فصل 05

5.

In Which a Swamp Monster Accidentally Falls in Love

Glerk did not approve, and said so the first day the baby arrived.

And he said so again, on the next day.

And the next.

And the next.

Xan refused to listen.

“Babies, babies, babies,” sang Fyrian. He was utterly delighted. The tiny dragon perched on the branch extending over the door of Xan’s tree home, opening his multicolored wings as wide as he could and arching his long neck toward the sky. His voice was loud, warbled, and atrociously off-­key. Glerk covered his ears. “Babies, babies, babies, BABIES!” Fyrian continued. “Oh, how I love babies!” He had never met a baby before, at least not that he could remember, but that did not stop the dragon from loving them all to bits.

From morning till night, Fyrian sang and Xan fussed, and no one, Glerk felt, would listen to reason. By the end of the second week, their entire habitation had been transformed: diapers and baby clothes and bonnets hung on newly strung clotheslines to dry; freshly blown glass bottles dried on recently constructed racks next to a brand-­new washing station; a new goat had been procured (Glerk had no idea how), and Xan had separate milk jugs for drinking and cheese making and butter churning; and, quite suddenly, the floor became thoroughly strewn with toys. More than once, Glerk’s foot had come down hard on a cruel-­cornered wooden rattle, sending him howling with pain. He found himself shushed and needled out of the room, lest he wake the baby, or frighten the baby, or bore the baby to death with poetry.

By the end of the third week, he’d had quite enough.

“Xan,” he said. “I must insist that you do not fall in love with that baby.”

The old woman snorted, but she did not answer.

Glerk scowled. “Indeed. I forbid it.”

The Witch laughed out loud. The baby laughed with her. They were a mutual admiration society of two, and Glerk could not bear it.

“Luna!” Fyrian sang, flying in through the open door. He flitted about the room like a tone-­deaf songbird. “Luna, Luna, Luna, LUNA!”

“No more singing,” Glerk snapped.

“You don’t have to listen to him, Fyrian, dear,” Xan said. “Singing is good for babies. Everyone knows that.” The baby kicked and cooed. Fyrian settled on Xan’s shoulder and hummed tunelessly. An improvement, to be sure, but not much.

Glerk grunted in frustration. “Do you know what the Poet says about Witches raising children?” he asked.

“I cannot think what any poet might say about babies or Witches, but I have no doubt that it is marvelously insightful.” She looked around. “Glerk, could you please hand me that bottle?”

Xan sat cross-­legged on the rough plank floor, and the baby lay in the hollow of her skirts.

Glerk moved closer, leaned his head near the baby, and gave her a skeptical expression. The baby had her fist in her mouth, leaking drool through the fingers. She waved her other hand at the monster. Her pink lips spread outward into a wide smile around her wet knuckles.

She is doing that on purpose, he thought as he tried to force his own smile away from his wide, damp jaws. She is being adorable as some sort of hideous ruse, to spite me. What a mean baby!

Luna gave a giggly squeal and kicked her tiny feet. Her eyes caught the swamp monster’s eyes, and they sparkled like stars.

Do not fall in love with that baby, he ordered himself. He tried to be stern.

Glerk cleared his throat.

“The Poet,” he said with emphasis, and narrowed his eyes on the baby, “says nothing about Witches and babies.”

“Well then,” Xan said, touching her nose to the baby’s nose and making her laugh. She did it again. And again. “I suppose we don’t have to worry, then. Oh no we don’t!” Her voice went high and singsong, and Glerk rolled his tremendous eyes.

“My dear Xan, you are missing the point.”

“And you are missing this babyhood with all your huffing and puffing. The child is here to stay, and that is that. Human babies are only tiny for an instant—their growing up is as swift as the beat of a hummingbird’s wing. Enjoy it, Glerk! Enjoy it, or get out.” She didn’t look at him when she said this, but Glerk could feel a cold prickliness emanating from the Witch’s shoulder, and it nearly broke his heart.

“Well,” Fyrian said. He was perched on Xan’s shoulder, watching the baby kick and coo with interest. “I like her.”

He wasn’t allowed to get too close. This, Xan explained, was for both of their safeties. The baby, full to bursting with magic, was a bit like a sleeping volcano—internal energy and heat and power can build over time, and erupt without warning. Xan and Glerk were both mostly immune to the volatilities of magic (Xan because of her arts and Glerk because he was older than magic and didn’t truck with its foolishness) and had less to worry about, but Fyrian was delicate. Also, Fyrian was prone to the hiccups. And his hiccups were usually on fire.

“Don’t get too close, Fyrian, dear. Stay behind Auntie Xan.”

Fyrian hid behind the crinkly curtain of the old woman’s hair, staring at the baby with a combination of fear and jealousy and longing. “I want to play with her,” he whined.

“You will,” Xan said soothingly, as she positioned the baby to take her bottle. “I just want to make sure that the two of you don’t hurt one another.”

“I never would,” Fyrian gasped. Then he sniffed. “I think I’m allergic to the baby,” he said.

“You’re not allergic to the baby,” Glerk groaned, just as Fyrian sneezed a bright plume of fire onto the back of Xan’s head. She didn’t even flinch. With a wink of her eye, the fire transformed to steam, which lifted several spit-­up stains that she had not bothered to clean yet from her shoulders .

“Bless you, dear,” Xan said. “Glerk, why don’t you take our Fyrian for a walk.”

“I dislike walks,” Glerk said, but took Fyrian anyway. Or Glerk walked, and Fyrian fluttered behind, from side to side and forward and back, like a troublesome, overlarge butterfly. Primarily, Fryian decided to occupy himself in the collection of flowers for the baby, a process hindered by his occasional hiccups and sneezes, each with its requisite dollops of flame, and each reducing his flowers to ashes. But he hardly noticed. Instead, Fyrian was a fountain of questions.

“Will the baby grow up to be a giant like you and Xan?” he asked. “There must be more giants, then. In the wider world, I mean. The world past here. How I long to see the world beyond here, Glerk. I want to see all the giants in all the world and all the creatures who are bigger than I!”

Fyrian’s delusions continued unabated, despite Glerk’s protestations. Though he was about the same size as a dove, Fyrian continued to believe he was larger than the typical human habitation, and that he needed to be kept far away from humanity, lest he be accidentally seen and start a worldwide panic.

“When the time is right, my son,” his massive mother had told him in the moments before she plunged herself into the erupting volcano, leaving this world forever, “you will know your purpose. You are, and will be, a giant upon this fair earth. Never forget it.”

Her meaning, Fyrian felt, was clear. He was Simply Enormous. There was no doubt about it. Fyrian reminded himself of it every single day.

And for five hundred years, Glerk continued to fume.

“The child will grow as children do, I expect,” Glerk said evasively. And when Fyrian persisted, Glerk pretended to take a nap in the calla lily bog and kept his eyes closed until he actually slept.

Raising a baby—magical or not—is not without its challenges: the inconsolable crying, the near-­constant runny noses, the obsession with putting very small objects into a drooling mouth.

And the noise.

“Can you please magic her quiet?” Fyrian had begged, once the novelty of a baby in the family had worn off. Xan refused, of course.

“Magic should never be used to influence the will of another person, Fyrian,” Xan told him over and over. “How could I do the thing that I must instruct her to never do, once she knows how to understand? That’s hypocrisy, is what.”

Even when Luna was content, she still was not quiet. She hummed; she gurgled; she babbled; she screeched; she guffawed; she snorted; she yelled. She was a waterfall of sound, pouring, pouring, pouring. And she never stopped. She even babbled in her sleep.

Glerk made a sling for Luna that hung from all four of his shoulders as he walked on all sixes. He took to pacing with the baby from the swamp, past the workshop, past the castle ruin, and back again, reciting poetry as he did so.

He did not intend to love the baby.

And yet.

“ ‘From grain of sand,’ ” recited the monster.

“ ‘Births light

births space

births infinite time,

and to grain of sand

do all things return.’ ”

It was one of his favorites. The baby gazed as he walked, studying his protruding eyeballs, his conical ears, his thick lips on wide jaws. She examined each wart, each divot, each slimy lump on his large, flat face, a look of wonder in her eyes. She reached up one finger and stuck it curiously into a nostril. Glerk sneezed, and the child laughed.

“Glerk,” the baby said, though it was probably a hiccup or a burp. Glerk didn’t care. She said his name. She said it. His heart nearly burst in his chest.

Xan, for her part, did her best not to say, I told you so. She mostly succeeded.

In that first year, both Xan and Glerk watched the baby for any sign of magical eruption. Though they could both see the oceans of magic thrumming just under the child’s skin (and they could feel it, too, each time they carried that girl in their arms), it remained inside her—a surging, unbroken wave.

At night, moonlight and starlight bent toward the baby, flooding her cradle. Xan covered the windows with heavy curtains, but she would find them thrown open, and the child drinking moonlight in her sleep.

“The moon,” Xan told herself. “It is full of tricks.”

But a whisper of worry remained. The magic continued to silently surge.

In the second year, the magic inside Luna increased, nearly doubling in density and strength. Glerk could feel it. Xan could feel it, too. Still it did not erupt.

Magical babies are dangerous babies, Glerk tried to remind himself, day after day. When he wasn’t cradling Luna. Or singing to Luna. Or whispering poetry into her ear as she slept. After a while, even the thrum of magic under her skin began to seem ordinary. She was an energetic child. A curious child. A naughty child. And that was enough to deal with on its own.

The moonlight continued to bend toward the baby. Xan decided to stop worrying about it.

In the third year, the magic doubled again. Xan and Glerk hardly noticed. Instead they had their hands full with a child who explored and rummaged and scribbled on books and threw eggs at the goats and once tried to fly off a fence, only to end up with two skinned knees and a chipped tooth. She climbed trees and tried to catch birds and sometimes played tricks on Fyrian, making him cry.

“Poetry will help,” Glerk said. “The study of language ennobles the rowdiest beast.”

“Science will organize that brain of hers,” Xan said. “How can a child be naughty when she is studying the stars?”

“I shall teach her math,” Fyrian said. “She will not be able to play a trick on me if she is too busy counting to one million.”

And so, Luna’s education began.

“ ‘In every breeze exhales the promise of spring,’ ” Glerk whispered as Luna napped during the winter.

“ ‘Each sleeping tree

dreams green dreams;

the barren mountain

wakes in blossom.’ ”

Wave after wave of magic surged silently under her skin. They did not crash to the shore. Not yet.