When other mothers say it is a struggle not to kill their children, I wonder how much of a jest there actually is in their words.

  Alejandra fought to keep the War at bay in her breast as she wrestled her daughters, trying to pry them apart from one another before they did something from which they could not recover. And she was not only thinking of the physical damage.

  It was difficult. Bel and Liv were both strong for their age, and they both had murder on their minds. They kicked and punched and bit and scratched at each other like wild animals. A corner of her mind knew what this was; a stress response to the past twenty four hours. Their bodies were locked in Fight mode, and were looking for any outlet.

  Alejandra managed to get between them, taking another set of knuckles to her sternum as she did so. The blow was inexpert, but had passion behind it and she felt the bruise already starting to form.

  The war raged and shrieked in her chest, seeing enemies where her children used to be. Her reflexes tried to lash out with her arms, tried to get her to strike. She was sandwiched between two bodies bent on violence she could barely breathe could barely move had to get out had to get out!

  She had to fight to not fight back.

  “Stop it the both of you!” she shouted, but her voice was not heeded as her daughters tried to get around her and back at each other. “Matt! Help!”

  “THAT’S ENOUGH.”

  The basso roar was loud and commanding, ripping across the beach like a physical wave and making every eye–Alejandra’s included–whip around to stare at Matthew Albright. He stood tall with his arms crossed, hard blue eyes sweeping left and right over the combatants. She had never, not once, heard him sound like that. Not once in all the years she had known him. The War quieted down, recognizing the voice of a leader and just as surprised as she was that it had come from her husband.

  “Isabel.” The words that came from her husband hit like sledgehammer strikes. “Over there. Sit.” He pointed to a spot on the sand under a purple palm.

  “Olivia. Over there. Sit.” He pointed to a spot near the rocks, exactly opposite her sister.

  He waited until his children, their eyes wide and watching him warily, obeyed his instructions. Then he marched forward and up to Alejandra.

  “Thank you,” she murmured as he got close.

  “It’s not over yet,” he replied in the same low volume. His hand twitched towards her, then stopped and fell back to his side, like he had just meant to touch her and decided it against it.

  “I’m going onto the boat,” he said, raising his voice and sweeping his eyes across the kids. “There’s something I need to get. Then I’ll be back, and we’ll settle this. Until I get back, no one moves. Understand?”

  Soft affirmatives came from Lucas and Dinah, and mute nods from the combatants. Matty eyed them for a long moment, then took a deep breath through his nose and blew it out in one loud huff.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said to her before turning and jogging back towards the wrecked yacht. He ignored the eyes that watched him go.

  Silence descended on the beach. Alejandra moved to position herself between the now-seated sisters, ready to intervene if they tried to get at each other again. But distance and silence had drained most of the fight out of them, and they sat where they had been directed, only casting sullen glares at her and each other.

  Matty was gone perhaps ten minutes, during which nothing was said and no one moved. Alejandra was used to slow time, and simply stood at parade rest between her daughters, waiting. Lucas started to fidget where he was seated atop the rocks, but quieted down when Dinah came up and sat down beside him.

  Finally, Matty returned, crawling out of a hole in the hull with his hands full. In his left hand he held a bottle and a pack of paper cups. And in his other hand he had a pair of wire clippers and…

  Zipties? Alejandra blinked at the heavy dark-plastic tie-downs as her husband came jogging back up to them.

  “Hogtying them might be a little extreme, mi corazon,” she murmured as he came up beside her again.

  He snorted as he set the glass bottle and the cups on the ground next to him. “Not quite what I have in mind. Watch. And,” he added in an even lower voice, “back me up, okay? We’ll figure us out later, but I need you with me right now. Please?”

  The fear in his voice was for her ears alone, and made her hate the War all over again.

  “I will try,” she whispered back, hating that that was all the truth she had right now.

  He nodded, accepting. He understood. Or thought he did. Always seeking to understand, was her Matty, even when there was no way he could possibly…

  Her eyes went to the corpse of the giant crab on the beach. The one they had slain together, protecting each other and their family.

  Perhaps… He might be able to understand?

  But the question went unanswered for now as Matty clapped his hands and beckoned the children forward. Bel and Olivia came slowly, still glaring at each other. Lucas hopped off his rock and started to dart forward, then stopped and turned and grabbed Dinah’s hand, practically dragging her along behind him. The girl protested, but her words fell on deaf ears as she was brought into the little half-circle forming in front of Matty.

  “So, I’m going to do something here in a second,” her husband started almost sounding sheepish. “But before I do, there’s two things that need to happen. First… Luc, come here.”

  “I didn’t do anything!” Luc protested.

  Matty chuckled softly. “No, you’re not in trouble. I need you to hand out the cups. Neutral third party and all that.”

  “Cups?” Lucas looked surprised, but did as Matty asked, and a moment later they were all holding a paper cup like you used a kid’s birthday party. Even she had one.

  “Okay good.” Matty stooped, plucked the bottle of vodka from the beach, twisted off the cap in one fast motion, and started to move down the line, pouring a little more than a finger’s worth into each cup. The kids–and Alejandra too, as she thought of it–stared at him wide-eyed.

  “You’re not actually giving us booze, are you Dad?” Liv asked, looking between cup and father like he’d lost his mind. “We’re under-age.”

  “I learned this from a Russian shift-boss I worked under once,” Matty said, not answering Liv’s question. “When people have a grudge against each other, and they get together to end it, the first thing you do is take a shot of vodka. He said the burn would scrub the heart clean and get it ready to accept what comes next.” He looked each of his kids in the eye. “There are grievances her, so we’re all taking a shot.”

  “I don’t have a grievance,” Dinah said quietly, holding her cup in both hands.

  “No, but you’re part of the family now,” Matty said, nodding at her. “Which means you get a drink too, because this is going to concern everyone here.”

  He set the bottle down and raised his own cup. “Drink. Then we talk.”

  Alejandra watched Matt, tea-totaller Matthew Albright, gun down two fingers of top-shelf Russian vodka like it was sparkling water.

  Then he waited for the rest of them to drink.

  Alejandra gunned hers down, closing her eyes against the burn. It reminded her of the time PFC Michaels had smuggled that bottle into the humvee.

  The kids followed their parents’ example. Bel drank hers, her eyes locked with Matty’s in defiance–though what exactly they were defying she couldn’t tell. Liv gasped and sucked in huge lungfuls of air after hers, and Lucas didn’t even swallow, he turned and sprayed the liquid all over the beach.

  Dinah, she noticed, just drank hers quietly, not reacting.

  “Eugh!? Luc scrubbed at his tongue with his fingers. “People drink this stuff?”

  “To Russians, it’s better than water,” Matty said with a smile.

  “Russians are crazy,” Luc muttered.

  Matt waited until everything had died down. The kids were staring at him with rapt attention, and Alejandra had to wonder if the whole ‘russian’ thing was true, or if he’d made it up just to get past the teenage then crumpled the cup in his hand and tossed it aside.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “Okay. Now that we’ve got that done, there’s something I have to say.”

  He took a deep breath.

  “Bel, you’re right.”

  Isabel jerked and her eyes opened wide. “Wait, what?”

  “I have been a lousy father for a long time now,” Matty said, holding his daughter’s eyes with his own serious gaze. “I’ve been running from the family, from my problems, and burying myself in my work. I was scared, and hurting, and I tried to escape that.

  “I lied to myself, too. I convinced myself that my work was important, that it was necessary, that in order to keep you kids fed and housed and going to college and everything, I had to work as long and as hard as I could. And some of that might have been true. But, really, I was running away. From you,” he nodded at Bel. “From you,” at Olivia, and at Lucas, and finally Alejandra herself. “From all of you.”

  You could have heard a pin drop. Even the wind died down as her husband continued speaking.

  “I missed a lot of things. I’m practically a stranger at my own dinner table. And right now, if I could go back and change all that, I’d do whatever it took to make it happen.” Her husband’s shoulders slumped with the admission, and she heard the shame and longing in his voice. “I wish to God I could go back and get back all that time that was lost.

  “But I can’t.” And now he straightened up and his shoulders squared. “That time is gone forever. I have to accept that, and live with that. And unfortunately, so do all of you. The only course left is to change things moving forward, so that’s what I’m going to do.” Another deep breath, and then he turned to face Isabel and held up a ziptie.

  “Isabel, come here please.”

  “Oh god, he’s going to tie us up,” Olivia blurted.

  “I am not going to tie you up,” Matty huffed, rolling his eyes. “Just come here. This is a good thing, I promise.”

  Isabel frowned as she approached, stopping at arm’s length from Matty. “Okay dad, so now what?”

  Matty extended a hand to her, beckoning. After a moment’s confused blinking, Isabel reached out and took the hand. Matty closed his hand around hers and smiled softly.

  “Do you guys know why wedding rings are round?” he asked the small crowd.

  “Dad, I swear to god if you propose to me, I’m having mom cut your nuts off,” Isabel deadpanned.

  “What? No,” Matty reared back. “I wasn’t–dang it Bel, I’m trying to be serious here.”

  “Me too. Seriously. Nuts. Chop.”

  A nervous giggle spread through the group, and Alejandra could feel some of the tension bleed away. Matty huffed out a laugh and used his free hand to bop his eldest daughter playfully on the head.

  “They’re round because they’re a symbol of eternal love, right?” Olivia said.

  “Exactly,” Matty said, nodding. “They have no beginning and no end, and continue on into infinity. Just like love is supposed to. When a man and woman exchange rings at the altar, they are pledging their love to one another. The rings are a symbol of that pledge, and the vows that they exchange to one another. Do you guys know how those vows go?”

  “This is getting kinda mushy, dad,” Lucas said, wrinkling his nose.

  Matty sighed and shot Alejandra a look of long-suffering. “Shakespeare never had this problem.”

  “You’re not Shakespeare, dear,” she said, hiding a smile behind her hand. “Best get on with it.”

  “What version of marriage vows?” The question came from Dinah, who was looking both sheepish and intrigued. “There’s the catholic one, the protestant ones, the secular…”

  “I was thinking of the old-timey ones,” Matty said. “The ones with all the ‘thee’s and ‘thy’s in them.”

  Dinah frowned. “I don’t think I know that one.”

  “It sounds sort of like this.” Matty turned back to Isabel, who looked like she was ready to bolt if this turned weird. Weirder. And Alejandra couldn’t really blame her. Where in the world was Matty going with this?

  “The wording’s a little different, since I promise I am not proposing,” he said, smirking at his daughter.

  “What wording?” she asked.

  Matty took a deep breath, and when he spoke next his voice was something you could have anchored a battleship to.

  “I, Matthew James Albright take thee, Isabel Mariah Albright, as my beloved daughter, to shepherd and to guide, to honor and protect, to love and to cherish from this day forth, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, ‘til death do us part.”

  The ziptie in his hands was one of the industrial strength ones from the boat, used for cinching down loose objects in a storm. It was nearly an inch wide and made of thick black plastic. With a practiced effort Matty curled the tie into a loop, snipping off the excess so what was left looked like a misshapen bangle.

  “With this, er, bracelet,” Matty continued, “I thee pledge; I shall never leave thee, I shall never betray thee, I shall never forget thee. With my heart I thee honor. With my soul I thee shelter. With the strength of my arm I thee protect. Unto thee my time, my attention, my love I endow. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

  Alejandra’s vision went blurry as her husband took the plastic bracelet and slipped it onto Isabel’s wrist, and she took a moment to dash the tears from her eyes. She looked back just in time to see Isabel blink furiously and try to swallow down the lump in her throat.

  “I can’t change the past,” Matthew said quietly, turning to look at everyone else in the clearing. “But by God I can change how the future shapes up. I am sorry for what was lost, but I swear that I will never be that man again. And I swear too that I will prove my words by my actions. I will fail. I will stumble. I will fall. But I will never stop trying.”

  He stepped back and released Isabel’s hand and the ‘bracelet’. The black plastic dropped onto her wrist awkwardly and hung there. It was misshapen and ugly, and nothing any sane person would wear as an accessory.

  Isabel touched it with the fingers of her other hand, staring at it as if it were adorned with rubies. Then her eyes came up to stare at her father, who smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

  “It sounded right in the moment,” he said.

  Then she was hugging him, and he was hugging back.

  He repeated the same process for each of their other kids, word-for-word, like he’d memorized it and repeated it a thousand times before. It should have sounded corny, or gotten stale by the time he finished. But it didn’t. Somehow, each time he repeated it, the impact only got stronger.

  And then he stopped in front of Dinah.

  “It’s okay,” she said, not looking at him. “I know I’m not family. You don’t gotta–” She cut off with an eep as he took her hand in his.

  “Until we find a way back home,” he said gently, “you are family. As sure as if we shared the same blood.”

  And then he repeated his pledge to her too.

  Later, when they would look back on everything, it would become clear that it was that last pledge that had sealed it. A father pledging himself to his children was one thing, a father pledging himself to a lost child and bringing her officially into his family was another, and it was from that pledge that the power had finally overflown.

  As soon as Matty’s hand pulled back from that last black bracelet, there came a sound like thunder from the clear sky, and all of the bracelets started to shine with golden light. Everyone made some kind of startled noise, and those wearing the bracelets yelped tried to shake them away or take them off, but their fingers passed right through the now-glowing plastic.

  And when the glow faded, the bracelets had changed.

  Alejandra stared at the ornate golden cuff on Isabel’s wrist, adorned with etchings and a single glowing jewel of some kind right in the center. The gem was the size of the first joint of her thumb, and shone bright blue.

  She glanced left and right, and saw that each of the children now bore the exact same type cuff on their wrists. Everyone was staring at them in shock.

  “Is everyone alright?” She and Matty asked at the same time.

  “Yeah, I think so,” Bel said in a faraway voice, eyes glued to the piece of jewelry on her wrist.

  “It didn’t hurt,” Lucas said, also staring. “It just felt kinda warm and weird for a minute. Is this gold? Am I rich now?”

  “That was magic,” Olivia breathed. “Like, real magic. Everyone saw that, right? I’m not just like having some kind of weird freak hallucination?”

  Everyone was staring at the cuffs, which was why no one noticed the snake until it was right next to Matty. There was what Alejandra would later swear with all her might was a polite hiss, and her eyes jerked down to see a six-foot python with what looked like a feathery crest just behind its head. The body was ruby-red, the crest emerald-green, and the head was gold. The front quarter of its body was raised off of the ground, and in its jaws it held another one of those ornate scrolls. Its eyes were locked on Matty, who jerked and swung his head down to stare at the snake.

  It offered him the scroll. As if in a dream, Matty reached out and accepted it from the snake’s jaws. The snake bobbed its head once, then turned and slithered away back into the jungle.

  Everyone stared at the scroll.

  “Wait, is that a system message?” Olivia blurted. “Are system messages delivered by animals here?” She blinked owlishly, then turned her eyes skywards. “What the heck, System?”

  “Should I read this?” Matty asked hesitantly.

  “Yes!” Olivia said. “If it’s a system message, it’s probably tied into whatever just happened with the zipties. It’s going to be something important!”

  Matty nodded slowly and unfurled the scroll. The rest of them crowded around as he began to read.

  Alone on the shores of an unknown land, unknowing what fate has in store for thee, thou hast placed the well-being of others above thine own. By word and deed, thou hast pledged thyself as protector and defender of the innocent. By thine actions, thou hast unlocked the Calling “Warden Of The Hearth.”

  Thy shield shall be a fortress in time of war. Thy hands shall soothe the injured in time of crisis. By the strength of thy heart shalt thou stand against the foe, and by the power of thy soul shalt thou strike down all who mean thy charges harm.

  Take now thy shield, Warden.

  The Record Of Thy Adventures hath been updated!

  “Okay seriously,” Olivia said, wrinkling her nose. “Why’d we have to get stuck with a weird system? Where are all the cool menu panes and stuff? And why did it have to be one of those ‘thee-thy-thou’ system voices?”

  “Uh, dad? Where’d you get that shield from?” Lucas asked.

  “I think,” Matty said, raising his left hand to show off the triangular metal shield that was suddenly just there, “that we need to have a talk about this whole ‘system’ thing.”

  “After we’ve secured the area,” Alejandra said firmly. “We need to make sure we’re safe and that we have what we need to survive the night. Then we can figure out what all is going on here.”

  “Right.” Matty eyed the shield for a moment longer, then set it gently down on the ground propped up against a rock. “I’ll take a look at the yacht. The rest of you, listen to your mother. She’ll tell you what to do.” He paused, then took in a deep breath and let it out. “We’re going to get through this. I promise.”

  And Alejandra almost believed him.