Wood Sprites

“I do think that while the demonstrations against the E.I.A. zone expansion are going on that checking for car bombs at the dinner is perfectly reasonable. Anna Desmarais is a complete loon, though, if she thinks my nine-year-olds are terrorists. You tell Taliaferro that if she goes after my girls, I will come down there and set her—” Their mother noticed them standing at the door and winced. “Short hairs on fire.”

With a flick of the wrist and a jangle of gold bracelets, she tried to banish them away so she could use real harsh language. They edged back so that they weren’t in the room proper but they could still see her rinsing out her cardigan.

She knew that they were still in earshot; she gave a long angry hiss instead of swearing. “She is not a nice little old lady, she is a hedge-fund manager and one of the best. She’s a shark; if she smiled a little wider, you’d see how sharp her teeth are. Oh, she hates me just as much as I hate her; we’re just both very good at smiling and pretending that everything is just peachy.”

Their mother worked in events planning for charities. In some ways, it was a glamorous job as it involved throwing bright and glittering parties for the city’s richest. It meant, however, that their mother was constantly faced with drop-dead deadlines and unexpected emergencies. She was quite good at it since, as an African warrior queen, she was forceful and unbending while extremely polite.

“Jillian needed three stitches.” Their mother sniffed the cardigan to see if she had gotten out the smell of smoke from the fine wool. “Louise had half of her hair burnt off. Other than that, they only have minor scrapes and bruises from head to toe. They spent the night at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital.” She paused as the other side asked a question that made her glare at them in the doorway. “It was a dust explosion! Look it up; I had to.” She huffed with impatience. “Flour, when airborne in high concentrations, can explode. Flour. The white stuff in cookies and cakes. Tell Taliaferro to tell Desmarais that the fire department already has ruled it was an accident.” Another huff of impatience. “My girls videoed the whole thing, and the footage cleared them of everything but stupidity. Yes, the joy of raising children. Said children want their mother, I have to go.”

She laid her sweater on the drying rack and pulled off her gloves. Their mother held up her elegant hand as if giving benediction. “I love you two dearly,” she said calmly. “I would kill anyone that tried to harm you. I would lay down my life to protect you. But — this — is — not — a good time to push me.”

Louise swallowed hard. Jillian held out her hand, and they laced their fingers tightly together.

“No, no, no.” Their mother waved her finger at them. “Don’t do that The Shining twin dead girls on me.”

Louise squeezed Jillian’s hand tight and then reluctantly let it go. “Mom, we wanted to know. Could you and Dad go back to the embryo bank and use what’s still in storage so we can have little sisters and brothers?”

Their mother took a deep breath and sighed it out. She didn’t like to give them her knee-jerk reactions, but it sometimes took her a few minutes before she could find safe answers. This took longer than usual, and it was simply, “No.”

“Why?” Jillian pushed when she shouldn’t have.

Their mother caught hold of them to grip them both fiercely. “Having a child is not just getting knocked up and spitting it out into the world! You are responsible for every moment of that child’s life until it can take legal accountability for itself — which with some poor souls is never. Besides adequate food, clothing, and schooling, you must lavish it with love and affection tempered with discipline. Your father and I made that commitment to you two. We do not have the resources to reasonably extend that to other children, no matter how much we would love to have more. So the answer is no.”

They nodded and escaped up the stairs. At the top of the steps, though, Jillian paused to look back with her mouth rounded into a silent “Oh” of surprise.

“What?” Louise whispered.

“Lou, they thought about having more. That means there’s other leftovers still waiting to be born.”

* * *

Late that night, they lay in their beds as gleaming stars slowly crawled across their ceiling. The holographic, completely accurate, star field was one of the many expensive birthday gifts that their parents had surprised them with over the years. It had a “lullaby” mode where an AI with Carl Sagan’s voice gave astronomy lessons as constellations rose in the east. Louise couldn’t understand why their parents hadn’t saved their money and gotten more children instead.

“If there are leftovers, we need to do something.” Jillian was waving her arms in the darkness. Louise could only see them moving, though, as they rapidly eclipsed the stars. “Big things. Maybe illegal things. They’re our little sisters.”