I died the day I was born. My father had to hold me up to the candle to see me better.
I wasn't breathing.
It was only five hours after my birth that I drew my first breath. It tasted so sweet that I cried out. I cried until my lungs were full of air, until I drew milk from my mother's breast, until I looked up and saw my mother's face.
She wasn't smiling.
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I was 10 when my father told me he had made a deal with a demon. Give his first-born breath in exchange for a dozen stringed potatoes. I didn't believe him.
Then my mother birthed Jamal.
Jamal died right after he was born, too. The midwife claimed my mother's intestines were wrapped tight around Jamal and that he wouldn't make it. My mother tried her best to ease Jamal out and out he came. With his breath snatched right before.
I was beside my father when he called up the same devil that gave me breath. One moment I saw the dark, night sky, and the next, my vision was gone. My father braced himself against me as his breathing hitched, and I wondered if he had the same fear he had now as he had then when he bargained for my life.
But, really? For stringed potatoes?
Even now I can't recall the demon's face, but I knew it was female. The demon had the kind of voice that wrapped and wrapped around you, trying to ensnare that part of you that was pure male, and once it was caught you could never really escape it. Her voice sounded like the village's Anni who would flirt with all the men and boys in a husky, secretive tone. And, sometimes if she got drunk enough, she would even do more than flirt.
Like I said, the demon had a voice that could make death paradise. That didn't stop my father from making a deal, though.
"Good night, demon," my father bid.
The mass of dark seemed to shave off my skin as it swirled around us. My father had told me not to speak so I tried not to make a sound even though my blood spilled.
"Yessss…I smell death," the demon hissed. "Death with the first, now the second… What do you want, Father of the Unborns?"
My father's grip on me tightened and I grit my teeth from the sharp pain.
"Give my second son breath," my father said aloud.
The dark around us whipped around ferociously and then suddenly came to a calm. I heard the demon take a deep breath. Even through the dark, I knew she was smiling.
"Whaaaaat do you offffer, Father?" asked the demon.
Surely she wouldn't take another dozen of stringed potatoes? Or did my father lie about my own exchange?
He straightened against me. Was that my hand trembling or his?
"I offer my life."
"Father!!" I shouted in shock.
A shrill laugh rang out across from us, the air squeezing us even tighter. I took one step back but my father stilled me with a squeeze.
"Aaaaah...your first smells as dead now as he had when you first brought him to me. No," she said, "I will not have your life."
My father twitched as if he had just been slapped, but I felt relief rush into my bloodstream even as my neck rippled with nerves at what she said about me.
"I will have a bottle of your woman's right breast's milk; I am thirrrsty."
It all felt unreal as my father led me back to where my mother was, staring silently at her second son, as he told her of the conditions and made me fetch a clay bowl, as he loped back to the demon with his dead son in his arm and a bowl in his hand, until finally the demon drank the warm milk and breathed air into my brother's mouth.
Jamal's screams could have ripped the dark sky into two that day.
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Ellerslie was different. He died after taking three breaths. After his body went cold, my mother decided my youngest brother would have a proper burial. My father decided different. He called the demon again and this time Jamal and I were at his side. I was 17 and Jamal was 4.
"Good night, demon," my father bid.
The demon said nothing.
"My third son has died."
She remained silent.
"Give breath to my third son," my father said.
The winds rustled our hairs and smarted our ears. "Yessss... And what will you offffer this time, Father of the Unborns?"
"My life," my father said.
Even after several years, I still felt the shock of his words pound through me. The demon laughed again, as if this were some kind of script she acted by, and Jamal whimpered.
"Noooo…I shhhhhall not have your life…"
Suddenly, the dark air parted and for the first time I saw her. I saw her and I saw her, and I saw her again.
"Thrice life has happened, thrice happen will death. On their three-hundredth birthday, this time I will draw their breath."
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When we came back, my mother was rocking a sleeping boy against her breasts. She didn't look up nor speak when we walked in.
We found her body three days after she went missing.
And Father called him Ellerslie.