Work Text:
i.
At first, Teena thinks it's cute.
"She's just a baby, mommy, she can't play yet," he'd say.
"Oh, is that right?" she'd reply, indulging him in his childish fantasies. Perhaps this was his way of asking for a sister. The other moms in the neighborhood often urged her to give Fox a sibling, citing a child's need for company and social engagement, but Fox had always seemed so happy to play alone. She's not on the best of terms with her husband at the moment, either, which complicates things.
But then there's times when she sees Fox on the floor, legs splayed out before him as he recites his favorite picture books to his imaginary friend, and she wonders if she ought to be worried. Just a little.
Dr. Seuss, Curious George, Clifford the Big Red Dog... The boy has a photographic memory. Though he's too young to properly read, he has a grasp on the basic plots and recounts them in great detail, turning the pages as he goes.
"This one is called 'Where the Wild Things Are,' Dana," he says, because his friend's name—he insists—is Dana. He turns the book in his hand and shows the colorful illustration on the cover to a patch of carpet on the living room floor. "Don't worry, it's not scary," he assures her. Her. It. Whatever it is he's spent his days talking to since late February.
When he tells the story, he uses his own name, instead of 'Max.' That's how she'd always read it to him, and that's the only way he knows.
"And Fox told the monsters to be still!" he narrates with enthusiasm. "He used a magic trick and looked right in their BIG yellow eyes, and they were all scared. They said Fox is the most wild thing of all, and they made him king!"
ii.
There was one night when she'd woken to find Fox standing in the corner of his room, speaking softly to the wall.
"Shh, it's okay, Dana," he soothed in his little voice. "Here, I'll sing you a song. Twinkle twinkle little star...."
She never tells Bill what she's seen. He's always too busy to notice himself. But others know.
"He's quite an imaginative young fellow," Spender notes, taking a draw from his cigarette as Fox rolls around in the grass outside the house in Quonochontaug. Since "Dana" learned to crawl, he's been even more preoccupied than usual. He shows her all his toys, tells her the names of all his action figures. He announces to his mother one day that he's going to teach Dana how to walk. That she can only stand on her own for a little bit right now, but she doesn't cry anymore when she falls down.
Bill, if he ever catches wind of this, must think he's talking about one of the other kids from Teena's ladies' group. But there's no "Dana" in this neighborhood. Not on the Vineyard, either. She's checked.
iii.
The day she finds out she's pregnant, a part of her wonders. Though her knowledge of her husband's work is small, she knows enough to gather that things she might have thought impossible, could in fact be possible. Perhaps her son had been having visions of his baby sister, long before she was even conceived. Maybe it had simply been a sign that he would one day be a big brother. Soon.
She'd long since dispelled thoughts of ghosts and hauntings and exorcisms.
He tells Dana all about the baby in mommy's tummy. He giggles and makes silly faces, pausing in between sentences, which she gathers must mean his friend has developed the ability to speak.
"Mommy, she said my name! That's right! Fox! Fox!"
iv.
When Samantha is born, "Dana" seems to disappear overnight. This, at least, supports her theory that he had simply been preparing himself for a new sibling, and after a few years, she's completely dismissed the issue. Fox shows no other signs of strange or unusual behavior. He is nothing but a doting big brother, who occasionally gets annoyed by his freckle-faced kid sister, as any brother is wont to do. He reads to her, plays games with her, watches the television with her. They're two peas in a pod, and not once does the name "Dana" escape his lips. She is all but forgotten.
Until he's twelve years old. Samantha is gone, and Teena lacks the patience to deal with his questioning.
"Mom? Does the name 'Dana' mean anything to you?" he asks.
"What? Of course not, Fox, why would you ask such a thing?"
He looks down at his feet, shoulders slumping. "No reason. Forget I asked."
v.
When Fox lays awake at night, the bedroom next to his now dull and empty, he thinks he can hear a voice. It isn't Samantha's—though he'd thought so at first.
"By heaven, man," she reads, "we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike. And all the time, lo! that smiling sky, and this unsounded sea!"
What does this girl know about fate? What does she know of this upside-down world?
"Read the next chapter, Dana!" he hears another girl's voice speak. The words are faint—muffled—like he's underwater. But her voice is clear.
He falls asleep, like most nights, listening to the tales of Ahab and Starbuck, and a great white whale.