"It's A Boy"

Note: Roy meets his new baby sister and goes through the adjustment period of no longer being the baby of the family. Gran intervenes after a minor accident involving a toy bird and a broken vase, and they have a little chat.

The name 'Siobhan' is pronounced 'shiv-on', and she and Connor are a couple of Roy's childhood friends. They're only mentioned here, though, and won't show up in person until later.

"Chapter 7: Angry Potato Person"

September 12th, 1513

Gran was awake much earlier in the day than she usually was, and she stayed inside with Momma while he and Daddy waited outside. Two other ladies had arrived, and when Roy tried to follow them in they gently shooed him out.

This hurt his feelings immensely! This was his house, and it was his momma who was sick in bed! Whatever it was they were doing to her up there sometimes made her holler; he could hear it from outside. But Daddy had told him that crying was for babies, and he was not a baby! So, what could he do if he wasn't allowed to cry?

He could get angry.

"Daddy?"

"Yes?" Fergus looked up from the game of X's and O's he had been playing with his son, with limited success; each of them had a stick to draw with in the dust, and three-year-olds sometimes forgot the rules.

"I want those ladies to go away." Roy folded his arms and scowled at the closed front door.

Fergus, who had no siblings, looked from Roy's face to the house, then back to Roy. "Why?"

"'Cause they're hurting Momma, and they won't let me inside!" Roy flung down his stick. "They're mean! Make 'em to go away!"

"Ah," Fergus hid a smile and went from sitting on his knees to sitting cross-legged. He patted his knee, and Roy came over to sit. "They're not really mean, they just have a job to do. So does Momma."

"They're mean," Roy insisted.

Fergus didn't argue. Instead, he thought of a family visit they had taken when he felt it was safe enough; they hadn't heard from Brandel since that day when Roy was only a year old, and Fergus was beginning to think the man was dead. "Do you remember when our neighbor Anwell had us over for the afternoon, and his cat had her kittens while we were visiting?"

Roy shrugged. He did remember, at least a little bit. But it had been icky, and he hadn't wanted to watch. Instead, he, Connor, and little Siobhan had gone off to play. Later on, the kittens had turned into cute little fluff balls, and the children had enjoyed holding them until the mother cat became nervous. Then Anwell told them it was time to give the kittens back to their mother, and Roy's mother had said it was time to go home.

"Well, that's what Momma's doing right now."

Roy frowned as he worked this out in his head, then went wide-eyed when he came to the wrong conclusion. "Momma's having kittens?!"

Fergus laughed. A great, rolling guffaw shook his frame and nearly caused him to tilt over backwards. His reaction was caused by equal parts of tension and amusement, and he couldn't help it.

"Stop laughin' at me!" Roy vaulted off of his father's lap, greatly offended, and deliberately smudged the game of X's and O's with his foot to ruin it.

Fergus didn't chastise him for this, and quickly got his mirth under control. "Sorry, son. That...haha...I didn't mean to laugh at you. And no, Momma isn't having kittens. She's having a baby. And those ladies are here to help her because it's hard work."

"Oh..." The child played with the hem of his shirt, still clasping the stick in his other hand as his stunted purple wings moved in idle thought. "But why do they get to go in, and we don't? We live here."

Fergus's cheeks turned red, and he cleared his throat. "Um...well..."

Roy remembered the kittens being born, and something clicked. "Oh! Is it 'cause the baby comes out of-"

"Shh," Fergus said quickly, turning redder than ever. "Yes. But it's not for men to see."

"But you said it's-"

"Natural, yes, it is. So is going to the privy, but we do that alone when we're old enough to not need help, right?" Fergus wished Cori was there to explain it!

"Ohhh," Roy nodded, not fully understanding how these two activities were in any way connected, but he understood the concept of privacy. And, since his father had said his mother needed help, he didn't ask why the ladies were there. But he did have another question. "How did Momma get her baby?"

Now, this was a conversation that Fergus definitely wasn't ready to have! He drew another grid on the ground. "I'll tell you when you're older. Want to go first?"

"Yeah!"

Dinner had been brought outside to Roy and Fergus; cold sandwiches, which neither of them complained about, and a pitcher of water. Gran left for work when it began to get dark.

Fergus sat on a large rock with Roy perched on his knee. He seemed unusually tense and anxious, and this scared Roy a little bit. His father kept a lot to himself, but those little glances up at the curtained bedroom window whenever a muffled cry reached their ears spoke volumes.

"Did Momma yell a lot when I came out?"

"I don't remember," Fergus lied.

"Yeah, you do. You said it's bad to fib!" Roy wagged a disapproving finger before looking sad. "Did I hurt Momma?"

Fergus had to smile at that. "Your momma wanted you, just as she wants this baby. She knew it would hurt, but she chose to go through it anyway. And when she had you in her arms, she forgot about the pain and was happy."

"Hmph..." Roy rubbed his knee, which he had scraped rather badly. "My knee still hurts, and it happened years ago."

Ah, a child's gift for exaggeration. "That happened two days ago, and you didn't have something good when it was done."

"Momma gave me a sweet," Roy pointed out, remembering the delicious sugared dates his mother occasionally gave him for being a brave boy.

"Well...a baby is a little like a sweet, only better." Fergus explained. "Because you have a whole new person to get to know. A person you and your wife made together."

"Not me! Girls are icky!" Roy stuck out his tongue.

Fergus chuckled. "See if you feel the same way in fifty years. That's when we usually begin to see them differently."

Roy wasn't convinced, but before he could argue another scream filtered through the closed window. He buried his face in his father's chest and tried very hard not to cry. Rather than scold him, Fergus rubbed his back until he fell asleep.

Roy's sister was born just before midnight, bringing a day of chaos and confusion to an end. The boy awoke to his father accidentally jostling him as he got to his feet, and he blinked owlishly at the woman who had disturbed them. It was one of the ladies from before, and she was smiling.

"What is it?" asked Fergus, seeming to have forgotten that his son was there, even though he was holding him.

"It's a girl. Mother and daughter are doing just fine." replied the midwife before turning to Roy, who still wasn't sure if he liked her or not. "You have a sister, little one."

"I'm not little; I'm a big boy." Roy scowled, an expression which only deepened when both adults chuckled at him.

"My apologies, sir!" she curtsied and motioned for them to go inside.

Roy craned his neck to look behind him as Fergus carried him up the stairs, taking them two at a time. He didn't know what he expected to see, having never seen a newborn Fairy before, but he was confused when all he saw was a balled-up blanket and a shock of dark brown fuzz.

It turned out that the fuzz was his sister's hair, and she was swaddled up and fussing in Cori's arms. Fergus put him down and joined Cori at the other side of the bed, and Roy grew impatient. He bounced on the balls of his feet, his hands resting on the side of the bed. "I wanna see, I wanna see!"

"Shhh, you'll frighten her. Here she is," Cori smiled tiredly, turning the bundle slightly so that they could see better.

Well, the baby did not like this at all! She had just begun to calm down from her ordeal of being born into a cold world and getting bathed in water that could have been warmer, and now that she had finally gotten warm and comfortable again she was being moved! Red-faced and squalling, she clenched her fists and squirmed.

Fergus kissed Cori's forehead, and there was some murmured conversation, but Roy wasn't paying attention to what the grown-ups were doing. He reached out and tickled the baby's chin, which she either didn't notice or didn't like; the wailing continued. "You look like an angry potato."

"Roy..." Fergus looked appalled, but Cori giggled.

"What? She does!" Roy had no idea what he had done wrong, but it seemed he wasn't really in trouble, because there was no lecture.

"She's had a long day," Cori told him, "We both have. Roy, this is your little sister, Brinna."

"Hi, Brinna!" he grinned, but the baby wasn't appeased.

"Perhaps she's hungry," Fergus suggested.

"I tried, but she's too agitated to nurse," Cori told him.

Roy didn't know what that meant, but he knew that sometimes sucking his thumb made him feel better. He took Brinna's wrist with a gentleness neither of his parents expected, and brought the baby's fist to her mouth. At first she continued to fuss, but when it registered that there was something in her mouth she quieted down and began to suck.

"Alllll better," he crooned, as his mother sometimes did for him when she bandaged his scrapes. His parents thought this was amusing, but he whispered in her ear, "Grown-ups don't know anything."

Brinna opened her eyes and stared up at the face that was still very young, but was older than hers. Then she smiled. He smiled back.

The two partners in crime had officially met.

September 26th, 1513

But sibling hijinks were well in the future. It wasn't long before Roy learned that the entire dynamic of his household had changed. The baby woke him up at night with her cries, and Momma didn't have as much time for him as she did before. She was always too busy nursing the baby (Roy learned what that meant fairly quickly, and simply accepted it as a natural thing that happened), or changing the baby, or resting. He had to be very quiet, or he would wake the baby.

He couldn't pick the baby up because he was too small, and his parents were afraid he'd drop her; he had to be sitting down if he wanted to hold her, and one of the adults would lay her on his lap. 'Two hands!' they said, fretting as if he didn't know what he was doing. 'Support her head!' He knew, he knew!

Brinna didn't really do much, he found out. When she wasn't sleeping (which she was most of the time), she was crying or eating. Sometimes she would be awake and quiet, but she would just...lie there. To make matters worse, Momma had cried when he told her that babies were 'boring', and Daddy had scolded him. He had only told them the truth! He hadn't meant to hurt Momma's feelings!

Dinner would sometimes be a bit late, because Daddy, who now cooked most of the meals because Momma would be doing all the Tooth Fairy work someday, was too busy helping Momma with the baby.

The baby, the baby, the baby!

One day, when Brinna was two weeks old, Roy was playing with a toy bird his father had brought home for him. He ran from one end of the house to the other, holding the bird above his head so that the wind from their passing made the wings flap, and he wasn't paying special attention to the objects in his path. During one of his trips past a small decorative table, one of the bird's wings caught the edge of a porcelain vase, which his father had given his mother on her birthday.

The vase wobbled, and Roy watched in horror as it seemed to fall in slow motion, shattering on the floor and spilling water and dandelions (which he had picked for her that morning) everywhere.

Brinna heard the sound from upstairs, and she wailed.

Cori took one look at the vase, heard her daughter's cries, and began to weep as well. Gran had called her moods 'the baby blues', whatever that meant.

"Roy!" Fergus boomed as he went to console his wife. "What have I told you about running in the house! Now you've made the baby cry, and you've broken your mother's favorite vase!"

Roy dropped the wooden bird and looked down at his shoes. Tears filled his eyes, and his lower lip quivered. Daddy didn't want him to cry anyore, and if he did that he'd be in even worse trouble! But he couldn't help it. Fergus was speechless when he bolted from the room with an anguished wail, but Gran certainly wasn't.

"Fergus, you frightened him! He's only a child." The Tooth Fairy scolded, "It was an accident."

Cori was torn; which child should she tend to?! The baby had been frightened, and she needed her. But her son hadn't intentionally misbehaved, and now he was upset too!

Fergus put a hand to his wife's back and guided her towards the stairs to see to Brinna. "Give me a minute, and I'll talk to him."

"Why don't you let me try first?" suggested Tooth Fairy, getting to her feet with a slight groan as she held her back. "I'll let him know you're not angry. If that's the case..."

Fergus didn't like it when his mother-in-law meddled in his parenting, but he knew that Roy hadn't meant to break the vase or scare the baby, just as he himself hadn't meant to yell at the boy. He gave a terse nod as his wife climbed the stairs. "I'll, um...I'll be down in about ten minutes."

Tooth Fairy followed her grandson without a backwards glance at her son-in-law, who hung his head before trudging up after Cori.

Tooth Fairy went into the kitchen and saw all of the pots and pans strewn across the floor. She heard muffled whimpers coming from the cabinet, and she realized that her grandson had cleared out a place to hide himself. Apparently, he didn't think that the pots and pans would give away his location. Either that, or he didn't care.

A sad smile crossed her face as she navigated the obstacle course. She didn't have to gather up her skirts, because Fairy women generally didn't wear them. If anyone on the ground happened to look up, a dress would actually be rather immodest, so most Fairy women wore trousers like the men unless they went out among the humans with their wings magically hidden.

She grabbed a cookie from the jar on the counter and knelt down by the cabinet door, wincing as her knees popped, and gave three light knocks.

"Go 'way!"

"Oh..." Tooth Fairy sounded disappointed. "But I have a cookie for you..."

"I don't want it."

Tooth Fairy settled herself on the floor, pushing a pot away with her foot to sit cross-legged beside the door. "Oh, well, that's a shame...I only give cookies to good little boys, and you're the only one around."

"I'm not good..." he sniffled. "I broke it...I made Momma and the baby cry!"

"I know it was an accident, and so does Momma..."

"Daddy hates me! And all they care about is that dumb baby!"

Tooth Fairy sighed and reached up to place the cookie on top of the counter as her grandson began to sob. "Come out. Come on, come to Gran..."

There was a moment when she thought he hadn't heard her, or had decided to ignore her, but then the door opened a crack. "Can I have my cookie first?" he sniffled pitifully.

She stifled a laugh. "Of course you can."

After she passed the cookie through the door, which he quickly closed, she heard soft crunching sounds in between his hiccuping breaths. He was calming down, though; cookies did it every time! When he finally deigned to join her, his face was red and streaked with tears, and his chin was speckled with crumbs. She wiped away the crumbs and took him onto her lap. "Your daddy doesn't hate you, sweetling. You knocked over the vase by accident, and he yelled at you by accident. He's very sorry now, and he knows you're sorry too."

"They love the baby more than me..." Roy mumbled as he cried on his grandmother's shoulder.

"I know it seems that way..." Tooth Fairy rubbed his back just below his new wings. "The new baby needs a lot of attention, just like you did when you were that little. You can do a lot of things for yourself now, but she still needs help. They still love you just as much as they ever did, and they don't love her more than they love you. They love you both the same."

"But all she does is eat, sleep, and poop!"

Tooth Fairy snickered. "So did you."

"Nuh-uh!"

"Oh, yes. And some nights you would cry for hours. Your poor tummy was hurting you. Maybe that's why she cries at night, because her tummy aches."

Roy found his resolve to dislike the baby wavering. He knew about tummy aches! A few months back, he had been very sick, and even though they tried not to let him see it, his parents had been scared. 'Magic Flux', they called it. He didn't remember much; just that he'd been hot and cold at the same time, and that he had thrown up a lot, which made him cry. Back then, Daddy had let him. Now he wasn't supposed to...and he'd done it anyway. He hid his face again. "Daddy told me no more crying...I'm in trouble!"

Tooth Fairy had no idea what he was talking about, but her 'mama bear' (or, in this case, 'grandma grizzly') instincts kicked in, and she rocked him on her lap. "No, you're not. And if you're in trouble with him, then he's in trouble with me."

"Cause you're his momma?"

"I'm his wife's momma, and he's living in my house. But I don't think you'll be in trouble with him. We all have to adjust to the changes a new baby brings to the house. Before, he only had one child. You. Now he's very busy with two. And sometimes when we have a lot to do, we get overwhelmed."

"What's 'overwhelmed'?"

"It's...hmm...Remember when Momma was teaching you your letters, and you couldn't remember them all at first? You got very upset with yourself, because you wanted very much to get it right, you remember?"

Roy sniffled and nodded. "Uh-huh..."

"What did you do when you kept getting it wrong?" Tooth Fairy asked him.

He looked down. "I got mad and told Momma 'no', 'cause I couldn't do more, and she made me do more..."

"Well, she was just trying to teach you. But were you really mad at Momma?"

"Yes."

"All right, were you only mad at Momma? Or were you mad at yourself because you couldn't do it right away?"

"...Me."

"But you still love her, right?"

Roy nodded, wiping snot from his nose with his fist. Gran 'tsked', and wiped his hand and nose with her handkerchief.

"Well, that's a little like what happened today. Your father is trying very hard to be a good daddy, and he lost his temper when things didn't go right. But he still loves you, just like you still love Momma. Even though he got mad at you, he was a little bit mad at himself. After all, he's the one who put the vase so near the edge of the table."

"Ohhh...so it's Daddy's fault?"

"That's not what I meant...It was nobody's fault. Just an accident. And maybe I can glue the vase back together. Now...are you ready to go talk to Daddy?"

Roy sniffled a final time, then looked up at the counter. "Can I have another cookie first?"

The older lady chuckled merrily at this, and got to her feet after setting him on the floor. "Yes, you may. But first you have to put away the pots and pans."

Fergus had come down to check on Roy, and he overheard some of what his mother-in-law was saying. He didn't know exactly how to take it. It made him feel very uncomfortable, to be analyzed like that, and what made it worse was that she was right. He'd thought he was doing very well, until he heard the crash-tinkle of breaking porcelain, followed by his daughter's wails and his exhausted wife's sobs. He had simply snapped, and now he felt terrible. It was obvious that his son hadn't knocked over the vase on purpose, but he'd reacted before he could stop himself, and now the poor boy was in tears.

To make matters worse, Cori was cross with him over this. "You were too hard on him, Fergus. He's only three!"

"I know," Fergus managed to avoid snapping at her too.

"So, why are you up here with us? You should be down there with him."

These after-baby moods are even more volatile than her pregnancy moods. "Mother is talking to him, and I didn't want to interrupt. Cori, I'm sorry. You know I didn't mean to snap."

"If you're sorry, then you go back down there and make it right!" Cori hissed, careful to avoid raising her voice and upsetting Brinna. The baby nursed peacefully at her mother's breast, oblivious to the turmoil that surrounded her.

Fergus had learned long ago never to argue with her when she was angry. He hung his head and went back down.

Tooth Fairy met him in the living room, leading Roy by the hand.

The boy had a cookie in his other hand, which he hid behind his back; it was before dinner, and he wasn't supposed to have those until after.

Fergus could see the effect he'd had on his son, and remorse settled over him like a soggy blanket. The boy was afraid! He looked back at his mother-in-law, whose expression matched Cori's from a moment before, and he ducked his head like a scolded child. "Mother, I'd like a word with my son. Alone, please."

Tooth Fairy looked down at Roy, who seemed uncertain, but she smiled and nodded before letting go of his hand and going upstairs. Roy watched her leave, then looked hesitantly up at his father. "I'm sorry, Daddy..."

Fergus felt his eyes begin to sting, and he blinked a few times before getting down on one knee. "And I'm sorry for losing my temper. That was very wrong of me."

Roy held up the half-eaten treat. "I meant for the cookie..."

Realizing what he meant, Fergus chuckled. "I'll overlook it this time. Come here..."

Fergus held out his arms, and Roy rushed into them for a hug.

"I'm not bad?"

"No," Fergus shook his head and picked him up as he rose, holding him close with a hand to the back of his head. "You're not bad at all. Accidents happen. And I shouldn't have had it so close to the edge. Can you forgive your crab of a father?"

Roy imagined his father with pincers instead of hands, and giggled against his neck. "Uh-huh. Can I have another cookie?"

"How many is that?"

"Two."

"No, not before dinner."

"Awww..."

Tooth Fairy, who had been listening at the top of the stairs, smiled approvingly before retreating into her room. She needed rest.