“Go, Ragnor. Go away. Go play with your sister.”
“But Mama, what can I do?”
“Nothing.”
“Can Dad help?”
She laughed, and the bitter, hysteric sound made the musician flinch. “If your father knew . . .” She shook her head. “No, beautiful boy. Go on. Go!”
She pushed him out of the bed, and he scrambled away. But instead of running outside, he hid behind the door and peered through the crack.
He watched her, his hands clenched, as she cried. He mouthed her name—“Mama”—as she wept. He couldn’t help her if he didn’t know what was wrong.
So the musician began to watch his mother. Some days, she was happy, but other days, she closeted herself in her room and kept the lights off. When his father was home, she sparkled and laughed, but when he left, she refused to eat and didn’t sleep.
There was something very, very wrong.
The musician had always been her favorite. He’d always made her smile. So he cuddled his mama. He brought her flowers picked in the park. He sang her songs. He tried to be very, very, very good. But each day, her smiles grew a little less bright, until they were barely there at all.
It was almost too much worry for a tiny body to contain.
What had happened to make his mother so afraid?
Then, one day, after the trickster had been put down for a nap, the mother slipped out of the mansion. She darted quick glances over her shoulder and hurried into shadows. The musician, watching from an upstairs window, opened the latch and scrambled after her.
He followed her, running to keep up with her, darting behind newsstands and crouching behind trash cans. He slipped into a dilapidated brick building in Murray Hill, using his newly birthed power to cloak himself. He barely breathed as he squeezed into a tiny apartment on the fifth floor.
He pressed himself against the plaster wall as his mother ran to a man who was not his father. They hugged. They kissed. The musician didn’t watch. Instead, he crept over creaking floorboards to a small playpen on the floor.
He stared at the chubby, freckle-cheeked boy. He was small—a baby, really. Not a baby like the trickster, but still a baby. At least to the musician, who considered anyone younger than him a baby, this boy was a baby.
He hated him on sight. He knew with unshakeable confidence that this boy was the reason his mother had been weeping. He knew this boy was the reason his songs couldn’t make her smile. He was the reason for her fear.
“Mamamamama,” the freckle-cheeked boy sang. He reached out his chubby arms. His cheeks had flakes of milk on them, and his clothing was stained with pureed carrots. The carrot was almost the same color as his hair. It didn’t darken until later in life. His eyes were the same though: a cautious, hopeful, solemn gray. “Mamamamamama. Mama?”
The musician flinched as his mother pulled away from the freckled, red-haired man.
She stared at the child, and tears filled her eyes. “We can’t keep him. Dagrid suspects. Tonio, Dagrid suspects. He’ll kill us. He’ll kill me. You know?—”
“Shh.” The red-haired man grabbed the woman and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Don’t worry about it. What can he do?”
The woman broke away. “Idiot! Fool! He can kill us! I hate you. I hate you. I hate what I feel for you. It’d be better if I’d never met you. If Dagrid knew his wife had a son by his fifth cousin, do you think he’d stop with killing me? You? The baby? No. Fool! He’d kill all my children. He’d feel they were all tainted. He’d rather start over than risk?—”
The boy started to cry. A mournful wail. His arms reached out to his mother.
She glared at him, her lower lip trembling. “I can’t see you again,” she told the red-haired man.
He held out his hands. “You’re being irrational?—”
The musician sucked in a breath as his gentle mother spun, conjured a knife, and stabbed her lover in the heart.
He hit the ground. Dead.
The musician held very still. He stayed cloaked, hidden from his mother’s eyes.
She stared at her freckle-cheeked son. She held the knife, its blade dripping red.
The musician held his breath as his mother walked toward the boy.
