SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES
A better mother might have smiled patiently and explained to the daughter that there was nothing she could make the father do. But there is some thrill in letting Tirza believe that she has any influence over Stave at all and the corners of her mouth do not stir with even the rumor of a smile.
Instead, she studies her star-strewn daughter and thinks about the new child, how she had emerged doused in galaxies, too. The curse of her children to look like their father, she thinks, and to suffer the knowledge that neither of their parents particularly wanted them.
“She was born that way,” she says, off-handed. The child had been born solid, certainly, but it had not taken long at all for her to dissolve. A defense mechanism, Gospel thinks, easier to be a ghost than a viper. “She was a viper, too.” She turns to face the daughter now, studying the face, the fangs. “Fanged, like you and me.” She could not have nurtured the child even if she had wanted to.
There is a beat of silence then and Gospel lets loose a long breath, her brow faintly furrowed in concentration.
“I wanted better for you than this,” she says, tells the daughter, though she does not know why. “For you and your brother both.”
@[Tirza]