When the baby was lifted high, we all clapped. The birth was another success for the family. The infant was small and healthy; it’s body was pale, it’s head the smooth, inky shadow of a jaguar. Grandmother smiled. I frowned. The birth would kill the boy’s mother, that much was obvious from the pool of blood and the raw ravine where her stomach used to be. But she was only a villager and she was not special, so grandmother told us we shouldn’t care.

As the baby shrieked, I was reminded of all of the other births I’d seen. My twin sisters had been the hardest. Watching them tear mom apart, holding back the tears so Grandmother wouldn’t see, then being told I had to love them…that was a red year. But both my sisters were special, so they made the family stronger, and I knew that was good. Jennifer was born twice the size of a normal infant and ten times as strong. She had the horns of a bull and the eyes of a bear but wept whenever there was thunder, so I found it hard to hate her completely.

Our other sister, Jessica, her I could hate, easily. Perfect and flawless, everyone who sees my sister loves her madly. Everybody but me, apparently. Hers is a toxic love, a slow poison that turns affection into obsession into insanity. She’s as pretty as the sun and about as warm as its eventual corpse, a darkstar, and we’re all trapped in her awful gravity.

Then there was Grueno. We don’t talk about Grueno. We’re not allowed. Grandmother never loved him, even though he was special. The trouble with Grueno was that he could remember…everything. He remembered each moment of his short life with absolute clarity, but more than that, he could remember events from even before he was born. Grueno told us about how it was before Grandmother made the bargain that made our family special. He saw what the village was like before our family arrived and took over, before we started using the terrified men and women who lived here as surrogates. They weren’t special but they could produce special children, even if that was usually fatal.

Grueno remembered all of these things and they broke him. I warned him not to let Grandmother see his hurt, his understanding…his kindness. But as clearly as Grueno could see the past, he never did think of his future. He saw how Grandmother was long ago and he hoped there was still a piece of that girl left in the stone woman she’d become.

He was wrong.

That’s why we don’t talk about Grueno. Grandmother keeps what’s left of him hanging in the basement. I wonder sometimes if the ruin of him remembers what it was like to be whole. I fear he does. Sometimes being special is a terrible gift.