TimeSorceror's Personal Blog

Granddaughter. Granddaughter?

The young woman who seems to be just a few years younger than Hob himself appears is his child?

It is perfectly possible, of course, but the risk Hob takes. And an adult child he has failed to mention?

The surprise is enough to render Dream mute.

Instead of inquiring further, he moves to sit on Hob’s other side, pulling a chair up so he may look over Hob’s shoulder at the tiny baby. Hob’s tiny baby. His grandchild.

“Her name is Willow,” Hob enthuses, as though this is the most wonderful name any child has ever been given.

“She’s…” Dream begins. She is many things. Tiny. Mortal. Beloved. An accomplished dreamer with a wonderful imagination despite the scant week she has been in the world.

“Beautiful.”

This, Dream thinks, most of all.

“Melanie,” the child’s presumable mother offers her hand across Hob, who is too preoccupied with his precious burden to bother with the social niceties of introduction.

“Is it all right if I tell her your name?” Hob asks. “She knows about me, obviously.”

“Will you not be jealous if your daughter gains knowledge of a name after three minutes which you yourself did not have the use of for six hundred years?” Dream asks.

Melanie’s mouth falls open, her eyes suddenly alight.

She looks absolutely nothing like Hob, except that her smile is as bright and freely offered, and her eyes twinkle in much the same way.

“Oh, I know exactly who you are,” she says. “The mysterious stranger.”

Dream blinks.

“Practically the first thing Hob told me when we met was about you—” Melanie begins, only to purse her lips at a look from Hob, a grin threatening to break through.

Met. Met?

“Met?” Dream asks.

“When I was fifteen and my parents kicked me out,” Melanie says, the barest catch in her voice.

She has a nightmare of this incident, now that Dream looks. A rainy evening. A tearful call to a friend. The feeling of being all alone in the world. Abandonment. Fear. Monstrousness.

But then there is another dream. A smiling face, the warmth of which is familiar to the Lord of Dreams himself. Kindness. An umbrella in the rain, a hand outstretched. Hot chocolate. Safety.

Hob. The dream is of Hob.

Willow makes a sound of displeasure, possibly at being ignored.

“Shh, darling. You’re still the most interesting thing in the room,” he says. “I’ve known him six hundred years, but I’ve only known you half an hour. I’ve got so much to show you.”

Hob’s voice, thick with emotion, makes something inside Dream ache.

“Do you want to hold her?” Hob asks. “Can he hold her?”

Melanie nods. “Do you know how to hold a baby?” she asks.

“It has been some time,” Dream admits. This, Hob does not yet know. “But I do not believe it is something one forgets.”

Hob hands her over expertly, and Willow falls immediately asleep in Dream’s arms.

Melanie’s mouth falls open again. “How did you do that?” she asks.

Hob chuckles. “Of course she’ll sleep for you,” he says. “Careful, or you’ll end up splitting the babysitting with me.”

“I would consider it an honour to be charged with the care of your grandchild, Hob Gadling,” Dream murmurs, settling Willow’s tiny, warm weight a touch closer to his body, offering her human warmth in exchange.

It takes him a moment to realise Hob is staring openly at him.

“Have I said…?”

Hob breaks into a soft, warm smile. “It was just very sweet.”

Dream smiles back, without wholly intending it. “Perhaps there is something to the idea that it is possible to have a sweet dream,” he says.

Hob laughs. “Oh, I have no doubt that under all this you’re soft as marshmallow.”

Melanie excuses herself a moment, and leaves the two of them alone.

“You are a symbol of safety to her,” Dream says. “In her dreams. When she runs from the worst of her nightmares, it is to you she runs.”

Hob bites his lip. “Are you trying to make me cry in public?” he asks.

“You took her in when she had nowhere else to go. I am simply marvelling at how you always seem to have come further, in your humanity, each time we meet.”

Hob snorts. “All your fault, you know,” he says. “Started back when… do you remember Louise Baldwin?”

Dream nods.

“Aye, well, she had a couple of kids, turned out. Older. One of them already married with kids of their own. Absolutely useless husband who, I will add, copped his share of black eyes from me and eventually learned to stay away. Anyway. I married her, you know, for the look of the thing, so she’d have someone who could decently take care of her. Moved to the country for the fresh air and space and so no one’d know who we were. Had a little family again. She didn’t last long, but I set the kids up as well as I could. Took care of them until they were ready to fly the nest.”

Now it is Dream’s turn to stare.

“Then it just. Sort’ve became a habit,” he says. “Fought in the Great War. Couldn’t do it again when the next one came around. Let the greys show through, carried a cane around and let myself limp a bit more than I would’ve. Bought a big place in the country, took in kids from London during the Blitz. That was… obviously there was a war on, but it wasn’t so bad, having a house full of them. Running around the place.”

Dream pauses to picture Hob surrounded by children, being dragged into games and endlessly harassed and smiling all through it, as he is now upon recalling it.

“I’ll be the first to admit that the sixties, seventies, and half the eighties are a bit of a blur,” Hob says, grinning. “Got to fall off the wagon occasionally, keep things interesting, and I hadn’t had a really good messy phase in a century. Pulled myself together for you, of course,” he adds, this last part gently. Hob knows why Dream was not in attendance at their last scheduled meeting, and in any case had blamed himself the entire time, and harbours no ill-will.”

“Anyway. Somewhere along the line I became the go-to contact for kids that needed a place to stay and a safe adult to be around for a while, but who couldn’t have any paperwork involved because they’d just be sent back. I suppose you know the kind of kids I mean.”

“I understand,” Dream confirms.

“Some of them only needed a couple of nights, a week or two, maybe a few months to get themselves sorted. I see most of them occasionally. Keep in touch.”

“But Melanie is different,” Dream says.

“A few of them were,” Hob says. “Melanie got herself caught in a dress and lippy when she was fourteen,” he adds softly. “Her dad didn’t take well to it. Her mum was a bit better but couldn’t stand up to him. So. We just. Fell in with each other for a while. I gave her away at her wedding,” he finishes, beaming proudly. “With any luck, this one’ll let me do the same. If she ever gets married.”

“Are you marrying my daughter off already?” Melanie asks, returning to her seat beside Hob.

“Mm,” Hob teases. “This one here’s in the habit of cradle robbing for his brides. Fairies, can’t trust ‘em.”

Dream wrinkles his nose. “I am no mere fairy.”

Hob chuckles beside him. “No, but you are ridiculously easy to get a rise out of,” he says, warmly. “I think you have to give her back now.”

Dream blinks. He had all but forgotten about the child in his arms.

Once she is handed back to her mother—she will be fast asleep for some time yet, a gift to both of them—Dream misses the weight, and the warmth, and the soft wash of simple dreams filled with new wonder.

Hob says his goodbyes, and returns with a happy sigh and a wistful look in his eyes.

“Would you ever have another?” Dream asks, suddenly curious. “Your own flesh and blood?”

“Not yet, anyway,” Hob says. He pauses a moment, looking carefully at Dream. “You?”

Dream’s eyes widen. “How did you—?”

“I’m not going to pry,” Hob says. “You’re welcome to tell me on your own time. Just. Couldn’t miss it. One dad to another.”

“I would like to share those memories with you,” Dream says. “One day.”

“I’ll look forward to it. In the meantime,” Hob adds. “I was serious about that babysitting. Drop in for baby cuddles anytime I’ve got her.”