+. weird, world.
An assortment of post-Weird, World snippets featuring Charlie & Robbie's spawn written mostly for corellianjedi, full of spoilers, natch.
“Uh, Red?”
“Yes?” Charlie said, attention still focused on the wiggling chubby arm she was struggling to stuff into a sleeve.
“It’s not Halloween anymore,” Robbie pointed out with the patience of Job.
“I’m aware-it’s not usually this snowy in October,” she replied. “Bills, can you please cooperate with Mum, just for a second?”
“Charlie, I’m pointing out the fact that you’re trying to dress our child in a pterodactyl costume when Chrimbo is just around the corner.”
“Yeah, and? Dani doesn’t mind her t-rex onesie. Aha! There we go!” Charlie lifted the baby from the changing table and gave her a little jiggle. “Who’s my vicious pterosaur? That’s right! Let’s go strike terror in the hearts of lawyers and tiny land mammals!”
“Charlie,” he said firmly, stepping between her and the door. “Why are the twins in Halloween costumes?”
“Because why not?” Charlie countered blithely, balancing Billie on her hip. Danielle, already fastened in her carrier, gurgled loudly at their feet. “They were practically throwing these away at the holiday superstore, they were marked down so cheap-and you know how expensive baby clothes are, especially when you figure the kids only spend a couple weeks in ‘em before they need bigger sizes. They’re warm, they’re cute. And you know how I feel about gendered baby clothes. Dinosaurs aren’t gendered-dinosaurs need no gender.” She lifted Billie up overhead; the baby promptly laughed her ‘mad evil genius laugh’, as Ben called it. “Caw caw, motherfuckers!” she crowed, zooming her daughter dramatically through the air.
“Swear jar,” Robbie said automatically.
“They don’t know what the words mean,” Charlie protested.
“Yet. They’ll pick them up soon enough.” He didn’t need to be psychic to see all of the future parent-teacher meetings, the warning slips from the principal, the protestations of “Mum does it!” But at least that was a few years away-he had enough to worry about today. He bent down and picked up Dani, who was energetically kicking her felt-clawed feet. “Okay, munchkin, time to brave a bunch of funny looks from people who don’t understand your mum’s avant-garde sense of style…”
“Fuck!”
Robbie cracked an eye open with a frown, shifting on the couch and freeing the arm that had become pinned beneath him. He’d collapsed there, sprawling over the much-abused cushions, over an hour ago and must’ve dozed off-Dani had a bad earache and had spent the entire night grizzling; he’d sat up with her and rubbed her tiny back incessantly, which seemed to be the only thing that soothed her. He could vaguely remember handing her off to Charlie around 5 AM before passing out. The air smelled of coffee-Charlie must’ve started the pot already-which was a vast improvement over the sharp medicinal tang of Dani’s hated eardrops, and the light spilling between the blinds was a buttery yellow. Birds were singing, the heater hadn’t kicked on even once throughout the night: it promised to be a fine spring day-
“Fuck!”
His brain was moving sluggishly with sleep and it took him several seconds to realize that hadn’t been Charlie’s voice. He swiveled his head and stared into a pair of giant brown eyes framed by brown frizz and a toothless smile. The baby bouncer squeaked slightly as Billie flexed her legs, head rising and falling like a bobble-head on a swaying dashboard. “Fuck!” she crowed again with an air of triumph.
Robbie rolled over, rolled off the couch, and knelt in front of his daughter. “Naturally,” he mumbled to himself, gripping the frame of the bouncer. “You couldn’t just settle for ‘daddy’ or ‘mum’, could you?”
“Huh?” Charlie’s head appeared around the door frame. Dani was draped across her shoulder like a limp, wet sack of flour, boneless in the way only an exhausted infant could manage. “Were you talking to me?”
“No, I was talking to your daughter,” Robbie said pertly.
“My daughter? What’d she do?”
“Fuck!” Billie replied as if on cue. Robbie merely pointed an accusatory finger, which the baby promptly grabbed hold of.
“Well, it is a very versatile word,” Charlie said with a rueful smile. Dani started to stir, hands clenching around Charlie’s baggy t-shirt, twisting her head from side to side with disgruntled noises. “When you think about it, it might just be the only word that could fit any situation-”
“I can think of plenty of situations where it doesn’t belong. Like coming from our seven-month-old baby, for starters.”
“I’ll start saying ‘banana’ every other word and she’ll drop it in no time,” Charlie said, patting Dani’s back. “Feelin’ any better this morning, babycakes?”
Dani opened bleary sleep-encrusted eyes, stared at Charlie, and promptly began crying. It was a ragged, thin sound that made Robbie’s heart ache.
“Fuck,” said Billie, staring up at her sister. “Fuck!”
“At least she’s using it appropriately,” Charlie said by way of defense as Robbie took the squalling baby and she went to look for the bottle of eardrops.
Two days later, when Charlie was changing her diaper after her nap, the fully recovered Dani followed her sister’s suit and said her first word. Robbie wasn’t in the room that time, so no one else had to know that it had been ‘dammit’.
The twins were almost a year old when Robbie had a particularly bad vision. He wrestled with indecision for the better part of a day before finally telling Charlie.
“It’s the way things are,” she said calmly, spooning applesauce into Dani’s eager mouth. “You have to go. I’ll be fine-Jane’s always on hand if I need some help. Ooh, maybe I’ll give Gloria a call. She keeps hinting that she’d love to come for a visit. Perfect opportunity.”
Robbie was silent as he wiped pureed carrots off Billie’s round cheeks. Whereas Dani managed to get most of her meal swallowed with a minimum of fuss or mess, Bills was utterly incapable of eating without smearing half of her dinner into her hair, over her shirt, and across her high chair. A slippery orange hand darted out as she attempted to smoosh another handful into her father’s face; he caught the flailing arm and vigorously applied a washcloth to it. “That’s not it and you know it,” he said finally, expression thunderous and voice weary. “I know you can handle things while I’m gone.”
“Robin, you are not your father,” she said firmly. “I highly doubt you’ll run into an old school flame while you’re gone and decide to cheat on me. You’ll be gone for a couple weeks and then you’ll come home-easy as that. The girls won’t even notice you’re gone. They’ve got no object permanence at this stage.”
There had been a hunting rifle in his vision. A young man with dark skin and a bruised face swaying on his knees while he pleaded. Three men in camo jackets and ripped jeans standing over him, drunk, laughing. “…It was bloody,” he said quietly. “Hateful.”
He didn’t put the rest into words. Collateral damage was far too easy in such charged situations. What if it came to the last second and there was no time for a talk-down, no hope of police arriving before body bags would be necessary, no choice left save one: to put himself between the stranger and the barrel of a gun or to remain only a witness.
Charlie paused, looking across the table at him. It would be too easy to say that he had faced down worst and survived; it would be stupid to say they’d always had a cat’s luck. Just because you’ve dodged bullets before doesn’t mean you’re Kevlar. “Maybe you shouldn’t go alone,” she said finally, when Billie began to babble loudly and bash her tray with demanding fists. “Do you have time to call someone?”
“It won’t happen for a week or so, but I still need to track down the would-be victim.”
“Any idea where it’s going to happen?”
“Arizona. Feels like… near Tucson?”
“Then maybe you should call your sister,” Charlie suggested.
That night, travel plans made and plane tickets purchased electronically, Robbie lay awake beside his wife and stared at the protective charms hanging from the ceiling fan overhead. The window by the bed was half-open and the breeze that rustled the feathers and beads and colorful string smelled of bonfires and barbeque grills.
“It’ll be okay,” Charlie whispered in his ear. “You’re gonna help that guy and you’re gonna be home in no time.”
Robbie cleared his throat and moved restlessly, reaching up to rub at his eyes. “And if I’m not? What if one day I walk out the door-and I never walk back? What if the girls have to ask you what sort of person I was because they never get to see for themselves? What if-”
“Fuck ‘what if’,” Charlie said in a low and warning snap. “That’s not how we live our lives. That’s never how we’ve lived our lives. You focus on what’s right in front of you and you get things done as they come and that’s all.”
“After everything, I’ve still got a hole inside me, Charlie,” Robbie said hoarsely. “Where a father should’ve been. I can’t do that to our girls.”
“Then stay focused and do what needs to be done and get your ass back home,” Charlie said, pressing her chin into his shoulder with enough pressure that it hurt. “And remember that you don’t have to keep facing this shit by yourself any more. If I’ve got to stay home and keep an eye on the twins, there are others who’ve got your back.”
And that was the truth of it, really. There had always been a network of the Gifted for a reason-and it hadn’t been purely for their own preservation. When Diego pulled the rifle out of the man’s hand from across the parking lot; when he helped the beaten man stand and recover himself in the wake of certain death; and when the third man in the racist trio confessed everything in an honest statement to the responding policewoman under Akiko’s prodding, Robbie remembered that this would never be something he could just ignore or turn a blind eye to.
He’d been given his Gift for a reason, after all, and he could hardly squander it, no matter how good his reasoning. Because how could he come home to his wife, his girls, and ever be content if he knew he only did so by letting others die when he could’ve done something? How could his family ever be proud of him if he put them first at the cost of someone else’s life?
He wasn’t his father, because the choices he made that took him away from his family were also the only choices he could make that would bring him back.
“…don’t want to frighten them, is all,” Alberto said, pausing on the porch. “I can be a lot for a kid to take in.”
“Dani might be a little shy at first, but nothing phases Billie,” Robbie assured him. “She takes after Charlie that way-heaven help us.”
“I dunno. I grew up in a carnival,” Alberto pointed out. “And even I had a thing about guys with big beards. Used to scream bloody murder every time I saw one.”
“Well, look at it this way, then: what’s childhood without a healthy seasoning of irrational fear? They’ll get used to you.” He pushed open the door. “I’m home!”
There was a flurry of noise from the bedroom-a mixture of excited squeals, muffled barking, and the pounding of scrambling feet. Boomhauer lead the charge, collar jangling loudly in counterpoint to his odd huffing; the dog never truly barked. It sounded more like grumbling, as if he was muttering under his breath. Charlie had been immediately charmed and named him on the spot; she had to sit Robbie down once they were home from the pound and introduce him to King of the Hill by way of explanation.
Billie was right on the mutt’s heels, practically latched onto his tail. She’d ripped the hair-ties out again and her hair stood out in a brown nimbus from static electricity; there was a plastic wrench from the Fisher-Price car play set sticking out of the front pocket of her jean overalls. She stared up at Alberto with wide eyes and an open mouth while her sister stumbled into her. Dani looked at him, let out a little gasp, and promptly sat down with a floor-rattling thump before sticking the first two fingers of her right hand into her Kool-Aid-stained mouth.
“Hey,” Alberto said in his softest voice, crouching down slowly to be more at their level. “You guys don’t remember me. Last time I saw you, you were still just babies. I’m Alberto.”
“Uncle Al,” Billie announced matter-of-factly.
He grinned at that. “Yep. That’s me.”
“You’re funny,” she added.
“A little bit,” he agreed.
“Can I touch your face?”
“Sure.” His smile only widened as she ran steady, curious fingers down the bridge of his nose, across his cheeks, and over his crooked chin.
“Bumpy,” she confimed. “Wanna play robots?”
“How do you play robots?” Alberto asked, glancing at Robbie.
“You do this,” Billie held her arms out theatrically and started beeping. “And then Dani and I run and hide. You gotta catch us. And if we hit you with a laser you die. But then I can fix you with my tools.”
“Quite an imagination on that one,” Alberto commented hours later when they were sitting outside with a cooler of beers, the dog stretched out between their chairs. The girls’ window was open and they could hear Charlie supplying sound effects to the bedtime story-a particularly energetic roar was met with a flurry of high-pitched giggles.
“She told us very coolly last week at dinner that she’s going to be an engineer,” Robbie said. “Charlie was proper chuffed. Four years old and she’s already interested in science and machines.”
“Is Danielle usually that quiet? Or just around strangers?”
“That’s normal for her. She never says much, but she pays attention to everything. The chattiest she gets is when Ben and Liv Skype with us and Amari gets on-the two of them are thick as thieves. She signs better than I do.” He leaned over and scratched behind Boomhauer’s ears. The mutt sighed contentedly, long brushy tail slapping gently against the grass. “And she knows you don’t always need to talk to say something.”
Alberto thought of those huge blue eyes made all the more riveting by the black curls framing her solemn face, the way her gaze had bored into him with an intensity most children didn’t possess. “Empath?” he asked lightly.
Robbie nodded. “Akiko says it’ll only get stronger as she gets older. Puberty might be a little dicey, so she and Diego will probably come and stay for an extended visit if things get overwhelming for her. As it is, she’s been teaching her some simple things when they Skype. We’ve stressed that her Aunt is there for her if she ever needs help. And it’s a comfort knowing she won’t have to learn everything by herself the way Akiko had to.”
“What about Billie? Is she…?”
“We don’t know. Maybe she’s like me and Ben, and it’ll take some sort of trigger to awaken something latent. Maybe she’s normal. Honestly, I couldn’t say which I’d prefer.”
“Well, she might not have a Gift,” Alberto said sagely, sipping his beer. “But she sure as hell ain’t normal-not with you two for parents.”
Robbie grinned. “And not with uncles like you, yeah?”
“Daddy?”
Robbie looked up from his laptop, rubbing the heel of his hand across his damp cheek with a startled jerk. “Oh, hey, love. What is it?”
The nightlight shining from the bathroom behind her made her a stark silhouette, a tiny figure in a long blue nightgown, her Raggedy Ann doll dangling limply from one hand. She padded closer to the couch on silent, bare feet. Crawled up beside him and reached out to touch the smeared tear tracks on his face. He felt the concern radiate through her fingertips, a gentle warmth like the thaw of spring after a frozen winter.
“Don’t be sad, Daddy,” Danielle said quietly. “He wouldn’t want you to be sad.”
“Darling,” he whispered, setting aside the computer and pulling her into his lap, holding her close and smoothing back the dark curls. He always felt a sharp twinge in such moments, when his child felt the need to soothe him; he was the father, and it should be his job to comfort her, not the other way round. “Sometimes I can’t help but be sad. It’s like… You know how my hand hurts when it’s cold out?”
She nodded, taking the hand in question and looking thoughtfully at it in the blue glow from the laptop. Studied the last two fingers, missing their top two joints, and the deep furrow that bisected the broad palm. The scar tissue was lumpy in spots but it wasn’t frightening to her; her Daddy’s hand had looked like this for as long as she could remember, and he hardly remembered the pain of the old injury. There was nothing cutting there for her to sense.
“It’s like that. Old wounds ache sometimes. And sometimes you’ve just got to let them ache.”
Danielle turned and looked at the laptop screen, at a picture of Uncle Danny. He was sitting in a tree, long legs dangling over a huge branch, flowers stuck in his curly hair. His hair was a lot like hers-she pulled at a curl and looked at it thoughtfully. But his eyes were greyer than hers; her eyes were blue like Daddy’s. “It’s his birthday, isn’t it?” she asked. “You keep thinking of birthday cakes and candles.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“I dream about him,” she said in her flat way. “He laughs a lot in my dreams. He was… loud, wasn’t he?”
Robbie laughed softly. “He could be extremely loud. But… A lot of that was for show. A distraction, really.”
“Because he was afraid?”
“Yes, love. Because… sometimes he felt too much, and he thought too much. And he was afraid of being sick.” Robbie wondered, as he had many times over the years, if schizophrenia had been lurking in the shadows. If Danny’s manic moments would’ve become more pronounced given the time; if they would have had to face a slew of doctors and prescriptions had they not driven back from that particular party at that precise moment. It was a terrible question and a horrible thought: what if Danny’s death had been, in a way, fortuitous? A forestalling of something he had always dreaded, feared, worried about? Perhaps the universe had been kinder by ending it so abruptly before such a disease could claim him and wear him down?
It was impossible for Robbie to avoid such reasoning-and every time it popped into his head he felt an overwhelming, burning wave of guilt and shame and self-disgust. How could he even think that Danny would’ve preferred death over a life with mental illness? How could there be any sort of comfort in such an idea? It was monstrous of him to even entertain such a thought. It felt like he was betraying everything his cousin (brother, soul mate) had meant to him.
And little Dani reached out again and pressed her fingertips to his cheek. “It’s okay, Daddy,” she said with utter conviction. “He still loves you. He always will. And where he is now no one’s ever afraid. I know it.”
Billie loved when they got to stay at Jane’s-she liked to help her with her garden, and reveled in all of the open space in the backyard. David had even rigged up a pair of swings by the shed out of pipes and scrap metal. It was so much better than at their own house; the street they lived on was crowded with houses, each pressed so close to its neighbor that the patches of empty ground between and behind were narrow and good for absolutely nothing. So Mondays and Wednesdays were her favorite days of the week-while Mum was working at the garage with David, she and Dani and Boomhauer got to stay with Jane.
(Of course she often begged to be allowed to go to the garage and help out, lured by the promise of cars and machinery and grease, but Mum had made it very clear that she was still a bit too little to be tinkering with such things. “Just a couple more years, mousie,” Charlie had promised her. “And I swear I’ll let you come with. I’ll show you how to do anything you want to do, okay?”)
Today she was hard at work weeding the vegetable rows. Jane had given her a large bucket and a floppy straw hat and a trowel just her size for anything with troublesome roots. Dani, who didn’t share her sister’s inclination for grubbing in the dirt, was busy with a box of crayons and a coloring book at the little wicker table where they ate their lunches in nice weather. Boomhauer was sprawled at the edge of the garden and contentedly gnawing away at a deer antler. Jane kept watch from the back porch, seated comfortably in a fraying lawn chair and humming an old Patsy Cline song while she wove flat reeds into a basket.
Billie paused and sat back on her feet, rubbing the back of her dirty hand through the sweat clinging to her forehead. Mum had braided her hair that morning but long strands had escaped and were plaguing her; she wondered why ladies always had to have long hair. She glanced over at Jane; her waist-length salt-and-pepper hair was always so perfect in its tight braid. It lay over her shoulder like a glossy snake, as thick as the older woman’s wrist. Maybe if she had hair like that she wouldn’t mind it so much…
“Everything alright, honey?” Jane called, feeling her eyes on her. She looked up from her half-finished basket and smiled. Jane had a smile that felt like sunlight breaking through clouds on an overcast day, it was so warm and welcoming; Billie liked the way her bronze skin wrinkled around her mouth and eyes when she smiled. It felt even better than when a cat squeezed its eyes at her, which was the highest compliment a cat could give.
“Yeah, Auntie,” she said with a quick smile of her own. “Just thinkin’.”
Jane nodded and resumed her humming, one foot tapping to the beat. (It was always so endearing, she reflected, how Charlie’s girls called her ‘Auntie’. To them every adult who was friend to their parents was either an Aunt or an Uncle-but then the Beechum family was a strange and sprawling one, unfettered by the constraints of blood bonds.)
Billie turned and looked at her sister, pristine in her pale blue shorts and t-shirt, her sandaled feet swinging gently under her chair. Daddy had helped her wrestle her curls into a ponytail capped with a blue ribbon that morning-his work was holding up better than Mum’s. She reached out along the invisible string between them. Plucked it gently.
Dani’s pale eyes slid from her coloring. She lifted an eyebrow. ? appeared in Billie’s mind, the same shade blue as the ribbon in Dani’s hair. Everything Dani ‘said’ was blue, except when she was really angry-then it was a vibrant orange, like the logs at the heart of a campfire. Billie didn’t know what color she was; she didn’t know if her ‘words’ had a color for Dani. Maybe for her it was just the feelings behind the words rather than actual words. They had never discussed this communication between them because they didn’t see any reason to. It was just the way things were. Although Billie did wonder if Mum and Uncle Ben could do the same thing, if it was something all twins could do, or if it was just them.
Is Auntie okay? Billie asked her.
She’s thinking of Annie’s daddy, Dani replied.
Thought so. She only hums that song when she is. Should we do something to cheer her up?
It’s okay. It’s a happy sort of sadness, Dani said, rummaging in the crayon box for a new color.
Billie shrugged at that and started weeding again. She didn’t see how you could be happy and sad. Dani had tried to explain it to her-“It’s something grown-ups feel sometimes.”-but it still seemed confusing to her. But then she didn’t understand emotions the way her sister did; so long as Dani knew what was going on, that was the important thing.
She finished the row between the lines of sweet corn and picked up the grass-stained foam pad she’d been kneeling on. Stretched to ease the ache in her back and took a deep breath. The air smelled different here than it did in their neighborhood-there was always the smell of wood smoke, of someone cooking on a grill or over an open fire. A few houses down was Lucinda Mankiller’s chicken coop; on a quiet day when the wind was down they could hear the clucking of the hens. And when the wind picked up, sometimes they could even smell the grease and oil and paint and gasoline from Mum and David’s garage down the street.
Today, though, Billie smelled something new. Boomhauer did, too-he sat up in a hurry, dropping his well-chewed antler and poking his nose into the air. The ruff on the back of his neck started to rise and he pulled back his rubbery black lips and growled softly.
What is it? Billie asked him.
His reply wasn’t in words-like most animals, he rarely said words to her. Boomhauer typically talked to her in images and sensations, flashes of colors that carried very specific meanings. HUNGRY was the first thing he said, in a flash of harsh yellow, quickly followed by THREAT in a swirl of vermillion. His growl revved up into a higher pitch and Jane and Dani both looked up in alarm.
The musky tang grew stronger. Something was slinking through the thick bushes behind the shed. The branches shivered, the leaves parted, and a pair of large yellow eyes fixed on Billie’s. It was a dog-no, it was too big to be a dog. Its eyes were too wild, too. This wasn’t something that had been touched by man, trained and tamed into a friend. Its long legs and muzzle were a ruddy brown, but the rest of its face and body was a mottled gray and silver in hue.
Billie found herself thinking of one of her favorite movies, Balto.
Boomhauer started forward, hackles bristling and ears slicked back against his head. He barked, a sharp, short, threatening sound, the first time they’d ever heard him do more than grumble or whine. The creature just stared at him, alert but seemingly unconcerned.
“Girls,” Jane said quietly. “Girls, come here. Let’s go inside.”
Boomhauer was practically vibrating now with tension, moving obliquely, putting himself between Billie and the animal. Boom, don’t, she said quickly, reaching out and grabbing hold of his red collar.
THREAT, he said, straining, mind a swirl of orange and red. PROTECT.
She stared into the yellow eyes. Found what she thought of as the ‘thread’ that lead to the space behind its eyes. What do you want? she asked.
The silvery ears flickered. The animal tilted its head. It seemed to be looking at her with a greater degree of interest. HUNGRY, it said just when she had stopped hoping for an answer. FOOD. A chicken vividly appeared in her head, though it was colored all wrong and weirdly elongated in places-a chicken as it would appear to canine eyes.
No, she told it firmly, erasing the image. Those are Lucinda’s, not yours.
Black lips pulled back from plaque-yellowed teeth. The animal snapped at the air and Boomhauer almost pulled free from Billie’s grasp in his desire to lunge. FOOD NOW, the animal insisted.
Different food, Billie suggested just as emphatically. She pictured the haunch of venison she knew was in the big freezer-Jane had mentioned it to Mum when they were talking about Saturday dinner. David had brought it back last night from a hunting trip.
The animal stared at her. ????
We give it to you and you leave the chickens alone, Billie said. You leave and go somewhere else. West, she suggested, picturing the hill. Where the Little People of the Mountain live. Where there are no humans.
FOOD.
“Auntie?” Billie said-it had taken only a few seconds for the unspoken conversation; animal minds always worked so much quicker than humans’.
“Yes?” Jane said breathlessly.
“If we give it David’s deer meat, it’ll go away. Otherwise it’s gonna eat Lucinda’s chickens.”
“…Oh?”
“You should go and get it now.” She started backing up slowly, pulling Boomhauer with her. The animal didn’t move, its eyes fixed on hers, watching as Dani caught her free hand and they all moved to the back porch. A moment later Jane threw the slab of meat into the yard and the door slammed shut behind them.
And a moment after that the animal dug its teeth into the half-frozen flesh and dragged it off through the bushes and out of sight.
“That was a coywolf,” Jane said, staring out the window. “I’ve never seen one in person before-I didn’t know they got that big. What was it doing this deep into town?”
“It was really, really hungry,” Billie said, stroking Boomhauer’s neck and sending him soothing images. “It smelled the chickens.”
“I don’t like the thought of something like that prowling the neighborhood-I’ll tell David-”
“It’s okay, Auntie,” Billie cut her off firmly. “I told it to go to the hills, where the Yunwi Tsunsdi live. They’ll make sure it doesn’t come back.”
Jane hesitated, looking down at her thoughtfully. “Do you think it will listen to you?”
“I promised it we’d give it food and we did. Animals understand things like that,” she explained. “They see things simple. Black and white. Yes and no.”
“Billie, do you talk to many animals like that?”
“Sure,” she shrugged casually. “If we’re gonna be inside for a while, can we watch a movie?”
“Uh, Red?”
“Yes?” Charlie said, attention still focused on the wiggling chubby arm she was struggling to stuff into a sleeve.
“It’s not Halloween anymore,” Robbie pointed out with the patience of Job.
“I’m aware-it’s not usually this snowy in October,” she replied. “Bills, can you please cooperate with Mum, just for a second?”
“Charlie, I’m pointing out the fact that you’re trying to dress our child in a pterodactyl costume when Chrimbo is just around the corner.”
“Yeah, and? Dani doesn’t mind her t-rex onesie. Aha! There we go!” Charlie lifted the baby from the changing table and gave her a little jiggle. “Who’s my vicious pterosaur? That’s right! Let’s go strike terror in the hearts of lawyers and tiny land mammals!”
“Charlie,” he said firmly, stepping between her and the door. “Why are the twins in Halloween costumes?”
“Because why not?” Charlie countered blithely, balancing Billie on her hip. Danielle, already fastened in her carrier, gurgled loudly at their feet. “They were practically throwing these away at the holiday superstore, they were marked down so cheap-and you know how expensive baby clothes are, especially when you figure the kids only spend a couple weeks in ‘em before they need bigger sizes. They’re warm, they’re cute. And you know how I feel about gendered baby clothes. Dinosaurs aren’t gendered-dinosaurs need no gender.” She lifted Billie up overhead; the baby promptly laughed her ‘mad evil genius laugh’, as Ben called it. “Caw caw, motherfuckers!” she crowed, zooming her daughter dramatically through the air.
“Swear jar,” Robbie said automatically.
“They don’t know what the words mean,” Charlie protested.
“Yet. They’ll pick them up soon enough.” He didn’t need to be psychic to see all of the future parent-teacher meetings, the warning slips from the principal, the protestations of “Mum does it!” But at least that was a few years away-he had enough to worry about today. He bent down and picked up Dani, who was energetically kicking her felt-clawed feet. “Okay, munchkin, time to brave a bunch of funny looks from people who don’t understand your mum’s avant-garde sense of style…”
“Fuck!”
Robbie cracked an eye open with a frown, shifting on the couch and freeing the arm that had become pinned beneath him. He’d collapsed there, sprawling over the much-abused cushions, over an hour ago and must’ve dozed off-Dani had a bad earache and had spent the entire night grizzling; he’d sat up with her and rubbed her tiny back incessantly, which seemed to be the only thing that soothed her. He could vaguely remember handing her off to Charlie around 5 AM before passing out. The air smelled of coffee-Charlie must’ve started the pot already-which was a vast improvement over the sharp medicinal tang of Dani’s hated eardrops, and the light spilling between the blinds was a buttery yellow. Birds were singing, the heater hadn’t kicked on even once throughout the night: it promised to be a fine spring day-
“Fuck!”
His brain was moving sluggishly with sleep and it took him several seconds to realize that hadn’t been Charlie’s voice. He swiveled his head and stared into a pair of giant brown eyes framed by brown frizz and a toothless smile. The baby bouncer squeaked slightly as Billie flexed her legs, head rising and falling like a bobble-head on a swaying dashboard. “Fuck!” she crowed again with an air of triumph.
Robbie rolled over, rolled off the couch, and knelt in front of his daughter. “Naturally,” he mumbled to himself, gripping the frame of the bouncer. “You couldn’t just settle for ‘daddy’ or ‘mum’, could you?”
“Huh?” Charlie’s head appeared around the door frame. Dani was draped across her shoulder like a limp, wet sack of flour, boneless in the way only an exhausted infant could manage. “Were you talking to me?”
“No, I was talking to your daughter,” Robbie said pertly.
“My daughter? What’d she do?”
“Fuck!” Billie replied as if on cue. Robbie merely pointed an accusatory finger, which the baby promptly grabbed hold of.
“Well, it is a very versatile word,” Charlie said with a rueful smile. Dani started to stir, hands clenching around Charlie’s baggy t-shirt, twisting her head from side to side with disgruntled noises. “When you think about it, it might just be the only word that could fit any situation-”
“I can think of plenty of situations where it doesn’t belong. Like coming from our seven-month-old baby, for starters.”
“I’ll start saying ‘banana’ every other word and she’ll drop it in no time,” Charlie said, patting Dani’s back. “Feelin’ any better this morning, babycakes?”
Dani opened bleary sleep-encrusted eyes, stared at Charlie, and promptly began crying. It was a ragged, thin sound that made Robbie’s heart ache.
“Fuck,” said Billie, staring up at her sister. “Fuck!”
“At least she’s using it appropriately,” Charlie said by way of defense as Robbie took the squalling baby and she went to look for the bottle of eardrops.
Two days later, when Charlie was changing her diaper after her nap, the fully recovered Dani followed her sister’s suit and said her first word. Robbie wasn’t in the room that time, so no one else had to know that it had been ‘dammit’.
The twins were almost a year old when Robbie had a particularly bad vision. He wrestled with indecision for the better part of a day before finally telling Charlie.
“It’s the way things are,” she said calmly, spooning applesauce into Dani’s eager mouth. “You have to go. I’ll be fine-Jane’s always on hand if I need some help. Ooh, maybe I’ll give Gloria a call. She keeps hinting that she’d love to come for a visit. Perfect opportunity.”
Robbie was silent as he wiped pureed carrots off Billie’s round cheeks. Whereas Dani managed to get most of her meal swallowed with a minimum of fuss or mess, Bills was utterly incapable of eating without smearing half of her dinner into her hair, over her shirt, and across her high chair. A slippery orange hand darted out as she attempted to smoosh another handful into her father’s face; he caught the flailing arm and vigorously applied a washcloth to it. “That’s not it and you know it,” he said finally, expression thunderous and voice weary. “I know you can handle things while I’m gone.”
“Robin, you are not your father,” she said firmly. “I highly doubt you’ll run into an old school flame while you’re gone and decide to cheat on me. You’ll be gone for a couple weeks and then you’ll come home-easy as that. The girls won’t even notice you’re gone. They’ve got no object permanence at this stage.”
There had been a hunting rifle in his vision. A young man with dark skin and a bruised face swaying on his knees while he pleaded. Three men in camo jackets and ripped jeans standing over him, drunk, laughing. “…It was bloody,” he said quietly. “Hateful.”
He didn’t put the rest into words. Collateral damage was far too easy in such charged situations. What if it came to the last second and there was no time for a talk-down, no hope of police arriving before body bags would be necessary, no choice left save one: to put himself between the stranger and the barrel of a gun or to remain only a witness.
Charlie paused, looking across the table at him. It would be too easy to say that he had faced down worst and survived; it would be stupid to say they’d always had a cat’s luck. Just because you’ve dodged bullets before doesn’t mean you’re Kevlar. “Maybe you shouldn’t go alone,” she said finally, when Billie began to babble loudly and bash her tray with demanding fists. “Do you have time to call someone?”
“It won’t happen for a week or so, but I still need to track down the would-be victim.”
“Any idea where it’s going to happen?”
“Arizona. Feels like… near Tucson?”
“Then maybe you should call your sister,” Charlie suggested.
That night, travel plans made and plane tickets purchased electronically, Robbie lay awake beside his wife and stared at the protective charms hanging from the ceiling fan overhead. The window by the bed was half-open and the breeze that rustled the feathers and beads and colorful string smelled of bonfires and barbeque grills.
“It’ll be okay,” Charlie whispered in his ear. “You’re gonna help that guy and you’re gonna be home in no time.”
Robbie cleared his throat and moved restlessly, reaching up to rub at his eyes. “And if I’m not? What if one day I walk out the door-and I never walk back? What if the girls have to ask you what sort of person I was because they never get to see for themselves? What if-”
“Fuck ‘what if’,” Charlie said in a low and warning snap. “That’s not how we live our lives. That’s never how we’ve lived our lives. You focus on what’s right in front of you and you get things done as they come and that’s all.”
“After everything, I’ve still got a hole inside me, Charlie,” Robbie said hoarsely. “Where a father should’ve been. I can’t do that to our girls.”
“Then stay focused and do what needs to be done and get your ass back home,” Charlie said, pressing her chin into his shoulder with enough pressure that it hurt. “And remember that you don’t have to keep facing this shit by yourself any more. If I’ve got to stay home and keep an eye on the twins, there are others who’ve got your back.”
And that was the truth of it, really. There had always been a network of the Gifted for a reason-and it hadn’t been purely for their own preservation. When Diego pulled the rifle out of the man’s hand from across the parking lot; when he helped the beaten man stand and recover himself in the wake of certain death; and when the third man in the racist trio confessed everything in an honest statement to the responding policewoman under Akiko’s prodding, Robbie remembered that this would never be something he could just ignore or turn a blind eye to.
He’d been given his Gift for a reason, after all, and he could hardly squander it, no matter how good his reasoning. Because how could he come home to his wife, his girls, and ever be content if he knew he only did so by letting others die when he could’ve done something? How could his family ever be proud of him if he put them first at the cost of someone else’s life?
He wasn’t his father, because the choices he made that took him away from his family were also the only choices he could make that would bring him back.
“…don’t want to frighten them, is all,” Alberto said, pausing on the porch. “I can be a lot for a kid to take in.”
“Dani might be a little shy at first, but nothing phases Billie,” Robbie assured him. “She takes after Charlie that way-heaven help us.”
“I dunno. I grew up in a carnival,” Alberto pointed out. “And even I had a thing about guys with big beards. Used to scream bloody murder every time I saw one.”
“Well, look at it this way, then: what’s childhood without a healthy seasoning of irrational fear? They’ll get used to you.” He pushed open the door. “I’m home!”
There was a flurry of noise from the bedroom-a mixture of excited squeals, muffled barking, and the pounding of scrambling feet. Boomhauer lead the charge, collar jangling loudly in counterpoint to his odd huffing; the dog never truly barked. It sounded more like grumbling, as if he was muttering under his breath. Charlie had been immediately charmed and named him on the spot; she had to sit Robbie down once they were home from the pound and introduce him to King of the Hill by way of explanation.
Billie was right on the mutt’s heels, practically latched onto his tail. She’d ripped the hair-ties out again and her hair stood out in a brown nimbus from static electricity; there was a plastic wrench from the Fisher-Price car play set sticking out of the front pocket of her jean overalls. She stared up at Alberto with wide eyes and an open mouth while her sister stumbled into her. Dani looked at him, let out a little gasp, and promptly sat down with a floor-rattling thump before sticking the first two fingers of her right hand into her Kool-Aid-stained mouth.
“Hey,” Alberto said in his softest voice, crouching down slowly to be more at their level. “You guys don’t remember me. Last time I saw you, you were still just babies. I’m Alberto.”
“Uncle Al,” Billie announced matter-of-factly.
He grinned at that. “Yep. That’s me.”
“You’re funny,” she added.
“A little bit,” he agreed.
“Can I touch your face?”
“Sure.” His smile only widened as she ran steady, curious fingers down the bridge of his nose, across his cheeks, and over his crooked chin.
“Bumpy,” she confimed. “Wanna play robots?”
“How do you play robots?” Alberto asked, glancing at Robbie.
“You do this,” Billie held her arms out theatrically and started beeping. “And then Dani and I run and hide. You gotta catch us. And if we hit you with a laser you die. But then I can fix you with my tools.”
“Quite an imagination on that one,” Alberto commented hours later when they were sitting outside with a cooler of beers, the dog stretched out between their chairs. The girls’ window was open and they could hear Charlie supplying sound effects to the bedtime story-a particularly energetic roar was met with a flurry of high-pitched giggles.
“She told us very coolly last week at dinner that she’s going to be an engineer,” Robbie said. “Charlie was proper chuffed. Four years old and she’s already interested in science and machines.”
“Is Danielle usually that quiet? Or just around strangers?”
“That’s normal for her. She never says much, but she pays attention to everything. The chattiest she gets is when Ben and Liv Skype with us and Amari gets on-the two of them are thick as thieves. She signs better than I do.” He leaned over and scratched behind Boomhauer’s ears. The mutt sighed contentedly, long brushy tail slapping gently against the grass. “And she knows you don’t always need to talk to say something.”
Alberto thought of those huge blue eyes made all the more riveting by the black curls framing her solemn face, the way her gaze had bored into him with an intensity most children didn’t possess. “Empath?” he asked lightly.
Robbie nodded. “Akiko says it’ll only get stronger as she gets older. Puberty might be a little dicey, so she and Diego will probably come and stay for an extended visit if things get overwhelming for her. As it is, she’s been teaching her some simple things when they Skype. We’ve stressed that her Aunt is there for her if she ever needs help. And it’s a comfort knowing she won’t have to learn everything by herself the way Akiko had to.”
“What about Billie? Is she…?”
“We don’t know. Maybe she’s like me and Ben, and it’ll take some sort of trigger to awaken something latent. Maybe she’s normal. Honestly, I couldn’t say which I’d prefer.”
“Well, she might not have a Gift,” Alberto said sagely, sipping his beer. “But she sure as hell ain’t normal-not with you two for parents.”
Robbie grinned. “And not with uncles like you, yeah?”
“Daddy?”
Robbie looked up from his laptop, rubbing the heel of his hand across his damp cheek with a startled jerk. “Oh, hey, love. What is it?”
The nightlight shining from the bathroom behind her made her a stark silhouette, a tiny figure in a long blue nightgown, her Raggedy Ann doll dangling limply from one hand. She padded closer to the couch on silent, bare feet. Crawled up beside him and reached out to touch the smeared tear tracks on his face. He felt the concern radiate through her fingertips, a gentle warmth like the thaw of spring after a frozen winter.
“Don’t be sad, Daddy,” Danielle said quietly. “He wouldn’t want you to be sad.”
“Darling,” he whispered, setting aside the computer and pulling her into his lap, holding her close and smoothing back the dark curls. He always felt a sharp twinge in such moments, when his child felt the need to soothe him; he was the father, and it should be his job to comfort her, not the other way round. “Sometimes I can’t help but be sad. It’s like… You know how my hand hurts when it’s cold out?”
She nodded, taking the hand in question and looking thoughtfully at it in the blue glow from the laptop. Studied the last two fingers, missing their top two joints, and the deep furrow that bisected the broad palm. The scar tissue was lumpy in spots but it wasn’t frightening to her; her Daddy’s hand had looked like this for as long as she could remember, and he hardly remembered the pain of the old injury. There was nothing cutting there for her to sense.
“It’s like that. Old wounds ache sometimes. And sometimes you’ve just got to let them ache.”
Danielle turned and looked at the laptop screen, at a picture of Uncle Danny. He was sitting in a tree, long legs dangling over a huge branch, flowers stuck in his curly hair. His hair was a lot like hers-she pulled at a curl and looked at it thoughtfully. But his eyes were greyer than hers; her eyes were blue like Daddy’s. “It’s his birthday, isn’t it?” she asked. “You keep thinking of birthday cakes and candles.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“I dream about him,” she said in her flat way. “He laughs a lot in my dreams. He was… loud, wasn’t he?”
Robbie laughed softly. “He could be extremely loud. But… A lot of that was for show. A distraction, really.”
“Because he was afraid?”
“Yes, love. Because… sometimes he felt too much, and he thought too much. And he was afraid of being sick.” Robbie wondered, as he had many times over the years, if schizophrenia had been lurking in the shadows. If Danny’s manic moments would’ve become more pronounced given the time; if they would have had to face a slew of doctors and prescriptions had they not driven back from that particular party at that precise moment. It was a terrible question and a horrible thought: what if Danny’s death had been, in a way, fortuitous? A forestalling of something he had always dreaded, feared, worried about? Perhaps the universe had been kinder by ending it so abruptly before such a disease could claim him and wear him down?
It was impossible for Robbie to avoid such reasoning-and every time it popped into his head he felt an overwhelming, burning wave of guilt and shame and self-disgust. How could he even think that Danny would’ve preferred death over a life with mental illness? How could there be any sort of comfort in such an idea? It was monstrous of him to even entertain such a thought. It felt like he was betraying everything his cousin (brother, soul mate) had meant to him.
And little Dani reached out again and pressed her fingertips to his cheek. “It’s okay, Daddy,” she said with utter conviction. “He still loves you. He always will. And where he is now no one’s ever afraid. I know it.”
Billie loved when they got to stay at Jane’s-she liked to help her with her garden, and reveled in all of the open space in the backyard. David had even rigged up a pair of swings by the shed out of pipes and scrap metal. It was so much better than at their own house; the street they lived on was crowded with houses, each pressed so close to its neighbor that the patches of empty ground between and behind were narrow and good for absolutely nothing. So Mondays and Wednesdays were her favorite days of the week-while Mum was working at the garage with David, she and Dani and Boomhauer got to stay with Jane.
(Of course she often begged to be allowed to go to the garage and help out, lured by the promise of cars and machinery and grease, but Mum had made it very clear that she was still a bit too little to be tinkering with such things. “Just a couple more years, mousie,” Charlie had promised her. “And I swear I’ll let you come with. I’ll show you how to do anything you want to do, okay?”)
Today she was hard at work weeding the vegetable rows. Jane had given her a large bucket and a floppy straw hat and a trowel just her size for anything with troublesome roots. Dani, who didn’t share her sister’s inclination for grubbing in the dirt, was busy with a box of crayons and a coloring book at the little wicker table where they ate their lunches in nice weather. Boomhauer was sprawled at the edge of the garden and contentedly gnawing away at a deer antler. Jane kept watch from the back porch, seated comfortably in a fraying lawn chair and humming an old Patsy Cline song while she wove flat reeds into a basket.
Billie paused and sat back on her feet, rubbing the back of her dirty hand through the sweat clinging to her forehead. Mum had braided her hair that morning but long strands had escaped and were plaguing her; she wondered why ladies always had to have long hair. She glanced over at Jane; her waist-length salt-and-pepper hair was always so perfect in its tight braid. It lay over her shoulder like a glossy snake, as thick as the older woman’s wrist. Maybe if she had hair like that she wouldn’t mind it so much…
“Everything alright, honey?” Jane called, feeling her eyes on her. She looked up from her half-finished basket and smiled. Jane had a smile that felt like sunlight breaking through clouds on an overcast day, it was so warm and welcoming; Billie liked the way her bronze skin wrinkled around her mouth and eyes when she smiled. It felt even better than when a cat squeezed its eyes at her, which was the highest compliment a cat could give.
“Yeah, Auntie,” she said with a quick smile of her own. “Just thinkin’.”
Jane nodded and resumed her humming, one foot tapping to the beat. (It was always so endearing, she reflected, how Charlie’s girls called her ‘Auntie’. To them every adult who was friend to their parents was either an Aunt or an Uncle-but then the Beechum family was a strange and sprawling one, unfettered by the constraints of blood bonds.)
Billie turned and looked at her sister, pristine in her pale blue shorts and t-shirt, her sandaled feet swinging gently under her chair. Daddy had helped her wrestle her curls into a ponytail capped with a blue ribbon that morning-his work was holding up better than Mum’s. She reached out along the invisible string between them. Plucked it gently.
Dani’s pale eyes slid from her coloring. She lifted an eyebrow. ? appeared in Billie’s mind, the same shade blue as the ribbon in Dani’s hair. Everything Dani ‘said’ was blue, except when she was really angry-then it was a vibrant orange, like the logs at the heart of a campfire. Billie didn’t know what color she was; she didn’t know if her ‘words’ had a color for Dani. Maybe for her it was just the feelings behind the words rather than actual words. They had never discussed this communication between them because they didn’t see any reason to. It was just the way things were. Although Billie did wonder if Mum and Uncle Ben could do the same thing, if it was something all twins could do, or if it was just them.
Is Auntie okay? Billie asked her.
She’s thinking of Annie’s daddy, Dani replied.
Thought so. She only hums that song when she is. Should we do something to cheer her up?
It’s okay. It’s a happy sort of sadness, Dani said, rummaging in the crayon box for a new color.
Billie shrugged at that and started weeding again. She didn’t see how you could be happy and sad. Dani had tried to explain it to her-“It’s something grown-ups feel sometimes.”-but it still seemed confusing to her. But then she didn’t understand emotions the way her sister did; so long as Dani knew what was going on, that was the important thing.
She finished the row between the lines of sweet corn and picked up the grass-stained foam pad she’d been kneeling on. Stretched to ease the ache in her back and took a deep breath. The air smelled different here than it did in their neighborhood-there was always the smell of wood smoke, of someone cooking on a grill or over an open fire. A few houses down was Lucinda Mankiller’s chicken coop; on a quiet day when the wind was down they could hear the clucking of the hens. And when the wind picked up, sometimes they could even smell the grease and oil and paint and gasoline from Mum and David’s garage down the street.
Today, though, Billie smelled something new. Boomhauer did, too-he sat up in a hurry, dropping his well-chewed antler and poking his nose into the air. The ruff on the back of his neck started to rise and he pulled back his rubbery black lips and growled softly.
What is it? Billie asked him.
His reply wasn’t in words-like most animals, he rarely said words to her. Boomhauer typically talked to her in images and sensations, flashes of colors that carried very specific meanings. HUNGRY was the first thing he said, in a flash of harsh yellow, quickly followed by THREAT in a swirl of vermillion. His growl revved up into a higher pitch and Jane and Dani both looked up in alarm.
The musky tang grew stronger. Something was slinking through the thick bushes behind the shed. The branches shivered, the leaves parted, and a pair of large yellow eyes fixed on Billie’s. It was a dog-no, it was too big to be a dog. Its eyes were too wild, too. This wasn’t something that had been touched by man, trained and tamed into a friend. Its long legs and muzzle were a ruddy brown, but the rest of its face and body was a mottled gray and silver in hue.
Billie found herself thinking of one of her favorite movies, Balto.
Boomhauer started forward, hackles bristling and ears slicked back against his head. He barked, a sharp, short, threatening sound, the first time they’d ever heard him do more than grumble or whine. The creature just stared at him, alert but seemingly unconcerned.
“Girls,” Jane said quietly. “Girls, come here. Let’s go inside.”
Boomhauer was practically vibrating now with tension, moving obliquely, putting himself between Billie and the animal. Boom, don’t, she said quickly, reaching out and grabbing hold of his red collar.
THREAT, he said, straining, mind a swirl of orange and red. PROTECT.
She stared into the yellow eyes. Found what she thought of as the ‘thread’ that lead to the space behind its eyes. What do you want? she asked.
The silvery ears flickered. The animal tilted its head. It seemed to be looking at her with a greater degree of interest. HUNGRY, it said just when she had stopped hoping for an answer. FOOD. A chicken vividly appeared in her head, though it was colored all wrong and weirdly elongated in places-a chicken as it would appear to canine eyes.
No, she told it firmly, erasing the image. Those are Lucinda’s, not yours.
Black lips pulled back from plaque-yellowed teeth. The animal snapped at the air and Boomhauer almost pulled free from Billie’s grasp in his desire to lunge. FOOD NOW, the animal insisted.
Different food, Billie suggested just as emphatically. She pictured the haunch of venison she knew was in the big freezer-Jane had mentioned it to Mum when they were talking about Saturday dinner. David had brought it back last night from a hunting trip.
The animal stared at her. ????
We give it to you and you leave the chickens alone, Billie said. You leave and go somewhere else. West, she suggested, picturing the hill. Where the Little People of the Mountain live. Where there are no humans.
FOOD.
“Auntie?” Billie said-it had taken only a few seconds for the unspoken conversation; animal minds always worked so much quicker than humans’.
“Yes?” Jane said breathlessly.
“If we give it David’s deer meat, it’ll go away. Otherwise it’s gonna eat Lucinda’s chickens.”
“…Oh?”
“You should go and get it now.” She started backing up slowly, pulling Boomhauer with her. The animal didn’t move, its eyes fixed on hers, watching as Dani caught her free hand and they all moved to the back porch. A moment later Jane threw the slab of meat into the yard and the door slammed shut behind them.
And a moment after that the animal dug its teeth into the half-frozen flesh and dragged it off through the bushes and out of sight.
“That was a coywolf,” Jane said, staring out the window. “I’ve never seen one in person before-I didn’t know they got that big. What was it doing this deep into town?”
“It was really, really hungry,” Billie said, stroking Boomhauer’s neck and sending him soothing images. “It smelled the chickens.”
“I don’t like the thought of something like that prowling the neighborhood-I’ll tell David-”
“It’s okay, Auntie,” Billie cut her off firmly. “I told it to go to the hills, where the Yunwi Tsunsdi live. They’ll make sure it doesn’t come back.”
Jane hesitated, looking down at her thoughtfully. “Do you think it will listen to you?”
“I promised it we’d give it food and we did. Animals understand things like that,” she explained. “They see things simple. Black and white. Yes and no.”
“Billie, do you talk to many animals like that?”
“Sure,” she shrugged casually. “If we’re gonna be inside for a while, can we watch a movie?”