It was the finest autumn day Lakepost could imagine, except that it was still technically the end of summer, and even though Pickett and Kite had gathered every fallen leaf they could find from town, the lot still made too pitiful a pile for jumping. They looked at it sadly in the back garden, and tried to think of other soft things to add.
“We could steal Blockhead’s mattress,” Pickett suggested. “He probably wouldn’t mind.”
“He probably wouldn’t notice until too late,” Kite grinned.
“Mum would be mad, though.”
“Mum’s busy,” Kite insisted. “Come on, I want to jump! If we cover the mattress with these and a little grass it should work, right?”
“How are we going to get the mattress outside? Blockhead’s near Mum and Da’s room. They’ll hear us,” Pickett frowned.
“We’ll use the window, of course,” Kite returned, as though this were the most obvious thing in the world. Pickett looked up at the window skeptically.
“I don’t think it will fit,” she said.
“Well we’ll fold it nicely,” replied Kite, though she was now also biting her tongue in concern. “Come on, if it doesn’t fit, at least we’ll have played a joke on Blockhead, and it will give us time to think of something else.”
Pickett conceded this point and the two sisters dashed inside. They tried to be quiet, but neither of them quite knew how, and they’d only gotten halfway up the stairs when their brother came tearing out from the kitchen shouting, “Hey, don’t go up there!”
“We can go to our own bedrooms, Blockhead,” Kite taunted. “There’s no one saying we can’t be in our rooms.”
“That’s not what you’re up to,” he said. “Come on, I want to take a peek, too, but they won’t let us in and they’ll be mad if they catch us at the door.”
“A peek at what?” Kite asked. Her voice squeaked excitedly, and she narrowed her eyes to exchange a look with Pickett that said ‘we are definitely taking a peek’. Their brother groaned.
“Come on, Fencepost, reel her in, will you? Mum’s having the baby and everyone’s inside and I’m supposed to be watching you two.”
“Great job you’re doing on that. Keep it up,” Pickett smirked back.
“I don’t care what you’re doing outside, but in here—“
“They know what they’re naming it yet?” Kite interrupted. “It’s got to be something good! They won’t let Mum give it a dumb name, will they?”
“Aunt Lily and Uncle Robin were trying to talk her out of it, but I think it depends on what it is. She says she’ll settle on flowers if it’s a girl, but if it’s a little brother, she wants to give it something really common.”
“But why?!” whined Kite.
“Probably so we can’t call it something stupid, eh, Brick?” Pickett winked.
“When there is a will, there is a way,” Brick, called Blockhead, answered with all the humbleness of a pageboy. “Besides, Da’s still not sold on it all.”
“Come on and let’s listen, then!” Kite cried in too loud a voice to truly be conspiratorial, and she scampered up the stairs, Brick hissing “No, Fly’way, get back here!” Pickett took their both dashing up the steps as opportunity to do so herself, and the three of them all careened down the hall at a galloping sprint and very nearly crashed into the door at the end. Brick looked around furiously at his sisters, but they both ignored him as they pushed their ears up to the door. Brick did not waste his breath telling them off, but just shoved his way between them grumbling at the two younger girls to make room. There seemed to be a lot of crying and cooing, with the occasional groan of tortuous pain that made Kite gasp and grin all at once.
“Do babies hurt, then?” she asked eagerly.
“Only when they’re you,” Brick drawled back at her. “Fencepost and I didn’t make Mum cry.”
“You don’t even remember Fencepost being born,” retorted Kite. “You said so yourself two weeks ago. No take-backs.” Brick flushed and stammered, so Pickett took over.
“Just because we don’t remember it personal doesn’t mean we don’t know,” she said smartly. Kite stuck out her tongue at her older siblings, but kept her ear to the door. They could hear their father’s voice, but the only words they could make out was their mother swearing and their Aunt Lily, who must have been right beside the door. Mrs. Juniper Randolph’s cursing made Pickett grin as she tried to remember the words she hadn’t picked up yet. There was a last enormous groan with a long drawn out swear that made all three children snicker, and a new cry joined the adults, wilder and much less happy.
“It’s a boy! A little boy!” Mr. Randolph shouted happily.
“Oh, Juney, come on, what will you call him?” Aunt Lily twittered. Listening hard, Pickett thought she could hear Aunt Opal and Cousin Sandal asking similar questions.
“How about Step? That’s a fine name for a young man,” Uncle Robin suggested.
“Or Nickel! S’been a while since ol’ Pappa Nickel passed, that name’s up for grabs again,” Cousin Braid called. The names came strong and fast, “Leaf?” “Coup?” “Duck?” “Calendar?”
“No!” Juniper Randolph shouted with all the breath she had left. “No, I’ve got one picked out, thank you all very much. I’m calling him Arthur.”
Juney took a minute to wheeze while a roomful of relatives protested the choice, and waited until they needed answers before more questions could be asked to force them to settle down on their own rather than wasting more breath on them.
“Arthur is a perfectly good name. And if you’re superstitious still, call him Art, which is still common enough,” Juney huffed. Mr. Randolph started to say something to her, but Pickett couldn’t hear and her father never got the words out anyway before Juney cut him off again. “No, Thorn, tradition be damned, I’m not having another child named after something I can see from my kitchen window. Kitey, Pickett and Brick tease each other enough even without everyone else joining in, and Arthur’s going to be the baby on top of all that. He needs a respectable name, and I’m going to give it to him. What are we scared of? We know now that magic doesn’t attach to a name and spells can’t be cast like that anyway.”
“But—“ Aunt Lily tried.
“No, that’s that. His name is Arthur, and you can’t change my mind, any of you. Now, it sounds like he’s hungry, so hand him here, Thorn, and let’s fix that. Get the kids. They’ll want to meet their brother.” Juney’s voice softened at the end of her sentence. She knew she’d won for the moment, and took the chance to really look her youngest child in the face and smile and coo at him as she wanted. Thorn Randolph decided not to argue for the time being. She had given him Art as an alternative, after all, and she was likely to be more amenable to tradition in a few hours time, when everyone was no longer shouting at her.
Aunt Lily, however, stormed out. She threw open the door in a huff and all three children were pushed back unexpectedly into the corridor. Aunt Lily had already shut the door behind her when she saw them.
“Arthur?” Kite pouted at once. “What are we supposed to do with that? That’s no good.”
“You’re quite right, it’s no good at all,” Aunt Lily agreed. “And Art won’t protect him in the slightest. It’s too vague. You can’t name a child after an idea and expect a spell to misdirect to the idea when there’s a physical body to attach to. That’s no good at all. Nicknames, nicknames, there has to be a way to fix this. Help me, children.” Kite frowned at the ground. Brick and Pickett looked to each other for ideas.
“Thur doesn’t mean anything, does it?” Brick asked. Pickett shook her head.
“Can’t we just call him Rock or something?” Kite asked. “What does he look like?”
“Small and wrinkly, like all babies,” Aunt Lily told her. “There has to be something.” They all thought hard for another moment as the crying on the other side of the door quieted.
“There was a story I read a while back,” Pickett said slowly. “There was a kid in that who was an Arthur, only no one liked him so they all called him Wart. Does that work?” Brick’s jaw dropped and Kite shrieked in glee. Aunt Lily smiled joyfully.
“Oh yes, yes, Pickett, dear! Oh what a good girl! Wart, a physical ailment that is separate from the body’s whole and will contain any wicked magic in a piece you want to fall off anyway. Oh, yes! Pickett you’ve done it! You’ve saved your little brother. Don’t tell your mother just yet, just adopt the name. It will stick fine. Such a smart young girl!” Aunt Lily practically skipped down the stairs, calling over her shoulder, “I’m going to spread the good news around town! Go in and see your brother, children! Be good!”
As one, all three of them darted inside and through the legs of relatives to their mother’s beside. There was, indeed, a small, red, wrinkly mass on her chest, which appeared to be sleeping.
“Is it alive?” Kite asked quietly.
“Yes, dear,” Thorn answered. “This is your new brother, Art. Say hello. Quietly now, don’t wake him.”
Kite got up on her tip toes and leaned over as far as she could until she was right next to the baby. To her credit she did whisper, but right up next to the baby’s ears it probably didn’t matter.
“Hello, Wart!”
Their father’s jaw dropped as Pickett and Brick echoed from behind her, “Good to meet you, Wart!” “Welcome to home, Wart!” “How you feeling, Wart?”. The Randolph relatives shooed them all away as quickly and quietly as they could, while their mother frowned and their father apologized and they all called out “Bye! See you later, Wart!”
Baby Wart gurgled and giggled in his sleep.