Chapter 3

It's hard to know what to feel all the time. Most of us have a vocabulary of experiences to easily draw from when confronted with a new situation, and can usually find something that in some way at least remotely resembles it. For comparison, or at least as a basis from which to improvise. If you were to find yourself wandering through a bedroom in a pitch-black house that you've never been in before, and you know, this can and does happen, for instance if you wake up in a strange place and need to find your way to the nearest bathroom or escape with your life or avoid breakfast or what have you, then you might have a reasonable set of expectations concerning the contents of the room. Bed, nightstand, dresser. Some things that you encounter, though difficult and sometimes painful to identify in the dark, are reasonable, once you've figured them out. Exercise bicycle, foosball table, large stuffed polar bear doll. I felt that the man I was looking at had suddenly found a wading pool full of tapioca. To extend the metaphor, as tapioca is slippery when stood in, he naturally appeared a little wobbly. I thought of whether or not this expression might enter common parlance, but decided that "wobbly as my long lost father standing in a wading pool of tapioca" lacked a certain euphony.

Noticing something, I said, "You're busy."

He all of a sudden looked a little harried. "Yes, ah, well, I, huh, erm…" He sounded like he was making up a new alphabet. After a moment, he closed his eyes and collected himself.

"I never thought I'd see you again," he said simply. "You were our first-born, and…we were heart-broken when you disappeared. For so long, we just … we couldn't bring ourselves to … " He put his hand on my shoulder. "We loved you so much. It was only last year that we, we felt ready to – and now, you're here, and…" He managed a small chuckle. "And you're so big. Sorry, that's a strange thing to … You're grown up, and of course you're bigger." He gave me a look that I felt like I recognized, though I'd never seen it. Maybe, I thought, I'm just feeling sympathy for him, or maybe some things travel with the blood. He seemed to be saying, "a little help, maybe? I just have no bloody mention of this here. I'll be saying foolish things if I'm allowed to continue. Just step in any time, if you would."

"My Aunt tells me you and …my mother do magic as well." That's what I lobbed at him. The desire to help in my experience is not the same as the ability to do so.

"Okay…" He ran his hands through his hair. "I have a lot of questions, and I'm sure you do…" From somewhere in the house came a long, drawn-out groan. "But I'll be honest. My wife is about to have a baby, a son, our second son - and I've got to help her, and the midwife is late, and I'm …"

"Do you have a couch?" I said.

His face went blank.

Arthur finally spoke up. "We could sit on it while you two got on with the birthing."

"Yes. That'll – yes." He looked relieved. Here was something he could actually do.

There was a love seat of sorts in a room just off of the foyer where we could watch the front door. It was a beautiful door – heavy broad-grained wood, windows on either side, red velvet-looking drapes. He disappeared upstairs with a promise that when this was all over we would all sit down and make sense of all of this.

I was sitting there thinking about people I remembered. And basically there weren't any but Arthur. No friends that I went places with, no people at the store that I knew on sight, and… no women. That was actually really irksome. Imagine that. Arthur had said I was slow to get up in the morning, and I kind of remembered that, I suppose because she wiped my memory out at some time of day that wore off around breakfast. The awakening I was experiencing was a little like dragging myself out of bed, and one thing I was waking up to slowly, like a hangover, was the bitter feeling of having been lonely without being aware of it for many years. Not just an orphan, but no girlfriend. Ever.

I stood up. I had to say something out loud. I had to tell Arthur just how badly she'd ruined my life. I had to let this out or I would explode.

Abruptly the front door flew open, banging into the wall with considerable force. A little vase on a table by the door began to teeter, and my eyes were drawn to it for a moment, just as it began to fall over the edge. But then I looked at the person in the doorway.

These things, all at once. Very red hair. Flashing brown eyes. Splash of freckles. Pale gray robes. Are you all like this? Vase frozen, on the way to the floor, not moving at all. Curtains drawing up like shoulders shrugging. Her face towards me, gone from driven and intense to surprised and shocked. Her mouth open, her gasp. My heart thudding, my ears ringing. Just the first, just the first, just not used to…to…oh, god, she's so…

I'm the only one who knew the vase shattered before it hit the floor.

"Wh…wh…where is she?" she managed to get out. "Ooh," she added, looking down briefly at the vase bits everywhere. Words like "precious", "sparks" and "hmmerrrrhh" bubbled but never made it to my mouth because she bit her lip. What settled in my mind was, "I want to help with that," meaning the lip business, and fortunately I didn't actually say that. No, I came out with something far more suave.

"Err…you didn't break that."

Genius.

"Upstairs", Arthur said irritably. The woman took a second look at her, made up her mind, and put her conclusion away somewhere.

For goodness' sake, the curtains are showing off for her, I thought.

She'd turned at the noise and they were billowing in a way that was bashful yet unmistakably meant to impress, in a very forties-musical-with-water-ballet-sort-of-way. I was beginning to think that if this were I being magical, then I had about the most useless ability imaginable. Able to animate cloth objects and pop crockery at a distance. She would think I was an idiot.

"Who are you?" she said, regaining some of her bearings. What I liked was, she was a little irate-sounding. I guessed that she was unaccustomed to being surprised, and that my actually succeeding in doing so was considered an affront.

"No idea," I blurted out. Then, "Go on, they need you, I'll be here when you're done. We can figure it out then." Bloody tongue, made entirely of stupid.

"Right…" she said. "Right, then. I'll just…shall I…oh, Merlin, she must be – " She looked horrified, and rushed from the room. I heard her thumping up the stairs, and I can say now, there were twelve. Twelve thumps, not too loud, as she was a smaller woman, slight but fleet, I thought, and for some reason I wanted to see her running, hair floating madly, the image burning an afterimage in my eyes, like fingerpainting, like a flag on a brilliantly sunny day.

I turned to look at Arthur, weighing my words before saying, "Was it really necessary to have made me forget beautiful women?" I heard a roaring in my ears, my chest gave a great twist and all of a sudden I passed out.

Like anybody else, I don't remember all of my dreams, but I'm pretty sure the one I had during that blackout was a doozy.

I heard mumbling from far away, and struggled to hear it, but I couldn't move at all. In fact, I felt like a slab of petrified wood, only a memory of what it was to move and live. My eyes would not open. My hands would not move. It was as if I had never had a body, only a false memory of one, but it was a vivid memory, and so I felt some loss, and maybe a little pain. Yes, there was a bit of pain now. References. I needed references to something. Anything. I was really at sea here. Sea. I had had a dream, of being in the ocean, waves rolling over like…something or other, and faces in the clouds, and then I had woken up and there had been a blanket floating above me – was that still the dream? And then breakfast and then this lady, a sort of mannish-looking lady, fed me breakfast and eggs flew around the room, who was she – Ariel? Arnette? Arthur? Yeah, right, Arthur, get serious. Am I Arthur? I don't feel like an Arthur. No, I think her name is Arthur and I'm…I'm…a little movement to the right, dear…what?...Deasil! That sounded like a sneeze. She's my aunt. Not my uncle? No, my aunt.

Voices became more distinct. I wanted to struggle to the surface, but something was preventing it, and I was actually a little panicked about that. I pushed against it with all of my strength, and with a dull wrenching feeling my arms moved and my head jerked up. Now I could hear one of the voices quite clearly saying "Bloody hell!"

My eyes opened slowly, and I took in a good bit of red. On my left sat a really attractive redheaded woman, youngish, who looked a little amused. Directly in front of me was a tall redheaded man around my age with what looked like a miniature pool cue pointed in my general direction, though he wasn't threatening about it – rather, he actually looked a little baffled. (I thought I had more of a right to be baffled considering he had chosen a tiny pool cue to be the appropriate widget for this situation, whatever it was.) It seemed that he was not too far from a laugh, that he might never be. I thought I'd probably like him. The last redhead was a fortyish woman with kind eyes that were a little tired but clear. She had reached out to my arm that was kind of flailing a little and had grasped it gently.

They appeared to be nice, but I had no idea of who they were or where I was.

What I felt was a need to belong in this, that it seemed right for me to be here, and maybe I'd forgotten something, what got me here, why I was lying down in a strange house, why my head hurt a bit. Where was Arthur? Weren't we supposed to go somewhere?

Casting about, my mind came up with: "I'd love for us to go around the room introducing ourselves, but I wouldn't be able to hold up my end."

The younger woman abruptly laughed, then looked a little embarrassed. "Sorry," she said, "that wasn't funny." Brown eyes widened, then her lips parted, and I wondered if she thought that was an insult or something, and then after a bit of thought she said, "I'm going to wait outside now where I won't be…talking in here, or…something." She stood up, flushing a little, and shook her head slightly. To herself she said, "What on earth…"

"Will you be all right?" the young man said to my mother. He looked like he wanted to raise his wand again but was resisting it.

"With him? Always," she said.

"But he threw it off…I mean, right off…"

"Well, then, what help would that be again?" She grinned at him and with a flush of his own, he rose.

From the doorway to the room we were in, the young woman said, "It's nice seeing you again."

"Yeah," I said. "I'll try to remember that."

She looked a little quizzical.

"That's a little unusual for me, is all."

"Oh. Well." She actually looked mildly apologetic, as if she were saying, "Sorry I can't go anywhere with that – you're not giving me much to work with, are you?" Which I agreed with.

The young man looked a little amused, and a little irritated. I guessed that they were family to each other. "Come on, then, you can get your banter in later, love." The look she gave him of embarrassment and then of withering ire fascinated me. I wanted to see more of her expressions, as many as she had. Where that thought came from I wasn't sure.

But first things first. The door closed behind them and here we were.

"I'm Lily," she said softly.

"Best guess, my name is Deasil," I said.

"You're my son," she said, smiling, and I wanted to feel like I'd seen her smile before.

"I should have known…" I said.

"Known what?"

"You."

She formed a curious expression, mixed in with the smile. Her eyes shone a little.

"Yes," she said after a pause, "you should have known me all along."

"Baby."

"Pardon?"

"There was a … baby. Is it yours?"

"I'd say so."

Right. Hard to mistake that. "Boy or girl? Boy, right?"

"Right."

I said, "How's…how's he doing?"

"He's fine," she said, still smiling at me. I felt tike I was being breathed in. "Your father is remembering what it's like to hold an infant. It builds character, I imagine."

"How long was I, erm, whatever I was?"

"Ten hours. Your portkey lag must have been horrendous." She had a bit of mischief in her eyes, which, if they did look like mine, meant I had nice eyes. Dumb thought. It was hard to have any clarity, so many things rushing through me that I felt a little flat, the way that if you blend all colors of light together you get white, or if you blend all colors of paint you get a weird dark brown, or if you mix all of your food together you get something that's uniformly…well, that's what was in my mind. So many thoughts turned into noise.

"You were a little busy while you were out," she said.

"Huh?"

She was still smiling, but her eyes were steady, direct. "You released quite a bit of magic. It was a good kind of magic," she hastened to say. "It certainly helped with the delivery. Every bit of pain stopped, he came out easy as you please, and he barely cried, even at first. The healer said she could use you around at more of these things. Arthur…even Arthur was …affected."

An image of Arthur with her dark hairs standing on end popped into my head. "Is she all right?"

The smile changed to a grin. "Very well. Not expecting to have such…smooth arms. Those charms are a little difficult, I suppose…" She giggled. I thought of layers to a person, the appearance of calm and poise and the special joy each of us feels when some of the sweet underneath reveals itself, only to us. I knew she laughed around other people, but this one was for her and me. I had the feeling that she had a gift for intimacy, something one would want in a mother, helping with a skinned knee or making a wait in queue more bearable – and I had no idea where these images came from, maybe wishful or just my mind scavenging for things that seemed to belong, like a bower bird.

What came out was, "She lost her arm hair?"

She laughed, her eyes bright with amusement. "You enhanced all of the magic in the house, during your…fit. Maybe it extended beyond the house, I'm not sure. All of the midwife's spells, all of Arthur's charms for…for her appearance, even a little glamour charm I had going, everything was working so much more powerfully than it had been. Your father said that his favorite pot has a hole worn in it because a scrubbing spell got a little aggressive."

I didn't really know how to take this. I suppose that the reality, to use the term loosely, of my situation was taking its time settling on me. Magic was a word I somehow kept shrugging off, in the way that if you do something simple and someone keeps calling you a genius and thanking you repeatedly every time you see them and after all it was only a nickel or a pocket comb or figuring out the tip on lunch or whatever so why they insist upon talking about how grateful they are is beyond you, it was nothing, really, and I understood gratitude, in fact I felt beyond grateful, to this complete stranger who I instinctively liked and, I realized, needed so much from – needed to hear about where I came from, what I was like as a baby. Although…can you tell what an adult is like by looking at a childhood photo of them? I felt like all I could learn was what I was likely to be like, and did that make any sense? Was I trying to see if I was doing well, fulfilling any family destiny or predilection like, say, hating mushrooms or whistling through my nose when I slept just like some ancestor of mine did? And if that's the best that DNA has to offer, then it's fairly useless stuff, I thought, throwing that train off the tracks and coming back where I was.

"I…guess I'm happy to help?"

"Do you know what I like?" she asked.

I gazed in reply.

"I like that there are things going on in your mind that you don't say out loud, and though you're quiet sometimes, I know your mind is working and I know I would be delighted by what's going on in there."

In a rather incontinent way, I said, "I was taken away when I was little and we haven't seen each other since, you all do magic, and I can't remember anything. That wasn't what was going on in my mind just now, but it is. Now. Currently. Some things seem familiar but I'm not sure if it's just that I want them to, because you're, well, wonderful, and my…father seems great, and maybe it's early but I'm crushing on your midwife, and I may have to shut up now."

She paused before saying, "I always wished I could have found you – I thought you had been taken. It had been a terrible, dark time. People had been disappearing and then when out of the blue you were gone – "

It was the first time I'd seen her look like any of this had hurt, and I immediately wanted to make that go away. Somehow the fact that it had happened to me was not as real to me, because in a way it hadn't. In the way that one can never step into the same river twice, that self of mine, the boy I had been, was long gone, only vague clues remaining, a fragment of a toy or a scrap from a children's book abandoned in a distant past.

"- I couldn't imagine why you were even taken," she said. "Tom had been gone for four years, no one thought he'd ever return, so there was no reason why you would have to be taken." Her voice rose a little, but she managed to calm herself. "I suppose I'm just wondering where you were and what you were doing…are you able to talk about that?"

I thought for a moment. It felt like thinking, though nothing happened. Where did that thought come from? "I'm able to talk, but I don't really know. As far as I know, I've lived in…a big city with Arthur. I think my life's been okay, I'm more or less healthy, I can spell things correctly, you know, all that, but I sort of have a – thing with memory. It's like always being slow on the uptake. I really don't know anything about anything, until the right question is asked, and then I can sort of pull out a little piece of it, from somewhere, only I don't know where. It's hard to make sense of, because sometimes I can't tell if I'm really remembering something or if it's just my mind latching onto something that I would like to be a part of me."

She was moving between sad and furious until that last. "Is that…how you're feeling now?"

"Well, yes," I said. "You feel right to me. I think that maybe I'm a little scared of that, because as far as I know I've never had a mother, so it's a little alien to me, but at the same time…in every sense of the word, familiar."

She had the tiniest smile at the corners of her mouth. "Are you really crushing on my midwife?"

I sighed deeply. "Hi, mum."