1989

All three of his sons were alive.

By some miracle, Renshuu, Miso, and Okorippoi had all made it through the winter. They were thin and weak, but as the weather warmed, their eyes brightened, and they began to explore their world with new vigor. They eagerly ate the food that Splinter brought, and, to his astonishment, they began to regurgitate words.

This was a far happier event than when a meal made an unexpected reappearance. One of the turtles would peep out a syllable, then look around, almost as though to see where the sound came from. The others looked on in amazement, then sometimes broke into a chorus of echoes, discovering that they too could perform this feat.

Splinter had to shush them, because he could not let a passerby hear a child's voice crying "meat" or "fire" from a sewer grate, but he always quieted them by gathering them up in a warm hug, and pressing their faces to his fur.

He hoped the lesson they took from this was that they must moderate their volume, and not that he wished them to silence their speech entirely.


He found a more comfortable, more secure space, where his sons would be able to exercise their voices and their bodies freely. He moved his family there, and then he began to fill their new home with the kinds of things he had seen in his Master Yoshi's house: mattresses to sleep on, vessels to eat out of, books to look at, fabric items to wear.

He dressed his sons, but every time he turned around they were toddling at top speed across the Lair, as he had come to call it, naked and laughing.

He soon gave up on that particular endeavor.


Fire was a constant companion, the only way to provide light in their underground home. With some experimentation, Splinter also learned to cook with it, finding that in this way he could provide more and better food to his sons. They ate ravenously and grew quickly.

Their fascination with the dancing flames was a constant problem. Splinter did his best to teach them not to touch, but he feared that some day, something terrible would happen.


He taught them other things as well: how to run silently, how to stand still in a shadow, how to fall without getting hurt. These were the very rudiments of the secret arts that his Master Yoshi had practiced.

The turtles thought this was a wonderful game. Renshuu was perpetually determined to win. Miso had obvious natural talents, though Splinter could tell he would always struggle with patience and discipline. Okorippoi had a distressing tendency to respond to his own failures by crying or hitting someone.

Life, Splinter could tell, was going to be an adventure.


The young turtles tired easily. While they slept, Splinter taught himself.

After mastering cooking, he turned to the mixing of medicines. This was a kind of special cooking he had seen Tang Shen do sometimes, when Yoshi or Mashimi or the Dai-Sensei was not feeling well. The ingredients were strongly-smelling and not difficult to identify. He collected them from the world above, stored them carefully, and learned how to use them.

He learned, too, to make weapons. One of the homeless men he had observed always carried crude daggers carved from formerly-innocuous objects, and was known for using these blades to great effect against anyone he perceived to be standing in his way.

Splinter did not want to be like this man. But he had seen his Master Yoshi use a similar weapon to defend himself, and he remembered the movements his master had made with it.

He made such a weapon, and practiced with it daily.

Finally, he learned to read. This was by far the most difficult lesson. His acute senses were of no help in trying to decipher the symbols printed on the pages of the books he had scavenged. Moreover, after many nights of no progress, he realized that the books were written in English, a language he understood only poorly.

Some of the books had pictures. Splinter spent the most time with these, trying to use the images to guess the meanings of the words.

One book in particular fascinated him. Unlike the simple, brightly-colored illustrations in the other books, this one had pictures that were dark, intricate, spectacularly realistic.

Eventually, Splinter understood that some of the words in this book were the names of the humans who had created these beautiful pictures.


As Splinter's skills with language improved, he realized he had chosen poor names for his sons. He could not go on calling these bright, affectionate boys Practice, Hot-tempered, and Soup.

One night, as the children were curled up together on the mattress, Splinter opened the book of beautiful pictures and studied the names with a new kind of interest.

Renshuu, pronounced with his Japanese accent, sounded to him like Leonardo. That would be the name of his most attentive son.

None of the names began with an O sound, but there were the R and the P, next to a picture of a kind-looking woman with two children, one of whom was holding a bird. Okorippoi loved his brothers and was fascinated by animals. He would be Raphael.

And then, Miso. Masolino and Masaccio were close matches for the sound of his sweetest son's name. But, these persons had few words dedicated to them in the book, and their pictures were not among Splinter's favorites. The names seemed like inauspicious ones, not good parallels for the many words and full-page illustrations the book devoted to Leonardo and Raphael.

Splinter paged through the book again, and then he saw it.

Michelangelo.

It would take Splinter some time to be able to pronounce this name. It would take longer for his son to grow into it. But after spending the first year of his life being called by the name of a common food, Miso deserved the grandest name his father could give him.


In the morning, Splinter greeted his sons by their new names.

"Ohayo, Leonardo. Ohayo, Michelangelo. Ohayo, Raphael."

The children did not seem to notice that Splinter was calling them something different than he had before, and he hoped that as they grew, they would forget that their father had ever given them such unbecoming names.