Viviene watched as her son poured himself a glass of wine. It was her wine, she noted—even in a time like this, he wasn’t willing to waste a single coin. She hadn’t recalled him being so frugal when she’d left those five years ago. He sat down in a chair beside the downstairs hearth, where the fire faintly crackled.

  “I’ll just tell it to you straight, because it’s easier for me that way,” Willem said as he looked into the flame. “The gravestones Petronella was talking about was for two people. The first was the love of my life, and the second was our one-year-old daughter.”

  When the words hit her, they rattled Viviene so deeply that she could barely even think, let alone muster the words to formulate a response. She had a granddaughter? A granddaughter that had died? The mere thought of it brought a tide of untold sadness.

  Willem swirled the wine in his glass. “She was a strange person,” he mused. “Followed a weird religion. Jainism. And she was strict about it, too. In particular… she stuck steadfastly to a principle they call ahimsa.” He took a long drink. “Long story short, that’s the observance of nonviolence. It’s the absence of desire to harm any forms of life.”

  Viviene only listened, fearing that if she interrupted Willem might withdraw into himself.

  “If she found a spider, a cricket, or anything in her house… she’d pick it up, carry it outside, and set it free. She told me she had termites once…” he laughed affectionately as he ran through memories. “Spent almost a year carving out a chunk of her house without killing any of them to relocate the termites to a forest. She didn’t eat meat, seafood, anything. If she saw a mosquito on her hand, she’d let it suck the blood and get away without doing a thing. If a fly was bothering her… she’d just sit there, and endure.”

  Willem took a long, long drink and poured himself some more wine just after. “Me? I couldn’t get enough of war. Even after years of it, I’d have been happy putting the whole world under our boot. Meanwhile, she was rabidly anti-war. She hated me. And I mean hated me, with a capital H. I thought she was stupid, na?ve, moronic, and short-sighted. I once told her that her mother drank too much before giving birth to her.” He pointed his pinky finger at her as the rest stayed wrapping around his wine glass. “All of the things I imagine you might think of me. So… I know where you’re coming from.”

  Willem drank yet more wine, and topped his glass again. “But hell… she stuck to her principles. I watched someone beat her bloody. The guy beat her face so badly he broke her orbital bone. And then, I started hitting the guy that that was hitting her, and… she defended him. Started shielding him with her own body, even as her nose was still pumping blood from what he’d done. Most absurd thing I’ve ever seen, to this day. That’s when I realized… she wasn’t stupid at all.” Willem took a drink. “She was just absolutely crazy.”

  All the affection with which he spoke of her only made the fact that she was gone sting all the harder.

  “I’ve always been attracted to batshit crazy people,” Willem admitted. “I don’t know. I can’t explain it. I don’t like ‘normal,’ and she was so crazy that she would cry whenever she accidentally stepped on an ant. It was quite embarrassing to be in public with her when that happened, but also very endearing to me. I’d never met someone so sincere, so compassionate, so pathologically unlike what I understood people to be. After she got beat to hell and back, I started visiting her as she recovered. We talked, and this time I listened. She told me about her philosophy, her theology…”

  Willem trailed off, staring idly into the fire.

  “And you adopted her faith?” Viviene asked.

  “Noooo,” Willem said incredulously. “Of course not. I like meat too much. But… and I still don’t really understand it myself… we ended up in love.” He drank deeply once more, then moved on to his third cup. “Me, a damn war hawk, and her, this little pacifistic twig that only ate things that grew from the ground. It took her hours to pull vegetables, because she didn’t want to harm any insects in the dirt or on the plant. Such a joke…”

  Willem stood up from the chair and moved closer to the fire. “If you think that she’d have lightened up about the whole pacifism thing once we had a kid together… nah. Not at all. See, in Jainism, hurting others is hurting your own soul, because violence inhibits your ability to escape from the cycle of birth and death.” He shook his head. “I won’t get into it. Point is, now that she loved me she was always worried about me. She pushed harder and harder on their ‘five vows.’

  “Ahimsa—intentional non-violence. Satya—truth. Asteya—refusal to steal. Brahmacharya—chastity, or just faithfulness. Aparigraha—detachment from worldly possessions.” Willem drained more of his wine. “She kept harping on those points. Me? I thought the whole thing was just delusional. Didn’t think there was a soul, that any gods were real, or that there was anything after death. But I loved her.”

  “And what did you do?” Viviene asked.

  “I did what you do for someone you love and respect. I compromised, with noted caveats,” Willem said. “The whole faithfulness thing was easy. I loved her, so it was easy to swear to that. After that, I promised to always tell the truth, unless I was joking. Eventually… she got me to promise never to hurt any human beings, including myself, unless I was defending the people I love. She got me to promise to try and promote peace around the world. Refusal to steal and detachment from worldly possessions were… a little muddier, given my interests in business, but I promised to do my best.”

  “Really?” Viviene asked, almost not able to believe it. “You don’t lie any longer?”

  “Wouldn’t be telling you this otherwise,” Willem pointed out. “She was… she was so damn happy when I promised. Jumping up and down, clinging to my arm, gushing admiration… she was just so much fun. She was probably malnourished on account of the stupid diet she had, but she was full of life. There was this… this vitality to her. It filled you with joy, with enthusiasm. She almost made me believe the world could be a better place.”

  If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  Viviene swallowed, almost afraid to ask the question. “How did she die?”

  “Accident on the road.” Willem looked at the fire, then at Viviene. “What, were you expecting to hear that someone killed her violently? Nah. Just bad luck.” He drained his cup. “I had all these ideas in my head about a lifetime with her, with our daughter. All the things we’d do and see. About how I’d raise our little girl. About how much of her mother’s craziness I’d let her have, and how much of my craziness in turn. I always hoped… she’d get her mother’s nature, tempered by my cynicism. A good-hearted, but street-smart girl. The best of both of us.” He sighed a long, long while. “But she got neither.”

  Viviene stood up and walked to her son, but he waved her away as she tried to hug him, walking back to sit down so that she couldn’t.

  “I told you I was fine, and that’s relatively true,” Willem said, pouring his fourth glass of wine to finish the bottle. “I died on the battlefield, years back. She used her little pacifistic voodoo to bring me back to life, and our little girl sealed my soul back in my body. When they died? Pfft.” He took another drink. “Her magic died with her, far as I’m concerned.”

  “Willem…” she walked over to him and kneeled where he sat. “You can come back from this. I can help you.”

  “Already have come back from this.” He gestured with the cup, sloshing some wine, then drank deep. “I’m going to live whatever’s left of my life doing what I enjoy, keeping the promise I made with her. I’m going to do what I want, when I want, until life leaves my body,” Willem said, leaning back into the chair. “That’s it.”

  “You can’t spend your life frozen in grief.” Viviene took his free hand. “You still have… family.” Even as she said it, she knew the word felt weak.

  “Do I?” Willem said with a sardonic smile. “Look, I’ve tried to move past this. It’s always hurt me a lot more to try and move beyond than to stick with what I have been doing. Fact is, I feel alive and happy when I’m swimming in a sea of numbers, looking at businesses, economies—all the little figures that make up a market. I never lie, Viviene. When I say I’m happy, I mean that I’m happy. All of the other things in the world?” He sighed. “It’s not my concern. I just don’t really care.”

  “But at that point…!” Viviene said, both in frustration and concern.

  “What is life, really, huh? Break it down,” he said, his tongue a little sloppy. “Everything ends at some point. What’s the point of anything but doing what you want to do? Your ancestors will forget you. Anything you write, any art you create, any monuments you craft will fade away. Whatever legacy you leave is nothing in the grand scheme of things.” He shrugged. “I know that sounds grim and fatalistic, but I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true.” He put his hand on hers. “I’m happy doing what I want.”

  Viviene never thought her son honestly claiming that he was happy would break her heart so much.

  “I’ve seen that look before,” Willem said. “You don’t believe me. Good thing for me, then, that what you people think doesn’t mean a damn to me. I’m walking my own road. If I cared what others think, I would be dead in a ditch, somewhere. My life may not be up to your standards, but it’s up to mine.”

  “What were their names?” Viviene asked, having long ago caught on to something. “You never said.”

  For the first time in his recounting of the tale, Willem seemed affected. His lower lip trembled slightly, and he started blinking a little quicker. He tried to pour another glass of wine, but the bottle was empty.

  Willem looked into the fire and swallowed hard before saying, “That’s, uh… still a little difficult for me to say.”

  Viviene’s point was made, but she didn’t gloat. She stood, quietly taking the bottle from his hand. “You should go to sleep,” she told him. “Would you like me to take you to your room?”

  “No, I’m fine.” He rose to his feet. “Are you contented? Will you stop bothering me about all this?”

  “Just go to sleep,” she told him.

  “Yeah…” he rubbed his eyes. “I said too much. Rambling. When you get old… got too much to say. A little wine, the tongue of mine gets a-waggling.” As he turned and started walking back up the stairs, he continued on, “At least I didn’t spend any money. But considering time is money, the opportunity cost… limitless. But I guess you are my liquidator, so I can afford to be a…”

  His voice slowly faded away as he walked up the stairs. Viviene walked over to the fading fire, and grabbed the fire poker to extinguish it. As she rummaged with the logs, she was lost in thought.

  I said a lot of embarrassing things today, Viviene thought. By the goddess, I even cried a little…

  She scolded herself for thinking that way. This wasn’t the court of Valdérie, where weakness was read as opportunity. This was her flesh and blood. She’d been tough, aloof, distant… and what had it brought her? A terrible vineyard that she didn’t even own, sons that were all broken in one fashion or another, and cousins and brothers in her own family that all couldn’t care one whit about her.

  Viviene had mentioned family… but what did Willem really have? She had never heard this woman mentioned by anyone until now. No one really cared for his well-being, and he had no one to turn to. He had no family. The blame wasn’t Tielman alone. It was hers as well. Viviene prodded the fire angrily, and the flame surged. She rose to her feet.

  “Someone’s after my boy?” she muttered angrily.

  Her breathing quickened, and rage flitted across her features. She squeezed the poker, and her aura involuntarily leaked. The fire poker’s grip crumbled beneath her grip, clattering to the ground noisily. She looked at her hand, where the iron crumbled away as sand.

  I’ll kill Arend if he takes one swing at my boy, she decided. Lennard, Godfried, Hans… the girls are doing fine, but all my boys… they need to learn. She cracked her knuckles. I’ll fix everything. I can’t just walk away—not now. Ran away battered five years ago, but things have changed. Arend, Dorothea, Tielman, my own family, the damn king himself, the entire kingdom… don’t care who stands in my way. I’ll make this right.

  She took a deep breath and exhaled. The most urgent matter… Arend Rook, a royal knight. She’d need to learn his style, learn of the Rook family aura… and prepare for the duel. If her son wasn’t willing, she’d just fight in his stead. She’d jam her rapier in that arrogant bastard’s eye. She’d grab that harlot Dorothea by the neck and drown her little scheme in a pool of her own crocodile tears.

  Viviene turned, where her rapier leaned up against the wall. She walked and retrieved it, then made for the door. To fight against a royal knight, she’d need to redouble her training. To win… she’d need to quadruple it. On top of that, she needed to spend more time with Willem. She’d heard from Dirk that he’d just bought into a large variety of businesses—she needed to be there with him, every step of the way.

  They didn’t have a family in the true sense of the word, but it wasn’t too late to give him one. With this thought fueling her, she opened the door and walked into the cold night of Gent.