Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
first released 8th April 2022
Barbara was plotting. Barbara had a plan. Well, Barbara had an idea.
Okay, so she had no ideas. But she had a goal! Sort of.
What did you even do for a birthday party for a 918-year-old who was also, and always would be, 19?
"Ugh." She let her head drop into her hands.
"Problem, my dear?" Walt sat down beside her, offering a cup of tea.
She accepted it just to have something to hold. "Douxie's birthday," she said.
Walt raised his eyebrows. "He has a birthday?"
"Everyone has a birthday," she retorted. "And I even know when his is. I... just don't know what to do about it. What do you do for a nineteen-year-old's birthday?"
"Well, what did you do for Jim's birthday?"
"Made him pancakes, before I had to go in to work."
Walt hesitated, then put down his cup and set hers on his coffee table as well. He took her hands. "Barbara, you know I hold nothing but highest affection for you, but-"
"I know I can't cook," she interrupted him. "But it's our thing. Douxie helped me this year, so the pancakes even turned out edible, for a change." She sighed. "The thing is, I've never done birthday parties for Jim. I was in medical school, or doing my residency, or working. We always just do a special breakfast, and gifts."
"But you feel you should do something special for Douxie."
She sighed. "It's his first year as part of our family, and that feels like it's worth celebrating. Like he's worth celebrating. But I really don't know what to do. Would he even like a big party? Or is he one of those people who hates parties?"
Walt hummed. "Speaking as a fellow long-lived individual..."
"Please do." She reached out and smoothed a few loose gray hairs back behind his ear.
"Birthdays pall," he said bluntly. "The years blur and pass and lose meaning."
Her hand stilled on the side of the face. "Walt... birthdays don't /have/ meaning beyond what people assign them. Logically, it's marking one more trip around the sun. But what they're for is celebrating another year of survival, of growth. Of the connections between an individual and their community and family."
He smiled at her, his hand coming to rest atop hers. "I do understand that, my dear."
"Do you, though?" She kind of doubted he did; the way he'd spoken had seemed detached. Like it was something he'd learned from a report, or from observation, rather than the simple joy of a party and cake and love being something he'd experienced for himself. "Did you ever have a birthday party, Walt?"
He shrugged and stopped meeting her eyes. "Cupcakes, in the teacher's lounge. It's socially expected."
"Oh, honey." She felt sad for him, for this ancient man who wasn't even technically of her same species. "Didn't your parents...?"
"It wasn't so much a thing then. And they were... strict." His smile held a tinge of bitterness. "Not that I was their true son anyway."
"They're dead, I assume?"
"Oh, centuries since." He waved it away. "I left their home, and their family, early in my teens. I was a printer's apprentice to begin with, can you believe it?" He laughed.
"Well, you're a teacher, and clearly a well-read man, so it would seem you've never gotten that far away from books."
"True. Sometimes I can still smell the leather and the ink, the metal of the type..." He frowned. "The sheer racket when all six of the presses were going at the same time and the other apprentices were joking about and telling low stories."
"So much different than a room full of high school students before you call them to order?" Barbara teased.
"No," he replied, with the tone of a man who found one specific part of his job intensely irritating. He sighed and waved it off. "Regardless, as someone who's lived a long time and wandered the path through many careers... I personally have no attachment to the day of my familiar's birth. Whether or not Douxie has any attachment to the day of his birth, I cannot say." The corner of his mouth crooked up. "And, keep in mind, the calendar has drifted over the centuries."
Barbara blinked. "What?"
Now Walt grinned. "Dear me, did your education fail to cover the Gregorian leap?"
"Yes." Barbara glowered. "It would seem so?"
He chuckled. "In order to bring Easter celebrations back into line with the day of the spring equinox, in 1582 the Christian church leapt the calendar forward by ten days."
"Wow." Barbara blinked. "That makes Daylight Savings Time seem like..."
"Indeed. It did, of course, take some time for non-Catholic denominations and countries to accept the change, as it reeked of Papism to do so. These days, it is, in most places, the accepted secular calendar. So the question is," Walt raised a meaningful eyebrow, "is Douxie's birthdate actually whatever date he's stated, or ten days before or after it?"
Barbara hummed and thought about it. "Well, he said May Day, so he's claiming that date, regardless of calendar shifts that happened over four hundred years ago."
"Well, then. A May Day celebration it shall be."
Dinner, sans parental presence, was lasagna, garlic bread, and a simple salad. Jim would have felt offended at how little enthusiasm Douxie seemed to have for his cooking, if it wasn't for the fact that Douxie was steadily, methodically, working his way through the contents of his plate. The way he was eating was almost a study in mechanization: each bite of the lasagna was cut to the same size, chewed exactly the same number of times, and chased down with a sip of milk. Every third bite got some garlic bread to go with it, or, alternately, salad.
At least Archie was enthusiastically enjoying the meal. Even if he had curled his tail around the shaker of red pepper flakes and liberally dosed his food with it.
"So... how did it go with Hiccup today?" Jim made a conversational opening salvo.
"Well enough." Douxie looked blankly at his meal for a minute longer, then blinked and raised his eyes to meet Jim's, as if suddenly realizing some modicum of social interaction was called for. "Sorry. It's just... tiring."
"Using magic?"
"Using magic all day long."
"Isn't Hiccup...?"
"Hiccup's working on parts for Krel's daxial array," Douxie said. "We're doing checks of one another's work, but basically we're each buried in our own project."
"I thought he was supposed to be making the armor for you," Jim accused.
Douxie shrugged. "Having Aja and Krel's parents live is a bit more important."
Jim... could not argue that point.
Douxie pushed a bit of lasagna noodle around with his fork. "It's not that your cooking isn't good, Jim, please don't think it isn't. It's delicious, as always. It's just." His gaze skittered away again. "Sometimes I have to be careful and controlled when I eat. Otherwise I'll end up stuffing it all in my face like a savage because I'm starving, and then." He made a face. "Well, uncontrolled eating can mean it all reappears again half an hour later, having done almost no good."
Jim recoiled. "Ugh."
Douxie nodded. "At least for those who use it a lot, magic complicates a person's relationship with food. It can become a constant battle to consume the fuel you need to burn."
Jim thought about it. Thought about how, during those long weeks after Merlin's transformation spell, he'd been walking and scouting endlessly forward, eating what he was given but never looking at it. How he'd desperately tried not to think about it, because his mind and his body remained, in matters of culinary taste, two extremely discrete entities, and one couldn't stomach what the other now found delicious. Troll food had been fuel, not something to enjoy. "Believe me," he said softly, "I understand magic screwing up your relationship with what you eat."
Gold eyes met his again. "I suppose you would," Douxie agreed.
"Which does not mean your relationship with food isn't messed up," Jim continued.
Douxie chuckled. Amusement had no part in the sound. "Many wizards have hangups over food. Having a body that thinks it's constantly on the edge of starvation will do that to someone." His gaze went distant. "It's yet another reason I really miss my staff. The way it magnified magic meant I didn't have to use so much to get the same results."
"Well, until you get it back, there's definitely enough for seconds and thirds." Jim gestured toward the kitchen.
"And fourths, the way he's been burning energy," Archie muttered.
Fourths? Jim promptly ran through his mental menu for the week and tossed half of it, including anything that could be labeled low-calorie.
Douxie glared at his familiar. "I'm trying my hardest to make sure Claire and Mary don't end up with the same hangups most of the rest of us wizards have."
Can't be worse than trying to get Mom to eat healthy with her schedule. "By the way." Jim gestured at the whiteboard hung on the basement door. "Mom left you a message?"
Douxie got up out of his seat to go look, peeling the sticky note off to read it. He blinked. "Thursday morning. That's fast."
Jim didn't want to pry, but he didn't want to be blindsided either- "Do I get to ask why Mom's making you a doctor's appointment?"
Douxie went very still. So did Archie, Jim noticed, the dragon's eyes fast on his familiar.
"If you don't want to tell me, you don't have to-"
"I need to go back on anxiety medication," Douxie said quietly, not looking at Jim.
It took a moment to ping. "What?" Jim said stupidly.
"I am having difficulty handling things," Douxie said, sounding like he was reciting from a form letter, "so I am being proactive and going to a doctor to get prescribed medication to help me."
Jim didn't know what was the bigger part of his surprise. That Douxie thought he needed medication? That he'd apparently been on it some time before? That-
He swallowed. "Is this my fault?" he couldn't help asking. "Because I'm pushing you to-"
Douxie's head snapped around to look at him, surprise flashing across his face. "No. Jim, this is nothing to do with you," he swore. "I don't handle stress well, above a certain level, and..." He huffed a breath. "Taking on the Arcane Order again, eyes wide open, is something that was always going to make me fall to pieces. So in order to be able to function, I need a chemical crutch to prop me up." He quirked a bitter smile. "As they say, if you can't make your own neurotransmitters, store-bought is fine."
"You know way too many memes," Jim pointed out.
"And you know them too. What's that say about you?" Douxie sassed back. He shook his head. "Jim, I've been a mess my entire life. You, and everything in the last couple years, really has nothing to do with that, all right? Believe me."
Jim wasn't sure that was the entire truth, but... "All right," he said. "If you say so."
"I do."
Jim bit his lip, then pushed forward. "While we're clearing the air..."
"Yes?"
He sighed and studied the wood grain of the table. "It hurts when you look at me like I'm a king instead of a brother."
Douxie was silent. Jim traced a knot with his fingertip. "I mean, I get it. You grew up in the middle ages, in Arthur's court, it's part of you, and it's not fair for me to ask you to not do that. I just..." He breathed, his words knotted up with his feelings. "That's what I feel like, and since we're being open and all..."
"Jim." He blinked. When had Douxie gotten by his side? "If you ever think I don't care, when I'm seeing the king in you..."
"No, I know you do-"
"Jim." Douxie cut him off, took the empty chair and sat down, pulling it close by. His hand curved warm around the back of Jim's neck, Douxie's long fingers brushing through Jim's hair. "I love you as a brother. Which, bar Archie, is something I've never had." The dragon looked pleased at the comparison. "And if I sometimes draw strength from the fact that you're a king-my king-I can't and won't apologize for that, because sometimes I am scared witless of what we're trying to do. But do not ever think that the fact that you're a divine king changes the fact that you're my little brother, nor how much that means to me."
"Fealty-" Jim started.
"I owe my king my fealty," Douxie agreed, gold-and-green eyes meeting Jim's blue, "and my brother my love. Fortunately," he said with a smile, "these things don't go in different directions. They're two streams, meeting to form one river. All right?"
And Jim didn't quite understand how Douxie could feel those two very distinct things and claim they fed into one another, but... neither did he think Douxie was lying to him.
"All right," he said, and accepted what he didn't understand.
"Toby-Pie," Nana called up the stairs, "dinner's ready!"
"Coming, Nana!" he called back. He elbow-bumped Aaarrrgghh. "Wingman, you wanna stay for dinner?"
But Aaarrrgghh shook his head. "Go find Blinky," he said. He sniffed the air and made a face. "Human cooking not good."
"Yeah, Nana does go in kinda hard on the garlic," Toby agreed. "All right, catch you later? Go-Go Sushi rematch tomorrow night?"
"Wingman is on," Aaarrrgghh agreed with a fist bump.
Heading down the stairs, they went their separate ways: Aaarrrgghh to the basement and the tunnels leading to Trollmarket, and Toby to the dining table, laden with lovingly made food.
"You know, Nana, I'd say you were trying to fatten me up to stuff me in the oven or something," he said, grabbing a roll and splitting it to butter, "but I'm burning so much energy training with Draal these days, I don't think I'd really care."
She laughed, like he'd said the funniest thing possible. "Oh, Toby, you know those stories about witches eating people were mostly to keep kids from wandering off, right?"
"Sure, Nana."
"Not that there weren't things in the woods eating kids in the olden days."
"Yeah. Wolves, bears..." Maybe lions. Wait, were there lions in Europe? Toby didn't know.
"Trolls."
He stopped and looked up at his grandmother, who was looking at the arrangement of red roses that she'd shifted to the side of the table, so they could see each other and talk while eating. "Nana...?"
"Oh, not your friend trolls," she waved her words off. "But other trolls. The bad ones."
"Yeah." Toby frowned at the tablecloth. "Bular and Gunmar and the Gumm-Gumms."
"Yes, dear. Them. And... other things that weren't trolls but weren't human either. Of course, that was some time ago. Most of the world's become too civilized to worry about such things these days. Not with electricity and phones and the internet everywhere. The old ones keep far away from humans, these days. I suppose," she said with a sigh, "they learned too well that we bite back."
"Nana...?" Toby asked cautiously. "Did you forget your meds this morning?"
"I did not," she assured him. "Feel free to check, Toby."
"Okay." He stood up from the table, placing his napkin by his utensils, and went to check her pill organizer. And, yes, it looked like she had indeed taken her morning meds. "Okay, you did take them," he confirmed, returning to his seat.
"Such a good boy, Toby. Always remember: trust but verify."
"Yes, Nana." Toby respread his napkin across his lap and took up his fork.
She looked at her roses again and sighed. "Have I ever told you about your great-great grandmother?" she asked.
Mouth full of casserole, Toby shook his head.
"My mother's mother," Nana clarified. "She was quite scandalous. She was what they called a 'boarding house woman,' back when that term meant she might give discounts for certain clients who pleased her."
Toby choked on the implication. "Nana! Not while I'm eating."
"Oh, hush, Toby, you're more than old enough to know such things exist." Nana smiled. "She was an old, old woman while I was a little girl, but I still remember her." Her eyes met his. "She certainly had more children than husbands. Most of them while her husbands weren't even around."
"Nana~," Toby moaned. "I really don't need to know this."
"Oh, but I think you do." Her eyes were sharp. "You see, Toby, Granny was quite old when I was quite little. In her eighties, even. But my mother wasn't a late-life child. No, she was Granny's second child, born when she was barely twenty. Me, on the other hand... I was. It took a long, long time until Mama could have me, and my granny told me why, once. You see, according to her, my grandfather wasn't a boarder. He was one of those beings who used to frequent the woods behind Granny's boarding house. She said he was quite the gentleman, for what he was."
Toby stared, dinner forgotten. "Wait, so great-great grandpa was a... what?"
Nana shrugged. "I don't know. I certainly never met him, and I'm not sure Mama did either. Granny never said what he was. But, well... Mama looked like a girl for a long, long time. For years, after I was grown up, people thought she and I were sisters. And I stayed young for quite a long time, too. Your grandfather was actually my second husband, did you know? My first, Gregor, died in the second World War. We'd been married for almost twenty years when I lost him. I married Horace a few years later. I was over sixty when your papa was born, but no one believed I was a day past thirty."
Toby's mouth was dry. "Are you trying to tell me...?"
Her gaze was level. "That we're not completely human, Toby-Pie?" She shrugged. "Of course we're not."
"But... but... you do bake sales!" he protested. "We live in the suburbs! We're normal!"
"Toby," she said chidingly, "you have magic armor and a sword. So does Jimmy. Your friends are trolls and wizards and... well, whatever your new friends are. Normal is long since out the door and running for the hills."
Toby's mouth opened and closed a few times, like a goldfish. He didn't know what he wanted to say. Finally he settled on "Why are you telling me this, Nana?"
"Well." She folded her hands before her and looked at him, smiling benevolently over her plate of good home-cooked food. "First off, because you're getting ready to hit puberty-"
"Nana!"
She ignored his wailed protest and continued, "-and because that tends to mean certain changes, in our family."
Toby paused. "Changes...?" he asked warily, wondering if he was going to find out about tails or cloven hooves or extra limbs or something else horrifying.
"Well, when a young man goes through that time of life," she started, a mischievous twinkle in her eyes.
"Nana," he groaned.
"You'll probably shoot up like a weed, and become quite handsome, just like your daddy did," she said, dropping the teasing. "And I don't want to alarm you, dear, but we all tend to be quite long-lived. Except for your poor father, god bless his soul."
Toby paused. "Nana, did something... happen... to Mom and Dad?"
"I haven't the faintest, dear."
"They... they did actually go on a cruise, didn't they?"
Her expression was instantly indignant. "Of course they did! I would never lie to you about your own father, Toby-Pie!"
"Sorry, Nana," he apologized, cowed.
She waved it off. "They went on that cruise and disappeared. I don't know if they fell overboard accidentally, or were murdered, or if... something took them. With my grandfather's blood in our family, I suppose that's always a possibility. Though I don't even know what might have done the deed, if anything. But that's why you and I moved here."
"To Arcadia Oaks," Toby felt the need to confirm.
"Oh yes." She nodded. "Haven't you ever felt how warm and lovely it is to be here? How safe you feel, as opposed to anywhere we've gone on vacation?"
Toby blinked, thinking about it. "I always thought that was because sleeping in hotel beds was weird."
His grandmother shook her head. "I didn't know it then, of course, I just thought this seemed like a nice, safe place with no bad memories. But now I think it's because we have a little bit of magic in us, and can feel that heart stone you keep telling me is underground here."
Toby swallowed. "So you're a lot older than you look, then."
"Toby-Pie," his grandmother said softly, "I was born in 1899."
He did some quick mental math and manfully resisted the urge to gape. Thoughts of ambiguously numbered birthdays popped up in his head - that and how his Nana had always insisted it was rude to ask a lady's age. He'd thought that had been a lesson in manners. Apparently he'd been wrong.
"Now," Nana said, taking her fork back up again, "I'm certainly not going to ask you to tell me any of the man's secrets, but am I correct in assuming that Varvatos and his two 'wards' aren't entirely human either?"
"Uhh... no, ma'am," Toby said. "He's not. They're not."
She nodded. "Well, that's all right. I thought so, but I wanted to be sure. So long as they're good people, that doesn't really matter, does it?"
"Nana," Toby said, seriously this time, "why didn't you ever tell me any of this before?"
She shrugged. "I wasn't sure if the blood had thinned too much for it to matter. This isn't even something I ever told your grandfather. Or my first husband."
"Why not?"
Her smile was gentle. But also sad. And underlined with something unholy and angry. "I was quite the dish when I was younger, and my mama was prettier still. More than once it saved both our lives during that first war! But we were both always assumed to be fully human, because we looked it, and because of Granny's other babies from the wrong side of the blankets. Granny told me half-breeds used to be a lot more common, and once it was found out... well. There were a lot of early graves dug those days. All of them outside the churchyard. People haven't always liked mixing." She sniffed. "Which is why I would never think of chiding you about that pretty Black girlfriend of yours. And if you and she end up having pretty mixed-race babies, I will be the proudest great-grandma around."
"Nana," Toby groaned.
"Now, maybe I didn't tell you because I didn't know if you needed to know," Nancy Domzalski said placidly. "But also because you weren't quite grown up enough to know yet. Little family secrets like ours can be dangerous, Toby-Pie. But you're growing into quite the young man, so I'm telling you now. The same as I told your father when he was about your age."
"Nana," Toby said, "you never told me any of this the first time around!"
"I didn't?" She frowned. "Why, how amiss of me! I'd certainly have words with her - if she weren't me."
"Ugh." He let his head fall, facing his plate of casserole and green beans. "So I'm going to live a long time, even if I let Douxie destroy the amulet."
"I'm sorry, dear," said the woman who had buried two husbands, a son, and a daughter-in-law. And, Toby thought privately, probably an unknown number of Nazis and other threats. He knew, at this point, that his grandmother had been doing something during both world wars. He wondered if she knew her body count.
He wondered if Jim knew his.
He wondered if he knew his own.
"Nana, how do you keep going?" he asked. "When people you love die?"
"Well." She set down her cutlery and folded her hands together. "You find that you have something to keep living for. Taking care of you or your father, for instance. Or duty, after Gregor was killed. Sometimes... well, Mama left for years after Papa died. I was all grown and married by then, so she wasn't really needed. She went on a grand tour of anyplace new, trying to outrun the memories."
"Like Douxie does," Toby murmured.
"I suppose," Nana allowed. "But the thing is, Toby, life is precious, and hard to give up, even when it hurts. So you find a purpose, or create a meaning for yourself, and keep going forward until one day you look around and realize that even though it still hurts... it doesn't hurt as much," she said. "Each time, surviving gets easier day by day."
"Oh," said Toby, and tried to still his swirling thoughts by taking another bite of his casserole. It only kind of worked; his mind was still chaotic as he chewed and swallowed. "This is really good, Nana."
"Why, thank you, Toby-Pie!" She beamed. "Now eat up. You're a growing boy, after all."
"Yeah," he said, and wondered, Growing into what?
