Rebirth14 min read
When the Second Life Was Only Morning
ButterPicks18 views
I have never been the sort of man who trusted ghosts or prayers.
"I don't trust any of it," I told him, voice level enough that the study's paper lanterns did not flicker.
Simon Church folded his robe with the practiced calm of someone who has talked a man down from a cliff too many times. "And yet you came," he said.
"I came," I agreed, "because I wanted to know if the impossible could be asked for one final time."
"You want resurrection," Simon said plainly. "You want your... wife back."
"Yes." My throat felt strange when I said it.
Simon did not look surprised. "You are Baxter Albrecht," he said. "You hold weight in the court. You command lives. Why throw all of that away for an old memory?"
"Because it is mine," I answered. "Because I cannot sleep."
"Resurrection is not a favor," Simon said. "It is a violation. It requires blood that is not yours to give."
"Then tell them to bring the instruments," I said. "Tell them to bring whatever they ask."
Simon closed his eyes for a long moment. When he opened them, they were only the quiet blue of a winter pond. "Baxter, I will not perform it."
"Why?"
"Because I have seen what paying such a price does. Because the world does not have space for the living to be made whole with the dead." He stood. "And because the rites you mention—using human life as fuel—are not the work of any decent man."
"Then do it for me out of cruelty," I said. "Tell them everything is prepared and that I refused, so that I may die with the knowledge that I tried."
Simon took a step toward me. "That is a poor comfort, Baxter. People die for less."
"You do not understand," I said. "You speak as though this is an ordinary desire. You think of rules and reason. But when the nights are long and empty, and the only voice that was ever kind to you is gone—"
"Then leave the court," Simon cut in. "Go home and marry again."
"Home?" I laughed, and it came out like a dry bone. "Home is dust in a jar."
"You sound like a man on a cliff," Simon said softly. "Do not leap. If you insist on that path, I cannot follow."
Outside, the city moved on—carriages, hawkers, men who did not know how cruelly their cautious words had failed to stitch me back together. I left Simon's small room without the ritual and walked through the lacquered corridors of the palace like a ghost.
A servant—Drew Bailey, the old man who had served my household for decades—ran to my side. "My lord, your carriage—it's ready."
"Good," I muttered. "Bring it close."
He looked at me with the kind of pity that has a sound like paper tearing. "Shall I call the physician?"
"No," I said. "Just bring me a blade."
He blinked. "A blade, my lord?"
"Do not make me explain," I said. "If you love me, Drew, whet it."
He did not speak again. He took his orders like a man who would follow them to the end.
There was a certain absurd pride in being the man people whispered about. They knelt as my carriage passed; brides covered the faces of their daughters. My name had become its own sentence. I had given many others their ends. Now I was going to write my. I wanted to watch the last flame gutter and tell no one that I had ever been frightened.
"I am ready," I said into the dark when the blade glinted and the long night pressed like a hand. "End it."
I carved. A slow, bright thing, a line that said this is mine to give. The pain was immediate and honest. Blood fell into a lamp, and the lamp's oil drank with a soft sound. I waited for the final peace Simon had promised would not come.
I did not die.
Instead, I woke. The light was wrong—not the cold official glow of the palace but a warm, floury morning. The smell was unfamiliar: faint laundry soap, crushed gardenias, boiled rice. I lay very still and listened.
There was a small sound—a baby noise, a half-laugh and a breath.
"Wake up, you dawdler," a voice murmured, half teasing and half scolding, a voice I had not heard in years and had thought was gone like a storm. "Did you sleep well, husband?"
I could not move at first. The voice was Eliana Li's.
I kept my eyes closed because if I opened them too fast the world might vanish. I opened them anyway.
She was a sight that came like a bowstring snapping: hair loose over silk, a smear of sleep on her cheek, lips still parting from a dream. The room smelled of jasmine. A small girl slept against her chest, hair like a child's scoop of dark honey.
"Eliana," I said, a word both prayer and accusation. My hand felt small in the bright air.
"You're in a bad mood or you would be smiling," she said, but she did not flinch when I put my palm to my face. "You look paler than usual. What's wrong?"
"I—" I tried to say how long I had been away. "When did this happen?"
She laughed softly. "Always with the dramatics. It's our rest day, Baxter. You overwork yourself until the men think you are half made of iron. Now, sit up. The baby is hungry."
She called the child "Mila," and the baby fussed. I watched her rock the child with a tenderness I had forgotten existed in the world. The way she moved was ordinary, perfect. Ordinary was a miracle.
"She is beautiful," I said when Eliana handed me the child.
"Don't stare too hard or she'll think you are a stranger," Eliana teased. "Hold her."
I did hold her. She fitted into my arms as if the two of us had been designed to hold each other. Her fingers curled into my knuckle. She smelled like milk and spring.
"Mila," Eliana crooned. "Say 'Da.' Say 'Da-da.'"
"Mama," Mila babbled, then blinked and formed a surprising clear sound—"Da."
I felt a cracking, a thing inside me like a thin sheet of glass giving way. Joy—raw and loud—rushed into a part of me I thought had been hammered into a safe. I laughed, the sound wet and astonished.
"Stop making your father blush," Eliana said, but she did not take the child back. She let me hold her longer as though testing if I would break.
Drew Bailey shuffled in, carrying a wooden tray with boiled rice and something wrapped in cloth. He was hunched but bright-eyed. "My lord," he said, and the old affection in his voice made me ache.
"You know, you are cheating," I told Drew. "You have been keeping this from me."
"I am old, my lord," he said with a shrug. "My legs creak. I keep what little I can to make you comfortable."
Gage Reynolds and his wife, Margaux Carney, arrived like they always did—loud, warm, and careful. "Look at the little fat cheeks," Margaux gushed.
"She will be a handful," Gage warned, but his warning was full of softness for his sister.
I sat there, a man who had decades ahead in one life and decades behind in the other, and I watched small domestic scenes unfold like lanterns lighting up. Turning the room, I found my hands full of past and future at once.
"Did we ever have another child?" I asked Eliana quietly at one point, almost afraid to know.
"No," she said. "We were lucky to have one." Her eyes clouded. She tried to hide it, but I saw the tremor. "Baxter, are you all right? You look like you are going to faint."
"It's nothing," I lied. "Tell me—tell me about us. Tell me about what we used to like doing."
She smiled, and the telling began. "You always liked the top pastry at that bakery by the bridge," she said. "You picked the cherries off your tart like a naughty child."
"I demanded the top pastry," I corrected, with the faintest sting of pride.
We filled the morning with small memories that felt new, and the presence of them stitched away a loneliness I had been thinking was the only thing that had ever been real.
"Why are you staying inside all day?" Eliana asked me when the sun was high. "This weather—it's too beautiful to waste."
"Because," I said, and could not finish. "Because there are always things to do."
"Then come find us something to do," she snapped with her soft reprimand. "Sweep. Help the gardener. Do not just sit there and brood."
I swept. I picked dandelions and watched a child discover that a single puff could scatter wishes in the air. Gage and Margaux laughed at me, drawing me into small arguments over where the seedlings should go.
"You're different," Gage said once, catching me looking at Eliana with a look that startled even me. "You used to be harder around the edges when we were young."
"Do I look softer to you today?" I asked.
"A bit," he admitted. "But it is a good look for you."
The day folded into evening like warm cloth. We ate a simple meal. Mila fell asleep in Eliana's arms. I sat very still and watched the curve of her jaw. In the dim light she teased me about promises I'd once made.
"You once promised me you would keep a garden," she said, fingers tracing a line on my palm. "Where is it?"
"I had a garden," I answered. "I let it go when duty called."
"Then plant one again," she said simply, with the absolute practicality of a woman who raises children and keeps the world from spinning. "If you are in a mood to leave something behind, leave a patch of green."
I wanted to tell her everything. I wanted to tell her how many nights I had sat at my desk polishing other people's decisions and felt them grow heavy in my bones. I wanted to say how the palace's polished floors had talked to me of debts and bodies. I wanted to say I had tried to bargain with Simon Church and had failed. But the words stuck like thorns.
"I will plant it," I promised. The promise felt like a lie because I had already promised to die. I feared the lie would be a betrayal even to myself. But Eliana smiled and kissed my forehead in reward.
That night I dreamed again. But instead of the cold hallways of power, I dreamed of small hands—Mila's tiny fingers—pressing bread crumbs into my palm, and Eliana laughing because I had made a face at the dinner's spiciness. The dream was so real I woke with an ache that was almost holy.
"Are you crying?" Eliana asked when she found me awake.
"Just some dust in my eye," I fibbed.
She took my hand. "If you are ever tired, tell me. Promise me you will tell me and not keep it to yourself."
"I promise," I said, and the promise echoed like something that had not been allowed in my life for many years.
Days went by. Each was an ordinary miracle: Mila said a new word, Drew told me some old joke, Margaux brought soup when I had a cold I had no business admitting to. The world was full of small things that had the power to stitch. The more I stitched, the more the other life—the one with the carved throne, the court intrigues—felt like a story I had once read.
One night, while the house slept, I sat on the steps and felt a chill. "So this is the price?" I muttered to myself. "To go back?"
"You are a coward to ask that question," Simon Church said suddenly from the shadowed path. He had come without my permission. "And you are a saint for having it."
"Do not call me a saint," I said. "I came here to end things."
Simon stared at me with those clear blue eyes. "Did you find what you needed?"
"I found a life," I said. "I found his and her names on the lips of a child. I found a woman who does not demand power from me, only presence. How am I supposed to return to what I was?"
"You are not supposed to return," Simon said. "You already chose. You wanted to be done."
"Then why—" I could not finish. "Why make me taste it? Why let me feel the softness of bed and child if it was only to be taken?"
"Because dying with regret is worse," Simon answered. "And because you needed to know what you had lost."
I laughed at that, a small dry sound. "So you were right all along, then."
Simon did not smile. "I was right about the ritual being wrong. I was right that I would not join you in blood. I was not right to deny you a truth."
"What truth?"
"That sometimes, a man must see what he loved before he can let it go."
There was a long silence. I felt a tide pulling under my ribs—the tide of life going out. Perhaps that night I had been spared for a reason. Perhaps the blade had not finished its work. Perhaps the world had some reluctant mercy left for me.
"Stay," I said abruptly.
Simon tilted his head. "To what?"
"Stay and tell me what to do. If I am given this morning, teach me to spend it well."
He laughed softly, a small human sound. "You are asking a poor monk to teach you how to be a man."
"You have taught me by refusing to be false to me," I said.
And so Simon stayed longer than he should have. He sat on the edge of my courtyard and told stories of small towns and honest men. He taught me to be content with bread and a clear conscience. His presence was a balm because he was a man who had denied me a false miracle. There was no sanctifying glow around him; only stern, steady judgment that somehow felt like kindness.
Seasons turned. We planted a small garden. I tracked the arrival of first leaves like a boy counts candies. Mila grew. Her words came in a tumble. "Baxter!" she shouted one morning, having discovered the small magic of an echo. The sound rolled down the alley and woke the neighbors.
Neighbors would knock and offer extra eggs or gossip about the magistrate who had been extra strict that week. I listened and smiled because the gossip connected me to a world that did not revolve around a desk. When I sat in the shade, watching a sparrow fight for a scrap, I felt a peace I had only simulated before.
One evening, a messenger arrived. He was breathless and official, the sort who thinks his little envelope contains entire destinies.
"Baxter Albrecht," he said, breath fogging like frost. "A summons from the palace."
For a moment my heart froze. Habit moved like muscle memory. I thought of the carved chairs, the heavy scrolls, the night I had taken the blade. I thought of Simon's refusal and my urge to end.
"Tell them to wait," I said.
"They said it is urgent," the messenger repeated. "They said your presence is required tonight."
Eliana's face had gone an interesting shade in the lamp light—one I could not read. "Will you go?"
"If I go," I said slowly, "I will be stepping into the old life. If I stay, I might keep this one."
She took my hand and squeezed. I could feel the pulse of her living fingers. "We will stand with you," she said.
"We?" I echoed.
"Your family," she smiled. "Drew, Gage, Margaux, and me. We will stand with you if you go. We will not let you go alone."
The summons burned like a decision made for me. I read it and saw the neat handwriting that carried obligation more heavily than any blade. The palace had a way of calling like tides.
"I will go," I said.
"You must not let them take you," Eliana warned.
"They will not," I promised. I had fought other battles. I had learned the taste of power and the smell of strategy. I had made people bend like reeds. This would be no different. I folded the summons and went.
The palace was exactly the same and unimaginably changed. Faces were familiar; the air tasted of old loyalties and sharper, newer fears. I found myself on the steps as before, older men with long memories pressing petitions into my hand. They looked at me and saw the man they had always depended on.
"Lord Baxter," someone called. "Your presence has been requested by His Majesty."
I bowed and entered the room. The throne was empty. The Emperor's council sat like a small sea. They spoke of borders and taxes and of intrigues I had once tamed. There was a new urgency in their voices tonight, the kind that comes when the lanterns burn low and someone else's life hangs by a single, old coin.
"Your service is required," the Chancellor said, "to oversee the trial of the minister from the Western Province. Expedite it."
I listened. I wrote orders. I did my duty. Duty was a shape I knew well; it fit my hands like gloves that had been worn thin.
At dusk, after the day had been full of petitions, I left the court and made my way through the palace corridors. A servant escorted me to a small chamber reserved for men of my station. The light was poor, and the silence was deep as ruin.
There, in the lamplight's weak pool, I saw myself—an image like a mirror placed at the wrong angle. For a breath I thought I had wandered into a painting. The younger Baxter I had been—leaner, full of some hungry pride—stood across from me, as real as any man.
"You have been absent," he said with a half-smile. "You look like you have been sleeping."
"I have been sleeping," I answered.
He laughed. "Poor old Baxter. You look older than your years."
"Perhaps I have learned to look like my sins," I said.
He watched me as if measuring whether I still had the hunger. "You always were sentimental."
"It is a flaw I'm glad to keep," I said. "Where is she? Where is Eliana?"
He cocked his head. "Which one? The girl from the county? The woman you took for duty's convenience? You'll find women are like the moon—if you watch them long enough, you will always think they are a different face."
The younger me's flippancy stung because I knew the truth behind his words. I knew the taste of the life I had ruined with impatience and pride. I could have fought him. I could have told him to be kinder, to leave the thrice-said cruel order unsigned. But we were the same man, split by choice and time.
"I am going to leave now," I told him finally. "Go on with your duty. Take the ruling for the Western Province."
He nodded. "Do not come back too often."
The next morning I awoke in my small house before dawn. Eliana was already up, humming, with Mila at her side. "You are early," she teased.
"Because I wanted to see the garden before the city wakes," I said.
She looked at me for long moments, then threw an arm over my shoulder and pulled me close. "You keep making promises."
"Then I will keep this one," I said.
And yet something under my ribs cracked. The old hunger had not left entirely. The summons had called me, and the summons would call again, and again, until all my days were numbered like coins on a string. I realized with a cold smallness that the life in the palace was not done with me, even if I had been given a morning of sunlight.
That afternoon, in the courtyard where my family worked and laughed and the world seemed arranged for small kindnesses, I felt a final shifting. A sound like a key turning, a settling of bone. It was quiet and absolute.
"Are you all right?" Eliana asked at once.
"I am," I lied, and then I stopped because I could not fool her. "I am ready."
She looked at me long, and then her face shaped itself into a calm I had not earned. "If you must go," she said, "go with me in your heart."
"How can I carry all of you in one pocket?" I asked.
"Put us in the slow place," she said. "Where you can take us out like a scrap of cloth and press it to your face now and then."
I kissed her forehead. "I have been a poor husband."
"No," she whispered, and it was the gentlest denial. "You have been a man who found himself too late."
The world narrowed to children laughing and the creak of Drew's foot on the stoop. I thought of Simon Church and the blood and the refusal and the way the old monk had let me feel my life before he insisted I face it.
I closed my eyes.
The blade I had asked for years ago found me again—not as steel but as a thin fever that burned out the last eddies of breath. I felt something peaceful, not a tearing but the undoing of a too-tight knot. Memory rewove itself into a calm tapestry. I saw faces: Mila's first steps, Gage's clumsy jokes, Margaux's careful hands, Drew's stubborn loyalty. I felt how the small kindness of a boiled egg could be larger than any triumph.
In the dim, I heard another voice—my own, older, steadier. "Go," it said. "Go where you no longer need to hold the world together."
"I am not afraid," I said.
"You are strangely brave," the voice answered.
I thought of the court with its polished floors and the long list of names whose futures I had once held. I thought of Simon, of his denial and his essential, relentless honesty. And I thought of Eliana—of how she had married into a hunger and made it into bread.
"Goodbye," I said.
"Goodbye," she said back, and the word folded around me like a shawl.
When the end came, it did not come with thunder or accusation. It came like a door closing in another room. There was a small, bright ache and then a soft release.
Afterward—perhaps moments, perhaps years—the world opened again. I woke to nothing at first, and then to sunlight and the smell of rice and the soft breath of a child on my chest. Eliana smiled sleepily as if she had not cried at all. Drew shuffled at the door with a bowl of soup and an old joke stuck to his lips. Gage and Margaux teased someone about a missing hat.
"Morning," Mila said, as if she had always been there.
I sat up and looked at them and felt something like gratitude swell to the edges of my eyes. I thought of the palace and of the blade and of Simon's refusal and understood at last that the life I had been given—however brief—was not a punishment but a gift.
"I will plant that garden," I told Eliana.
She laughed and brushed soil from my sleeve. "Then get your shovel, Baxter. We have much to do."
"Yes," I said, a simple word that sounded like a vow.
When the sun moved across the sky that day, each small joy was sharper than any victory I had ever won. Mila learned to tie the simplest knot and beamed like a small sun. Drew told a story that had fewer morals than nonsense and we all felt lighter for it. Gage tripped on a rake and everyone laughed until their sides hurt.
At dusk, as the household settled, I took one last, long look at what had been returned to me. I thought of Simon sitting on the path, of his disapproval and his care. I thought of the blade and the lamp and the floor that had been wiped clean of others' mistakes. I would have liked to tell the story to him and to the men at court: that kindness matters, even when it refuses to comply with desperate wishes.
"Do you ever regret it?" Eliana asked suddenly, as we stood by the doorway watching the stars prick into the night.
"Regret?" I echoed. I thought of deeds and their costs. "I regret the days I let go to building a fortress around myself. But I do not regret the staying."
She squeezed my hand. "Then stay," she said.
"I will," I replied.
I do not know how long I was given. The calendars have always been poor at keeping gifts. But I know this: when my end came again, if it must, it will be with the taste of jasmine and boiled rice, with a child's breath against my neck, and with a small garden planted by clumsy hands next to the door.
And if anyone asks whether I had believed in ghosts before—no. But I had believed in mornings like this, and if there is an afterlife, then I lived it in a handful of bright, ordinary days.
The End
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