Day 23410 5:20 AM
“A child can play with its mother's breasts, but not its father's testicles.”
— African Proverb
Manuella’s words got me thinking. If this lifetime restarts, and I lose all my children as a consequence, how many should I have? In retrospect, a child with Leandra cemented a very important early alliance, which helped conquer Garacia. As for twenty-three children Manuella and I had afterward, five should be more than enough.
“What are you thinking about?” Manuella asks, still kissing and caressing my back.
“About the matter of children you mentioned yesterday evening. I think you are correct. The obvious problems of so many pregnancies aside, sometimes I think we have neglected our children due to sheer numbers and the limit to our attention.
“I mean sure, most noble children are raised by tutors and rarely have deep discussions with their parents, but we tried. And while tutors did spend more time with them than us, we had a dedicated time for play and to discuss the things they learned, but there were too many of them.”
The triplets were the most extreme and turbulent period of our parental odyssey, but we plowed through. Somehow.
“Losing Vic and Nate over something as irrelevant as a patch of land and their desire to prove themselves is an open wound, one I would never allow to happen again.” I pause. I thought everyone had learned the price of killing my children after Vic, but Nate was unlucky enough to die to a random arrow in a volley, rather than during an aimed attempt at his life.
When I marched at the Ludilonians with my elite troops and destroyed them in the open field, they crucified all archers involved in Nate’s death themselves and begged for forgiveness.
“Luck is also something which we should not repeat,” Manuella says again, her absentminded caresses stopping. “His mother will die of old age and he has just stepped out of boyhood.”
I turn around and grab her ass to pull her closer.
“What boyhood? I had seven children by the time I was his age, and he is still fooling around, visiting taverns and distant cities incognito.”
Manuella pinches my cheek, tit for tat.
“You started as a forty-year-old man in a youth’s body. Of course you managed to behave like an adult from time to time. But even then you were just a naughty boy on most days. Even now.”
I cannot argue with that, so I change the subject.
“What if we reincarnate together in a different world? One free of past entanglements and hatred. What would you do?”
She worms her way up the pillow, her lips reaching my ear. “I would fuck you until I busted your testicles.”
Her warm breath tickles me. II bark a laugh and keep laughing. It has been ages since Manuella had spoken dirty, and the funniest thing is I can feel she means it.
“Laugh all you want. How would you feel if I was full of life and desire while you were a withered old man?”
It is a rhetorical question, but I feel obliged to answer. “I would have died smiling years ago.”
Manuella smacks me on the head.
“You self-centered crook, what about the devastated widow you would leave behind?”
“Joking, joking! But what would you have us do after you bust my royal jewels?”
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“I would like to visit beautiful places without killing people and tearing down fortifications, just wander around and see how other people are living, I guess? There is this nagging feeling I have wasted half my life listening to others whine and ask me to solve their problems, and I am not talking about the children.”
“You too?” I am honestly shocked, I thought Manuella was doing whatever queens were supposed to be doing in their gardens and parlors.
“You cannot be so dense, my dear.” So she says, but apparently I can and am. “Countless people have brought me presents and asked for my time just so I would speak with you on their behalf. I still have two hours dedicated to supplicants even now. I think even my ladies-in-waiting hold courts of their own to bring me the matters they find the most urgent, or the ones for which somebody had paid an exorbitant sum.”
Huh?
“You think Mathias also does something like that?”
Her look tells me everything, so I steer us back towards the subject of reincarnating together in an unknown world.
“So, travel. Anything else? Would you prefer to spend some time away from me?”
“No,” she responds without hesitation, her voice steely. “I would love to have fun with you. I would like to experience a lifetime where I did not feel guilty whenever I look at your face.”
“And kids?”
“Maybe. I am unsure. They are my pride and joy, and I love them. But…”
“But?”
“But I want to be selfish, to have you to myself. We have children, even when they are adults and have countries of their own there is always the constant worry, a gnawing feeling in the back of my head, which started ever since Victor died.”
I understand her. The same feeling has been pressing down on me too for years. The children are too far. If something happens, the news will not reach me in time, their deaths will be permanent, and the two of us will remain.
Without Manuella, my life would have become an ever present anxiety, days of waiting to get the bad news. Like Manuella has said, I look younger than most of my children, and I will probably outlive them. That means I will have to bury them all myself. When will it drive me mad?
Sometimes, I have nightmares of being old, and waiting in an empty castle to receive the news, wondering which one is next. I am afraid of living.
“Manuella,” Blunt starts, but I press my teeth together. She is dying, and does not need to hear stupid nonsense about her husband being afraid of life without her.
“Yes?”
“We should get up and have breakfast. What would you like?”
Crepes with raspberry jam, topped with sour cream, surprised me and the chef alike, but they made a fine meal.
“Sire,” Mathias arrives to introduce the altered schedule for the day as soon as we leave the dining room.
“I am taking two weeks of vacation. Luck is to take over all royal duties.” I dismiss the man with a wave and hear the sudden commotion as they look for our youngest.
“He ran away again,” Manuella says, shaking her head. Unlike our other children, we spoiled Luck rotten.
“Do you think someone else should inherit his domain?”
She shakes her head. “I do not know. No matter which move we make, it is a foul one. Removing him from the line of succession might push him into leading an armed uprising, and having him take the throne could ruin the country.”
She opens her mouth, but then closes it. The solution is obvious, and we both know it, if I outlive him, Luck will never cause trouble. He is into wine and women, and would not even notice what is happening until he is too old to do anything about it. At least we are still steering him away from drugs, but I guess even that is only a matter of time.
“We failed as parents.”
“We failed him. I was too absorbed with my own problems, and you never disciplined children anyway.”
I resent the statement, and I wish to argue. Unfortunately, my wisdom tells me I would lose that debate, several most obvious arguments in Manuella’s favor. Having no desire to waste my breath on an argument I would lose, I obscure my retreat with a practical question.
“What are we doing today?”
“I am writing letters for the children, explaining I love them, and leaving them with final words I have for them. Most messages will be similar, or at least have some overlap, but I think they deserve it, and I want to have a feeling I have done all I can, since they are all at least three weeks away by carriage.”
I let Manuella work, watching her beautiful profile as she writes her goodbyes on a marble garden table, near her favorite pond. The glistening violet fish are close to the surface, languidly moving their fins to swim in place and observe their mistress.
The jibbies are said to be magical, absorbing their owner’s negative emotions if kept nearby. The story sounds like nonsense to me. Plenty of people back on Earth kept aquariums to relax and meditate, but the fish do seem oddly calm and focused.
They steal all of my attention, then one of them goes still and starts floating upside down, followed by another and another. The whole school dies in ten seconds, and I look at Manuella. She drops her quill, her jaw clenched in pain. She grabs her chest and turns towards me, trying to smile, before falling off her chair.
The world turns blurry as I run towards her, but I am too late. She is gone.