See the child. He is pale, thin, halfseen in his diminution. His hair flashes white, betrays his Aryan blood.
He is alone, the parents gone in the morning. It is nothing to him. He revels in their tedious wake. Eats milk and cream. Breaks and steals property and rubs himself in oils strange. He sleeps ’til near the sun’s noonhigh meridian, his whited hair splintered and splayed like some infernal broomhead. At night he carnivals with dervish fervor, watches plays of mindless violence. He is wild and drunken, bestial, howling into the darkling primordial. There is no echo. He is a changeling.
It is not long before the robbers com