157. Ces

157. Ces

Cespuglio Four Moons was adopted by my parents four moons after he was born. He was probably meant to be a woodwose, but the forest where he was born burnt down the night of his birthday. A tribe of forest fairies that were fleeing from the fire spotted the newly born babe sweating profusely within a burning bush. They plucked him from the bush to save him and took him with them as they fled, but soon found he did not fit in their family.  Somebody told my parents about him and they decided he could live in the palace’s parks, always supposing he wanted to. He arrived at twilight and spent the night pretending to be one more bush in my mother’s rose garden. When she visited the garden at dawn to pluck some roses for her hair, seeing him there startled her. When she recovered from the start, she felt he was too young to be all alone outside and invited him into the house. He became one of us the minute he sat down to breakfast.

Cespuglio is not much older than I am but he is far odder. He doesn’t speak much, though when he does, it is almost always to say something that needs saying. Cespuglio’s voice is low and hoarse, because he often suffers coughing fits when he starts to talk. He is not allergic to pollen like I am. He probably coughs because he isn’t used to talking or because he  caught the habit when he was inhaling smoke during the forest fire. When he is inside the palace his behaviour is quite normal but now and again he leaves the palace and goes somewhere where he can pretend to be a bush for a while without attracting too much attention. People say this is because he almost became fused with the bush he was  born in and should have burnt to death with it and their ashes become one pile. But it may be because he sprang from that bush when the plant’s spirit foresaw it would not live long and created Cespuglio to leave something done in this world before it moved to the next.

I am telling you about my brother Ces because one day he was standing in front of the Dullahan house considering pretending to be a bush in its garden. Before he made up his mind if it was the right place to do this or not, Mrs. Dullahan began to wave at him from one of the windows.  She had something to say to him, and when she had said it, he had something to say to me.