"Oh yeah, I forgot—I have parents," I thought, with the sort of theatrical disappointment reserved for people who find a blister on their favorite slipper. It was one of those thoughts that felt both obvious and absurd. Of course I had parents. Babies normally do. In my last life I'd been very good at forgetting people until they annoyed me; in this one, apparently, I was both rediscovering them and mentally filing them under "assets for future bargaining."
There's a small, dull explanation for why I didn't see my mother the instant I opened my eyes in that straw-stuffed room: I had, by the luck or cruelty of fate, overheard the steward and the ink-stained scholar muttering in the corridor right before the midwife pushed me into the world. They'd been leaning close together like conspirators over a ledger, and the steward's voice had been that low, efficient thing men use when they don't want others to know they're afraid. "It nearly was a stillborn," he said. "Mother fainted after the bleed. If not for the midwife—" the steward's sentence tapered into a line that meant gratitude and a little panic.
The scholar, whose ink-stained fingers always smelled like someone who spent too much time cataloguing miracles, said the sort of thing scholars say to make miracles feel like evidence. "A noble birth with complications," he murmured, "and then a sudden, clean sound from the child. Odd. Some call it the Echo of Rebirth. That child came out of the mother sleeping—strange omen or not, the midwife says he drew breath when all looked quiet."
Hearing them I had a flash of the absurd: newborns don't usually give commentary on their delivery. Adults do the telling while children are busy being born. The upshot was this: my mother had been unconscious—weak from the labor—and I, small and brittle and somehow full of someone else's late-night regrets, arrived into a room already crowded with worry and relief.
The midwife brought me to life and kept the mother sleeping and safe until she could be roused. So when I later "woke up" and the midwife's eyes found mine, it was not because I popped into the world fully formed and alone; it was because there had been that strange, quiet hour where the household balanced between grief and miracle. That's why my first clear face was the midwife's rather than the mother's. Not poetic, just practical—and also oddly cinematic when you couch it in your head.
The morning they arrived, the house smelled like boiled cabbage and clean linens. The steward had arranged the guest room with the kind of efficient pride only people who have to make polite poverty look respectable can manage. The midwife fussed more than usual, smoothing blankets as if they could be ironed into being less fragile, and the scholar hovered with a face that said, "This is an anthropological opportunity; please behave."
I, who had the attention span of a man thirty-one years older than my ankles, sat upright on a low stool and attempted to look appropriately baby—curious, unthreatening, adorable enough to secure more porridge. It is amazing how useful an expression can be. Expressions are the primitive interface of human negotiation. Smile properly at someone who brings you gifts and later you can ask them for tutors.
They entered separately, which is important to the theater of introductions. First came the woman: pale, hair pinned loosely with a single jeweled comb, a face that carried the tired softness of someone who had been brave and paid for it with sleep. She moved slowly, as if still remembering how to be fully solid in the world after whatever roughness childbirth had given her.
She looked at me as if trying to name a new star. "Elenor," the steward said in the background, like a helpful placard. The woman smiled, and the sight of that smile—gentle and honest—made something loosening that had been tight in my chest a little less sharp. Adults make one-sided promises to infants all the time; what they do not often see is that infants keep them in their heads and, years later, hold those promises like debt.
"Elenor," the midwife repeated, her own voice a small prayer. She bent low, and the woman reached out a hand and touched my forehead with fingers that smelled faintly of rosemary and ink. The scent slid into my memories—those early midwife visits now folded into my life like bookmarks. "You are small," she whispered, and when she said it I had the ridiculous flash of my former self grinning at something very small and very breakable. "But you have eyes that think too many years ahead."
She said it like a compliment and like a prophecy. I mentally filed it under useful social capital.
Then the door opened again and the air changed. The man who came in carried himself like someone who had practiced authority until it fit him like armor. He wore the practical cut of a retainer—a leather jerkin over studded mail, a glove on one hand, the sort of boots that had seen more roads than most of the local gentry bothered to know the names of. He smelled faintly of horses, metal, and a life lived on the edge of things rather than inside them.
"Harlen," the steward murmured. He said it like the name carried both weight and timetables. The man's eyes scanned the room and landed on me with a measurement that made me feel, absurdly, like a tool being tested for usefulness.
Harlen—Lord Harlen Redwood, I learned later when the steward introduced everything like a ledger—was not a man who wasted ceremony. He smiled once, a tight thing, and it softened his features in a way that made him look less like someone who carved justice with a blade and more like a man who sometimes wondered if the village wells were getting properly maintained.
"Is he well?" Harlen asked—the sort of question that implies both care and an appraisal.
"Fine, my lord," said the midwife, quick as a trained animal. "Strong lungs. He made the first sound cleanly."
The name-root, again—it followed me like a legal sort of rumor. There was a small, private satisfaction when the steward said "Redwood" as if the word conferred a map: land, a few acres, an obligation to till and to tax and to harbor. We were not powerful, but we had presence. The Redwoods were not the sort of family to be invisible.
Mother—Elenor—sat on the low stool beside me and looked like someone getting reacquainted with gravity. She wore a simple brooch that matched the comb, and her hands trembled when she held mine. The sensation of being held by her was like an old song that sounded unfamiliar because it had been out of practice. She spoke my name as if to test it. "Kai," she said, soft and precise.
I wanted to answer properly. Instead my throat tightened, and a tiny sound escaped—"Ka." The midwife's lips curved. "He says the root," she murmured. Harlen's eyes, which had been almost unreadable, flicked with something that might have been approval or calculation. People look at potential the way they look at coin. It's practical and immediate.
I, of course, had the internal commentary ready because I had a lifetime of habit in narrating everything for the benefit of future versions of myself. Note to self: mother kind. Father efficient. Steward useful. Midwife very good at timing compliments. Scholar unreasonably fascinated. I also thought the absurd thing I thought whenever an adult says something meaningful to a child: Okay, now buy me tutors and stop whispering about ledgers in corners.
Harlen sat stiffly and watched as if my smallness was a scroll worth scanning. "He must be trained in responsibility," he said finally, voice like a measured axe. "Not spoiled."
"Of course," Elenor whispered immediately, in a tone that could smooth quarrels like warm butter. "We will see he is taught. Not babied."
I grinned inwardly. Useful conversation. The delicate balance between mercy and discipline—this household clearly intended to practice both.
Conversation, of course, returned to practicalities. There were ledgers to be balanced. There were small lands requiring attention. Harlen spoke of patrols along the northern wood and of a mercenary contract he'd signed (for the estate's safety, he said), while Elenor listened and nodded as if she were planning a garden in her head at the same time. It was a comfortable picture of a household doing its duty.
At one point Elenor bent and spoke to me, eyes soft with that tired kindness. "Kai, we will teach you letters and numbers and the ways of the land," she said. "You will learn to read the ledgers and to plant seeds."
I had the vivid adult reaction—*ledgers? seeds? how thrilling*—and the softer one that actually meant something: *a mother who wants me literate. Useful.* In my previous life I had never had a parent who offered a roadmap. This time the map looked neat and practical and, crucially, potentially executable.
Harlen cleared his throat. "I leave in three days," he said. The sentence dropped like a stone onto the table of the room. It was not unexpected—his profession implied travel—but the words had the practical sting of a warrant. "Patrol duty. There are troublemakers on the east road."
The steward's expression folded into a ledger's worry. "We will manage, my lord."
"You will," Harlen said. His gaze fixed on me for a beat longer. "Marta will oversee his lessons. You will ensure discipline. Midwife—keep him healthy. Scholar—note anything irregular."
Commands were efficient, detached. I felt like an inventory item for a moment and, not for the first time, acknowledged the utility of internal planning. If father left, the house would be a place of adult comings and goings. That would be the reality. It would be my playground and my school. Good. Seize the opportunity, make friends, learn what you can, keep your pebble tricks in the pocket.
Elenor's hand tightened once on my small fist. "Harlen," she said quietly, something heavier and human coming through, "come back."
He hesitated the briefest second—an honest flicker of a man with a duty and a family—and then he nodded once. "I will," he said. No vows in excess, only the practical, measured promise of a man who knew what dangers looked like. It was an honest answer and, to the adult in me, not necessarily a lie. Men who keep watch sometimes keep themselves as well.
He left the room the next day with a few companions and a saddlebag. The steward saw them off like someone recording an expected expense. The midwife smoothed the blankets and sang a small song I would later learn to hum without knowing the words. Elenor sat back down and folded her hands in a way that looked prayerful, though whether to gods or to fate I could not say.
As the household settled back into its quieter rhythm, the scholar bent close and whispered conspiratorially, "Note the father's absence. Children of minor houses with fathers absent are often…flexible in their alliances. It changes the trajectory."
Alliance—another word to file. The scholar's nose twitched as if he had sniffed a future rumor. I, of course, made a list in the private ledger of my head: secure tutors, impress the steward, charm the midwife, do not show pebble movement in public, befriend the village kids, cultivate curiosity. And when the list felt long enough to be believable, I tucked it near the other small promises that were now part of me.
Later that night, as the rain softened into a patient whisper and the midwife's lamp burned low, Elenor came to my bedside and touched my forehead in the quiet way mothers do. "He will learn," she murmured. "We will not make him small."
I answered not with words but with the echo of a vow, older and more deliberate than the house had ever seen: I would not be small in heart nor in deeds. I would learn. I would protect. And, yes, I thought with a private, slightly ridiculous grin, I would probably start with ledgers. If a man wishes to be powerful, he begins by knowing where the bread comes from.
"Oh right, I forgot—I have parents," I thought again, this time with the contentment of someone who had filed an important cabinet under the correct label. It was less an afterthought now and more an asset—one I intended to use wisely.
Tomorrow, I decided, I would ask Elenor to teach me to write my name. Not because I needed to sign anything profound, but because writing your name is the first act of claiming a life. And I, who had been given a second one, intended to claim it as thoroughly as I could.