Chapter 18
The Boy
Jesstin hovered outside the boy’s room. He’d been standing there a while, which made him feel quite dumb... to be scared of a child?
He supposed he wasn’t scared of the child but of the boy’s expectations, whatever they were.
Rhiain’s children had been so easy to look after.
They’d had stability and consistency and, above all, two parents who loved them more than anything.
The same could not be said of the little tow-haired lamb sleeping in his spare room.
Until a few weeks ago, the boy had never even seen a bed or had a room all to himself.
The kid didn’t even have a name. The young woman Jesstin had rescued from the fire, Alana, had offered the devastating revelation that the girls in the cellar never bothered naming their little boys until they were next to be rescued, because they could be taken at any time. The girls, of course, had further use.
The boy’s mother, whoever she’d been, had died from influenza before she could even nurse him.
But haven’t any of you formed a bond with him?
Jesstin had asked Gertrude the night he’d rescued him, two weeks before the fire.
The young woman he’d come for had a family waiting, but Gertrude had urged him to take the boy too.
She didn’t believe he would survive until the next visit.
Wouldn’t he be better with someone familiar?
We don’t bond with the boys, she’d said with a chary look. He’ll be better with someone who knows nothing of where he came from. He needs to forget, or he’ll never have half a chance at a decent life.
Jesstin pulled himself together and walked in. The boy was sitting on the end of his bed wearing the pajamas Sesto had bought him in the market, his head angled in rapt awe at the snow falling outside his window.
“Hi,” Jesstin said awkwardly. When the boy turned, he waved. The boy waved back.
“Hi,” the boy answered.
“Did you have fun with Daire today, in the village?”
The boy nodded. “There was a big tree.”
“Yeah? They do find the biggest trees for the Jubilee.”
“And we ate too much.” He rubbed big circles across his belly.
“What did you have?”
The boy grinned. “Candies.”
“Good. Yeah. Candies are good.” It was embarrassing how quickly he’d forgotten how to speak to children.
The boy lit up with expectation. “You tuck me in again?”
The only useful fact Gertrude had offered was the boy’s age.
She couldn’t say with certainty, but he was closer to three than two, she’d estimated.
Rhiain’s children had all been conversationalists at that age, and though the boy was shy—and doubtless traumatized—he’d been taught to speak well enough.
“If you’d like.” Jesstin gave the edge of the bed a pat. “Come on then.”
The boy’s scrambly crawl was endearing. He was a sweet thing, and he deserved so much better than he’d been given. Jesstin pulled the quilt over him and tapped the edges like he was tacking them down, because it had made the boy laugh when he’d done it before. The boy was just as amused this time.
The boy’s gleeful giggles echoed across the sparsely furnished room. The apartment had come furnished, however meager, and Jesstin hadn’t had the compulsion to spruce it up. He imagined the space brimming with toys and color. With life and love.
It was a nice thought, anyway.
Jesstin went to stand, to say good night. The boy seemed to withdraw in sadness, the playfulness of a moment ago behind them. “Do you need something? Water?”
“Story?” The boy’s wide brown eyes searched Jesstin’s. “Tell me a story?”
“A story?” Jesstin’s brows met in the center.
“Anna and Faye have stories. They tell me stories. Then I sleep.”
“Oh, ah, I don’t...” Jesstin scratched his head with a befuddled frown. “I don’t really know any that are appropriate for children.”
The boy retreated further, and Jesstin caved to the pressure.
It hadn’t been entirely true, what he’d said about not knowing child-friendly stories, but those long nights reading to his nieces and nephews belonged to another lifetime.
Then a very specific tale, a true one, came to him, and he decided it was as good as any to tell a boy who had known nothing but strife and could use a little hope.
“Wellllll,” Jesstin sang as he sat in the spot next to where the boy lay. “How about a heroic tale of a young, fiery girl who defied her father and took the village by storm?”
The boy nodded eagerly. “Oh, yes. I want that.”
For the next hour, Jesstin regaled the boy with Rhiain’s adventures, softening the darker parts and embellishing the more exciting ones. Sleep called for the boy, but he fought it to the end, and when Jesstin told him the story was done, he smiled with his eyes closed.
Jesstin tiptoed to the door, where Sesto stood watching. He nudged him out and joined him. “Were you spying on me?”
Sesto nodded. “Yes.” He handed him a folded slip of paper when they reached the kitchen. “This came for you.”
“What is it?” Jesstin waved the note.
“An invitation, from Asterin. To dinner with him and Rhiain.” Sesto sat.
Jesstin tossed the unread letter on the table and joined him. “Ah.”
“We should talk, Jess.”
“There are few things I enjoy less these days, Sesto.”
“What happened at your father’s home was no trivial matter,” Sesto said, sounding more urgent with each word.
“And today... I’m sorry. I am. I should have explained first instead of ambushing you with the children.
I see now how it was too much for you to take in right now.
The more I think on it, I’m unreservedly horrified. ”
“Are you?” Jesstin pushed the chair back with his feet and slumped in it with a whistling sigh. He’d be there a while, if Sesto’s habit of prolonging unwanted conversations had carried into his old age. The only way out was to let him talk and offer the occasional sign he was listening.
“If you think I don’t know about the redhead you’ve been fornicating with—”
“Fornicating?” Jesstin gaped at him. “Really?”
“I can still smell her on you. When did you last bathe? When will you next?”
Jesstin rolled his eyes and groaned.
“There’s a little boy sleeping in your guest room, a child who looks forward all day to seeing you, and he doesn’t even have a name.”
“His new family will give him one.”
“How is the progress on finding one, by the way?”
“Do you want to talk, or do you want to lecture?” Jesstin retorted, but too late, he realized Sesto was a move ahead of him. He already knew Jesstin would be a stone wall, so he’d laid bait to engage him.
It felt like half a lifetime of drama stuffed into a tiny pocket of time, but Jesstin had learned from his mentor in Mythgarde, Melvin, how to keep obsessions from taking over.
It was a surpassingly simple tactic. When an intrusive or difficult or hurtful thought popped up, one said to themselves, I’ll think about it tonight.
When tonight arrived, it would become I’ll think about it in the morning.
It was a game with no end, so there was no way to lose.
He’d forgotten how well he’d honed that skill, until he was back in the village where everything made sense.
Of course, it would all spill over and flood one day, but that was a problem for the future.
“I’m your friend, Jess. Of course all I want is to talk.” He nodded at the folded note. “Will you go?”
“Haven’t thought about it yet.”
“It won’t be the same as it was, but it’s a way back to what you had,” Sesto said.
“If the twins both dreamed of you in memories, then it stands to reason Rhiain and Asterin might also, especially if you’re close by.
Remember, that’s how Rhiain regained some of her memories of Asterin.
She couldn’t stop dreaming of him once they were near one another. ”
Sesto had said nothing he didn’t already know.
“No one knows you quite like I do, Jesstin. Not Rhiain. And not even—”
“If you say her name, I swear on the fucking stars—”
“All right. All right. I know you. I see what you’re doing.
I can almost read your deviant little mind.
” Sesto tapped his bald head with a droll glare.
“Not everything must exist in the extremes. There is a compromise between feeling everything and feeling nothing. That compromise is the very foundation of life itself.”
“We’re getting philosophical Sesto tonight,” Jesstin muttered. “My favorite.”
“I won’t do it.” Sesto flopped back and crossed his arms. “I won’t watch you repeat your past mistakes because you refuse to learn from them.”
Then leave, Jesstin started to say, and nearly said anyway, but he didn’t want that.
“Which part was a mistake? Sending the worst of my bloodline up in flames? Bringing a boy home with me to keep my brother and father from murdering him? Not reacting the way you wanted when you sat my nieces and nephews and great-nieces and great-nephew, most of whom are now older than I am, at my table to share some fantasy without even a warning? Failing to leap with joy at a dinner invitation with two people who don’t even know who the fuck I am?
I know you’re not shaming me for having casual sex. ”
“To be fair, El—someone else started the fire.”
“What do you want me to say? Do? If you’ll tell me, we can both go to bed.”
Sesto tilted his head in thought. “We could start by giving the boy a name.”
“Me, not the mother and father who will love and raise him?”
Sesto gave him a pointed look.
“Unbelievable.” Jesstin shook his head. Naming the boy implied a level of commitment he wasn’t prepared for.
But it was unfair to deny him a sense of identity, especially since Jesstin hadn’t had the time to find him a permanent home.
“You told me you had a brother once. You were close, but he died young?”
“The only member of my family who was worth a damn and then some, yes. Oliver.”
“Oliver,” Jesstin said, nodding. “I think that’s a good name for the boy, don’t you?”