Chapter 8 - Name Me (Answer Late)
Evening. Two bowls in the sink. Rae dries, I wash.
“Small day or big day?” she asks.
“Small,” I say. “Good small.”
We work side by side. Water runs. Plates click on the rack. The room is steady.
She glances at the card on the wall. **Love is quiet work. Keep the pace.** Then back to me. “You want to try the name tonight?”
I hold the rim of the sink. “Yes,” I say. “If you’ll sit with me.”
“Always.”
We carry two cups of tea to the table. I leave the door open a finger-width. The bronze bell-key rests by the coin. Rae sets the kettle back on the trivet and takes my hand.
“Count first?” she says.
“Count first.”
We breathe together. “One… two… three… four.”
I wait. No speech tricks. No swell. Just my mouth and the air I have.
“My name is Caelren,” I say.
The room stays calm. The word lands and does not try to be more than itself.
Rae smiles like she’s been expecting a guest and he finally walked through the correct door. “Caelren,” she repeats, soft. “It fits your pace.”
“It’s new and not new,” I say. “The old form was **Cael Rhenatir**-‘the Voice that Commands Storms.’ I don’t want that job. This one means ‘the sky made gentle.’ I can carry that.”
Rae squeezes my fingers. “I like this job better.”
“If you want the short name, call me **Ren**,” I say. “That feels like the part that learned how to stay.”
“Ren,” she says, testing it. “It sits right. It sounds like again. It sounds like human.”
I breathe, and something unknots behind my ribs. I don’t feel taller. I feel placed.
Rae tilts her head. “Say it again. Slow.”
“My name is Caelren,” I say. “But you can call me Ren.”
The kettle clicks once as it cools. A hinge in the hall settles. From the street, a tram chimes four notes as it turns the corner. **sol-la-do-fa.** The pattern is quiet, late, perfect.
“I keep hearing those four,” Rae says. “Since I was a kid.”
“In my head they always spelled me,” I say. “**C–A–E–L.** I didn’t know how to read it yet.”
She laughs once, soft. “So the song was your name the whole time.”
“Maybe it was trying to be,” I say. “I was loud. I couldn’t hear it.”
We sit in the easy part. Tea steam. The table under our palms. No one rushing us.
Rae looks at my face like she’s learning it again. “How does it feel, Ren? Not the idea. The body.”
“Like the room got bigger by one seat,” I say. “Like I can stop guarding the door.”
“Good.” She traces a small circle on my wrist with her thumb. “You don’t have to guard anything with me.”
I nod. Then I add the plain thing that needs saying. “I lied to you once,” I say. “The day with noodles. I gave you Jon. Thank you for letting me fix it.”
“You fixed it fast,” she says. “That’s what counts. We learn, we try again.”
I take the card from the wall and a pencil. I write:
**My name is Caelren. Call me Ren.**
I pin it back up. The words look simple and true in this light.
Rae leans back in her chair. “Can I ask you to tell me the old name, too?” she says. “So I can spot it if it tries to come back.”
“Yes,” I say. “**Cael Rhenatir.** The voice that commands storms. If you hear me reaching for that voice, stop me. Make me count.”
“I will,” she says. “And if I reach for loud when I’m scared, you stop me and make me drink water.”
“Deal.”
A light somewhere down the block flickers once, then holds. We both look up and then let it go.
Rae rests her chin on her hand. “Say the short one again,” she says.
“Ren.”
“Hi, Ren,” she says, smiling. “I’m Rae.”
“Hi, Rae.”
We both laugh a little at how simple it is.
She stands, comes around the table, and sits on the edge. “May I?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say.
She cups my face and kisses me, slow. No show. No hurry. Her hands are warm. I feel the old power rise, wanting to make the world echo this moment back a thousand times. I let it rise and pass. I let the moment stay human-sized.
When we part, she stays close. “I love your name,” she says. “I loved you without it. I love you more with it.”
“Say it one more time,” I ask.
“Caelren,” she says in full. Then, “Ren.”
I close my eyes. The sound threads something straight through me. No lightning. Just right.
We sit like that until the kettle’s heat leaves the room. A neighbor’s radio finds a signal and then turns down. The late overtone from this morning’s bell seems to follow us home and settle in the walls.
Rae taps the bell-key with her nail. “Do you want to mark today?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say.
We take the small index card that lists our rules and add a line:
**Name spoken. Answer late is still answer.**
Rae writes another:
**Carry it gentle. No selling.**
I nod. “No selling,” I say. “No using it as a lever.”
“Good,” she says. “It’s yours, not a story for rent.”
I reach for the coin out of habit. The groove under my thumb is familiar now. I set it on the table and flip it once. It doesn’t decide anything. It just lands where it lands.
Rae watches me. “Do you want to tell the Cantor?” she asks.
“Tomorrow,” I say. “I want one night where the name belongs to the kitchen first.”
“Kitchen first,” she repeats, pleased. “I like that.”
We clean the cups. She dries, I stack. We talk in short lines, back and forth, like we have for days, like we will for years if we are lucky.
“Ren?”
“Yes.”
“What do you want to do with your name tomorrow?”
“Buy fruit with it,” I say. “Ask for a bell shift with it. Write it on a note at the museum: **I was wrong. I am learning.**”
“That’s a good day,” she says. “I’ll meet you at the tower after my shift.”
“Okay.”
We stand at the window and watch the street settle. A boy practices a skateboard trick, fails twice, lands it once, throws his hands up, then puts them down when he remembers the sign about keeping exits clear. He grins to himself. A bus sighs, chimes four notes, and moves on.
Rae rests her head on my shoulder. “Ren,” she says again, like a blessing. “Ren.”
“Rae,” I answer, same way.
We go to the bed and sit with our backs to the wall. She takes my hand like she did on the church floor. “If the old name shows up,” she says, “tell me before it starts driving.”
“I will,” I say. “If the loud room shows up in you, tell me before you have to shout.”
“I will,” she says. “New rule?”
“New rule,” I say, and write it down.
We turn off the lamp. I leave the door open a finger-width. In the dark, the four-note shape rolls through the apartment once more, tram, hinge, a spoon settling in a cup in someone else’s kitchen. **C–A–E–L.** It used to haunt me. Now it rings like a part of my name that will always arrive when it wants to.
“Good night, Caelren,” Rae says.
“Good night, Rae,” I say.
“Good night, Ren,” she adds, softer.
“Good night,” I answer, and the word fits.