Marco

• Liam Edis, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2015

When I was eleven years old, that age where everything seems subject to a magical sensitivity, I purchased a quite extraordinary bean.
At the time, I didn’t believe this bean held any supernatural power, even the though the hunched, impressively bearded vendor announced that it possessed ‘untold wonders.’ Despite my dubiousness, I forked over all my pocket money and planted the bean out the front of my family’s house. Climbing into bed, I was seized by a curious mix of embarrassment and excitement. Sleep did not come easily.
The next day, I woke feeling a little lighter than usual. I rushed to the door, half-wanting to stay inside and simply let my imagination determine what had sprouted in the soil. Yet curiosity, like a darting firefly at night, is impossible not to gaze at or chase — and that invisible force pushed the door open to reveal an oversized flower, tall and proud, with a pale fruit dangling from its stem.
At first I was rather disappointed — but upon closer inspection, the world seemed to come alive. For the fruit wasn’t a fruit at all, but a tiny and completely white baby boy.
Whichever way I looked at things, responsibility for this was squarely on me. So very cautiously, as if picking a thin-skinned berry from a branch, I removed the baby from the flower, then stood there completely at a loss as to what to do next.
The baby took this moment to cry. Almost instantaneously, my parents burst through the front door, dressing gowns billowing, their mouths wide open in shock.
Initially, my parents were very apprehensive about the baby. Neither the local botanist or the doctor could explain his existence, and the two of them — practical people by nature, allergic to superstition — had only enough warmth in their hearts to let me look after him, yet not actively involve themselves in his upbringing. In effect, I became a father, if not legally or biologically, at eleven.
I named the boy Marco, for no other reason than that I liked the name. Marco grew up a quiet yet vivid boy, and we loved each other fiercely. As the years stretched him taller, a very peculiar thing happened to him: splotches of colour appeared on his skin, like paint thrown at a canvas. When he was teased at school, bruises of black and grey climbed up his arms. When my father, a man-of-the-earth type, unexpectedly asked for his help in tearing up roots, Marco returned with a loam-coloured shade painting his neck. Eventually he was coated in colours, though a white splotch still splashed across his chest.
I have always wondered what these colours meant. Were they just discolourings like those on a fruit? Yet now, looking in the mirror, I see a splotch of pure white on my cheek — and I think, with all the wonder of an eleven year-old, I know the answer.