Jesus laughed, careless of the blood that dripped from his mouth. “You deserve everything that is coming to you.”
Instantaneously, I found myself home, where women of my wife’s acquaintance had gathered to cheer her out of the gloom that continued to upend civilization. Our son, Jasper, rested at her feet, his beautiful head on her knee—behaving himself in a way I had never witnessed.
Kicking free of his mother’s embrace, he shot up… the babe stalking me as if I might serve as dinner. Fist in my face, he hissed. His first hiss. “Never leave her this way again.”
His first hiss.
How could I not love this boy?
Eyes wet with unshed tears, Pearl looked up at me and welcomed me home. Proud as the queen she had grown to be.
What need had I of pride? Before the gathering of women there, I fell to my knees at her feet. Tired, focused, sorry. I prostrated where all those of rank in my presence would share the tale of the devil who loved an angel.
The angel who drank me down like wine after forgiveness was lavished on my form.
Dreaming of murder down the hall, Jasper smiled in his sleep. Diabolically entertaining, those dreams held my attention. I reveled in them.
Once, I even made the mistake of telling Pearl the best parts of our son’s intentions.
The world would burn.
Terrified, she clung to me and begged that I might help him change.
Creatures didn’t change, but I promised her I’d try.
That was the first night she felt our baby kick.
In one moment, her attention was on the vagrant. In the next, it was swallowed up by our baby.
Jasper was twice as enamored with what grew in Mommy’s belly and fully in love.
Obsessed.
The ground shook, our son up to his normal tricks when he didn’t get his way should she brush his incessant prodding off. He practically tore down our house when the fetus didn’t respond to his songs.
“This is mine!” he would shout.
“She’s not yours.” Lips service I offered to appease his mother. Because I knew just as Pearl feared that he truly believed she was his.
“Mommy, eat more. She’s hungry.” Jasper would rub that burgeoning belly. “Oh, and so pretty! We will be the best of friends. Her favorite color will be orange, and she will slurp down liver just like I do.”
Jasper was not allowed to be present at the birth, the scamp unable to contain his excitement and far too distracting to the mother working to deliver. It was only the two of us while our son sulked in the jungle.
I was the first to see or touch our daughter, Pearl exhausted yet smiling when I set the babe on her breast.
Strength. Endurance. Intention.
The little girl was her mother incarnate.
As if he knew the moment his sister had taken her first breath, Jasper appeared and asked to hold her, the babe covered in vernix, mucus, and blood. His arms outstretched as if the only thing that might quench his endless appetite was soon to be delivered. Pearl made him wait, as the baby was learning to suckle.
The boy might have sacked an entire community in his temper, but his mother called him forward when his tantrum grew outlandish. She let him lay a single touch on her head.
He who he longed would be his best friend.
And I knew what coursed through his veins. I had suffered the same.
Kissing my soul, I knew joy with my wife at the beauty of our child. Jasper named the babe—Beryl.
And dared call her his.
Pearl didn’t tolerate it, chastising our son. “She isn’t yours. She belongs to herself.”
His soul, the mirror of mine, begged. “You’re wrong, Mommy.”
Our pretty phenomenon, Jasper... an amazing child. A true devil.
Who coveted, who hunted, and whom I found more than once standing over the cradle of my daughter, stroking her cheek and speaking of battles fought long before they were born.
Five times he threatened to kill me if I dared deny him his due.
So I did what had to be done.
I cast Jasper out to wander, removing all memory of him from Pearl’s mind so she might enjoy her daughter without the constant worry over her son—a deadly son who had been born to run wild and was growing all the more manic caged by an island too small to satiate his whims.
I told him this, honest when I dropped him at the doorstep of the Cathedral.
He might have only been a boy, but he had the memories of a man. Until he grew into his body and learned to control his urges, he was not to be permitted near his mother or his sister.
After all, eternity was a long time. What might a few dozen years mean in the scheme of things?
Jasper didn't wail. He didn’t cling to me. Instead, he made an oath.
To bring the world down in flames if his soul was not returned to him. Tussling his hair, I was so proud, knowing exactly how he felt, and glad I hadn’t had my Pearl in those hungry centuries where I wreaked havoc.
The kid would do well getting it out of his system. Then he might return to the flock, where he would find it was not his sister he was drawn to. It was the possibility for what might have been in her. Whoever he had lost and been reborn to find would not be delivered so easily.
He’d have to search for her. Suffer for her. Learn to control himself so as not to frighten her with his greatness.
And when he saw her, he’d know.
There was no need for him to project what he saw in Mommy and Daddy.
