It’s time for bed, Luc,” the young woman said.
“I don’t want to go to bed.” The heavy-lidded little boy tucked his arm under his head and sluggishly kicked at a stack of blocks, sending them tumbling to the rug.
The father leaned against the doorjamb of the nursery, smiling at his son’s tantrum, curious to see if the boy would win this battle of wills against his orderly nanny. As the father watched, a snippet of a story came to him: “‘Keep back, lady, no one is going to catch me and make me a man.’” The father, who never forgot anything, mentally flipped through the rest of Peter Pan’s tale in search of parental insight and wondered if it was time to move his son into a room of his own, away from the babyish decor and the low toddler bed.
Based on the date of the boy’s birth—and assuming a typical human calendar—Luc should have been celebrating his second birthday. But neither dates nor calendars were relevant to someone like Luc—or to his father. And since the boy had never celebrated a birthday, he didn’t know to miss it.
In the first days of parenthood, Luc’s father had meant to follow all the typical human customs and let his son grow up like any other boy. But then his patience had worn out. He wanted a son he could train, not one who needed diapers changed and lullabies sung. So the father had traveled the dark planes between place and time as only he could, his newborn son tucked against his chest. He’d pulled his cloak around them both and disappeared into the shadows, reappearing somewhere else with the newborn suddenly grown into an infant. Someday, when the boy reached maturity, the aging would stop altogether. But in the meantime, the father would manipulate his son’s growth as it fit his need and whimsy.
He had tried again to care for his infant son, but it was not in his nature to handle teething well. He’d considered finding a foster family to care for the boy until he reached an age that would be less demanding, but the father had seen the consequences of letting someone else raise a child. He had lost his daughter forever because of it.
Determined, he had wrapped himself up once more and traveled again. The infant had become a toddler, and his father had managed as best he could, until he couldn’t manage any longer. Father and son had taken one last trip though the dark planes. Now the toddler was a child, and they had been happy together for months. Luc was less focused on basic needs and far more interested in his desires. That was the fertile playground his father knew so well.
“I said I do not want to go to bed!” Luc sat up, yanking the zipper of his footed pajamas up and down as if he was ripping open his chest over and over again. Up and down. Up. Down.
“Little boys don’t always get what they want,” the woman answered as she sprayed lavender oil on the pillow.
With a growl, Luc grabbed a wooden train car from the floor and threw it at the nanny’s head.
She crossed the room quickly and took the boy by the arm. “We do not throw things, Luc!”
“I don’t like you anymore. I wish you were dead!” he screamed. “Die, nanny, die!”
Shock flashed across the young woman’s face, her skin turned pasty like glue, her eyes vacant like those of the toy soldiers at war on the table behind her. The bottle of lavender slipped from the nanny’s hand, shattering on the floor as she pitched forward like a puppet cut loose from its strings.
Luc backed away, wide-eyed, until he ran up against his father’s legs. The boy gaped at the work of his words, his dead nanny lying among the disheveled blocks and train cars with a sickly sweet pool of lavender seeping into the floor. His eyes brimming with unshed tears, he turned to look up at his father.
Luc’s father chuckled. “Did I ever tell you about a boy named Peter Pan? He killed people, too, but he didn’t cry about it.”
He patted his son on the head and led him out of the nursery.