Ajaccio, summer of 1774.
Napoleone Buonaparte was five years old, and he was furious.
He sat cross-legged on the stone bench under the fig tree, drawing angry lines in the dust with a stick. A boy from the next street had called him Rabulione. The Meddler. Then the boy had laughed and run off before Napoleone could hit him.
He wanted to throw the stick. He wanted to throw the bench.
And at the same time, something else sat quietly beside the anger. Calm. Patient. Completely uninterested in benches.
It will pass, said a voice.
It wasn't his own voice. Napoleone knew his own voice. It was loud.
He looked around the courtyard. Empty. Just a lizard on the wall, minding its own business.
"Who said that?"
Nobody answered.
That wasn't new. The voice had been there for as long as he could remember. It showed up when he was angry, mostly. It never explained itself.
Napoleone tossed the stick aside. He had a question, and the fig tree wasn't going to answer it.
He found Mamma in the kitchen, up to her elbows in dough.
"Mamma."
"Mm?"
"How do you feel when you're calm and angry at the same time?"
Letizia stopped kneading. She looked at her son. He looked back, serious as a magistrate.
"What a question, Nabulio."
"I want to know."
"I don't know." She shrugged and went back to the dough. "I feel angry, or I feel calm. Why mix them? Feelings come and go like the wind."
'That is not an answer,' Napoleone thought.
He tried Papa next.
Carlo Buonaparte sat in the study, scratching at a legal paper with his quill. He glanced up, amused.
"Papa. How do you feel when you're calm and angry together?"
"Eh?" Carlo leaned back and stroked his chin. "Whatever is strongest, I suppose. If I'm angry, I shout. If I'm calm, I think."
"And both?"
"Both is for philosophers, boy. We are simple people."
He ruffled Napoleone's hair and went back to his papers.
Napoleone fixed his hair and left.
The last stop was the bedroom. Joseph lay on the straw mat with a worn book of fables. He was six, a year older, and already very good at looking responsible.
"Joseph. What happens when you're angry and calm at the same time?"
Joseph blinked. "I don't know, Nabulio. I'm mad if someone takes my toy. I'm happy if I win a game."
"That's all?"
"That's all. You think too much."
Napoleone sat down on the mat. Three people. Three answers. None of them had two feelings at once.
'So it's only me,' he thought.
Nothing is wrong with you, said the voice. Feelings are weather. Watch them pass. Do not obey them.
Napoleone went very still.
"Who are you?" he whispered.
Silence.
It wasn't an empty silence. Someone was in there, choosing not to answer.
"That was rude," Napoleone muttered.
Joseph looked up. "What was?"
"Nothing."
By late afternoon he was in the street with the other kids, near the old well.
Sticks were swords. Rocks were shields. Half the children of Ajaccio were fighting a war, and the other half were pretending to lose it.
The adults leaned against the walls and watched. A fisherman mending nets. A washerwoman with a basket of sheets. Nobody stopped the game. Corsica had lost a real war five years ago, so letting the kids play at it seemed fair.
Napoleone was small, but fast. He slipped through the crowd like a lizard through a fence.
The game was always the same. French soldiers against Corsican rebels. Nobody wanted to be French, so Napoleone volunteered to command the Corsicans before anyone else could.
"Hey, Buonaparte!"
The voice came from a freckled boy named Paolo, who stood on top of a dirt pile, king of nothing.
"Your papa is a French bootlicker!"
The street went quiet.
It was a cheap insult. Everyone knew it. It also wasn't entirely wrong, which made it worse. Carlo Buonaparte did spend a lot of time smiling at French officials.
Napoleone's face went hot. His fists closed.
Not yet, said the voice. Watch him first.
He almost told it to shut up. Instead, he watched.
Paolo was grinning, but his eyes kept flicking to the other boys, checking whether they were laughing. He didn't care about Napoleone. He cared about being seen.
'Oh,' Napoleone thought. 'He's showing off.'
The game started again. Napoleone didn't take the bait.
He watched who charged straight in. Who hung back. Who always followed Paolo. Who ran when things got rough.
By the time the sun started to sink, he knew the whole street.
Dusk. The last battle, over a heap of dirt everyone called a hill.
Paolo shoved him in the chest.
"Go home, traitor. Back to your French house."
Everyone tensed. Someone dropped a stick.
Napoleone stumbled back one step. Two. He let his face crumple like he was about to cry.
Paolo grinned and leaned in to finish the job.
Napoleone ducked left.
Paolo, with all his weight forward, went straight through the space where Napoleone had been. His foot caught a rock. He hit the dirt face first.
Napoleone was on his back before he could roll over. One knee down, both hands on Paolo's wrist. No punches. No blood.
"Done?" he asked.
"Get off!"
"Are you done?"
"...Yes."
Napoleone let go and stood up.
"Words are wind," he said.
The line came out before he decided to say it. He had no idea where he'd heard it.
Silence. Then a girl laughed. Then everyone did.
"The little fox," she said.
Paolo scrambled up, dusting himself off and scowling. But he stuck out his hand. Napoleone shook it.
Some of the others were less sure. Two boys stepped back as he walked past, watching him the way you watch a quiet dog.
He walked home under the first stars, scraped and dusty and strangely proud.
He had won a fight without losing his temper. Nobody had ever told him that was possible.
Well done, said the voice.
Napoleone stopped in the middle of the street.
"Who are you?" he asked again.
No answer.
He waited a full minute. A cat walked past. It didn't know either.
'Fine,' he thought. 'Don't tell me.'
He started walking again, hands in his pockets, chin up.
Someone else was living in his head. And Napoleone Buonaparte, five years old, was going to find out who.