mind not to let them down, and began to read.
Two days ago I left Alan and Olivia alone and went to the mountains with Nick for his eighth birthday.
We had a long drive, and I think he liked getting to ride shotgun for a change. Olivia usually gets the seat up beside me. As he stretched his legs out and enjoyed the room, it occurred to me that he was going to be tall, and for a moment I remembered Arthur. He was a big man, and he thought he was bigger than he was: I never needed to know about the magic to hate him.
“Growing up fast, kiddo,” I said.
Nick glanced over from the passing cars to me with what I think was a glint of interest in those black eyes. “Will I be bigger than Alan?”
“Could be.”
“Will I be bigger than you?”
“You never know your luck.”
“It’ll be pretty sad when Alan and I are both bigger than you,” Nick said. “And you have arthritis.”
“Oh, big talk from such a little man.”
“We’ll protect you from the demons when you’re old and slow,” he said. “As long as you stop trying to feed me broccoli.”
I have a theory Nicky developed his smart mouth to stop Alan beaming at him every time he spoke. Nick doesn’t like it when we make a fuss.
“Nice try, Nicky,” I said, and he looked out the window, lapsing back into his usual silence.
Alan wanted him to do something for his birthday. Something without Olivia. He looked up a father- son mountaineering expedition, and I think Nick quite enjoyed picking out a tent and supplies. He seemed less enthused once we were actually on our way.
“Alan might not be safe,” he volunteered half an hour later. It startled me, as Nick generally waits for other people to start talking and then grudgingly responds.
“Hey,” I said. “I promised you he would be, didn’t I? He’s safe, him and your mum. Let’s just enjoy ourselves, okay?”
“Alan doesn’t like to be left by himself,” Nick said, still staring out the window.
“Nicky, one of Alan’s greatest ambitions in life is to be locked overnight in a library.”
I spoke as patiently as I could, and he didn’t pursue it. I thought he was just being crabby, the way he gets about early mornings and talking to strangers.
When we reached the camp, we had to introduce ourselves to the other father-and-son pairs. Nick was radiating coldness, and for a moment I was on their side, the human side, knowing how they must feel confronted with this monster child. I elbowed Nick’s shoulder, and he glared at me.
“I’m Daniel Ryves,” I said to a chorus of muttered greetings. “This is Nick.”
I elbowed Nick again until he said hi, and then we set up our tent.
Mountaineering the next day was easier. Nick gets the hang of anything physical fast. I stood with a man called Jason watching the kids go down, and we talked a bit about having trouble with the tents and his son being alarmed by the sheep on the mountainside at night.
“Your boy was okay, I imagine,” he said.
“Not much disturbs Nick.”
“Yeah, well,” he said, bridling a bit, as if I’d implied something about his child. “Seems to me—no offense—might be healthier for your kid if he did get a little bit more upset about things.”
I looked down to the foot of the mountain. The other kids were still making their way down. Nick was already done, and glowering as the instructor tried to help undo his harness.
“Seems to me like my kid kicked your kid’s ass.”
It wasn’t a clever thing to say. I used to be good at that, good at being one of the guys, but it gets harder to seem normal as time goes on. Unlike my Alan, I did not grow up with the certainty that I had to live a lie. And being a father means there is always, always someone else to think of.
They say a wife is flesh of your flesh and bone of your bone, but Olivia was able to leave with no sign that the separation from me was in the least painful, let alone like surgery. It’s true with children, though. If my children are twisted, I twist with them. Normality is no longer an option.
That night Nick slipped away from the campfire when I was getting us some marshmallows to toast. I found him sitting at the edge of a cliff, looking down into the shadows and hollows that would have been a green valley by day.
“Hey, Nicky,” I said, and did not reach out for him. It wouldn’t have been safe, not with the way he instinctively recoils. “Come away from the edge.”
“This is stupid,” he said. “All these people are stupid.”
“Give them a chance, Nick.”
“I don’t want to,” he said, face bone white in the moonlight, looking up at me with those gleaming eyes.
He looked like a little goblin out in the wild, and then in another shift of moonlight like something half monster and half a magician I hate, as distant from humanity as all nightmare creatures must be.
