Fluid slipped from his warm balloon home; the walls gathered and pressed. He didn't decide to go—he was sent, easily, irresistibly, toward a narrowing place.
The squeeze became a tunnel. Cold little teeth of air nipped his face. The weight that had held him gave way and the world shoved him forward. Noise sharpened—winter wind, wet work, low voices—and work-rough hands found his skull and drew.
He tried to say, Frank, wait—I'm coming back, but his mouth knew no words. What came was raw and thin and outrageously small—a baby's cry.
"G-g… gaa—b-baa—waaah—"
The hands pulled again, gentle and sure. A woman laughed through tears.
"Lo, mi lord, Crist yow save; a fair childe is y-bore!" Her voice was firm as oaken boards, breath quick with labor. He didn't catch the phrasing, but the vowels rang older than anything he knew—English bent different.
The squeeze tightened; his little shoulders turned without willing; palms shaped his skull. The black tunnel broke. Cold air knifed him; a rinse of pale light struck skin; he burst into a room that smelled of smoke, iron, and blood.
The hands that lifted him were big and knowing. Linen rasped his cheeks. A tug at his belly—an iron snip—and the cord was gone. He felt, suddenly, unmoored. He wanted to open his eyes and lodge a complaint, but the lids were heavy and would not obey, so he listened.
Straw hissed underfoot. Somewhere a rooster coughed the hour.
Leather creaked. Wood complained. Metal tapped the rim of a helm like a small bell. A heavier nearness stood by the bed—a man whose presence made the boards groan and the fur blanket sink with shadow. Oil and steel and horse clung to him. When he spoke, the cottage felt small.
"What childe is this? Sey quicke. A sone?"
The older woman—midwife, by her cords and calm—turned, words crisp as frost. "Nay, mi lord—ywis, it is a mayde; hool and sounde, and greet of cry."
Armor shifted, as if the man had taken a blow. "Allas! A mayde eft? Ever Fortune pleieth me fals."
Despite the steel to his disappointment, he stepped nearer until his breath fell warm on the baby's face. A buckle popped; a glove came free. A bare finger—broad, callused, gentle—touched her cheek.
Power lived in that hand. Even blind and tiny, Bruce felt it—and, despite himself, approved. Strong as hell, he thought dimly, and huffed.
"Hir face is hool—faire made, like hir moder," the midwife murmured, professional pride leaking through. "No bruys ne blemys."
The man's finger hovered to test the tiny palm.
Something inside answered. He willed motion into clumsy oars and clam-fingers and—by miracle or sheer stubbornness—one small hand closed around the knight's finger. He squeezed, a gym-bro handshake in miniature.
A breath caught inside the armor. "Byr Lady… lo this grip." Approval, gravelled and grudging—and real. He let the child hold him until the small hand tired, then eased free. It was hard work, holding the world with such little bones.
The midwife shifted her and passed the bundle into another set of arms—softer, trembling with spent strength. Milk-warm skin, salt damp hair, a heart thrumming near the baby's ear. Mother.
"Kepe hir sauf, goodwyf," the man said at last, steel returning to his edges. "Though but a mayde, yit may she availe—pees, covenaunt—what God shal sende." He drew the fur up beneath the baby's chin with a care that didn't fit his weight. One last nod—to the sweating mother, to the loud new life—and the glove went back on.
He turned for the door. Boards complained. The cottage seemed to shrink as he shouldered toward the light.
Lids trembled. The baby forced them open a little. Through a flare of brightness she saw him: a huge frame turning sideways for the doorjamb; close-cropped gold hair; the flash of a gilt helm; a dark blue cloak; a lion-headed pauldron catching winter. He had to duck and bend his knees to get out—ridiculous and, to Bruce, unreasonably cool.
At the threshold the midwife bobbed after him, skirts gathered, brisk and dutiful. "God yelde yow, mi lord. I shal clense and set alle to right."
Cold drew a finger in. Snow hissed under boots. Tack chimed. "Maken faste the dore! Hie thee!" she called, and the door thumped, latch kissing home. The cottage exhaled.
Soft arms gathered him, and for the first time he truly saw the one holding him.
Her eyes found him—blue as deep ocean, lit within like lakewater in sun. In them he caught himself: a wrinkled, blinking baby—no mile of eyes, just a baby—with the same impossible blue, already clearing, already wide and trying to look right at her. The eggy head he'd once worn in another life was nowhere now; the edges seemed knit smooth by the quiet work of the light at his core. He was a small thing—cute, even—like Frank's kids had looked when they were born. He couldn't remember ever looking like this in any of his past-life photos, few as those were.
The young woman smiled—a gentle, unmistakable smile full of love, the kind even Bruce couldn't miss. She was smiling at him, and he hadn't done anything, didn't even have sunglasses or any manly muscles. It felt like being accepted by someone other than Frank's family, and the feeling was astonishing.
Her voice came low and sing-song, a tongue he half-recognized from some Viking documentary—Scandinavian, maybe Swedish or Icelandic. He didn't understand the words, but the meaning arrived anyway: my little one… my beautiful daughter.
"Lítla mín… fallega dóttir mín…"
A sting of worry. Daughter? But—I'm a man. Or I was. Whatever. He was here; he'd arrived again into life. A second chance, though the mother before him was not the one from his past, and this was definitely not New York City on December 25, 1986.
Now, by some sideways miracle, this young woman was his mother. She was small—petite, people would have said—pretty, and from his shrunken vantage she seemed powerful, with those rounded, soft chest muscles that on women were simply called breasts.
He couldn't help remembering late nights at home trying to do handstands while watching the gymnastics girls on TV. This woman especially reminded him of that one gymnast who always smiled, fearless before the crowd. How did she do it? He'd never faced crowds without his sunglasses. He'd wondered what it would be like to be like her—to flip light and easy, to be smiled at, to be agile instead of bulky. The thought dropped like a pebble and left a ring of surprise. Maybe, this time, he could be approachable—like that gymnast. Maybe if he grew up small, the clerk at the late-night gas station wouldn't grip the gun under the counter when he walked in dressed in black and shades.
But who was he now? Who was she? And where on earth were they, if not New York? He scanned the room and tried to ask about the low, straw-laced roof; the door of old planks, leather patched atop; the chickens stalking around as if they paid rent and could sleep or poop wherever they pleased. He gave it everything he had.
"G-ga… b-baa… waaah."
Useless. Yet it seemed to delight the young woman. She tucked him nearer.
He tilted enough to inventory the room—smoke-black beams; mud-chinked walls; a stingy flame licking under an iron pot; straw islands; a bucket by the door where the bossy chickens drank. It tugged at odd half-memories—fantasy shows with dragons, an old documentary about African village life and enormous nose rings, the medieval strategy game he'd loved where you hit "End Turn" until your town finally got stone walls. He mused, baby-faced and pouty, then let out a bubble that rose and escaped as a surprised burp.
Something tugged a thong at the mother's wrist; she glanced toward the door, then back, and nodded to herself. She shifted him, loosened the neck of her simple dress, and bared a breast. It was no moment for modesty—only for keeping a small human alive. He'd seen Sarah nurse her kids, never understood the science of it, only the hush that came with it.
Up this close, as the little human in question, it was… intimidating. His eyes went wide. In his old math, chests were for benching; big chest, big lift, big meant don't mess with me, punk. Sarah and most women he knew didn't chase heavy numbers, which had always felt odd. But this wasn't gym or locker-room selfies. He tried to roll away, to register a courteous protest—two gentlemen, no pec comparisons today, thank you.
Protest meant nothing to the only person who mattered. Need overruled theory. His palm met her skin—soft, warm, nothing like a buff man's hard pec. Surprise opened his jaw; instinct drew the map. He latched.
Milk came—sweet, animal, startlingly alive. The world narrowed to three sounds: the drum under his ear, the pot's soft hiss, his own small swallow. Her hand cupped his head. She watched him with blue-bright patience that could turn winter noon.
Her voice slipped lower, a whisper shaped like a promise.
"Nefni þik… Lili," she breathed. Then, with a quick, mischievous smile: "Já. Tvær Lili."
Two Lilies.
He understood perfectly and tried to object—No, I'm Bruce. "Ga… goo."
That sealed nothing and pleased her very much. She kissed his brow—a brief, sure seal. The name settled like fur at his chin: light, warm, inarguable—for now.
The edges of the room went dark. Sleep shouldered in. He clung to a single face—Frank, shoulders hunched in the yellow wash of his nice car, turning to grin and say something stupid and exactly right. He thought of Frank's kids and the cheap lighters he'd bought them last Christmas because Amber had spent the month's money. He thought of promises that hadn't found their moment yet, of how, once he figured out how to grow and get back to Vermont, he'd have so much to tell Frank and his family.
Sorry, Frank, he told the inside of his skull. I blew it. I don't think I'll make it to next year's Christmas—or the ones after. You'll have to buy the kids gifts without me this time. I hope you all get a good Christmas without me.
He wasn't sure where he was, but Frank was probably out there, waiting for him to come home like always—because Frank usually was. Maybe while he worked out how to get back, Frank would keep the Happyman account safe. Maybe Amber too was waiting, mad he wasn't there cleaning or cooking, though she'd be fine filling the space he'd kept for her. Being alive again, Bruce felt hopeful. Time to do right things wasn't over yet.
The drum of his new mother's heart steadied him. Fire crackled. Chickens, curious onlookers, settled near the straw bed. Wind tested the door-cracks and thought better of it.
Just before sleep took him, he remembered the rat in the burning car long ago—the one that bolted into the bushes and was never found. Brave little bastard, he thought, pleased for it. At least you made it.
And so he slept in his mother's arms, the light within him keeping time.