The Juniper Tree Crazies
It's the baby that owns the island, not the other way around. Michael was the first one to notice; he didn't tell anybody that the only reason he noticed at all was because he was watching for the signs in his son. Walt was dead by the time he admitted what he knew, so it didn't matter anyway.
Locke rose up the matter of what to do with the boy. Claire wasn't any help; the girl would stare wildly about her with constancy and whisper lullabies through the trees. Wind blew back, hair streaming behind her like a tangled rope of gold. Rid themselves, Locke said. Rid themselves of the child.
Sayid's face was the first to betray its already-accepted version of thoughts. Shannon saw, and her face stained a defeat in the lessening of a wrinkle around the mouth. Aha, Locke thought, the island will not win. And Michael held his breath, waiting.
"No."
Kate's voice rang like a bell resounding. Then, heavily, it tripped up the next path of assertion, and she said something that Michael couldn't understand, probably wouldn't understand.
Michael uttered her name. She didn't turn.
She spoke again. "We can't do that. He's just a baby."
Locke said: the child is not made of good. He could not bring himself to say evil. He said instead: Listen.
They would not listen. And so Michael, with rocks and jagged boulders in his tongue and bats on the ceilings of his caves, tells of his son, and how he noticed the same in the baby.
Now he waits. They're arguing, but with more on Locke's side. Charlie is there already, but Michael cannot be surprised. This is where Charlie was meant to be after he had held Walt's last breath on his cheek. Michael knows that he's still set behind him in the circle, no mater how Charlie's moved himself. Walt was Micahel's son after all.
Listen, Locke said, and they are listening. Kate is being petted to comfort by her followers; Sawyer lazing and Jack silent. It is a deceptive moment, because Kate has no lost.
Michael knows a wind will whisper him to speak, and that he will pronounce again upon his lips the name of his dead son. There will be sun, but it will not be a laughter-born sun but a scowl painted ball of gas and harmful, burning rays instead of flitty little beams.
This will happen because there will be no true death to feed the island, only little falceties like Hurley and Sun and Jack. The girl-woman Kate who smiles now in a sharp, flinty triumph will feel the daggers made this date, will feel the daggers in the flesh of her friends.
Michael wonders who will win and wills it that it matters.