As promised here are the first couple chapters. I won't be posting the whole thing, but hey, if this is any good when it's finished (if you read the nanowrimo FAQ you already know most people's books aren't fully finished at 50,000 words. That's Chopin's The Awakening length, which is rather short), perhaps I'll try publishing it...

Prologue  Islene

The first time I ever saw Jared, it was through the glass window of a hospital nursery. My grandfather George held me up to see the small wrinkled newborns, some of whom yawned, and others waved their tiny fists. George pointed one callused finger at a baby wearing a blue and white striped stocking cap. "That's the one."

I turned curious eyes towards my grandfather. "That's the boy?"

"Yes."

"But he's a baby, grandpa." I protested, wondering if he was playing a trick on me. George did that sometimes, but his grandchildren usually laughed after being the butt of his gentle jokes.

"He's a baby now, Islene. He won't be forever. Look at you, you're just five, and hardly a baby anymore."

"No, I'm big!" The serious look on my face was belied by the fact that I had my hair in two plaits tied with ribbon that matched the too precious blue and black plaid dress my grandmother had put on me that morning.

"Someday he will be too." George cautioned me. "You must always remember that once he was smaller and weaker than you. In a way he always will be."

This statement puzzled me. I'd been studying grownups all my life, and I was already quite sure that with very few exceptions, men were bigger than women.

If George noticed my confusion, he didn't let on. "I don't mean that in the sense that he won't get taller than you, because he probably will, or that he won't be able to pick up heavier objects, since he'll do that too, but I mean in spirit. In his soul."

"Why?"

"Because you are good, and he is not." George said firmly. "Goodness makes you stronger, now and always."

Behind the glass the infant turned his head, almost as if he was denying the pronouncement my grandfather had just made. I thought this was cute, but sensed telling George this would not be well received.

Instead I said, "But in Sunday school they tell us all of us are born good."

George slowly, sadly, shook his head. "That's usually true, my dear, but not this child. He is different, and so are you."

"But-"

"Jared Bran. Remember that name, Islene. Remember it as if your life depends on it, because it does."

I can remember staring at that small baby and trying hard to imagine that he'd ever present a threat. It was impossible then, and strange to admit, hardly more possible now.

 

Chapter One  - Jared

A chill wind tore at our clothing and the awnings of buildings as my son and I hurried down the street. My little boy, Avery, clung to my hand and struggled to keep up, but his much shorter legs made it difficult for him, and I was too preoccupied to notice at first. A block from our destination, Avery's foot caught on an uneven curbstone, and he stumbled for a couple of feet before I was able to stop.

"C'mon, Buddy." I said as I reached down for him. If we were going to be on time, I was going to have to carry him the rest of the way because he was obviously tired.

He pulled away and shook his head, displaying what was becoming characteristic stubbornness. "No, Daddy, no."

"Yes." Without allowing further argument, I reached down and picked him up, settling him on my hip. "We need to be somewhere in just a few minutes. It'll be faster this way." Avery pouted, but didn't object to being carried. Not as he had the last six times my patience had worn thin enough to carry him. I know it under minded his sense of being a "big boy" but I didn't have time to worry about that just then.

Normally, I had patience in abundance, or so I liked to believe. At that point in time, not only was I a single father, but a first grade teacher, so I felt quite accustomed to the capricious nature of children. God knows I spent enough time puzzling over the wants and whims of the under seven set. Most days, however, did not start out with a call from a fertility clinic requesting my presence to discuss a matter too sensitive to talk about over the phone.

In short, I was impatient because I was terrified that the clinic was going to tell me that they'd discovered that something was terribly wrong with the woman whose egg had been used to conceive my son. And if there was something wrong with her, and she managed to pass it along to Avery…

It hadn't been a light decision to embark on single parenthood with the aid of an egg donor and a surrogate, but up until the call came in the night before, I hadn't ever thought about possible ill consequences that might result. Maybe it's naive, but when I went home with my healthy baby, I ceased to give the clinic that created him another thought. Perhaps I should have.

All too soon, the clinic loomed into view, and the stone in the pit of my stomach grew to a boulder. In renewed viciousness, the wind grabbed at the back of my coat just as I pulled the clinic door open. Shivering, I tried not to think of it as an ill omen.

The receptionist didn't smile when we checked in, but instead was rather solemn faced as she directed us to a waiting room. "They'll be with you shortly." Was all she said, and try as I might, I couldn't detect any emotion in her voice.

In the waiting room, the woman already seated looked up from her magazine to appraise Avery and I. And when she did, all the blood drained from her face. I'd never laid eyes on her before, so I was a bit taken aback by the shocked look on her face.

And it's not like I'm Frankenstein's monster or anything either, so it's not as if my appearance was grotesque enough to freak someone out. I've always been told that I'm good looking enough. I'm just shy of six feet tall, fit, have black hair and blue eyes. And I felt a twinge of indignation when it occurred to me to wonder if it was Avery she was reacting to instead. He looks just like me except for the fact that he has straight, silky hair, not the wavy mop I keep gelled into submission. Photographers have suggested I submit his headshots to modeling agencies, so what could possibly be scary about a cute little guy like him?

 I gave her a confused smile, and she immediately flushed red and looked away. Unsettled, I led my son as far away from the woman as I could, and tried to interest him in the ubiquitous Highlights For Children magazines that hung on a wall rack. It seemed to me as though the magazine had always existed, and had been in every waiting room I'd ever encountered, as requisite as uncomfortably hard chairs and soft lighting.

While Avery tried to find pictures hidden in a line drawing of a tree, I risked a glance at the woman. She wasn't my type, but she was pretty. Even in the dim lightening I could catch the glint of red highlights in her otherwise seal brown hair, and brown eyes that nearly matched her hair. In other respects she was average. Average height, average weight rather than model thin. I predicted that she'd have an average smile too, not that she looked like she'd ever smile again. On second glance, I doubted that she'd ever smiled a first time, never mind again.

Peering at the child huddled to her side, I suddenly wondered if I was not the only one who had been rudely and unexpectedly summoned to talk about "sensitive matters." The boy had her eyes, though, so perhaps it was something else, since it seemed as though she was his biological mother.

"A bird!" Avery's squeal tore my eyes from the woman. I wondered if I'd been openly staring at her and felt vaguely ashamed.

Looking down at the newsprint page, I said, "I think it's supposed to be a blue jay, Buddy."

"But it's not blue." Avery protested, as if I was trying to pull one over on him.

"No, the page is in black and white but-"

"Jared Bran, Islene Idlewhile?" As I stood I noticed that the woman looked up, which confirmed my suspicion that bad news was selling cheap at the clinic that day. "The director is ready to speak to you. If you'll come this way..."

The woman carried her son, but Avery followed me without a fuss. The other child was younger, I noted, but not by much. He looked scared, though, so I didn't blame the mother for being overprotective, like a mother bear. It was still on my mind to compare myself to some sort of paternal animal, but didn't think of one by the time the receptionist indicated that we'd reached our destination.

A small metal nameplate by the door said Doctor Charles Jules. It wasn't the name of any of the people I had dealt with before Avery was born, but the name sounded very vaguely familiar. If the man would go on to claim to have begun working there after the problem, I guessed that I couldn't satisfactorily correct him.

He did not make such a claim. Instead he sat there with a look of extreme constipation on his face, much like the sincere expression worn by lawyers in television ads. Doctor Jules waved us towards chairs, then stepped his fingers.

Avery climbed onto my lap, but to my surprise the other boy sat in his own chair.

"This clinic has been in existence for twenty years," Doctor Jules began in an oratory tone, "And it dismays me to have to confess what I need to today. I assure you that this has never happened before-"

The woman spoke up, her voice surprisingly husky. "So we luck out by being victims of your first major screw up."

Jules' eyes widened in dismay. "Well, those aren't the words I would have chosen to frame it..." After a nervous pause, the director forged on. "We conduct an internal audit every five years, which is more frequent than we're legally required to, and I'm sorry to say that we found irregularities in both of your records."

"What kind of irregularities?" I asked impatiently. Whatever we were to learn there had to be more upsetting than someone having forgotten to cross Ts or dot Is on the paperwork. The suspense was making my stomach ache.

Jules sighed, which made the woman and I exchange slightly alarmed looks. "You requested anonymous donors, but there was a mishap. A lab tech, one who has long since been let go, got...confused."

The woman leaned forward in her seat. "Confused how?"

This made Jules shrug helplessly. "Instead of combining Ms Idlewhile's ova with an anonymous donor's semen, and Mister Bran's semen with a donor's egg... well, frankly, he combined the genetic material from the two of you. Together. Which resulted in the embryos that went on to become your sons."

"Oh." I said. At first I felt a mixture of relief and annoyance. Even if she'd seemed to have taken an instant dislike to me, the woman looked okay to me, not diseased in anyway, so what was the problem? It was only as the other child shifted in his seat that it occurred to me that Jules had just told us that we each had two children, not one. "Oh!"

For her part, the mother looked horrified. "You di-didn't."

Sitting near her, I began to bristle. I might not have been as handsome as donor number three thousand four hundred and seventy eight or whoever she'd picked out of their shiny books of potential donors, but it wasn't like I was a booby prize either. She wasn't the woman I'd carefully picked out of the book either. She was at least three inches shorter than my choice, which meant that Avery probably wasn't going to be as tall as I thought he would be. Avery, I thought to myself right then. How was this going to affect my son?

"I can only offer my deepest apologies-" Jules began, but I cut him off with an outburst of my own, directed at the other victim in the ridiculous scenario.

"Look Lady-"

"Islene." Her tone was icy, but I felt a bit frosty myself, so I let it go.

"Yeah, whatever. I want to get this out there right now  Avery's my son, and that one is yours." I said as I pointed at the little boy. He ignored me, and continued playing with a toy car I hadn't even noticed him holding until then.

His mother, on the other hand, was listening. "His name is Owen."

"Okay, Owen is yours. I have no intention of trying to take him from you, and you damn well better not have any funny ideas about custody-"

She cut me off. "Believe me, I don't."

"Good, then."

"Good?" Doctor Jules asked hopefully.

"Our feelings about custody don't exonerate you one whit." Islene snapped at him, and he slunk back into his chair. "You can expect to hear from my lawyer about a negligence suit."

"Mine too." I added.

I gave her a sidelong glance and wondered if "her lawyer" was just an expression, or if she already had council on a retainer. I certainly didn't. Yet. The thought that she might made me a little nervous. It would either mean that she's had brushes with the law before, or that she was fairly wealthy. While I wouldn't want my son to have inherited criminal genes, being rich might not be very good either. Not if she ever got gaining custody into her head.

The director didn't notice that a lot had gone on silently, because he'd gotten the first phrase our before I realized he was talking about Islene's barb, not my thoughts. "I expected as much." He admitted. "For what it's worth, I really am quite sorry."

"I expect you are." Islene retorted. "In as much as you're afraid of our lawyers. But you can't even imagine what a harm you've done to Mister Bran and I."

Irrationally, I again felt like protesting that I wasn't such a bad guy to have fathered her son, but kept that to myself. The look she was giving Jules could kill, and I didn't want to suffer under the same gaze.

She picked up her little boy and stormed out of the room. Avery and I followed in her wake. In just seconds we were out of the building all together. For a moment we both stood there on the steps. I wasn't the only one at a loss, apparently.

Although it was my instinct to avoid the strange woman at all costs, I found myself pulling a business card out of my wallet. I rubbed my thumb over the school emblem before holding it out. "Maybe we should exchange contact information. Our lawyers might want to confer." After I find one, I silently added.

She looked at the card the way one afraid of snakes might if someone offered to let them hold a cobra, but she did take it. Eventually. "Yes." Then she rummaged through her bag until she came up with a pen and some scrap paper.

I waited impatiently while she wrote on a discarded flyer for a Columbus Day clothing sale. Eventually she handed it to me. "I hope that your wife can handle this news."

 "I'm not married." I said as I awkwardly folded the paper and thrust it into my coat pocket. "I guess that's that."

She nodded her head slightly, but turned and walked away without another word. Even as she walked away I studied her. She was wearing a blue turtleneck and kaki slacks, compared to my red sweater and blue jeans. That outfit couldn't have cost that much more than mine, could it? I couldn't believe I was rooting for her to have a law breaking past.

"Well, that was rude." I remarked to Avery as he too watched the woman rush off. The other little boy, Owen, looked back at us over her shoulder.

"Didn't say bye." Avery remarked in a scandalized tone.

"Nope, she didn't." I looked down at him and wondered if he had any sense at all that he'd met his biological mother and brother. I didn't think so. How little children understood adults struck me as a sad irony, because Avery often asked about the very woman who was rapidly fading from view.

"We going home now?" He asked.

"Well, we could, but I thought we might go to a movie first." I had taken the entire day off of work, thinking that I might need the distraction after their appointment. It now seemed like brilliant foresight. For just a second I wondered what the sub was doing.

Avery, ever the pragmatic four year old, asked "Can we get popcorn?"

"I don't see why not, as long as you're willing to share with your old man."

This made my little boy giggle. "You're not old, Daddy!"

I was twenty-nine. Most days I agreed with my son's assessment. This wasn't one of those days.

Reaching down, I took his small hand in my own. The movie theater was only a block away, so we'd walk there and go back to the municipal lot for my car later. Along the way Avery chattered happily about what he wanted to see.

The cool dark interior of the movie theater didn't provide the refuge from my thoughts that I hoped it would. I'm not even sure what we saw, I just remember it being whatever animated glurge that was currently out in theaters at the time. Avery seemed to enjoy it, so I guess that is the important thing.

Chapter Two - Islene

I couldn't get Owen to the car quickly enough, and I didn't care what sort of impression that made on Jared. He wasn't supposed to like me, anyway. What did I care if my mortal enemy liked me or not?

Poor Owen looked bewildered as I strapped him into his car seat. "We late, Mommy?"

"Yes." I felt bad lying to him, but my real reason for being out of sorts wasn't something you could easily explanation to a child of three and a half. "We've got to get you to daycare."

For some reason this always got a positive reaction out of him. He grinned and banged on the sides of the car seat. "I going to daycare, Mommy drive doggies!"

"That's right, Owen."

As soon as I dropped my son off, I would be on the way to pick up the first client of the day, a particularly large Great Dane named Moxie. I'd drive her around for an hour, and then bring her back home. Her owner would pay me forty dollars as soon as I pulled up and brought the dog safely to the front door. Rinse, later and repeat with five dogs a day, vacuum the dog hair out of the car, and I'm done.

Most people who make the mistake of asking me what I do for a living seem confused at first, then wary, as if they think I'm joking. I guess that people expect something different when they think of the phrase "small business owner." There was a niche, and I decided to fill it. I liked to think of it as taking people's laziness to its ultimate end, and spreading it to canines too. Someone has to take advantage of such sloth, and I'm not above doing it.

"Which doggie, Mommy?"

We were stopped at a red light, so I quickly reached back and put his hat back on. He doesn't really mind wearing it, but when he gets too enthusiastic, it tends to fall off. The smile he gave me was heartbreakingly sweet.

"I'm going to bring Moxie out first."

"Moxie's gray!" Owen shouted. He'd made me tell him what the dogs looked like so many times that he'd memorized it. Some of the owners were tickled by his interest in their pets, and had given me photos to show him.

"Moxie is big and gray." I agreed.

"Then?"

"Then Mora." Mora is a lovable but not very bright Irish Setter.

"I like Mora!" Owen crowed happily. But before he could ask for the rest of my day's itinerary, I pulled up in front of his daycare provider's home. I know a lot of people swear by big centers, but they feel less nurturing to me.

I had Owen on my hip and was about to knock on the door when Meg opened it from the other side. "Owen! Riley and Morgan are waiting for you inside. We're going to do a craft project before snack."

"With sticks?" Owen asked hopefully, meaning Popsicle sticks. We go through a box of them at home every two weeks. He prefers the colored ones, but he's happy enough to add his own color later. On one memorable occasion he used half a bottle of my favorite nail polish to do so.

"As a matter of fact, yes." Meg said as she swiftly stripped off his coat and hat and hung them by the door.

"Yay!" Owen ran off without even saying goodbye to me.

Something must have showed on my face, because Meg gave me a wry smile. "It's better than crying when you drop him off, isn't it?"

"Yes... How's Eli doing this week, by the way?" Eli is a big time crier, most mornings.

"Not too bad. No tears two days running, knock on wood."

"That's great." I said, looking down at the face of my watch. "But I'm running late."

"See you in a few hours." Meg said cheerfully as I closed the door.

Sheila was waiting for me by the front door. One of her hands was loosely holding Moxie's collar, but she was the type of dog that would have stayed just because her mistress wanted her to.

I waved as I pulled up, and Sheila waved back, which told me I probably wasn't late after all. As soon as I opened the door the car's rear door, she let the dog go. Moxie bound at me, in great loping strides. I stepped aside quickly, because I'd gotten in her way once, and once was all I needed to keep me from ever wanting to do it again. Scratches from claws that broad take a long time to heal.

Moxie scrambled onto the seat, then waited patiently while I adjusted the side window to the appropriate height. She'd already stuffed her massive gray head out the window by the time I got behind the wheel. With one final wave to Sheila, we were off.

"Hey girl, how's it going?"

She pulled her head back into the car, woofed deeply for a second, then went back to sniffing the passing traffic. I guessed that meant that she was good. Moxie's almost always a happy dog, so it came as no surprise.

I, on the other hand, was feeling far more gloomy than I'd let on to any of the adults I'd encountered since leaving the clinic. Although one would probably think that my thoughts would be consumed by what I'd learned, my mind was actually casting farther back in time.

All the way back to when I was visited in a dream by a god. My grandfather told me that it would probably happen not long after I turned thirty, since that was when I was supposed to have learned about my destiny. As it turned out, the first dream visit came on the very night of my thirtieth birthday.

I'd been having an insipid dream about shopping for oatmeal and pot holders, when a man in a long white robe began stalking me through the aisles. I tried to give him the slip, but he was quicker than me, in the way bad guys often are in nightmares. Before I could panic, however, I found myself remembering my grandfather's warning.

"Uh..." I'd come to a nervous stop. "Are you Hypnos?" I almost added "God of Sleep" but I wasn't sure if Gods were as picky about using lofty titles as old time British monarchs were reputed to have been.

"Good. Someone should have told you about me." He said, which more or less confirmed his identity. That seemed rather smug to me, but I suppose you have to assume that smugness is second nature to divinity.

"Some." I admitted.

Claire had warned me over drinks hours before that Grandpa George had broken some rules, so we shouldn't let on how much he'd told us as kids. When she'd said that, it scared me a little. Hypnos was a God. Could he disrupt Grandpa's afterlife if he chose to?

"Then you know that it's your destiny to help maintain the balance of dreams on Earth."

"Sure, but this is just a part-time gig, isn't it?" I blurted out, horrifying myself that I'd addressed a god, or at least an alleged one, in such a manner. Then I made it worse by finishing the thought. "I have a day job."

To my utter shock, he actually looked amused. At least slightly. "Simply existing fulfills half of your obligation."

The word half removed all of the calm I'd gained when he hadn't reacted badly. "But what about the other half?" I asked in a small voice. A fear was beginning to blossom at the back of my mind.

"I think you know."

"You might be overestimating my intelligence. Which isn't to say that I'm not bright, but I mean the other sort of intelligence. Like the CIA. Knowledge." I cringed inside, since I realized that I was babbling. "I honestly don't know what the other half is."

"Continuity." He said gravely. And I gave him a blank stare. After frowning a little he lowered himself to elaborate. "Of our particular bloodline."

"Oh." I said slowly as a light bulb flared to life. "You mean have a baby? I'm supposed to have one?"

"One or more." Hypnos said, nodding his head. "I'm a little disappointed that you haven't started on that already. Your sister Claire had already procreated by the time she'd reached this age."

"Oh, um." How were you supposed to admit that you hadn't really gelled with the idea of being a wife and mother? In fact, I'd sort of decided not to pursue either. "I haven’t met the right guy yet." I demurred.

"Then you best get to finding him." Hypnos said in what seemed like a laughably stern voice. I was getting martial advice from someone who had tricked his way onto my family tree. Even Gods, it seemed, weren't the ladies' men all guys wanted to be.

"I'll get right on that." I said lightly.

Apparently too lightly, because his expression clouded. "This is of grave importance. There must be children to continue the bloodline."

At the time, I didn't wonder about that, but I'd had a lot of time since to think about the statement. The big question was, of course, why must my bloodline continue? If, God forbid, something did happen to wipe out my family, what did it matter? A god could simply find another poor innocent women to dupe into sleeping with him. Couldn't he?

"Right." I said. Then I glanced over at the clock on the wall of the store. Even though it wasn't real, I was convinced that it was keeping accurate time. "I'm pretty sure that I'm going to wake up in the next few minutes. Besides kids, is there anything else you need to tell me about?"

"No, that's all for now. But I'll be in touch, to find out how you're progressing."

Oh goodie, a God as a pregnancy test. "Okay, then." In the distance I heard the first beeps of my alarm clock. "Bye then."

And then I woke up. I stretched, rubbed my eyes, and wondered how many other people had not only their family and friends on their case about starting a family, but a god too. I figured it wasn't just me, the fertility goddesses probably weren't big on their descendants choosing to be childless by choice, either.

I didn't hate the idea of being a mother, but under normal circumstances, that meant involving a man. A man who I'd one day have to tell that I was related to the god who assured that we all dreamed every night. And unless he was completely crazy, he'd think I was too. Hell, he might be crazy and still not believe me anyway. That sort of thing lead to complications in a relationship.

In the end I decided that maybe there was a way that would fulfill my familial obligations without having to involve some hapless fool in my not quite normal existence. I could be a single mother.

At first I thought it might be as easy as picking up some nice looking, yet sufficiently inebriated, man in a bar, but there were sometimes news stories. Stories about a man finding out a woman he'd only had a casual relationship with had had his kid, and how he wanted custody of him or her. Visitation, at the very least.

So that's how I eventually decided on going to a fertility clinic.

They say that no good deed goes unpunished, and I think that is proof. If I had dragged some poor innocent man into the madness that is my family, I wouldn't have had nearly all the trouble that would eventually come my way, not that I knew it yet as Moxie and I drove around Lakewood. Of course, Owen wouldn't be the same boy he was, either, which would have been a major loss.

I glanced back at Moxie, and watched the way the breeze caused the folds of her face to flap in the wind for a second before returning my eyes to the road. Her eyes creased back in the wind, giving her a joyful look. And why wouldn't she be happy? She had a good woman to own her, plenty of food, a soft place to sleep, and an idiot to drive her around in a car twice a week. There had to be happiness in a life that simple, to be that easily fulfilled.

It was probably the first time in my life that I was ever jealous of a dog.

We hit the set of lights near Target, so I pulled into the parking lot to turn around. Moxie was just as pleased with the return trip as she had been on the way there. I wish that I'd been as relaxed as she was.