The Name
Arista started the baby mobile the following Tuesday, in B.B.'s forge, with an extremely ambitious sketch.
"A mobile," B.B. said, studying the drawing she'd pinned above the bench. "For a baby."
"For a friend's baby."
"When's the baby due?"
"Five weeks."
"That's not much time if you can only have the forge on Tuesdays." He sighed. "Use it after six every evening until the project is done. This is an exception."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me. What are all these?"
"A demon, a mermaid, an octopus, a dragon, a fox, a boat, and a train."
B.B. looked at her. "That's an unusual group of friends."
"You have no idea."
She made one figure a night, hammering the pieces out to about the size of her palm and filing them until they stopped looking like scrap. Nettle would have measured every proportion to the millimeter. Gorthruk would have used a ball and some sticks. Arista landed somewhere in between, and was proud of it.
The demon went on the top arm. He would have insisted. B.B. picked it up and frowned. "Is this one a baby?"
"He's a Lord of Hell."
"He looks like a baby."
"He has range."
The dragon took two evenings because of the dish on its head.
"What's that?" B.B. asked.
"How he listens."
"Of course it is."
The train was easy. She had drawn it a thousand times. B.B. ran a thumb along the edge of the tiny train anyway.
"Round that off."
"It is rounded."
"It's going over a baby."
Arista picked up the file again.
The octopus nearly ended her night. B.B. counted its arms twice.
"Seven."
"Eight."
"I count seven."
She added one.
The fox was last. B.B. turned it over in his big, scarred hands. "And this one?"
"A friend," Arista said. "She was my go-to in the Demi-Human realm. The real version would be too hard to make at this size, so she got a fox."
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"The Demi-Human realm," B.B. repeated.
"It's complicated."
B.B. shrugged and handed it back. "Fine by me."
She hung everything from fine wire arms, each one balanced like a lever, adding and removing tiny weights until the whole thing turned slowly without tilting. B.B. watched it spin under the forge light.
"It hangs from the ceiling," he said. "Well out of reach."
"Obviously."
"That's a lot of math for a toy."
"Calculate first," Arista said. "Then build the right one."
He grunted. "Not bad."
From B.B., that was a parade.
Weeks later, the call came a little after midnight.
"It's started," Bram said, in the voice of a man working very hard to sound calm. "Simone said you should know. She said you should come. Not to the room. The waiting room. If you want."
"I'm already putting my shoes on," Arista said.
She had wrapped the mobile days ago and left it by the door. Of course she had. She grabbed it on the way out, a box that reached up to her neck, with an excessive amount of ribbon.
Bram met her at the ward doors looking like he hadn't blinked in an hour, which was impressive for a man who had once been launched out of a catapult.
"How is she?"
"Furious at me. It's going to be a while." He eyed the box. "What's that?"
"Birthday gift."
"Birthday gift?"
"For the day the baby's born?"
"I know what a birthday is. Most people just call it a baby gift, Arista."
From somewhere behind the doors came a voice Arista recognized instantly. Before the furniture shop, she had only ever known its owner as a green-haired imp with a head for margins.
"BRAM."
"That's me," Bram said, and vanished.
The waiting room held a handful of relatives, each with something small and sensible: a stuffed giraffe, a knitted blanket, a pacifier in a tiny gift bag. Arista took the last free chairs, set the box across two of them, and sat beside it.
The woman with the pacifier looked at the box, then at Arista's hair, then at the box again.
"Oh my God," she said. "You're the empty chair."
"I'm sorry?"
"At the wedding. I sat next to your place card all night."
"I heard you drank my glass."
"It was very good wine."
Hours passed the way they do in rooms like that. The giraffe was adjusted. The blanket was refolded. Arista checked the ribbon twice.
Then the doors opened and Bram came through them with his hair on end and his eyes wet.
"It's a boy," he said. "They're both fine."
The room erupted. Bram held up a hand. "Simone says Arista first."
"Me?" Arista said. "Her mother's right—"
"Her mother's next. Go."
Simone lay propped against the pillows, exhausted, hair damp, holding a small bundle as if it might evaporate. She looked nothing like Nettle and exactly like Nettle. Behind her stood Bram, enormous and shaking. Between them, in the bundle, a tiny red face was scrunched up in outrage at the whole idea of existing.
Arista looked at Simone. At Bram. At the bundle.
She had known him for ten seconds, and she loved him.
"Family wearing a stranger's face," she murmured.
"What?" Simone asked.
"Nothing." Arista's voice wasn't entirely steady. "Can I hold him?"
"Please," Simone said. "You've earned it. You brought a box."
Bram settled the baby into her arms with none of the bravado of a man who had once dropped thirty meters from a dome ceiling because it was faster than climbing down, every movement careful and terrified, and Arista held very still.
"Arista," Simone said, "meet Barry."
"Barry?" Arista looked down at him. "I love it. It fits him perfectly."
Simone, exhausted and radiant, gave her a slow, smug smile.
"What?" Arista said.
Simone just kept smiling. Bram became very interested in the ceiling.
A pause.
"...I know what you two did!"
"Bram wanted Strawberry," Simone said. "I compromised."
"Best of both worlds," Bram said, still studying the ceiling. "He gets a real name, and we both think of you every time we say it."
Arista laughed, careful not to jostle the baby, and her eyes stung. "Berry. You gave him Berry."
"Barry," Simone said. "Berry is a fruit."
"Is that why you asked me to come in first?"
"I couldn't let the family blurt out the name and have you make the connection when I wasn't there to see your face figuring it out."
"...I brought something," Arista said. "Technically, I brought a lot of ribbon."
Bram unwrapped it while she held Barry. When the arms unfolded, the figures swung gently: a demon on top, then a mermaid, an octopus, a dragon with a dish on its head, a fox, a boat, a train. Bram counted the octopus's arms, lips moving.
"Eight."
"Eight," Arista confirmed. "I had to add one."
Simone laughed, winced, and laughed again.
Arista looked down at the baby in her arms.
"Welcome to the world, Barry," she whispered. "I think you're going to hear some pretty incredible stories, growing up."