deal). ‘I mean, it’s not as if I’m a kid. I don’t have to tidy up just because she says so. It’s boring.’

‘Questions rot the mind!’ he called back as he went. ‘Keep your mouth shut and we’ll see what comes your way!’

For every day he’d spent there a year had gone by here in the real world. Every morning while he’d played in the spring warmth, months had passed. In the afternoon, while he’d lazed in the summer sun, the same. And those haunted twilights, which had seemed so brief, had been another span of months, as had the Christmas nights, full of snow and presents. They’d all slipped by so easily, and though he had only aged a month, his Mum and Dad had lived in sadness for thirty-one years, thinking that their little boy had gone forever.

He would have joined the fish circling in the lake; and circling; and circling. He shuddered at the thought.

‘I don’t mind,’ Harvey said. ‘It’s home, and that’s all I care about.’

repertoire

cavernous

If you stay here, forever and ever, you’ll never die. You’ll grow old, but you’ll live until the end of time, and never weep again.’