Author’s Note: Written for CABB’s September 25, 2025 Challenge

~ Famous First or Last Words ~

* * * * *

The meager slant of sunlight brought tears to his eyes …

But not to the baby’s.

No, the child, only moments ago in writhing, wailing argument with his swaddling, stilled. The thunder in his small, small body rumbled away; his next drawn breath long and slow … the softest gasp …

As if of surprise. As if in wonder.

The baby reached out … up … tiny pugalist fists unfurling, and in the crepuscular rays the storm grate allowed, he wiggled his marvelous fingers.

Was that … was that a laugh? Jacob shook his head. Impossible. The child was too young to respond so, no matter his … singularity. Reflex. It was only–

But his eyes! Jacob’s own gasp was sudden and sharp. In the gleaming – as thin as it was – the baby’s eyes, a celestial blue he’d witnessed only once before in his lifetime, changed. Furrows and petals and flecks and streams appeared in his irises, shifting in clarity, in pattern and hue as if charged with a mythical energy.

A kaleidoscope’s dance.

How can this be?

A ghostly voice remonstrated – one he recognized. His own … before. Before the world thieved so many of his possibilities.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.¹

He loosed the baby’s wrappings, the worn-soft blanket draping his cradling arm. Tears welled again. Round-bellied and chubby-limbed, flaxen-haired, his skin a downy rose-gold … the child was beautiful.

More, indeed.

* * *

Three long days of crying … He’d not slept since the Finding, the child’s misery becoming his own. He’d heard loss in his furious wails, frustration in his choking sobs, pleading in his snuffling whimpers. I know, I know, he’d crooned. I know.

At last … quiet. Tearless but watchful in his basket for days, a week. Considering, Jacob deemed. Weighing us, this place, this future.

Then … another onset. A winter of discontent loomed.

Take him to the Bridge of Whispers, Narcissa had advised. The voices soothe the child.

But the Bridge was not a place he favored, the murmurs he heard there too reminding …

I know, I know, he’d crooned again, over and over until the pipes proclaimed the dawn, pacing, the baby carried belly-down on his forearm, until the compass of his soul steadied, a direction determined. Take him skyward. He is hungry for light.

* * *

Do I know? he questioned now. Can I, truly?

From whom has the child been separated? To what life should he’d have been born? Where lies the homeland in which he would be wholly welcome?

So much will be denied him. Acceptance, liberty, fairness. The colors of the world above.

If I teach him to read and imagine, will he know dissatisfaction? If I teach him to love, will he know despair?

Do I have any other choice?

Shifting the baby, both hands spread wide in support – under head and shoulders, under diapered bum – he lifted the little one high, higher into the lean radiance, promise and apology at once overwhelming, so thick in his chest and throat he could barely breathe.

Was it minutes he held the child so? Was it hours? Above, the sun strengthened; the rays beaming below warmed, their angled cast altering left to right. His muscles grumbled, but he wouldn’t falter. He couldn’t … even as he trembled, uncertainty quarreling with conviction, even as he prayed to any gods who might hear …

Do not let my own grief manifest as bitterness. Do not let my disappointments manifest as judgement. Make me not rigid in thought. Help me recognize my mistakes, my many mistakes made and to come, that I might set right my wrongs. Make me gracious in awareness and generous in love.² Give me strength; give me courage. Make me worthy of this gift of a new-found world, this opportunity, this family …

At last, he brought the baby low again, knelt to collect the blanket he’d let drop to the stone floor, tucked the child within the cottony folds … the same soft patchwork into which Devin had been received, the same small quilt he’d kept folded high and in the back his wardrobe ever since.

New tears spilled. He would do better this time. He would be better. Surely I can.

He looked down and met the infant’s gaze. His eyes were crystal now, sky blue and focused. Jacob stroked his velvet cheek, and the vow he’d come here to make gathered in his marrow.

“One day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bankside in autumn.³

“One day, my sweet, sweet boy,” he whispered, the storm of love guttering his words. “For this – for you – I will always … hope.”

______________________

Title: Henry David Thoreau. Walden. Chapter 2: Where I Lived, and What I Lived For. 1854.

1. William Shakespeare. Hamlet. Act 1, Scene 5. 1623.
2. John O’Dnohue. Matins. To Bless the Space Between Us. 2008
3. Henry David Thoreau. Walking. 1851.