Winter, Bruce decided, was stupid.
It was cold, wet, loud, and it lasted far too long. Worse, it seemed personally determined to enter the cabin. Snow pressed against the door. Wind slipped through the wall cracks. Meltwater dripped from the roof whenever the fire got the room warm enough to thaw anything. The whole world outside was white, gray, and miserable, and Bruce had already filed a formal complaint in his soul.
Fortunately, he had chickens.
He lay on his side in the straw bed near the hearth, wrapped in wool and fur, while the fire gave off just enough heat to prove it was technically alive. Around him, the hens had gathered in a warm, feathered heap, not quite sitting on him but close enough that he was nearly buried beneath chicken kindness. They clucked softly among themselves, puffed up against the cold, and for once Bruce found their company useful.
A chicken blanket, he thought, not bad.
Near the door, the rooster and two of the braver hens stood guard, staring through the narrow crack where the wood did not quite meet the frame. Beyond them, snow lay piled knee-high against the threshold. Lili was out there somewhere, moving through the slush with a knife in hand, cutting brush and dragging back sticks for the fire. Bruce could hear her boots sinking into the wet snow, hear branches snap, hear her muttering in her northern tongue whenever the world displeased her, which was often.
Mother was brave, she was also, Bruce had learned, a growling, foot-stomping, professional fist-shaker.
She shook her fist at roof leaks. She shook her fist at rats when they darted across the floor and made her yelp. She shook her fist at the rooster when he screamed at dawn as if being murdered. She shook her fist at the fire when it died in the night and then refused to return, no matter how patiently she struck stone to spark, blew into dry grass, and cursed at the damp wood. She shook her fist at old roof holes that opened again after rain, at smoke that blew back into the cabin, at clay pots that cracked, at porridge that burned, and at chickens who pooped exactly where she had just cleaned.
Anything that went wrong earned the same ritual. First she froze, then she growled like a tiny angry bear, then came the fist. And after that, she always went right back to work. Bruce respected that.
Still, even brave mothers had limits, and winter was pushing hard.
Beside the hearth or the fireplace as other's say, hanging from sticks Lili had tied between the wall beams, were Bruce's freshly washed baby clothes. They steamed faintly and smelled awful, because Mother had scrubbed them in snow after Bruce had suffered another terrible incident in his wool pants. That, Bruce decided, was the true curse of babyhood.
It wasn't the small hands, the useless legs, not even being called Lilypad. No, it was the pants.
He hated the pants.
He hated needing them, hated ruining them, hated crying to tell Mother they were ruined, and hated being cleaned afterward like a little object that had failed at dignity. He had once been an undercover cop, he had carried guns, crawled through fire, he had taken bullets and only later died in an explosion.
Now he could be defeated by his own backside, it was humbling.
At least Mother had made him warm things. There was the itchy wool dress, which he disliked on principle but admitted was useful. There was a little coat. There were soft mittens. There were fur slippers. And there was a rough leather cap that Bruce was almost certain had once been part of one of Rob's old boots.
Which reminded him. Where was that bastard?
Bruce had not seen Rob since being born, not once. For a man who had helped Mother escape and apparently cared so much, he had done a very poor job appearing for important events. A birth, for example. A proper man should be present for such things, or at least arrive afterward with food and apologies. Rob had done neither.
Maybe he had been caught. Maybe he had died. Maybe he had simply gone back to his village and forgotten them.
Bruce did not like that last thought.
He looked toward the wall near the hearth, where Lili had carved marks into the wood with her knife after his birth. There were lines of her northern writing, which he could not read, and beside them, clear enough even for him, was the number: He stared at it often. Nine-zero-four.
Was it a year? A warning? Perhaps a count of something?
Had Mother carved the year of his birth? Was he born in 904? Did that mean this really was England, or Albion, or some ancient version of it where everyone spoke old beard-English and wore wool because no one had invented normal clothes yet?
The thought should have been impossible. Unfortunately, the world had made a habit of ignoring what Bruce thought was possible.
And then there was the other problem. Was he still he, or was he she now?
Mother called him her little girl. Her Lilypad. Her little lily. She dressed him like a daughter, held him like a daughter, and smiled at him with a softness that made his chest feel strange. Bruce knew, in a practical sense, what his body appeared to be. He had checked as much as a baby could check. Important equipment from his former life was missing. Certain things were different. The evidence was strong.
But he still felt like Bruce Redford, only much smaller.
He was still a dead cop, technically speaking, at least on paper—assuming anyone in his old world had been willing to file the proper forms after the explosion. He was still a loyal friend to anyone willing to be his friend, which historically had not been a very crowded category. He was still, in spirit, the largest man at his local gym.
And now, apparently, he was a tiny baby with unclear legal status.
In the twenty-first century, people had argued about such things constantly. Men, women, names, bodies, different types of rainbow flags, words that changed meaning depending on who said them. Frank had once told him not to worry about it too much, because Bruce already got confused reading takeout menus. Bruce had tried not to worry about it. He had failed. The world had been confusing then, and now, somehow, it was even more confusing because he was wearing a wool dress in the year maybe-904 while being guarded by chickens.
Maybe Frank and Sarah were out there somewhere too, reborn into their own strange lives. Maybe Frank was a knight. Maybe Sarah was a princess. Maybe Amber was a dragon, which honestly would explain several things.
Bruce hoped they were safe, and together if possible.
Then the door burst open. Cold air rushed in, and the rooster screamed in outrage as if the weather had insulted him. Lili stumbled inside carrying a bundle of wet sticks against her chest, her fur cloak dark with melted snow, boots soaked, cheeks red from cold. She shoved the door closed with her hip, dropped the sticks near the hearth, and cursed at them when half the bundle rolled apart.
The hens clucked in confusion, the rooster held order. Mother ignored them all and came straight to Bruce.
"There you are, little one," she murmured in her Northern tongue, voice rough with cold.
Bruce did not understand all the words, but he understood the hands. She lifted him from the feathered warmth, tucked him against her chest, and settled down near the fire. A moment later, feeding began, because babies apparently lived in a cycle of eating, sleeping, pooping, being offended, and eating again. Bruce accepted this, with reservations.
So the days went by.
Not quickly, not slowly, just one after another, like water dripping into a bowl. Bruce lay near the hearth, drank milk, watched chickens, endured cleaning, and trained when he could. Physical training came first, because he wanted strength, real useful strength. He worked his hands, kicked his legs, tried to lift his head, tried to roll, tried to crawl. It was exhausting, humiliating work, but it was work, and Bruce trusted work.
Magic was harder.
The light-heart still pulsed inside him, a second rhythm beneath the small thump of flesh. Sometimes he tried to push light into his hands, and sometimes he saw a faint white glow, barely there, like moonlight under skin. But it drained him terribly. A few heartbeats of effort, and he would collapse into sleep so deep he could not even be angry about it.
So he chose carefully.
Most days, he trained his body. He needed to move. He needed to grow. He needed to become useful in ways that did not require passing out every time he tried to help.
And he was indeed growing, perhaps too fast.
He remembered Frank and Sarah's children from his old life. For months, they had mostly lain there staring at ceilings, waving their fists like tiny drunk philosophers while adults praised them for surviving another afternoon. Bruce was different. Within weeks, he could lift his head. Then hold it. Then sit with help. Then sit without help for a few wobbling moments. Eventually, he could drag himself across the floor—not elegantly, no, but with the grim determination of a wounded soldier crossing a battlefield, which in his case was the floor of a one-room cabin full of straw, chicken feathers, and suspicious crumbs.
Mother noticed, she noticed everything.
At first, Bruce thought this was dangerous. In his first life, being noticed had rarely been good. At school, he had mostly stood at the side, too big, too awkward, too poorly dressed, too easy for the other children to laugh at. He had not been the child called forward for medals or praised by teachers with proud smiles. He had been the one people stared at, whispered about, or shoved aside when teams were chosen.
Home had been worse.
But here, in this new home, being noticed meant something else. It meant Lili gasping when he lifted his head, laughing when he sat up, and scooping him into her arms when he managed to crawl across the floor.
She praised every tiny victory as if it were a miracle, whispering words he was beginning to understand now.
Strong, blessed, clever, mine. Her special little girl. Her little Lilypad.
Sometimes there was worry in her face too. Lili was young, younger than Bruce kept remembering, and alone in a hut with no-one to tell her what babies were supposed to do. She did not know if Lilypad was early, blessed, odd, or simply wonderful. Sometimes she watched him move too quickly or stare too knowingly, and her brows drew together as if fear had knocked softly on her heart.
But then he would smile at her, or grab her finger. Or make one of his very serious baby noises, and the worry would melt.
Mostly, she was just happy. Happy that her special little girl was strong in a world that had given them so little strength to spare.
Bruce did not know what to do with that kind of happiness.
Praise felt strange. Suspicious, almost. In his old life, he had done dangerous things, painful things, useful things, and most of the time the world had answered with silence. Now he rolled over in a pile of straw and his mother looked at him as if he had personally defeated winter.
He liked it. That was the worst part. He liked it so much that it scared him.
So he kept training.
But while Bruce grew stronger, Mother did not. Now that he no longer lived inside her, no longer shared every meal and breath through the cord between them, he began to notice how thin she had become. Lili was always working, always moving, always spending herself on the cabin, the fire, the food, the chickens, and him. Rob's winter stores helped keep them alive, but they could not give back the strength that cold, worry, and sleeplessness stole from her day by day.
Still, Bruce was not useless, even as a baby.
At night, when Lili lay beside him coughing softly into her sleeve or breathing with that hollow tiredness that frightened him, he would focus inward. He would find the light-heart and send a little warmth through his small body and into hers where she held him. Not much. Never enough to burn himself empty. Just enough to ease her breathing, loosen the ache in her muscles, and draw her down into deeper sleep.
And it worked.
He could tell by the way her body softened around him, by the way her heartbeat slowed, by the way her hand, always tense even in rest, finally loosened against his back. Those nights were good.
The days were harder.
Winter weakened slowly. The snow did not vanish all at once. It melted into slush, froze again, returned as dirty patches, then surrendered to rain. Rain brought mud. Mud brought leaks. The roof dripped. The door swelled. The floor became cold and damp at the edges. Lili cursed the weather every morning with the grim dedication of a priest reciting holy words.
Then she fell sick. Not badly enough to die, Bruce told himself.
But she coughed. She shivered. She stayed inside for several days, wrapped in furs near the hearth, eyes heavy, face pale. Bruce grew afraid then, though he did not know what to do with fear except crawl closer and press himself against her like a tiny warm stone. The chickens helped in their own way.
That was when Bruce truly studied them.
The rooster, loud tyrant though he was, had value. Bugs did not survive near him. Beetles, silverfish, worms, little crawling things Bruce did not care to identify—all disappeared beneath sharp beaks and relentless chicken purpose. The hens were even better. Practical. Merciless. Efficient.
Machines they were, Bruce decided. The rooster was Mister Terminator. The hens were clearly the T-100 models. Advanced pest exterminators.
The only true man in the house, unfortunately, was the rooster, and he was doing a decent job guarding the perimeter.
Bruce—Lilypad, when he was trying to be realistic—began to appreciate them.
And as time passed, the world warmed.
Slowly, green returned. At first it was only a smell when the door opened: wet leaves, bark, moss, growing things. Then light lasted longer. The mud dried in patches. Birds sang louder. The lake behind the cabin began to speak again in frog voices.
One morning, while Lili slept heavily by the hearth, Bruce decided it was time to inspect the outside.
He had been staring at the door for days.
It was partly open, caught badly in its frame where the damp wood had swollen. A line of sunlight cut across the floor. Beyond it was the unknown. The real world. The place Mother went when she vanished from the cabin and came back smelling of leaves and lake water.
Bruce crawled toward it, which took time.
He crossed the floor with heroic effort, belly dragging, arms pulling, knees shoving, breath puffing in determined little bursts. The hens watched. Mister Terminator followed at a distance, suspicious but not interfering. When Bruce reached the door, he found a crack in the wood and grabbed it with both hands.
He pulled, but nothing happened. So he pulled again, and the door groaned.
A hen clucked in alarm. Bruce gritted his gums and pulled with everything he had. Then as the door opened just wide enough, the chickens escaped first.
Of course they did.
They poured out past him in a rush of feathers and self-importance, clucking as if freedom had been their idea all along. Mister Terminator strutted after them, head high, already ruler of the outdoors.
Bruce crawled after them to the threshold and looked out, and for the first time, he truly saw the world.
Sunlight.
Real sunlight, golden and soft, falling through green leaves. The garden lay before the cabin, though garden was a generous word. It was mostly wild growth, patches of useful plants fighting weeds for territory, sticks marking rows Lili had tried to make orderly, and muddy paths where her boots had passed again and again. Beyond it stood the forest, thick and deep, trees rising like pillars, shrubs and brambles tangled between them so heavily that Bruce could not see far past the first trunks.
Everything was enormous.
Grass blades looked like spears. Stones looked like boulders. The chickens looked like feathered livestock. The trees were impossible, great living towers that made the cabin seem like a toy. Bruce stared at it all, amazed.
Then Mother found him.
"Lilypad!" Her voice cracked through the morning like thunder.
Bruce froze.
Lili rushed across the room, coughing once into her sleeve before scooping him up from the threshold. Her face was pale, her hair a mess, eyes wide with terror and relief.
"No, no, no," she scolded in Norse, holding him close. "Bad little lily. No exploring without Mamma. Wait for Mamma. Always wait."
Bruce understood enough of the tone to know he was in trouble. He considered crying, but then, with the tactical genius of a desperate man, he smiled.
Lili narrowed her eyes.
Bruce gathered all his strength, shaped his mouth carefully, and spoke the magic word, "M… mama."
The effect was immediate.
Lili stopped scolding. Her whole face changed.
"Oh," she breathed.
Bruce blinked up at her, innocent as a saint and far more manipulative.
"Mama," he said again, because it had worked.
Lili's eyes filled with tears. She laughed, hugged him so tightly he squeaked, then kissed his forehead over and over while praising him in such a flood of Norse that Bruce understood almost none of it. But he understood the feeling of joy, pride, love.
Apparently, first words were powerful weapons. He would remember that.
After that, the outside became allowed, though only under supervision. Lili wrapped him well and sat with him on the cabin steps while the chickens searched the grass for enemies. She named things for him in Norse: sky, tree, stone, hen, rooster, firewood, house. Bruce repeated what he could, badly, and every ugly little attempt made her smile as if he had personally invented language.
Later, when Lili was stronger, she carried him around the cabin to the lake.
The back of the house faced the water, and there the world opened wide. Reeds crowded the shore. Frogs sat on floating leaves like fat little lords. Small fish flickered beneath the surface, quick as sparks under glass. At the water's edge lay a smooth stone, broad enough for Lili to sit on and flat enough for Bruce to be placed safely beside her while she kept one hand close.
From there, he could watch everything: the frogs, the darting insects, the bright skin of the lake, and sometimes his own reflection staring back at him from the water.
Round cheeks. Violet eyes. A tiny nose. A soft little mouth. Long lashes that would have been impressive on someone trying to look pretty, which Bruce very much was not. Pale strands of hair framed his face in the exact wrong way, making him look less like a future warrior and more like a miniature version of his mother dressed in wool.
Sometimes he tried to fix this by flexing.
He would tighten his tiny arms, puff himself up inside his little dress, and stare at the water with all the grim seriousness of a man preparing for the gym mirror.
The result was not intimidating. It was, unfortunately, adorable.
Lili laughed every time, delighted by his efforts to appear large and mighty.
Bruce sighed.
All right, he thought. Fine. We are Lilypad now, mostly.
The days after that grew brighter. Lili began working the garden again, slowly at first, then with more strength as the cough faded. Bruce helped in the only ways a baby could help. He sat in the dirt and pulled at weeds, sometimes correctly. He pointed at bugs until the hens came running. He patted soil with great seriousness. He crawled after Mother while she worked, watching, listening, learning.
The world was still dangerous, still medieval, still strange, but it was beautiful too.
That was the trade, Bruce supposed. No modern luxuries or hospitals, and no easy food. But there were no engines either. No planes cutting white scars across the sky. No smoke haze hanging over the horizon. No chemical stink in the water or oil shine on the lake. The air was so clean it almost felt sharp, and the sky was not merely blue, but deep and endless, a pure bright blue he could not remember ever seeing in his old life.
The lake was a little murky near the reeds, dark with roots and plant life, but even that felt alive rather than dirty. Sunlight moved over it in clean silver sheets. Trees leaned over the shore in thick green walls. Frogs shouted their opinions from the reeds. Insects flashed above the water. And Mother hummed while she worked, her voice soft enough to make the whole wild place seem almost kind.
Bruce began to think that maybe this life would not be so bad.