Jacob More (cont.)

the bed roiled like a boat at sea. his mind was elsewhere - she saw it recede from the forefront of his eyes like a hermit crab, tucking up deep inside the nautilus of his skull. they bucked & strained at each other, her astride him, profiled in the lightning like the figurehead on a prow. the house shuddered & moaned as the rain scourged its sides. the river down the road swelled like an orchestra & splashed over the sides, grappling with itself. the inevitable flood. the harangue of weather against the soft cheek of the earth. this is the seventh such storm in two weeks, and the land has had enough. it spits back. the thunder is little more than a rasping cough, gurgling. everything is filled with fluid.

at the same time as the hasty levee that old man Whitaker built collapses -

at the same time as the gnarled oak is rent asunder with one bolt -

she falls parallel to him, clutching her breast, exhausted. her eyes close. his gruff murmur, cadenced like a priest's during the liturgy, rising and falling. she opens her eyes and sees the ceiling - dark, seeming infinitely distant, vaulted - and feels herself become the smallest bit

heavier -

"of course," he says grandly, doffing his hat and motioning at the empty seat beside him.

"you're a gentleman." she said, somewhat distantly, and sat, smoothing her dress out beneath her out of habit, crossing her legs deliberately. composure had fled her, left her unbalanced, with water in her left ear. her dress clung to her lasciviously.

adolfo glances around. his neck cracks. "i have to warn you, there is a condition to my chivalry."

she stops in the middle of wringing out her hair. her lips are about to form words, but he continues as though he has not noticed. "the condition is this: you must not speak."

he watches her eyes tumble through the kaleidoscopic shift from confusion to rage. "and this is why: i am not human." he paused to take a sip of his tea. "my species has a unique codicil to our ... shall we say, contractual agreement with God ... and that genetic amendment is such that the voice of a human female causes us great pain."

"i don't understand," she said, staring him down haughtily.

adolfo winced and held his hand up.

a dark ringlet of blood leaked from his brow, appearing like a shiny worm from under his hair.

he took another sip of his tea and gently pushed it towards her.

Jacob More took his son into the study & pointed at the window. the night was so dark the glass could have been painted over and the difference would have been impossible to discern. a star, here or there, looking more like a flaw in the windowpane. the ferocious glitter of the Dog Star. the storms had left the valley, and fog seemed to leak from the trees like a gas, chilling the air. the river sank back into itself, grunting grayly, hissing and spitting treachery. "Home," his father said simply, then crouched by the boy & held his face towards the sky.

"Home," the boy repeated, but as soon as Jacob More released his chin, his eyes went to the walls around him, to the amber light of the desk, to the door, shut & locked behind them.

on the other side of the door, Emily crouched, her ear pressed to the smooth wood. heard nothing. pressed her eye to the keyhole. saw only the shifting black bulk of her husband. a flash of fleshy hand, darting out to grab the boy by his neck of his shirt, drag him to the window.

"Home," said her husband.

"Home," echoed the boy, dutifully.

it had been years, she thought dully, since she had used her lips for anything but kissing Jacob. or, from time to time, the pretense of healing her son's weeping scrapes & abrasions. she crept back from the door, and there, tentatively, in the dark of the hallway, hummed a single note. it was soft, and scared, wobbling out of her throat like a newborn deer-child. she clutched instinctively at her neck, to choke it, to grab the sound out of the air like a gnat or a mosquito, and crush it in her callused hands - but it escaped, slipping neatly between the ring finger & little finger of her right hand. it floated to the ceiling & vanished there in the inky corner.

she sat there for a moment, eyes turned to saucers, battling herself on the precipice of tears. she imagined it, that lame child, stuck where it was, wildly spinning a sticky web for the notes yet to come.

the lock in the door exploded like a shotgun, and she hurtled downstairs, veered into the kitchen and collapsed, barely buttressing herself against the sturdy table. the candles flickered in accusation.

she heard the heavy tread of him, descending the stairs. waited for the usual tumult of her son in tow, clamoring down - but this time, there was nothing. she seized up with the fear that Jacob had done something terrible, had exiled her son, her boy - her Adolfo -

and there they stood as she turned, stopped at the foot of the stairs, looking jaundiced in the candle-light. her eyes fluttered up like a damaged dragonfly, locking onto him feebly. he was impenetrable - a fortress of a man, the rook, the king's Castle - he stood with her son's hand firmly in his fist, and then separated from him. he knelt, and it was then - only then - that she noticed the blood trickling from her son's right nostril. "There, there," crooned Jacob awkwardly. "It's all right."

she took a step forward, apologies rushing to her mouth, crowding her teeth and tongue -

Jacob stood, abruptly, and extended his palm to her. there, in the center of his hand, was a small wound, which bled remorselessly.

she met his gaze. his eyes were boggy with the humidity of tears.

it was the only time she ever saw him cry.