Jack.

Jack springs up as soon as Jill is finished, pushing her over to the seat he occupied and shuffling his feet. “Okay…um, um here I go!”

I grin and let Jill clamber up onto my lap; she seems intent on using me as a pillow so I make no attempt to ask her to move. Her head briefly blocks my field of view and Jack’s face is obscured—I move my head to the side and he reappears from behind Jill’s grayish plating. “Sounds good, Jack. Whenever you’re ready.”

“O-okay.” Jack scratches his head and breathes deep. He stares at his feet, blinks at me and Jill, goes back to analyzing his feet. It’s normal for him—Jack tends to think over what he says before he says it, which makes his words that much more endearing to me. Jill speaks her mind and dredges up ideas like a volcano coughs up obsidian; Jack’s thoughts take time to reach the surface, like turquoise or amethyst, but shine in another, wonderful way. Smiling to myself, I continue the metaphor: I would be bronze—different ideas and concepts combined and heat-treated. Not exactly the best thing out there but still useful at times.

“Oh! Then I see Queen Mab hath been with you!” Jack’s shout startles me out of my revere. The little poleepkwa has punched at the air with his fists and voice, eyes wide and flicking back and forth. I can tell that he’s going to be outspoken for this one…maybe I should have closed the door. No, no—it’s best if people hear this. It’s going to be interesting. “She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes in a shape no bigger than an agate-stone on the fore-finger of an alderman, drawn with a team of little atomies over men’s noses as they lie asleep!”

He cocks his head, points to nothing in particular and squints. “Her wagon-spokes made of long spinners’ legs, the cover of the wings of grasshoppers, the traces of the smallest spider’s web, the collars of the moonshine’s watery beams, her whip of cricket’s bone; the lash of film. Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat, not half so big as a round little worm pricked from the lazy finger of a maid.” He makes a small circle with his finger and thumb and peers through it, smiling at me and Jill and illustrating the insane tininess of the thing. His sister squirms and laughs a bit; I smile and nod in encouragement.

“Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut, made by the joiner squirrel or an old grub, time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers. And in this state she gallops—” He jumps, actually jumps up, and lands back down on his feet only to start up again and run in place. “—night by night, through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love; O’er courtiers’ knees, that dream on curtsies straight, O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees, O’er ladies ‘ lips, who straight on kisses dream,”

With each repetition of the word “o’er” his antennae flick; the words and their meaning seem to be vibrating through every scrap of his plating, energizing my usually-quiet child and goading him to speak louder and with a note of jollity in his voice that even I have rarely heard. This was why I wanted them to read Shakespeare, I muse: the fact that words hundreds of years old could excite children today. Maybe, one day, something that we write will do the same—maybe hundreds of years from now people will be reading works of literature by those of us born here on earth and marveling at them the way we are now. Maybe—enough with the maybe. Jack is speaking…I have to listen.

“Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues, because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are. Sometime she gallops o’er a courtier’s nose, and then dreams he of smelling out a suit. And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig’s tail, tickling a parson’s nose as a’ lies asleep, then dreams he of another benefice: sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck, and then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon drums in his ear!”

He’s so excited now that he’s stumbling over the words, spitting out the syllables like they’re hot food that, no matter how tasty it is, has burned his tongue. Jill picks up on his energy—how they can do that, I have no clue. Is it a remnant of our species’ hive mind or simple understanding?—and jumps out of my lap, grabbing his hands and hugging him.

“At which he starts and wakes, and being thus frighted swears a prayer or two and sleeps again—merf. Merf…eef.” Jack giggles and returns the hug, cutting off mid-sentence and bursting into laughter. It’s apparent that he’s not going to continue, but it’s fine; he’s happy, Jill’s happy, so it’s—

“You say something! You gotta say something!” I barely manage to hear Jack’s words before he and Jill catapult into my lap.

It’s wonderful.