Rasp awoke to the tantalizing smell of sweet plums, buttery crust, and thyme. His eyes fluttered open, blinking at the harsh light pouring in from the window. Sunspots dotted his vision for a few seconds before they cleared, giving way to a familiar room. He was seated on a pine bench, with his upper half slumped over a matching rectangular table. The tabletop was scarred, burned, and pitted from four generations of abuse. He ran his hand over the polished surface, feeling a smile pull at his lips when his fingertips brushed against the anatomical drawing he’d etched into the grain as a teenager. No amount of buffing had ever been able to get it out.
Mother insisted he sit in front of the etching at every meal afterwards, hopeful, perhaps, that if he stared at it over and over again, he would one day come to realize his shame. Unfortunately, all it did was make him giddy. Even now, he felt the irresistible itch to grab the nearest knife and add a few curly-q hairs.
“Is there where you’ve been? I wondered why it was so quiet.” A woman strode into the room and heaved a stack of plates from one of the overcrowded shelves lining the wall. “You’re not carving anymore penises into my table, are you?”
A sharp pain lanced through Rasp’s chest. He sat straight, fighting his sudden inability to breathe. “Mom?”
“Hmm?” She hummed as she worked.
“It’s you.” What a stupid thing to say. So stupid in fact, Rasp wasn’t sure why he’d said it. Of course it was her. He could see her clear as day, couldn’t he? Why did that feel like it was out of the ordinary?
Mother turned in his direction, pushing the dark auburn hair from her eyes. A soft smile hovered over her lips. “Were you expecting someone else?”
Words failed him. He felt happy and sad at the same time and, for the life of him, couldn’t figure out why. Rasp wanted to push to his feet, rush over, and hold her in his arms and never let go again. But something was holding him back. There was a strange, squiggly feeling in the back of his skull. It pulsed, barely, like the former ache of a long-forgotten injury.
Try as he might, his words still weren’t behaving correctly. “You’re…”
Mother waited patiently for him to finish.
Gah! Why was this suddenly so hard? It was there, right on the tip of his tongue, but the harder he pursued it, the farther the old ache drifted out of reach.
Mother’s hands went to her hips. “Are you going to finish your thought? I am what?”
Unfortunately, her prompting did the opposite of what she intended and the word Rasp was searching for vanished from his memory. He blinked, attempting to recall what he’d meant to say. She was…something. Something important. Something that made him sad. Except that had changed, because seeing her again made him less sad. Happy then? Was that it?
Yes, he decided, as a tentative smile pulled across his downturned mouth. He was happy. Whatever it was he thought he knew, didn’t matter anymore because everything was just how it was supposed to be. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
“Are you sure?” Mother asked.
Her smile made Rasp’s spirits lift even higher. Whatever this inexplicable sense of happiness was, he never wanted it to end. It was as if all the frayed strings in his life had finally pulled together, resulting in a tapestry more beautiful than his wildest dreams. He just hadn’t been able to see it before. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Come on then.” Mother gestured for him to join her. “Help me set the table.”
“You want me to help?”
“Yes, you.”
“You haven’t let me set the table since Mul and I used your favorite plates for slingshot pra—” The blood rushed from Rasp’s head as he stood. He staggered forward, holding a hand to his eyes as he waited for the room to stop spinning. When he opened them again, the plates had moved from the back counter to the table. Cutlery had been laid out too, along with an assortment of mismatched goblets and neatly folded napkins.
That was odd. The squiggly feeling was back at it again, wriggling around like a worm loose in his skull.
Mother set the extra napkins down and approached, resting her hand on his shoulder. “Are you alright, Raspberry?”
Was he? Good gods, it felt like he was losing his mind. Things kept shifting on him and he couldn’t tell if it was him or the things that were out of sorts. “I’m not sure.”
“Look at me, dear.”
Rasp did as she asked, taken aback by what he saw. Somewhere along the way, he’d forgotten what she’d looked like. How her smile could light a room. The way the lines between her eyebrows crinkled together when he compared her cooking to a bloated porcupine. He gazed into familiar eyes, deep like pools of green tranquility.
An unexplained thought wormed free from his tongue. “I thought you only had one eye.”
Rasp’s vision blurred as the room shifted again. This time, when he regained his composure, Mother was back standing alongside the counter, sorting utensils. Rasp opened his mouth to demand an explanation when a short, wiry man burst into the room, carrying a squealing child on his shoulders. “There’s my favorite bastard,” he said, setting the boy onto the ground. “Go on. Go kick your dad in the shin like I showed you.”
“Not now. Get out,” Rasp commanded, refusing to let go of the thought else it might slip through his grasp once more. “We’re in the middle of something.”
“What? Too busy for your own damn son, Raspy?”
His what? Rasp turned, locking eyes with the short man as the squirming sensation in the back of his head fell eerily still. A different feeling flooded his insides. Confusion, mostly. He had never felt at ease in this particular man’s presence before, but the more he stared, the more the years of animosity melted away like ice during the breakup season. Even now, the word felt dirty in his mouth. “Dad.”
“Son,” Father greeted in a similar fashion.
For all his faults, Father could at least be counted on for one thing. He didn’t put up with bullshit. Rasp tilted his head at him, watching his father’s expression for its customary tells. “Does any of this feel odd to you?”
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“You’ve always been odd to me, Raspberry. Can’t be helped, I’m afraid.”
That sounded right. Or at least like something his father would say. Chewing his lip, Rasp’s gaze moved lower, realizing he’d forgotten all about the small child that was now meandering dangerously in his direction. The boy looked like one of Bil’s kids, but scrawnier. “Who’s this?”
“Did you get hit on the head again, boy?” Father demanded with a laugh. “Gods, I take your wee lad for a single afternoon and you forget him entirely.”
Rasp startled backwards until his legs struck the bench and he sat to keep from falling over. Before he could protest, the boy was clambering into his lap. Rasp’s first instinct was to shove the kid to the floor, but something stayed his hand. He looked the boy over, marveling at his dark wavy hair and brilliant brown eyes. There was a familiar warmth in the boy’s expression. It pulled Rasp in, melting all of his former trepidations.
Rasp reached out and ruffled the boy’s hair, not sure why it was summoning tears to his eyes. This time, when the obnoxious squirming sensation returned, he ignored it. He didn’t care anymore. Odd or not, this was a moment that he wanted to hold on to for as long as possible.
“You’re bigger than I remember,” Rasp said to his son.
“See? I told you it would happen, didn’t I?” Father shuffled from the doorway towards the table. “One day they’re wee little babes, and the next you’re having to stand on tiptoe to see eye to eye.”
The boy whipped his head around at the old man, mouth curled in protest. “I’m not a baby. I’m big!”
“You are, aren’t you?” Rasp said, his voice as soft as a whisper. It felt like he’d been asleep for ages, living the day-to-day of a distant nightmare for so long, he’d accepted it as reality. But he was awake now. The nightmare had faded save for a few lingering feelings that he just couldn’t quite shake.
“I’m happy to report that your boy is a born huntsman,” Father said, settling into the chair at the head of the table. “Leaps ahead of where you were at his age.”
“What would you know, old man?” Rasp said. “Bil taught me to hunt, not you.”
“I guess that explains it then. The blind leading the blind.”
Rasp’s head jerked to attention. “What was that?”
Father seemed more interested in his drink. He drained half his mug in a single gulp before wiping the droplets from his silver whiskers with the back of his sleeve, ignoring the neatly folded napkin to his left. “Hm?”
“What you just said.” Already, Rasp could feel the words dissipating from his memory. He tried to focus on them, but they turned to dust. Rasp struck his fist against the table with a resounding slam. “What did you say?”
“Gods, Raspberry, have a drink already. You’re acting all out of sorts.”
Rasp’s stare settled on the mug in front of him, brimming with a honey-colored liquid. The drink had always been there, hadn’t it? What in the realm was wrong with him today? He really was losing his mind. Rasp raised the cup to his lips, barely tasting the warm ale that slid down his throat. Behind him, the rest of the family barged into the dining room, arranging themselves around the table.
Rasp nearly spat his drink back up the moment a young woman placed her hand on his shoulder and whispered something in his ear. “Excuse me?” he croaked, staring up at her wide-eyed.
“Is that any way to greet the love of your life?”
Rasp set the mug back down, blinking hard. “What the fuck are you talking about? You up and left me after our baby…” He paused, thoughts racing across his mind as he tried and failed to find the missing pieces of this puzzle. Something wasn’t adding up. Rasp met her unflinching gaze. He’d loved her, once. But not anymore. At least he didn’t think so. Had it all been a dream? It felt like so much more had happened between then and now but for the life of him, he couldn’t recall any of it.
“Ignore him,” Mother murmured as she moved about, setting various dishes onto the table. “He’s in his head again.”
The young woman trailed her fingers down his arm. “I think I might know how to snap him out of it.”
“Don’t fucking touch me!” Rasp slapped her hand away as an unknown fire lit within his belly, battling against the cool calmness that kept trying to extinguish the rising flames. “Not after what you did. You said I was cursed, remember? And that it was my fault that…” Rasp’s voice trailed, realizing he could no longer recall what horrendous misdeed had caused the irreparable rift between them.
For a split second, the young woman’s eyes went cold, like frost. Rasp remembered that look, and the way it used to shred his insides to minced meat. Before he could put his thoughts to words the room shifted again and the young woman was pink in the face and on the verge of tears. “Why are you being so cruel?” she said, lower lip quivering. “What’s gotten into you? You’re not acting like yourself.”
He didn’t have anything to say to that. Heat flushed across his face as Rasp averted his gaze. The boy in his lap stared back up at him, brown eyes wide and glistening with the innocence of youth. The more they looked at each other, the more the surrounding calmness settled deeper in Rasp’s bones, eating away at his unease. How could he yell in front of someone so innocent? That wasn’t fair. The boy hadn’t done anything wrong.
Rasp was about to give in, to shut out the squirmy feeling in the back of his head and accept the calmness for what it was, when one final thought flashed across his mind. “I don’t know his name.”
“Ha!” one of his brothers chimed in from further down the table. “Dumbass here doesn’t remember what he named his own kid.”
Rasp ignored the offender, too concentrated on extracting the details from his shifting memory to retaliate. “We were waiting for his name day. We had a few picked out, I remember, I wrote a list on paper.” The mental image of that list being thrown in the fire darted before his eyes. He tried to latch onto it, to decipher its meaning, but it was gone as quickly as it had come.
“You changed your mind at the last second,” the young woman reminded him, offering a placating smile.
“I did?”
“It wasn’t my first choice, but you seemed so excited, I couldn’t tell you no. I’ll admit, it’s grown on me since.”
“Then why don’t I remember?” Rasp demanded, feeling his heartbeat spike once more. “Why don’t I remember his name? That’s something I should remember, right? My own son’s fucking name?”
Mother and the young woman traded concerned looks before the latter supplied the answer. “It’s Faris.”
Oh. Right. Now that they mentioned it, that name did sound familiar. A swell of relief broke over the top of him. Rasp relaxed back onto the bench, drumming his fingers against the tabletop. Gods, what was wrong with him? Faris was a good kid, the best son an undeserving dad could ask for. He loved Faris, and Faris loved him. Sure, they never actually said it out loud, but it was in the little things. The way Faris would call him names, like Dinglehead.
“Dinglehead?” Rasp managed to get the word out before the memory dissipated.
“Eat,” Mother commanded, shoving a slice of plum galette in his direction.
It smelled heavenly, rich, sweet, and savory, all rolled into a buttery crust and piping hot from the oven. The thick aroma of thyme wafted into the air, carried by the steam, and worked its way into his nose, causing both his eyes and his mouth to water. One bite, and Rasp would forget his troubles. He didn’t know how he knew this, he just did.
Father leaned over the table in his direction, whispering, “It’s time to wake up, Raspberry.”
“Nonsense,” Mother huffed as she moved to the other end of the table and sat. “We are going to have a pleasant family meal for a change. Now, no more of this foolish talk. Everyone eat.”
On cue, the dinner conversation rose up to a deafening hum as each dish passed from hand to hand, from one end to the next. Ordinarily Rasp would have fought tooth and nail to secure his portion, but his appetite was suddenly gone. He watched each dish pass by confused as to how something this right could possibly feel so wrong.
“Raspberry.”
He followed his father’s voice, locking eyes with the small man. Rasp used to hate how much they looked alike. Same small, wiry frame, and narrow face. The only difference was Father’s age and silver hair. Rasp was fortunate that his mop of unruly tangles was the same color as mother’s.
“Wake up!”
Startled, Rasp released the lock of hair he was holding, swearing he saw a shimmer of silver. The surrounding hum grew louder, each individual voice blending together as the room crescendoed into blaring din. The colors swirled as Rasp’s vision went fuzzy. The only detail that remained in focus was his father.
Father leaned forward, fingertips digging into the table, and shouted, “You need to wake up, boy. Wake up!”