Milo had his eyes winced tightly shut. This was fine. This was really important for Calliope, and she was doing a lot of extra stuff right now and trying to get ready for an art show, and he didn’t want to make her unhappy. This was just another do-over.

After this, there would be cookies, and they could finally start putting the cuckoo clock together, and maybe Calliope could put it in the show, and everyone would think it was cool, and Teagan would shrivel up and die of envy, and Calliope would be happy, and someone might buy it for a million sinqs and they could go on vacation forever. Lots of beaches, and dinner out every night. And appliances that used real electricity.

Or if he totally freaked out, there were lots of people waiting to put him back together, and after they did that, then the cookies and other stuff.

She was holding his hand and he squeezed. She was way braver than him and already all done.

“Milo, for gods’ sakes, this is safer than however the hell you got blood out of you for the record player. I am almost a doctor!”

That was Hyacinth. Hyacinth didn’t know anything about needles and terror, all that stuff was just tools. And people were like those broken toys in the box under the sink — they ought to lie there quietly and allow themselves to be fixed.

Well, this was more of a cool mod than a fix, but Calliope said it was “thematically appropriate.” He was way more okay with it back when he thought he’d be opening his arm with a razor blade or something. Calliope was all right with that, she thought it was “metal.” But Hyacinth wanted them to be “sensible.” She dragged them to a store for one of those emergency power kits. And she put herself in charge of it because Calliope wanted both their blood in it and it needed to be “sterile.”

“Da!” Lucy demanded.

They were doing it in the kitchen and the kids were watching. This was educational for all of them. Maggie and Erik could learn about batteries, and Lucy…

“Da!”

Milo gave her a little wave, but he was pretty sure she wasn’t asking about him.

It wasn’t her fault. Lucy had a limited amount of syllables, they had to carry a lot of weight.

“A hypodermic needle and a vacuum tube,” Hyacinth replied, employing it.

Milo flinched at the sting but made no sound.

The baby blew a raspberry and giggled.

“Battery, Lucy!” Maggie said. “Battery!”

“Ba!”

“Bat-ter-ry.”

“Baddy.”

“Eh, close enough.”

“Cloe nuh!”

Hyacinth twisted the safety cap and retracted the needle. “Now it’s a battery.”

“Da?”

“Generic-branded adhesive bandage strip,” Hyacinth said.

“Poo,” Lucy replied.

Hyacinth blinked and looked up. “Did that baby just swear at me?”

Calliope collected Lucy and bounced with her. “She knows you’re teasing her on purpose, Cin.”

Milo examined his generic-branded adhesive bandage strip with a sigh of relief. Calliope planted a kiss on top of his head. “Look how brave Daddy is.”

“Dada!”

Now that was meant for him. He smiled and covered it with a sign, but he still wanted some…

“Cookie! Cookie!” Lucy was really good at that one.

He broke one up for her.

Calliope said, “Can we get a ‘thank you,’ little parakeet?” She leaned in and said it clearly, “Thank you!”

“Ta!”

She snickered. “You sound Elban.”

“Hey, Erik,” said Hyacinth. “I’m in a lesson-giving mood and the gang’s all here again. Kitten excepted.” It was in one of the chairs in the front room with Mordecai being responsible, so they were both out of the way. “What do you know about batteries?”

Maggie opened her mouth and Hyacinth went on, “I did not say, ‘Maggie, give me more information on batteries than I require.’ This is a safety thing.”

Milo looked over, crunching. Did somebody say “safety”?

“I shouldn’t screw around with them because they’ll ruin what’s left of my brain,” Erik replied.

“What?” Maggie said. “Since when?”

“A long time,” said Hyacinth. “He probably didn’t tell you already because the kid loves to impress you and he doesn’t love talking about how weird he is.”

Erik winced.

“Sorry, kid,” said Hyacinth.

Maggie whispered in his ear, “I’m impressed with how weird you are.”

He made a weak smile.

“But you’re about to be nine or nineteen or some advanced age in a couple weeks, so I think I better clarify what ‘screwing around’ means,” Hyacinth went on. “Otherwise you’re gonna grow up with a battery phobia. Is this thing safe for you to pick up?”

He shook his head, frowning.

Hyacinth sighed. “Yeah, you need more information… Maggie, I did not say all the information.”

Maggie closed her mouth.

“Also, I’m not sure you know this part. It’s not official. They don’t make a habit of plugging people into batteries in a lab.” She rolled the glass tube in her hands. “We can infer that this thing is safe for you to pick up, because I’m not passed out on the floor with my hair on fire, right?”

“But I have way more metal,” Erik said. He touched his socket with a hand.

“Oh,” Maggie said.

Hyacinth shook her head. “Amount doesn’t matter. You’ll probably get more of a zap than me if you do screw around, but there are safe ways for you to handle any battery, and this little guy won’t hurt you even if you connect the terminals. I’m not gonna make you, but watch me.”

She demonstrated: “By the middle is fine, totally magic-neutral. Either end is also fine, at least on this model. Some of the bigger ones have both terminals on one end, like a nine-volt. I would say anything up to and including a nine-volt is okay for you. David used to lick nine-volts for fun, I ever tell you that? I didn’t like the taste.” She stuck out her tongue. “But this is kinda fun.” She held the battery by one terminal and tapped the other with her finger. “Woo!”

Erik cringed backwards, perhaps expecting literal flames.

“I live at 217 Violena and I remember the names of everyone in the room, including my own,” Hyacinth declared. She offered Erik the battery. “You want a hit off this, Craig?”

Erik went pale.

Hyacinth cackled. “I’m teasing you, Erik! I’m sorry. Low impulse control. It’s kinda like a shot of espresso, but it doesn’t last. Or taste like anything.” She grinned. “Hang on. Somebody give me a long word to spell!”

“Postmodern-industrialism,” Calliope said.

“That with a dash?” Hyacinth muttered aside. “Nevermind, I’ll give it a shot. P-O…” She tapped the end of the battery and kept doing it at regular intervals. “T-dash… O-D… -R-N… I-N-D…”

And Milo grabbed the battery away before she could finish.

“Aw, buzzkill,” Hyacinth said. “How’d I do? I feel like I got it right but I didn’t, right?”

Milo shook his head.

“Like a crummy telegraph,” Calliope said.

“Super weird,” Maggie added.

Hyacinth shrugged and laughed. “Yeah. My brain is a trick dog, but it’s totally incompetent. That’s the worst a little battery will do to you if you hold it the wrong way, Erik. Magic or electric. Mergers change your whole body, you’re kinda metal but not, and the most metal part of you is right up next to your brain. But if it’s a little battery, you’ll probably just drop it and not remember dropping it.”

Erik was rubbing his socket. “I don’t… like that… Auntie… Hyacinth.”

She sat down at the table and laid her hand on his back. “I’m sorry, kid. I shouldn’t have done a demo that way. I forgot how hard it is for you to talk sometimes, you’ve gotten way better at it.”

“And remembering,” Erik said softly.

She put her arm around him and squeezed. “I’m sorry. I was kinda hoping you’d think it was funny. I don’t want to put you off modern technology like I put Bethany off vegetables. Calliope’s art project won’t hurt you. It might scare you for a second because it feels weird and you’re not used to it, but only if you grab the battery out and hold it a very specific way. And I promise, you will not be hurt. It’s only big batteries you need to worry about holding wrong… and wall sockets and magic strikes and lightning, but you already know those are dangerous.”

He nodded.

“What happens if you do that with a big battery?” Maggie asked.

Hyacinth sighed and tipped back in her chair. “I don’t remember it, but I scared the hell out of David. I was screwing around with one of his automatons and I didn’t know it had a battery. I also didn’t know he’d made me conductive — normal people can touch batteries all they want, it’s an amp-volt thing.

“He said I forgot who he was, and who I was, and I didn’t seem bothered about it. Apparently, I was pleasant to him. He flipped out and ran me to Barnaby’s house… Not to a doctor or anything, I’d just like to point that out. Barnaby’s house. These idiots were supposed to be my guardians, so think about that next time I’m annoying you by acting stupid.”

She waved a hand. “Anyway, I snapped out of it by the time Barnaby got back with an actual doctor, and even the doctor didn’t know what the hell it was. I just don’t think it’d be good for you, kid. Or your uncle.”

Erik grabbed her arm so hard it hurt. “Will… batteries… do… that… to… my…”

She shook her head. “That’s not what I mean. He doesn’t have any mergers in his head. I just mean if it happened to you, he’d flip out worse than David.”

He let go of her arm. He nodded weakly.

“Can I get you to pick up this battery the right way for a sec so I know you know they can be safe? Milo, give me that.” He wasn’t giving her that and, in fact, had edged his chair farther away. “Milo, let me have the battery so I also know you know they can be safe.” She sighed and clutched her fingers in her hair. “I got along without you managing me for forty years, Milo!”

Milo held up two fingers.

“Forty-two,” Calliope said for him.

Hyacinth darted a finger at him, “I only let you do math for me because it’s easier. Just give me the battery, I promise I won’t play with it.”

“Pay,” Lucy said.

“Lucy, as far as you’re concerned, this is not a toy.”

“Na-doy!” the baby agreed.

Calliope grinned. “Now she’s Chozinese.”

Erik shied away from the battery. “I don’t wanna play with it either.”

“Then show me how you hold it so you don’t get zapped.”

Gingerly, Erik picked up the tube by the middle and put it back on the table in front of Calliope. “This is the creepiest thing you have ever done and I’m including the haunted house.”

Calliope examined the mingled blood in the vial. “What? Too literal?”

Erik just shook his head.

Calliope nudged Milo. “Wanna go plug it in real quick so it doesn’t zap anyone on accident?” She grinned. “I bet what we built so far is a total disaster and it’s gonna need all kinds of fixing!”

Milo slowly shook his head. This was enough excitement for an afternoon. He didn’t need to blow up a cuckoo clock on top of everything else.

Calliope frowned. “Is it okay if I try it with Cin? I’m excited about it and I really wanted to get it going in time for the show.”

Milo stood up and made signs at her.

Hyacinth pointedly did not look.

He indicated her to Calliope and shrugged.

“Milo wants to know if you want to be included,” Calliope said. “He doesn’t want to make you learn sign, but he doesn’t want to be mean about talking in front of you either. He’s not sure what to do and he loves you and you’re not… a house, Milo? A house?”

He nodded. Calliope shrugged. “A strong house, I guess. I dunno.”

“He’s probably trying to say ‘brick’ or ‘mighty’ but that’s really specific,” Hyacinth said, blinking. “He said all that other stuff? For real?”

“A lot of it’s context,” Calliope said. “And I know how he feels. He also says you should help make the cuckoo clock because you helped us before, and Em and Erik should help too.”

“Do we have names or anything, or is he just pointing at people?”

“You’re Goggles,” Calliope said, and she signed it with both hands making circles on top of her head. “Em is Cook and Erik is Eyeball.”

“Wow. Seriously?” Maggie asked Erik.

He smiled. “ I don’t mind it from Milo, and all sign names are like that. Calliope is Criminal.”

Milo sighed. He signed it for Erik again, [C]RIMINAL. NO CRIMINAL NO[EXTRA]. Calliope’s name was different. With a C.

Privately, Erik was Metal [E]ye and Mordecai was [M]Grilled Cheese, also different, but Milo couldn’t apply adjectives like he was supposed to and they hadn’t figured out a workaround for it.

Complex structures were beyond him. He couldn’t sign like Calliope. Like, physically couldn’t. Big motions, big expressions, and juggling people and objects in the space around him. He felt like a clumsy obnoxious idiot even trying. He could get himself across to Calliope, but he knew he still signed like Helen said. A machine.

A sewing machine, he thought to himself. All up and down in a little space. He just couldn’t say it because he couldn’t apply the word SEWING to MACHINE and make it stick. He had, like, a million nouns sitting right in front of him and no way to say “I want this word on that one.”

Damn it, I don’t even have any thread, he thought, frowning. And don’t say I should just talk normal, Ann. I can’t even do this right.

Ann didn’t say anything, but she didn’t think he should just talk normal or that he couldn’t do sign language right. She felt bad for him. He didn’t want that, so he ignored her.

“Do I have a name?” Maggie asked.

She didn’t know he was feeling unhappy and frustrated because he was always frowning like that.

He signed it for her, halfheartedly.

“‘Bird,’” Erik said.

Milo sighed. Bird-thief, if only I could. Criminal Bird. I have the words but I can’t stitch them together. Not Calliope AND Maggie. Magpie.

“If I’m Bird, what’s my mom?” Maggie said.

Calliope idiomatically translated his use of MACHINE: “‘It.’” She put a hand on his hand and added gently, “Milo also says he’s getting tired of talking,” She knew because she signed like a real human being and she watched all of him. He was saying stuff he didn’t even mean to say to Calliope.

“Is he upset with me because I don’t want to learn it?” Hyacinth asked, looking away.

Milo shook his head and crossed both hands in front of him. NO[EXTRA]!

“Uh-uh,” Calliope said. “He’s still really glad he doesn’t have to sign for you, because it’s hard for him and sometimes he just gets upset and wants to stop. He doesn’t like to disappoint people. He likes knowing you’re safe.” She kissed his cheek. “I’m not disappointed, babe. I know it’s hard.”

He touched his cheek and managed a weak smile. He shooed a hand at her and pointed at Lucy.

Calliope smiled too. “Milo says I can work on the cuckoo clock with you and he’ll babysit. And do the dishes,” she added with a snicker.

He shrugged and bobbed his head. Yeah, okay, “Criminal.” I’ll let you get away with that.

◈◈◈

Milo put the Lu-ambulator in “follow” mode, so Lucy could “help” him in the kitchen. He gave her a clean wooden spoon, since he was playing with dishes too. When he got tired of baby-drums, he’d take her back to the bedroom and let her choose a soft toy. It was a lot easier to handle noises like that when he could tell it was making someone he loved happy, and also nobody was trying to kill him.

Lucy babbled gleefully along with her improvised composition. It was too bad they couldn’t put that on a record, for Calliope. Calliope had a lot of records that sounded a lot like that. Especially the Shaggs.

Let’s see, that’s the dishes, and the kitten milk and the butter for Digby’s lunch… Where’s that little-bitty bottle he uses? Did it grow legs?

A lot of things in Hyacinth’s house grew legs.

“A-ba-ba-ga-ba-ma-ga-da-da!” Lucy declared.

He nodded and signed her an absent thumbs up, looking through cabinets. Plates. Jelly-glass… Jelly-glass… Cereal… He removed the box to check behind it.

“Da!”

Huh? Okay, Lu, you can have that. He put the box on the tray in front of her.

“A-daaa!” Lucy insisted, gazing up at him. “Dada! Da! A-daaaa? Dada!”

Father, Milo translated, with increasing dismay, while it isn’t that I don’t want the large friendly yellow box, you’re not playing this game right. We’ve established that when I say “da” with this inflection, you give me a word I can copy. And, ideally, one of these days here, when I want the large friendly yellow box again, I can call it what it is. I’m trying to learn language like a normal human being over here. What are you doing to me?

…I’m stunting your development and you’re going to grow up and do words wrong like me, Milo thought, clutching the box.

Lucy bapped the box with the spoon. “Da! Dada! Da! A-daa-aaaaah!” …ending with a shriek.

◈◈◈

Milo barrelled down the basement stairs and shoved a crying baby and a box of shredded wheat at Calliope.

“Gah! Milo!” Hyacinth quit merging metal on the worktable and lifted her goggles back to her forehead. “I’m going to blind that baby if you just drag her down here like that! What are you doing?”

He had already run back up the stairs, but she heard him crash into something and knock it all over the place. She sighed. “I shouldn’t have said it like that, but seriously…”

Mordecai appeared at the top of the stairs, clutching a puffed kitten. “What happened? Is Lucy okay? Ow, Digby, damn it!” He dropped the kitten, and it scrambled back into the front room, looking for someplace to hide and pee. “What’s going on?”

“I dunno,” Calliope said. She tipped Lucy back and forth and felt the diaper with a hand, before sniffing. For good measure, she counted ten fingers and ten toes. “Do you want cereal, Lu?”

“Da-da-da-da-da-da-daaaa!”

“I don’t always get Daddy, either, but he’s trying, hon.” She put the box on the worktable and began bouncing with Lucy against her shoulder. “Shh.”

Ann knocked into Mordecai from behind and damn near pushed him down the stairs. Her hair was still half-braided and she didn’t have any makeup or a corset. She caught Mordecai around the waist and set him behind her like an inconvenient chair.

“Cereal, Lucy!” she cried. She rushed down the stairs, barefoot. “Cereal! Box! Yellow box! Oh, please play the word game with Ann-Mommy, Daddy thinks he’s scarring you for life and I know he hasn’t…” She cringed and covered her pale mouth with a hand. “Has he?”

◈◈◈

They went back to the kitchen. Mordecai made tea and Hyacinth stood in the corner looking irritated. Erik sat in Ann’s lap and hugged her. Maggie looked lost for a second, then decided to put the ginger spice cookies on a plate for everyone.

“I’m sorry,” Ann sobbed. “Are little Lucy’s dear little eyes okay? We’re both so sorry… I… We didn’t know what else to do!”

“She’s okay,” Calliope said, bouncing. “She’s just upset because you are, Ann. What is it?”

“I’m okay, I am, I really am…” She hid her eyes behind a tissue. “Milo’s just falling apart and I can’t put him back together. He can’t play the word game with Lucy and he thinks she’s going to end up like him. You picked a father for Lucy who can’t teach her words.”

Calliope dropped Lucy back in the Lu-ambulator and set it to “rock.” She held her hand up in the C position and shook it like she was pouring the box. “Cereal.”

Ann was already shaking her head.

Calliope sighed. “Honestly, he can just make something up, as long as he remembers it and tells the rest of us. We’re not doing MSL, Ann. Milo Sign Language…” She frowned. “Okay, we can’t call it that because the letters are the same. But whatever we’re going to call it, home sign can be anything.”

“Lucy doesn’t want him to wave his hands in her face, she doesn’t know what that is. She wants a word, Calliope!”

Calliope frowned at Ann. she turned back to Lucy and shook the friendly yellow box. “Hey, Lucy. Cereal. Cereal? Cereal.” She made the sign again. “Cereal.”

“Seal,” Lucy replied at last, but she didn’t copy the sign.

Calliope moved her hand for her. “Cereal. Shake-shake-shake. Cereal!”

“Shay-shay.” Lucy flapped her hands.

Ann shook her head and made a miserable sound. “She-she can’t…”

Calliope cut her off, “Yeah, well, she can’t say ‘cereal’ or ‘shake’ either. We don’t teach babies to say ‘generic-branded adhesive bandage strip’ or ‘postmodern-industrialism.’ Hey, Lucy? Tickle-tickle-tickle!” After a few moments, the baby obligingly giggled and Calliope stopped. “More?” She tapped her fingertips together and helped Lucy do the same. “More?”

Ann tipped her head back and put both hands over her eyes. “Oh, gods, Calliope, please, not that one.”

Calliope smiled at her. “I’m sorry I taught him that word in bed, Ann, but it’s not a bad word. It’s an easy word. Lucy? More?” She helped Lucy do the sign again. “Okay! Tickle-tickle-tickle!”

“Tee!”

“More? More? Okay!”

After a couple more repetitions, Lucy tapped her hands together and said, “Mo.”

“Smart girl, Lucy! Tickle-tickle-tickle! More?”

“Mo.”

“Tickle-tickle-tickle! Show Ann-Mommy, what do we say?”

Lucy tapped her hands together. “Mo!”

Ann looked pained. “She’s going to think you have to say it that way. The children will tease her.”

“Here, Lu, get your tickles from Maggie. Mommy and Ann-Mommy need to get serious.” Calliope sat at the table. “I don’t think you and Milo would say something like that if Ojichan was teaching Lucy to speak Wakokuhito. What is it about sign?”

Ann looked away. “It’s not sign, Calliope. It’s sign as Milo is able to do it.”

“He can do it however he needs to do it, what does he need?”

“Complexity.” She shook her head. “Emotions. Inflection. Sentence structure. Adjectives. He’d be thrilled if he could just talk about two things at once and give them each an adjective. He wants to talk like you and Helen and he knows he can’t. He’s a machine. A stupid machine.” She was still shaking her head. “I don’t think he is, but he can say more things in binary than sign, and that’s just ones and zeros.”

“Binary is code,” Calliope said.

Ann nodded. “I’m sorry. I know it’s not…”

Calliope ran out.

“Gods, what did I do now?” Ann muttered.

Erik put both arms around her and hugged again.

Calliope dragged her folded art table into the kitchen, kicking chairs out of the way.

“Geez!” Hyacinth said. Mordecai leapt onto the counter and pulled up his legs.

Calliope ignored them. She pointed to the black carving on the underside of the table. “Milo told me what this says. Tell me again. Read it, Ann.”

“‘Fold here,’” Ann said meekly.

“No it doesn’t. That’s too simple and magic doesn’t work like that. What does it really say?”

“The material — wood — folds ninety-degrees here.”

“How does the code say that the material is wood and the fold is ninety-degrees?”

“Tags,” Ann said. “The subscript… The small symbols are tags. The sign for ‘material’ is tagged with the sign for ‘wood.’ And ‘fold’ is tagged ‘ninety-degrees.’”

Calliope signed while speaking, “Material wood, fold ninety-degrees.” She stopped signing. “The structure is subject first, then adjective?”

Ann shook her head. “It’s more like a mathematical function in brackets. Adjective around subject, or on top of it. It’s… It’s almost like when you put signs on top of signs, but he puts everything too close together when he does that. Written, it’s subscript after an object, or after the closed bracket for a complex function. Except not words, it’s all squigglies so it’s shorter. ‘Mat sub W,’ maybe, but it’s drawn so you know it’s a wood W and not a water W, does that make sense?”

“What if it’s two woods? What if you want to do something different with oak and ash?”

“Um. Bracket material sub bracket wood oak close bracket unsub bracket fold function close bracket ninety-degrees. Bracket material sub bracket wood ash close bracket unsub bracket music function close bracket sub bracket Petula Clark’s ‘Downtown’ close bracket unsub… Calliope, a human being can’t communicate this way, it’s too confusing!”

Gravely, Calliope spoke while signing, “Bracket,” she shaped the thumb and index finger of her left hand like a bracket, “box, yellow, cereal, close bracket,” she made the opposite bracket with her right hand. “Bracket, box, yellow, cereal, sub bracket,” she sighed UNDER with a bracket under it instead of a thumb, “wheat, tag, shredded, close sub bracket.”

“You left the box open.”

“Big, close bracket,” Calliope signed. She smiled. “Well?”

“…Everyone’s going to forget you’re talking about the box.”

Calliope gave her a thumbs up. “That’s why MSL repeats things all the time. Bracket, box, yellow, cereal, sub bracket, wheat, shredded, cereal, close sub bracket, box, close bracket. Or just close sub bracket, box close bracket. You don’t have to repeat, but there’s a space for it if you need it. It’s awkward to say it out loud, but sign isn’t Anglais. If I were talking and signing, I’d just translate like I always do.” She snickered. “Maybe a little slower ’cos I’m not used to it yet. Milo will have to teach me.”

“There’s still no inflection because he can’t smile and laugh like you,” Ann said.

Calliope froze her face in a frown. She tapped her mouth to sign SMILE like Milo did. Three times. Big smile. I LOVE [WHEAT, SHREDDED]. “He want a shout tag? We can make up a shout tag. Or a laugh tag? We can fix this however he needs.”

“It’s still going to be so hard,” Ann said finally.

Erik hugged her yet again, and didn’t stop hugging. “He thought he might hurt Lucy forever and he’s still really scared.”

Ann nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry. It’s going to take some time.”

Calliope put an arm around her shoulders. “You guys don’t have to do it alone.”

“He knows,” Erik said. “It helps a lot. He’s just tired. He already did one scary thing today, even though he thought it might break him, because he knew we’d fix him. And Auntie Hyacinth wouldn’t do something that would really hurt him, even if it was scary. So, Calliope, you…” He trailed away. “I gotta… Um. Before I change my mind.” He slid off Ann’s lap and wandered out.

“Bathroom?” Calliope said.

Hyacinth smirked. “You ever change your mind about going to the bathroom, Calliope?”

“Sometimes in gas stations…” She leaned the table against the wall. “You can come down now, Cook.”

Erik stood in the doorway and held up the battery from the cuckoo clock. “I’m sorry, Calliope. I remember where it goes and I’ll put it back. Uncle, Auntie Hyacinth is pretty sure a battery like this will do something weird to me if I hold it wrong, but it won’t really hurt me. She says it’s like coffee, so maybe I won’t hate it, I dunno. I’m just gonna try it real quick with everyone here because it scares me and I’ll make sure it’s not. Scary, I mean.”

He blinked. “Geez, you need to tag stuff when you talk out loud too.” He shook his head. “Sorry. I’m stalling.”

“Erik, what,” Mordecai said.

Hyacinth put out a hand and held him back. “Don’t scare him more or you’re going to end up raising a tiny Luddite.”

“What?”

“Oh, boy,” Erik said softly. He held the battery from the bottom and put his finger over the bumpy bit at the top. “Okay, no big deal.” He tried to touch it very quickly.

Both his hands curled up, he dropped the battery, and he sat down hard, laughing. “Oh, wow! Oh, holy heck. Coffee doesn’t do that, Auntie Hyacinth! I feel like someone pushed me so hard I did a loop-de-loop on the swing. I…” He opened his left eye, and the right one whirred and adjusted. “Hey, I’m on the floor.”

Maggie was on one side of him, helping hold him up, and his uncle was on the other, yelling at Hyacinth.

“Ha, ha, no, I’m okay, you guys. What’s going on?” He sniffled and wiped his nose with a hand.

“Well, you fell over and said ‘coffee swing’ but you seem to be doing complete sentences now, so I guess it’s fine,” Maggie replied acidly.

He frowned. “Nuh-uh. I said other stuff. Right?” He laughed again, weakly, though he didn’t feel much like laughing. “I can’t remember.”

Uncle Mordecai was yelling some more. Auntie Hyacinth put her hand over his mouth, “Okay, Erik, but what were we just doing?”

“We made up a code sign language for Milo and I thought I’d show him brave people trust you and touch batteries. It made more sense in my head.” He sniffled again and ran his sleeve under his nose. He shuddered. “I don’t like it, Auntie Hyacinth.”

“You sure sounded like you liked it,” Maggie said.

“No. It’s like someone put happy in my brain without asking if I wanted any. Now it’s gone and I know I didn’t want any. And I didn’t want to say something that didn’t make sense and forget stuff. It’s fun but it’s yucky.”

“That’s about how I felt about licking nine-volts,” Hyacinth said. She offered him a hand up.

“What?” Mordecai said.

“You’re okay, though, right?”

Erik stood with minor assistance and felt his backside for bruises. “Yeah. Guess so. Was I weird a long time?”

“I’d say about ninety seconds from ‘coffee swing’ to ‘I don’t like it.’”

“Did I hurt the battery?”

Hyacinth picked it up the safe way and showed him. “Nope. Want me to put it back for you? I know where it goes too.”

Erik considered her with a frown. He held out his hand. “No, I guess I will.”

Ann slapped both hands on the table and stood up. “Hyacinth don’t you dare…”

“Ann, the kid’s trying to teach you and Milo that being scared of something is way harder than actually doing it. I think you already know that, but maybe it’ll be easier to remember with a visual aid.” She gave Erik the battery. He held it up the safe way with a smirk. “You okay and not scared anymore, kid?”

“Yup. Just annoyed I have another dumb thing to be careful about. And I feel… bad I scared my… uncle.”

Mordecai sighed. He had been waiting for the slowing to pop up again, wondering if a jolt from a battery had knocked something out of or back into place. Maybe it did and it wore off. However, he suspected Erik was just more upset about him being upset than about talking nonsense and forgetting something.

And that made him feel like a son of a bitch.

“It’s all right, dear one. Just please do be careful.”

“I promise,” Erik said.

“Erik?” Ann lifted a hand and called him back before he could even go. “Milo promises he’s going to keep trying too. Only he doesn’t need you to teach him any more lessons, and please never do that on purpose again.”

Erik snickered. He signed, OK.

◈◈◈

Back in the basement, alone, Erik found his hand shaking as he tried to plug the battery back into the clock. He heard it rattling lightly against the metal. He pushed it in anyway. It clicked, safe and secure. He folded his hands and blew out a slow breath.

He’d just lied to his whole family. He wanted to be brave for Milo, but he was still scared. Not of touching a battery wrong and getting zapped like that again, it was something else. Like, just that he could get hurt that way. Not even hurt, just weird.

There was a lot of stuff out there that could hurt him a lot worse and he wasn’t scared of that stuff. Well, not like this. He didn’t get why batteries bothered him.

Cousin Violet was sitting on top of the shrine in the corner. They call that a goose walking over your grave, Erik.

“Well, that’s a dumb thing to call something,” Erik told her. “Geese don’t know anything about anything.” He went back up to see if he could help anyone in the kitchen.

I guess they don’t, Violet thought quietly to herself. But you do. Sometimes.

 She faded away.