William Fairburne

William believed in science, and, to some extent, William believed in God. He felt that it wasn’t too popular for those two to co-exist, but William always found a way. God said, “let there be light!” and science said how he did it.

God did, science explained.

It was a joint effort, in his opinion.

As he got older, he started to see how useful this was. God did curious things, and William often wondered why. Why certain things worked the way that they did. He soon came to realise that with just a quick question to his father, he could know all that there was to know about the world. When he was younger, he often wondered how his father had all the answered, but as he matured, William came to the conclusion that his father must be science.

When he was five, he stumbled across his first scientific predicament, having this particular question that no one seemed to know the answer to.

He started off by asking Sydney, but he was foolish to do so. Afterall, William was the smartest of the two twins. If anyone were to know, it would be him. But, alas, he didn’t, and so he instead took the question to their father.

When the question was asked, Garreth seemed to be at a loss for words. He’d never before seemed to be at a loss for words. Garreth was the entire Oxford dictionary, shuffled up, always. Sort of like the brother he would come to know as Matthew, except with more intelligence behind his sentences.

And yet, here he was now, speechless. He said a couple of ‘ums,’ darted his eyes back and forth a couple of times before placing a hand on William’s shoulder and telling him, “that’s not a conversation for right now.” The conversation was dropped.

William had thought of that interaction all day, coming to the conclusion that his father simple didn’t know! Science didn’t know. On this, God worked alone, and the thought kept William awake, staring at the ceiling into the darkest hours of the night until. This was the first time he father hadn’t known something that he asked. Even if he wasn’t too knowledgeable on a subject, he’d look it up, bringing home a book for William to read and a bunch of information he got from it.

He had never downright avoided the question, which led William to believe that no one knew. There was no book for him to find the answer in; no scientific explanation for what William foolishly assumed would be a simple concept.

He’d prayed to God that night, for the first time ever, and asked for him to bestow upon the world the knowledge that they lacked, and to set his mind at ease; William hated the feeling of wonder.

He gave it a week before he asked again, figuring God had many other prayers to attend to before he could get around to his. Garreth’s response was simply a light-hearted laugh, followed by, “this again, buddy?”

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Rejected. By God.

Ouch.

It was that day that William decided to take matters into his own hands. If God was going to withhold knowledge so dire, he would have to pry it from the man’s mind. He would find the answer to the world’s unknown question: Where do babies come from?

William was patient. He clung onto his goal for two years, finally getting his answer when he was seven.

A woman he had never seen before had come to their house one day, asking for Garreth. She was wearing a large, floppy hat brown tulle veil concealing her face. William recalled the delight his father expressed at seeing her. He had taken her hand and led her away.

After that first day, she started to come over more and more frequently, and each time, Garreth would take her away. She never showed William her face, not even after he asked politely, with both a please and a thank you. He’d caught a glimpse one time only, when she sat in one of the adirondack chairs, her veiled pulled free from her face as she blew out the smoke from a cigarette.

He started to get into the schedule. He’d hear a knock on the door every day shortly before bedtime, and when he father opened it, the woman in the floppy hat was the who knocked, perfectly framed by the doorway.

Understandably so, he was completely thrown off when she stopped coming.

Months went by without a knock at the door from his father’s favourite woman. Only when William had finally come to accept that she was gone did she knock again, as though she could hear his thoughts and was desperate to prove him wrong.

William was eager to greet her, even if she’d never given him the light of day. The door opened, and he saw a baby in her arms. A blond-haired, blue-eyed, screaming baby. William backed away, but to no avail; his father had brought the boy inside.

That was the last time William had ever seen the mystery woman. She disappeared like the smoke from a cigarette in the wind, as much of a stranger to him as she had been the day she’d first arrived. William liked to imagine she’d sprouted wings and flew up to Heaven, having just fulfilled William’s only prayer, but he laughed at the idea of an angel being that unceremonious.

His father seemed sad for quite some time after that, especially whilst caring for the boy. He could understand why; the boy was loud, and came in place of the woman Garreth seemed so fond of. It was an unfair sacrifice.

As the months went by, the boy grew unsettlingly more and more to look like William’s father. He had his hair and eyes, that William had noticed right away, but something about him just seemed to match perfectly. As though the boy was crafted out of clay in Garreth’s image, shaped in a way unable to be reproduced for anyone else.

Though, he needn't be distracted. William had, afterall, been given the answer to his question. All that was left was for him to record his findings.

He pulled out a notebook, where many other similar thoughts were well documented, beginning to write.

Babies come from a veiled angel, showing up at your doorstep. She may stay for a while, acting unseemly, but in the end, she will leave you with a screaming gift, and ascend back to the skies.

William prayed for the second time that night, asking God to please not send her again. He didn’t want another brother.