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Ten years is a long time. It's not a set phrase, not a poetic exaggeration to fill the silence. Ten years are a vast, incalculable collection of minutes and hours that, as they slowly settle, form years. And those years, when they pile up, make up an entire life for anyone. In that span, a person was capable of changing until becoming unrecognizable, of being reborn from their own ashes like a wounded phoenix, of learning the harshest, sharpest lessons the world had to offer, and even of dying—not just in the physical sense, but of dying inside, of leaving behind the child or the young person they once were to become a stranger burdened with the weight of a borrowed past.
Spider knew it better than anyone. He was the living proof of that transformation, an involuntary experiment of time and cruelty. Ten years had molded him, broken him, rebuilt him with pieces that didn't quite fit together, leaving invisible scars that ran across his soul like a map of dark paths with no return.
"I'm hungry..." The voice pulled Spider from his reveries with the delicacy of a feather but the force of a hammer shattering glass. It was a childlike voice, too low, almost a shy whisper that crawled through the air, as if the little owner of those words didn't have much experience using it, as if each syllable were a treasure to be administered carefully, a scarce commodity not to be wasted on the noise of the world. Spider blinked, feeling the pull of reality that brought him back to the present, to the here and now, to that specific moment unfolding in the backyard of the Sully family home.
It was a neighborhood barbecue, one of those gatherings that pretended to be casual and cheerful, where several families came together under the afternoon sun, amid laughter, trivial conversations, and the sizzle of meat over the coals. The blond, Spider, was sitting on one of the porch steps, a little apart from the bustle, observing everything with that gaze of his that always seemed to be in two places at once, as if a part of him had never fully returned from wherever he had been. He came back to the present—Spider, a twenty-four-year-old guy, with long blond hair tied back in a loose, careless ponytail, and dressed in borrowed clothes that, more than authentic garments, felt like a costume, like a second skin that didn't belong to him, a flimsy armor against the stares of others.
The boy sitting beside him—his name was Aster. Eight, nearly nine springs, though in his blue eyes there was a depth of knowledge that clashed with his age, a profundity that made anyone who looked at him closely feel slightly uncomfortable, as if that kid had seen things no child should know, and kept them in silence, chewing on them in the solitude of his mind. His hair was a soft brown, tousled and uncombed, falling over his forehead in careless locks. He was in front of Spider, watching him with too much insistence, with that fixity only children have when they want something or when they're trying to decipher a mystery that adults take for granted—but without saying much, almost without moving, like a small, patient statue. A child, Spider thought, who felt he had a daily word limit and didn't want to waste them on trifles, who rationed each sentence like someone meting out water in a desert.
"Mr. Sully is at the grill, why didn't you ask him for a plate?" Spider asked softly, almost tenderly, tilting his head slightly toward the child. All that time Aster had been sitting beside him, clinging to him like a faithful shadow, without moving, without complaining, simply waiting. The smell of food floated in the air, dense and tempting, mingling with the scent of freshly cut grass and the smoke from the grill, and Spider knew, from his own experience, that the smell of food was always a good distraction for fawns and children alike, a universal lure that awakened the most basic instincts of survival and comfort.
"I don't want to leave your side," the boy said, shrugging his shoulders with a tiny gesture, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, as if the answer were written in the air and Spider were a fool for not having seen it before. He said it without emphasis, without drama, with that disarming simplicity that only children and the wise possess. Spider couldn't help but smile, even if it was a melancholic smile, tinged with an ancient sadness that rose from his chest and reached his lips, making them tremble slightly. It was a painful smile, laden with meanings that Aster, fortunately, couldn't recognize, because he didn't have the tools to decipher the reason behind those complex feelings, behind that grimace that was at once affection and grief, present and past intertwined.
"Come on, I'll go with you." Spider got up from the step, noticing how his knees cracked, and took the child's hand. Aster's hand was small and warm, with fingers that clung to his with surprising strength, as if he feared Spider would disappear if he let go for an instant. They walked together to the grill, weaving through groups of neighbors chatting animatedly, and Spider was very aware that people were watching them. The stares settled on them like buzzing flies, and whispers bloomed at their backs, hushed comments that cut short as soon as they approached. Spider knew it; he had learned to notice it over time, and he also knew that the child noticed it—in the restless way he moved his head, trying to listen and observe those who pointed at them discreetly, in how his steps became a little more cautious, in how his shoulders tensed beneath the borrowed t-shirt.
It was a warm summer afternoon, one of those that seem painted by a benevolent artist, with a blue sky dotted with lazy clouds and a golden sun bathing everything in an indulgent light. The Sullys' house was the perfect place for an innocent neighborhood gathering: women laughing with glasses of lemonade in hand, men discussing sports by the grill, children scampering through the garden chasing butterflies or colorful balls. Everyone could enjoy that afternoon, at least in appearance.
Eat your food, drink your beer, and glance sideways at the boy who once was, for years, on the "Wanted" posters all over the county, a chilling image on a lamppost fading with rain and sun but never fully disappearing from the collective memory. Spider was that boy, the fifteen-year-old teenager whose smiling face, frozen in a school photograph, had adorned the walls of police stations and supermarket bulletin boards for far too long. It was no wonder they were the talk of the town, the inevitable topic of conversation that came up at every dinner, at every chance encounter at the gas station or in the bank line.
The boy missing for ten years, a fifteen-year-old kid who was kidnapped by his own father, ripped from his life without warning, and who was suddenly rescued, found under circumstances that the authorities never quite managed to clarify. But Spider had not come alone; ten years without anyone knowing anything of him, and suddenly he appeared, battered but alive, with a small child at his side—a child with no identification of any kind, no papers, no past, nothing legally tying him to the world. Aster was an administrative ghost, a creature arisen from nowhere, and secrets, Spider thought bitterly as they walked, only need two people to be secrets; as soon as there are three, the secret starts to leak, to seep, to poison the air.
"Hey, Jake. A plate, please," Spider said when they finally reached the grill, and the adult turned to look at them. Jake Sully, the host, always so kind, always with that calm smile that seemed to know more than it let on, but that feigned ignorance with almost professional skill. He was a man who inspired trust, with his steady hands handling the tongs and his apron stained with barbecue sauce. Spider appreciated him, but he never fully let his guard down with him.
"It's coming right up." Jake didn't hesitate as he took out a piece of juicy, steaming meat and placed it on a white plastic plate. The gesture was simple, almost automatic, but it was laden with a hospitality that Spider wasn't sure he deserved.
Aster looked up for the first time since the barbecue had begun. His blue eyes lit up with a gleam of genuine interest, a spark of childlike curiosity that broke through his usual shell of silence. He looked at the meat, looked at the vegetables, followed the path of Jake's tongs with his eyes. After a serving of roasted vegetables, potato salad, and other colorful things, a full and generous plate was handed to Spider, because he was the one who served as intermediary, as the bridge between that normal world and little Aster.
After all, the best way to earn the trust of a frightened fawn or a child wounded by life, Spider told himself as he accepted the plate with a silent thanks, is food. A warm plate, a bite offered without conditions, a gesture that appealed to the most primitive and basic part of the human being. His father had taught Spider that, in some bend of those ten years of nightmare, between twisted lessons of survival and displays of a warped affection that he still struggled to understand.
His father had taught him many things, too many, and that simple truth was one of the few Spider could hold onto without it burning his hands. He owed everything to that knowledge, and at the same time he cursed it, as he handed the plate to Aster and watched how the child, for the first time all afternoon, sketched the hint of a tiny smile, barely a faint trembling at the corners of his lips, before starting to eat with a quiet, meticulous hunger that spoke more of his past than a thousand words.
"Thanks, man," Spider said, and the words came out of his mouth with genuine gratitude, though his voice still carried that weary tone, like someone who has learned to appreciate small gestures because for a long time he had nothing to be thankful for. His free hand, the one not holding Aster's, rose in a brief, almost casual wave toward Jake, a gesture of male camaraderie that needed no great effusiveness. Then he turned toward the child, who was still holding the plate of food with both hands, as if it were a fragile treasure that could shatter at any moment, his tiny fingers gripping the edge of the white plastic and his knuckles slightly white from the pressure.
The steam from the freshly cooked meat rose in lazy spirals, lightly fogging Aster's little face, which gazed at the plate with an almost reverential concentration, as if he had never before seen so much food together and hot, served without conditions, without traps, without ulterior motives. "What do you say?" Spider asked him gently, bending down a little to be at the child's level, with that infinite patience he had cultivated over the last few months, a patience that was both shield and tool, a way of building bridges where before there had only been abysses of silence and mistrust.
The child lowered his gaze immediately, as if Spider's words were too heavy a weight to hold with his eyes. He hid between Spider's legs, taking refuge in that protected space the young man's body created, a small shelter of denim and shadow where the outside world couldn't reach him. From there, turned into a tiny, frightened creature, Aster pressed the plate against his chest and seemed to want to melt into the wooden floor of the porch, to disappear between the cracks, to become invisible like a frightened little mouse. Jake, meanwhile, said nothing.
He stood there, tongs in hand, waiting patiently as the smoke from the grill drew gray wisps behind him. He was a man who understood other people's timing, who knew he still couldn't push Aster much in any kind of social interaction. He had learned it in recent weeks, watching the child move through the world like a half-tamed wild creature, always alert, always measuring distances, always calculating escape routes.
The child was still learning how to relate to the outside world, and that was a titanic task for a creature who had spent an entire lifetime knowing no one but Spider, shut away in a universe reduced to four walls and an endless forest where the only human sound was Spider's voice, and the...
"Thank you..." the child whispered at last. The word came out so low, so fragile, that the wind nearly carried it away before it reached Jake's ears. It was a minimal sound, a thread of voice that trembled in the air like a soap bubble about to burst, but it was laden with such great effort that Spider felt a pang of pride in his chest, mixed with that perpetual melancholy that accompanied him everywhere.
Jake could only nod, with a slow, respectful movement of his head, without making any comment, without forcing a celebration that would have embarrassed the child. He simply nodded, accepting the gift of that word for what it was, and returned to his previous task, turning his back discreetly to tend to the grill, where the flames licked the metal grate and sizzled upon contact with the grease.
Spider guided the child toward the children's tables that the Sullys had set up in a corner of the garden, under the protective shade of an old oak whose branches spread out like generous arms. They were low tables, made of colorful plastic, surrounded by matching little chairs where the neighborhood children swarmed like birds at a fountain. But as soon as they got close, Aster went rigid. It was a sudden and total change: his shoulders tensed like guitar strings, his back straightened abruptly, and his feet rooted themselves into the grass as if they had suddenly grown roots.
The children ran around them, oblivious to everything, chasing each other with shouts of joy that cut through the air like knives; the girls were having fun in a circle, singing some nursery rhyme that Spider vaguely remembered from his own childhood, a melody about stars and sheep; and the babies, sitting on blankets on the grass, laughed with those guttural, contagious chuckles that only the littlest ones can produce, grabbing at colorful toys and glistening drool. Aster looked terrified. His breathing quickened, small, choppy gasps that made his shoulders tremble, and his blue eyes opened wide as saucers, scanning the scene with a contained panic that was heartbreaking to behold. It was as if he were seeing not a group of children playing, but a pack of unknown and unpredictable creatures, an incomprehensible chaos that threatened to swallow him whole.
"Are you going to leave me...?" the child said with genuine terror in his gaze, and the words struck Spider right in the center of his chest, in that place where he kept all the guilt and all the fear he had accumulated over ten years. Aster squeezed Spider's hand with all his tiny strength, his little fingers digging into the skin with the desperation of someone clinging to the edge of a cliff.
He looked like he wanted to cry; his eyes grew moist, that watery sheen that precedes tears appeared on his corneas, and his lower lip began to tremble almost imperceptibly. But Spider stood firm, planted on the ground like a lighthouse in the middle of the storm, because he knew, because he had learned through blows and scars, that there is no change without at least one break, without a small crack in the armor that lets the light in. Growth hurt, adaptation hurt, but it was a necessary pain, a bone that had to be broken so it could mend properly.
"No, of course not. Look, I'll be at those tables, I'll be watching you." Spider pointed to the adjoining tables, the adult tables, where fathers and mothers were sitting in folding chairs, with plastic cups in their hands and conversations floating in the hot air, likewise watching the children with that peripheral gaze that parents develop over the years. Adult tables.
The last time Spider was at a Sully barbecue he still sat at the children's tables, with scraped knees and a light heart, knowing nothing of the world or its traps, not yet having tasted the metallic flavor of constant fear. And now... now he had a child to watch over. The irony tasted bitter on his tongue, like a poisoned candy. He had gone from childhood straight into parenthood, with no stopovers, no transition, no instruction manual, and the child he was caring for was the purest and most painful reflection of everything that had happened to him.
The music playing in the garden was horrible, a mix of country and dated pop coming out of a portable speaker with the sound quality of a rusty tin can. It was hot, that sticky summer heat that got into your clothes and made you sweat in unexpected places. There was a lot of noise, a constant, overlapping din: people were all talking at the same time, their voices rising and blending into a deafening murmur; the children wouldn't stop shrieking, with those high-pitched wails that drilled into the eardrums; and the dogs, two golden retrievers that belonged to who knows who, just barked without stopping, chasing their own tails or barking at imaginary squirrels. It was horrible, it was absolute chaos, a cacophony of overflowing, disorganized life. And it was normal.
That was the strangest thing of all: that was normality, the background noise of an ordinary life, of a community that gathered without fear, without hiding, without whispering in the darkness. Spider, for a few seconds, missed that old house in the middle of the woods. He missed the silence broken only by the wind through the pines and the creaking of old wood; he missed the cool dimness of those rooms where time seemed to have stopped; he missed, God, even the feeling of being hidden, of being safe precisely because no one knew where they were. But he quickly pushed those thoughts away with a shudder of self-loathing, like someone swatting away an annoying fly. That house was not a refuge, it was a prison. Missing it was betraying everything he had fought for.
"I could sit with you," Aster tried to negotiate, and on his little face appeared a small, uncomfortable smile, an awkward grimace from a child who didn't know how to fake smiles because he had never had reasons to practice them. It was a smile that didn't reach his eyes, a forced curve of the lips that seemed more like a question than a statement, and Spider felt his heart shrink like crumpled paper. That child didn't know how to smile from lack of use, like an atrophied muscle, like a rusty door that creaks when opened. Smiles were a luxury Aster had never been able to afford.
Spider shook his head, slowly, gently, but firmly. Change is frightening, he thought as he watched the hope fade from the child's eyes. Change is painful, it's an open wound, it's a leap into the void with no safety net. But it always brings something better, he forced himself to believe, or at least it brings normality, that noisy, hot, overwhelming normality that surrounded them now. Normality was a gift, even if it sometimes smelled of burnt meat and sounded like a poorly equalized country song.
"You know children aren't supposed to sit there." It was a small lie from the older one, a white lie, harmless, that hurt no one and served to build an excuse the child could understand. Lies, Spider thought with an ancient weariness, beautiful lies that protect you from ugly truths. He had been telling them for so long that sometimes he no longer knew where the lie ended and where reality began.
Tell the lies so many times until they become reality, until the world accepts them, until you yourself believe them. Spider could only pretend that reality was a lie, and he knew how to control lies. He had learned it the hard way, at that gas station lost in the middle of nowhere: lie to your father saying you and the boy needed to go to the bathroom, tell him an urgent lie with a trembling but convincing voice; then run to the payphone and tell a lie to the 911 operator, that there's a holdup at the gas station, come quickly, please hurry; then lie to the police about whether you knew your father's whereabouts, deny, always deny, build a wall of falsehoods to protect you. Lie to the world about... about everything. "Come on, just give it a try, for me."
Aster fell silent. He held his plate of food with still hands, his knuckles still white, and looked alternately at Spider and at the children's tables with an indecipherable expression. Try what? he seemed to ask with his silence. Try to socialize, to approach those children who ran and shouted like creatures from another species? Try to make friends, to utter words that weren't whispers, to take part in games whose rules he didn't know? Try to pretend to be normal for once in his short life, to behave as if he hadn't grown up in confinement, as if he hadn't learned to walk on dirt floors, as if the outside world weren't a strange and hostile planet? Try not to be like Spider, not to be like...? To try to make the effort to still be able to have a normal life, a life that Spider already considered lost for himself but refused to consider lost for Aster. The child deserved at least the chance to try, even if he failed, even if he came running back to his arms.
"You won't go any farther?" Aster pulled Spider's hand insistently, a short, repeated tug, a secret code they had developed in their years together to indicate that the child wanted to speak privately, away from the curious ears of the adults. It was a secret language forged in the intimacy of the house in the woods, a language of gestures and tugs and glances that only the two of them understood.
Spider understood the signal instantly. He knelt on the grass, feeling the dampness of the lawn through the fabric of his borrowed jeans, and then the child hugged him. It wasn't a common childish hug, one of those quick and carefree ones children give before running off. It was a long, intense, desperate hug, almost as if he were a soldier saying goodbye before leaving for war, with the restrained strength of someone who doesn't know if they'll see the other again, with that barely perceptible trembling that betrayed the tears that didn't dare to fall. Aster buried his face in Spider's shoulder, in the hollow between neck and collarbone, and breathed deeply, as if wanting to memorize his smell, his warmth, his solid, real presence. Spider felt the child's little arms wrapping around his neck, squeezing with surprising strength, and thought, with a lump in his throat, of a soldier like his father.
A soldier marching off to a conflict he didn't understand, to a battlefield full of laughing children and barking dogs and adults whispering behind their backs. A tiny, terrified soldier, armed only with a plate of food and the memory of a hug, whom Spider was about to send to the front. And they stayed like that for a moment, kneeling on the grass, while the world kept spinning around them without understanding anything, without knowing anything, without even imagining the silent battles being waged in that small corner of the Sullys' garden.
"Do you promise, Mom?" the child whispered, and the words came from his lips like a barely audible breath, a murmur so low, so intimate, so fragile, that it was impossible for anyone else to hear it amid the bustle of the barbecue. The syllables faded into the hot afternoon air, swallowed by the noise of conversations, by the barking of the dogs, by the country music that kept playing with its annoying insistence from the portable speaker.
But Spider heard it.
He heard it with devastating clarity, as if those two words had been shouted through a megaphone directly into his ear, as if time had stopped for an instant so he could receive the full impact of that forbidden syllable. And he felt a shiver run down his spine, a shiver that started at the base of his skull and descended slowly, vertebra by vertebra, like an icy finger tracing a path of frost over his sweaty skin. Mom. A name that was only whispered at night, when the doors were closed, when the lights were out, when the outside world disappeared and all that remained was the absolute certainty that it was the two of them, alone, safe, wrapped in the complicit darkness of a room that smelled of old wood and moss.
A forbidden name for society, a title that shouldn't even exist in that child's mouth, a word that defied all conventions, all norms, all tacit laws about what was right and what was aberrant. But it existed. It existed in Aster's secret vocabulary, in that private language they shared, and Spider couldn't pretend it didn't stir something in him every time he heard it, an impossible mix of tenderness, guilt, fear, and a love so fierce it sometimes made it hard to breathe.
"You know I told you you shouldn't call me that in public," Spider said firmly, and his voice sounded harsher than he intended, an edge of steel wrapped in tissue paper. It wasn't anger, not exactly; it was fear, that constant, subterranean fear that had been with him for months, ever since they had come out of the woods and had to face a world that understood nothing, that knew nothing, that would judge without asking.
Aster lowered his gaze instantly, like a beaten puppy receiving a scolding it doesn't fully understand. His eyelashes, long and brown, cast small shadows over his cheeks, and his fingers tightened on the edge of the plastic plate, making the fork clink lightly against the surface. But Spider, despite his firm words, was incapable of staying angry with the child for too long. He couldn't. The world was fucked up, too fucked up, so hopelessly broken and twisted, that it was a waste to cry over trifles like a name whispered in a garden full of strangers. They had survived worse things.
They had survived a ten-year hell that Spider still hadn't been able to talk to anyone about, a hell that hid behind his eyes every time he fell silent. So he softened his expression, let the hardness fade from his features like ice melting in the sun, and added in a much sweeter tone: "But yes, I promise I won't go far."
The promise floated between them like a soap bubble, bright and ephemeral, and Spider wished with all his might that the child could believe it, that he could cling to those words like a lifeline in the middle of the noisy ocean of the barbecue. The child didn't seem very convinced; his blue eyes, those eyes that knew more than a child should know, still showed a shadow of doubt, a deep reluctance that refused to disappear.
Aster had learned, through experiences Spider preferred not to remember, that adults' promises weren't always kept, that pretty words were sometimes just that, words, and that the world had the nasty habit of snatching away everything he loved. But he accepted anyway, because he had no other choice, because he trusted Spider more than he trusted anyone, because Spider was his anchor, his safe harbor, his mom even if he couldn't say it out loud. He took the plate of food with both little hands, adjusting the weight carefully so as not to spill anything, and with slow steps, incredibly slow, like a condemned man walking to the gallows, he approached the children's tables.
Each of Aster's steps was a small triumph and a small defeat at the same time. His sneakers, sports shoes someone had donated and that were still a little too big for him, crushed the grass with an almost reverential delicacy, as if the child feared making noise, as if he feared being a nuisance, as if he still hadn't learned that he had the right to take up space in the world.
The plate trembled slightly in his hands, and the fork kept clinking against the plastic with a minimal, almost musical sound that to Spider was the saddest sound he had heard all day. Aster reached the children's tables and sat at the farthest one, in the most remote corner, where the oak's shade was thickest and where no other child had chosen to sit. He sat completely alone, a tiny island in a sea of games and laughter, with his head low and his shoulders hunched, bent over his plate like a little animal protecting its food from invisible predators.
He ignored the children who played and ran around him, ignored their shouts of joy and their carefree races, ignored the balls that flew close to his head and the girls who brushed past his chair without even noticing his presence. He just ate, without much pretense, without looking up, without making a single gesture that could be interpreted as an invitation to play. A gray stain on the innocence of childhood, a discordant note in the colorful symphony of normal childhood, a presence so silent and so sad that it hurt to look at.
Spider sighed heavily, a sigh that came from the depths of his lungs, from that dark place where he kept all the weariness he didn't dare to show. The hot summer air filled his mouth and tasted of grass, of grill smoke, and of resignation. He turned slowly, feeling the weight of his own bones as if they were made of lead, and walked toward one of the nearby tables, the adult tables, where the folding chairs lined up like soldiers in a domestic battle. He dropped into the chair with an awkward, graceless motion, letting his body collapse onto the canvas seat with a small creak of the metal legs against the wooden floor of the porch.
The world kept spinning, spinning without stopping, indifferent to his sorrows, indifferent to his traumas, indifferent to the small, silent tragedy unfolding at the farthest children's table. No one could wait for Aster, much less for Spider. Life didn't stop for two broken souls trying to find their place; life went on, unstoppable and noisy, demanding that you adapt or be left behind. The Earth was a big world, immense, full of oceans and mountains and cities and millions of people who knew nothing of them, but in those moments, sitting in that folding chair as he watched Aster eat alone, it felt so tiny it seemed to suffocate Spider, as if the walls of the universe had contracted until they left him without air.
Pretending normality was so exhausting. It was a full-time job, a constant, draining performance that allowed no breaks or days off. Put on the mask, Spider told himself for the umpteenth time, adjust the fake smile on your lips, relax your eyebrows so you don't always look angry, look people in the eye even if your eye sockets burn. Say what everyone wants to hear, the set phrases, the commonplaces, the rehearsed answers you had practiced in front of the bathroom mirror. Keep the sins to yourself, each and every one of them, don't let anyone see the bloodstains you still thought you saw on your hands. Tell everyone the all-ages version of the hell you lived through, the censored version, the softened version, the one that omits the lurid details and leaves only what is acceptable to tell at a neighborhood barbecue.
Say the most politically correct thing, what won't make others uncomfortable, what won't make them avert their eyes in discomfort. And don't say the worst of what you went through, don't mention the sleepless nights listening to footsteps in the darkness, don't talk about the cold that cut to the bone in winter, don't tell anything about the bruises or the tears or the constant fear that had become a background buzz in your head. Conceal the ugly truths with beautiful lies, cover them with layer upon layer of paint until reality is unrecognizable. You spent ten years locked away, an entire adolescence thinking solitude wasn't so bad, that that cabin in the middle of the woods could even be pleasant, that the four wooden walls and the roof that dripped when it rained were a home and not a prison.
You convinced yourself you were fine, that you didn't need anything else, that the outside world was a danger best avoided. And that self-deception kept you sane, kept you alive, but now that you were out, now that you breathed free air and heard children's laughter and saw the open sky above your head, that self-deception crumbled like a house of cards and left you naked before an unbearable truth: you had lost ten years of your life and you would never, ever get them back. Your...
"How is it that a bastard like Quaritch is capable of fathering such cute kids?" exclaimed a voice behind Spider, cutting the thread of his thoughts with the abruptness of a knife slashing through taut fabric. The voice was youthful, carefree, slightly mocking, with that tone of someone who feels close enough to allow themselves heavy-handed jokes and out-of-place comments. Spider didn't have to look up to know who it was. He knew that voice from childhood, from the distant days when the world was simple and his greatest worry was getting home before nightfall.
He simply raised his right hand in a vague gesture, without turning his head, without making any effort to greet properly, and a can of beer, cold and sweaty, was placed in his open palm. The aluminum was icy, a delicious contrast against the hot skin of his fingers, and the droplets of condensation slid down his knuckles like small, transparent tears.
His best friend from childhood, ten years ago at least, before everything went to hell, before Spider disappeared from the "Wanted" posters and became an urban legend of the county. Lo'ak Sully, the youngest son of Jake and Neytiri, a tall, lanky boy with dark hair, brown skin sprinkled with freckles, and a perpetual smile that seemed to defy everything. They had been inseparable as kids, thick as thieves, two kindred spirits who ran through the woods and scraped their knees together and told each other secrets under the sheets during sleepovers.
And now? Now they were just acquaintances, two strangers who shared a common past but had grown in opposite directions, separated by an abyss of ten years that couldn't be crossed easily. An acquaintance who was a little easier to talk to than the rest, that was true, because Lo'ak had the gift of making conversations flow effortlessly, because he didn't look at you with pity or morbid curiosity, because his jokes, though clumsy, came from a genuine place.
And without further ado, Spider opened the can with a metallic snap, the unmistakable sound of the tab breaking, and brought the cold rim to his lips. He took an enormous swig, a long, deep gulp that filled his mouth and his throat and his chest, a swig that emptied almost half the can in one go. The beer went down bitter and bubbling, leaving an aftertaste of hops and contained despair. Lo'ak let out an amused snort beside him, a nasal huff that was half laughter and half astonishment, watching his friend nearly finish the can in one go as if it were water in the desert. He dropped into the chair next to him, stretching his long legs under the table, and took a much more moderate sip of his own beer, watching Spider with a mix of curiosity and concern he tried to hide without much success.
Alcohol had long since ceased to be a horrible drink for Spider. It was no longer that bitter brew teenagers drink in secret at parties, making faces of disgust and wondering how anyone could enjoy something so unpleasant. Now it was the only thing that could give him a spark, a small flash of something resembling calm, a light anesthesia that numbed the sharp edges of his memories. A spark of what? Spider didn't know exactly.
Perhaps of oblivion, perhaps of peace, perhaps of that elusive sensation of being present in the moment without the past constantly whispering in your ear. But that particular beer, that cheap brand Jake bought by the case at the supermarket, tasted more like fermented juice than real alcohol, a watered-down swill that barely scratched the surface of what Spider really needed. For a fleeting moment, too fleeting, Spider thought it would be too disturbing to ask for a little whiskey or some bourbon. The words almost formed on his lips, he almost said them out loud, he almost made the mistake of revealing too much. Because whiskey and bourbon were the favorite drinks of his father, of Miles Quaritch, the man who had kidnapped him, the man who had kept him locked away for ten years, the man whose last name Spider bore like the mark of Cain.
His father drank bourbon on cold nights, sitting in front of the cabin's fireplace, with the cut crystal glass in his hand and his gaze lost in the flames, and sometimes, when he was in a good mood, he even let Spider take a sip. The taste of bourbon was the taste of fear, the taste of submission, the taste of days that repeated themselves identically in confinement. And yet, Spider craved it. He craved it with an intensity that made him nauseous, because it was a taste that reminded him of home, of the only home he had known for a decade, and that thought was so twisted that he preferred to drown it with another swig of watery beer.
"I keep saying it, your little brother is adorable," Lo'ak said, breaking the silence that had settled between them. His voice was light, conversational, the kind of comment made to fill the void and keep awkwardness from taking over the situation. "He's lucky the mother chose the name, though I wonder what it means..." he added, taking a sip of his beer, a casual, carefree gulp, completely oblivious to the bomb he had just unknowingly dropped.
Spider fell silent. His fingers tightened around the beer can, feeling the aluminum give slightly under the pressure, and his jaw tensed almost imperceptibly. The mother. The mother had chosen the name. Those words echoed in his head like an echo in an empty cave, bouncing against the walls of his skull, awakening thoughts he preferred to keep buried.
Lo'ak didn't know anything.
Lo'ak believed Aster was his brother, his little brother, the son of some mysterious woman who had disappeared or died or who knows what story Spider had invented to explain the child's existence. Lo'ak couldn't imagine, not even in his wildest nightmares, the truth that hid behind those blue eyes and that gray stain sitting at the farthest children's table.
Spider looked at Aster. The child was still there, alone, eating slowly, swinging his tiny feet under the chair because they didn't reach the ground. He was so far away and yet so close, just a few meters away, but those meters felt like an entire ocean to Spider. Aster lifted his head for an instant, perhaps sensing Spider's gaze on him, and their eyes met across the garden. It was only a second, a very brief crossing of blue eyes and brown eyes, but in that second Spider felt the world stop. And then Aster lowered his head again, and kept eating, and Spider brought the beer to his lips and took another long swig, wishing it were bourbon.
Aster, a name the mother had supposedly chosen. That was what Spider had told everyone, the official version, the beautiful lie that concealed the ugly truth. He had told it to the social workers with a calm voice and a steady gaze, he had repeated it to the police officers who interrogated them separately in that police station lit by fluorescent lights that buzzed like trapped insects, he had whispered it to Jake Sully one night, in front of a cup of coffee that grew cold without anyone drinking it, while the words came out of his mouth rehearsed and perfect like the lines of an actor who has performed the same play a thousand times. The mother had chosen it.
The mother, a woman without a face, without a name, without a past, a ghostly figure Spider had invented to protect the darkest truth, the truth that burned his tongue every time he tried to speak it out loud. But reality was something else, a reality that only existed in the silences between Spider and Aster, in the complicit glances they exchanged when no one was watching, in the sleepless nights when the child curled up against his chest and whispered "Mom" in the darkness. The reality was that Aster was a name Spider had given him. A name that had been born in the moments of most absolute solitude, in those endless days locked in that cabin lost in the middle of the woods, kidnapped by his own father, when his only contact with the outside world was a small barred window that framed a rectangle of sky.
When he saw the stars through that small window, Spider felt something that dangerously resembled hope. It was a tiny window, with a splintered wooden frame and dirty glass that could never be fully cleaned, a window that looked out onto a forest clearing where the trees parted just enough to reveal a piece of the firmament. And on clear nights, when the darkness of the woods was broken only by the huge bright moon and her sisters, the stars, Spider would sit on the windowsill with his knees against his chest and stare upward for hours.
The stars gave him hope, an absurd, irrational hope that wasn't based on anything concrete, but that kept him alive. They were tiny points of light in the black immensity, so distant they were unreachable, and yet their constant glow, their silent, faithful presence, reminded him that a world existed beyond the forest, beyond the cabin, beyond his father. A world where perhaps someone still remembered him, where perhaps someday he could return. The stars didn't judge, didn't hurt, didn't lock anyone away. They were simply there, shining, mute witnesses to his captivity, silent companions to his nights of insomnia and tears.
His father destroyed him in a thousand and one different ways. He destroyed him with words, with those sharp phrases that pierced his self-esteem and tore it to shreds, calling him useless, calling him a burden, calling him his. He destroyed him with blows, with the back of his hand when something didn't go as he wanted, with the leather belt that hung next to the door as a constant threat, with shoves that hurled him against the wooden walls and left bruises that took weeks to fade. He destroyed him with isolation, with the most absolute loneliness, with entire days without speaking a word to him, with the absence of any human voice other than his own, with the certainty that the outside world had forgotten him.
He destroyed him in so many ways that Spider lost count, and each of those times, in each break, in each fracture of soul and body, his father always rebuilt him. He rebuilt him with a sickening patience, with an almost paternal care that was more terrifying than the blows themselves. He would tend his wounds with hands that moments before had hurt him, prepare hot food for him after punishments, read him books by the fireplace in a soft, measured voice, and little by little, year after year, he molded Spider a little more in his own image and likeness.
Like a demented sculptor who broke his work only to sculpt it again, like a cruel god who punished and forgave in an endless cycle, Quaritch turned his son into a reflection of himself. And Spider, terrified and alone, could do nothing but let himself be molded, let his edges be smoothed, let his thoughts adapt to the twisted logic of his captor, because it was the only way to survive.
The nights in the forest were calm, that was something Spider could never deny even if he wanted to. There was a strange peace in that isolation, a supernatural stillness that wrapped around the cabin like a cloak of dark velvet. Without the noise of traffic, without police sirens, without the constant murmur of civilization, the silence was so deep you could hear your own heartbeat. And the stars, God, the stars were more visible than in the city. In the city, light pollution blurred them into a pale smudge, just a few timid points peeking out through the orange glow of the streetlamps.
But in the forest, the night sky was a breathtaking spectacle, a mantle of black velvet sprinkled with millions of shining diamonds, the Milky Way stretching like a river of spilled milk across the firmament, the constellations tracing mythological figures that Spider learned to recognize night after night. It was beautiful, terribly beautiful, and that beauty was almost an insult in the midst of his captivity.
Aster, Spider thought as he watched his son in the distance, the name had come from those two elements that gave him comfort in confinement. Aster, from the flowers. Because around the cabin, small golden flowers grew wild, with petals as thin as tissue paper and a sweet, delicate scent that floated in the air during spring.
They were golden asters, humble flowers that no one planted and yet bloomed every year with an admirable stubbornness, pushing their way through the weeds and the stones, painting small touches of yellow on the endless green of the forest. Those flowers had a pleasant smell, a subtle perfume that wasn't cloying, that mingled with the scent of pine and damp earth to create a fragrance that Spider associated with peace, with moments of stolen tranquility, with the instants when his father wasn't in the cabin and he could breathe without fear. With no one around, because that cabin was in the middle of a remote forest, so remote that you couldn't see a soul for miles around, those flowers were pleasant company.
Spider could pretend they were people, sit on the ground beside them and talk to them in a low voice, strike up one-sided conversations about life, about what he had eaten that day, about the cold in winter, about anything that helped him keep his sanity. He told them made-up stories, recited poems he remembered from school, sang songs to them in whispers so his father wouldn't hear. And over time, when his body began to change in ways he didn't understand at first, he also talked to them about the pregnancy he was going through.
Because Spider got pregnant by his father. Those words were so horrible that even now, years later, his mind resisted formulating them clearly, wrapped them in euphemisms and metaphors, buried them under layers and layers of denial. But that was the truth, naked and brutal: Quaritch, his father, his kidnapper, the man who had torn him from his life at fifteen years old, had raped him repeatedly during his captivity. And on one of those occasions, in one of those acts of violence Spider had learned to endure by disconnecting his mind from his body, he became pregnant. At first he didn't understand what was happening to him; the morning sickness, the extreme fatigue, the belly that began to swell inexplicably. It was his father who told him, one night, with a smile Spider still saw in his nightmares. "You're going to be a mom," Quaritch had told him, and those words had been the confirmation that hell still had deeper floors to explore.
When he gave birth to a small child, there on the wooden floor of the cabin, with pain tearing at his insides and blood staining the rough boards, Spider held in his hands a tiny miracle wrapped in sin. A child born of horror, of violence, of the most absolute aberration imaginable. A child who carried the blood of his abuser, the genes of his captor, the face of his executioner. A child the world would consider an aberration, a product of incest and rape, a creature that should not exist.
But when Spider held him for the first time, when he felt that warm, fragile little body against his chest, when he saw those blue eyes opening to the world for the first time and looking at him with total innocence, he felt all the love for that tiny sin trembling in his hands. It was an immediate love, fierce, unconditional, a love that asked for no permission and made no apologies for existing. To feel love for what the world would consider an aberration, it was... it was a contradiction, it was madness, it was a feeling so complex that Spider couldn't untangle it even if he had a thousand years to think about it. But when you're in hell, when fire surrounds you on all sides and there's no possible escape, you cling to the tiniest piece of stolen heaven with all your might. You need a motivation to live, a reason to get up every morning, an anchor to keep you sane in the midst of madness. And that reason, that motivation, that anchor, was Aster.
Aster, for the hope of the stars. Because every night, after giving birth, Spider would sit by the window with the baby in his arms and show him the starry sky. He would point out the constellations with his finger, whisper their names to him, tell him the stories he had invented during all those years of solitude.
"Look, Aster, that one's Orion, the hunter. And that one over there is Cassiopeia, the vain queen. And that very bright star is Sirius, the most faithful of them all."
The baby, too small to understand, would watch him with his blue eyes wide open, and sometimes he would stretch out his chubby little hands toward the window as if wanting to catch the bright points of light. Aster, for the pleasant company of the flowers. Because in spring, when the golden asters bloomed around the cabin, Spider would go outside, watched by his father, and gather some flowers to decorate the interior, to give a touch of color to that prison of dark wood. And the baby, when he crawled across the floor, would stop to observe the flowers with infinite curiosity, touching their petals with clumsy, clumsy fingers that still didn't know how to measure strength, sometimes pulling them off without meaning to and laughing with that bubbly laugh that only babies have. The flowers and the stars, the sky and the earth, hope and companionship. That was what Aster meant.
One could pretend in that cabin in the middle of nowhere. Pretend you weren't afraid, pretend pain didn't exist, pretend your life was normal and that you weren't raising your rapist's child in a wooden prison. Pretend while giving birth on the floor, without a doctor, without anesthesia, with nothing but your own hands and the stifled screams you bit into a rag so your father wouldn't hear you complain.
Pretend while you felt the pain of your body opening to bring forth life, a cursed life, a life that hadn't asked to be born in those circumstances. A punishment for an innocent soul, Spider thought sometimes, on the darkest nights, when depression dragged him into wells of hopelessness that took him hours to climb out of. Aster was not to blame for anything, he was one more victim, a victim as innocent as Spider himself had been at fifteen years old. And yet, his mere existence was a punishment, a sentence to bear the stigma of his origin, a stain that would mark him forever even if no one else knew.
He had named him Aster, and that decision, that small act of autonomy, was the only decision his father allowed him to make in all those years of captivity. Quaritch had controlled every aspect of his life: what he ate, what he wore, when he slept, when he spoke, when he kept silent. But when the baby was born, when Spider held him in his arms and asked his father with a trembling voice if he could name him, Quaritch shrugged and said, "Whatever you want." It was the only gift he gave him in ten years, the only moment he treated him like a human being with a will of his own.
And Spider, in an act of silent defiance, chose a name that had nothing to do with Quaritch, a name that was only his, a name that represented the two things his father hadn't been able to take from him: the hope of the stars and the company of the flowers. At least Quaritch was a better father to Aster than he ever was to Spider, that was the most twisted part of it all. With the baby, the man showed a different side, almost tender, almost human. He prepared bottles for him, changed his diapers, sang him lullabies with his gravelly smoker's voice. He never laid a hand on him, never shouted at him, never hurt him. As if Aster were a second chance, a blank canvas where Quaritch could paint the fatherhood he had failed at with Spider. And Spider watched that dynamic with a mix of relief and jealousy, of gratitude and resentment, not quite knowing what to feel.
Close your eyes, Spider told himself mentally, still sitting in the folding chair with the empty beer can in his hand. Close your eyes and remember, embrace your son in your memory, feel his soft brown hair against your temple, as fine as silk, as fragile as a butterfly's wing. Feel the warm breath of the infant against your neck, that steady rhythm that soothed you on sleepless nights, that warmth that reminded you you weren't alone, that there was another life beating next to yours.
An infant who was in the limbo of innocence and the horror of knowing the truths of the world, a child who still knew nothing of his origin, who still believed his father was a good man, who still hadn't learned to be afraid. Let him call you "Mom," a title you had earned with blood and tears and milk and sleepless nights. Let that word be your only balm for reality, the only medicine that soothed the pain of existing. Because when Aster said "Mom," with his little birdlike voice, Spider could pretend that everything was fine, that they were a normal family, that the love he felt for that child was enough to erase the horror of his conception.
But Spider was incapable of saying all of that out loud. Incapable of explaining to Lo'ak, who was still sitting beside him waiting for an answer that never came, the true story behind Aster's name. Incapable of confessing to anyone what he had really lived through in that cabin. So he just stayed silent, with his lips pressed together and his gaze lost in the distance, letting the silence speak for him. His silence was a wall, an impregnable fortress that protected the darkest secrets of his heart.
It would be a mystery to others why that child's mother had given him that name. The neighbors in the area, the social workers, the teachers at the school Aster would have to attend in the fall, they would all wonder where that name had come from, so peculiar, so poetic, so unusual. And Spider would let them wonder, let them weave their own theories, because any theory they invented would be less terrible than the truth. After all, Spider was only Aster's older brother. That was what the official story said, the lie they had built together. Tell the police the story of a nameless woman, a woman who had died in childbirth or had abandoned them or who had simply never existed.
Tell your son exactly what to say in interrogations, teach him the right answers, practice together until the lies sounded natural. A small lie to the Sullys, a small lie to society, a small lie to protect Aster from the truth.
Spider took another swig of the beer, tilting the can until the last drops slid down the aluminum and wet his lips. The beer was no longer cold, it had warmed up with the heat of the afternoon and tasted even worse than at first, but he didn't even notice. His eyes were fixed on Aster, who in the distance shook his head when a child had approached him. It was a child Aster's age, a freckled boy with hair red as a carrot and a superhero t-shirt, who had come over to the lonely table with a ball under his arm and an open, generous smile.
Maybe he was inviting him to play, Spider thought, maybe he was offering him the chance to join the improvised game that had sprung up in the garden, where several children ran after a deflated ball. But Aster refused, he shook his head with that gesture so characteristic of his, a short, curt movement that left no room for argument, and the red-haired boy walked away with a shrug, without giving it much importance, running back to his friends. The party went on, the world kept spinning, oblivious to that small, silent defeat. The adults' conversations blended with the music, the dogs kept barking, the babies kept laughing on their blankets on the grass.
In the lawn, right at the edge of the path leading to the children's tables, there were some small, pretty yellow flowers. They were humble, almost invisible among the green of the freshly cut grass, but Spider noticed them. He always noticed yellow flowers, he couldn't help it. They were wild asters, like the ones that grew around the cabin, like the ones that had kept him company during the long years of captivity. Seeing them there, in the Sullys' garden, gave him a pang in his chest, a bittersweet reminder of everything he had left behind and everything he still carried with him.
It was getting dark, the sun had already set behind the line of trees bordering the property, dyeing the sky in shades of orange and pink that were gradually darkening into a deep blue. And the stars, the stars were slowly revealing themselves, timid at first, like small diamonds someone was sowing across the firmament one by one. First Venus appeared, bright and solitary near the horizon. Then others joined in, paler, more distant, until the sky was starry enough for Spider to identify his favorite constellations. And there, under that same sky he had gazed at for ten years from a barred window, Aster refused to play with all the children.
He refused to socialize, refused to make friends, refused to behave like a normal child. He stayed seated at his lonely table, with the empty plate of food in front of him, counting the minutes until he could return to his mom. Because to Aster, the outside world wasn't an exciting adventure, it wasn't a playground full of possibilities. The outside world was a hostile, noisy place where the only good thing, the only safe thing, the only thing worth anything, was Spider.
And Spider was incapable of getting angry with his son. Incapable of feeling frustration, incapable of reproaching him for his reticence. Because he understood, he understood better than anyone, how hard it was to pretend to be normal when you had grown up in horror. Pretending to be normal can be hard, it can be exhausting, it can be a burden so heavy it breaks your back. Spider knew it because he himself had been pretending for years, for years wearing a mask of normality that was cracking at the edges.
So Spider stayed sitting in his plastic chair, with the warm beer can in his hand and his gaze lost in the small yellow flowers of the garden, while the stars kept appearing in the sky, one by one, as if greeting an old friend.