I stood upright, and she squalled in fear, wrapping fierce arms around my legs.
Ducking down, I patted her head. “It’s okay. I’m not leaving you. I won’t do that again. You have my word.”
As if she understood, her fear vanished, smothered by indignation and the glow of a pissed-off female. It was a look I’d seen multiple times on her mother as she’d swatted me with anything close by. It was surreal to have the same stare given in two completely different circumstances.
I chuckled.
I’d never chuckled before.
The mother hated me.
The daughter liked me.
I was stealing her for everything the Mclarys had stolen from me.
I would keep her, mould her, train her, turn her into the exact opposite of what they would have made her become, and I would change her name because she no longer belonged to them.
She belonged to me.
Yet something was missing…
I studied her, inspecting the brown trousers and grey long sleeve she’d been dressed in. I frowned at the micro-sized sneakers on her feet. She looked like a tomboy and was happy about it.
But still, something was missing.
Her hands.
They were empty.
No blue satin.
No ribbon.
Ripping her from the carpet with my fingers under her arms, I plonked her on my hip and turned to face the woman. “Her ribbon. Where is it?”
Her two boys continued to reap anarchy as she slowly put down the phone.
“What ribbon?”
Della squirmed in my arms. I squeezed her tight in warning. “The blue ugly thing she loves.”
The woman glanced over my shoulder toward the trash can in the corner.
My teeth clenched. “You threw it away?” Marching toward the can, I manhandled Della so I could hold her with one arm, ripped up the lid with the other, then dropped it before ploughing my hand straight through eggshells and bacon rind until I found the slipperiness of her disgusting ribbon. The moment I pulled it free with new stains and old, Della snatched it.
I wanted to snatch it right back. It needed a wash, but for now, I had other problems to take care of.
Turning back to the woman, we stared some more until she finally admitted, “I called the police. You can’t take her.”
I stepped toward her. “I’m leaving.”
“Just because I let you into my home doesn’t mean I’ll let you take anything out of it.” She slithered from my path, putting the bench in our way. “You can’t take her. You can’t just steal a person like you stole our food.”
Ignoring her tirade on my theft, I said calmly, “I can take her, and I am.” Placing Della by the sink, I tapped her nose. “Don’t fall off. It will hurt.”
She planted her hands—complete with threaded ribbon through her fingers—on the granite and pressed her little sneakered feet against the cabinets below. Trusting her not to be stupid, I wrenched my heavy backpack from the floor.
She would no longer be able to travel on my back.
The extra complication should’ve layered me with doubt, misgivings, and hate.
Not anymore.
Now, I only looked for solutions.
Glancing around the welcoming space, I fell upon a laundry rack drying a mismatch of baby clothes and sheets.
Giving the woman a sharp look, I strode toward the rack and ripped off a few t-shirts, shorts, and jumpers all in blues, blacks, and browns for little boys.
They would fit Della. They’d be too big right now, but she’d grow. We both would.
At the last second, I stole a sheet then stuffed the baby clothes into my backpack, wrapped the sheet around my neck and back and copied what I’d seen Mrs Mclary do when she’d carried Della out to the fields to see her husband.
A sort of pouch on my chest to support Della’s butt with her legs on either side of my waist and arms poking out the sides. She would be a nuisance. I wouldn’t be able to travel far with her weight and our supplies.
But for now, my time had run out, and we were leaving.
Della gurgled something happy as I marched toward her and ducked a little to put her legs in the wrapped sheet first. Once in position, I slipped her into the hammock on my belly and tested the knots around my waist and neck.
Claustrophobia drenched my blood being so burdened, but my mouth watered for the forest.
Sirens sounded on the breeze, far enough away not to be urgent but close enough to warn they were coming. And quickly.
Storming past the woman, I stopped and stared. “You didn’t want her. I changed my mind, and I do.”
Her mouth opened and closed as I unlocked the back door.
“You’re a kid. Where are you going to go?”
“Home.” I shrugged. “We’re going home.”
“And parents? Do you have someone to take care of you?”
Heat filled my limbs, a fiery sort of scorn that put her beneath me. “I’ll take care of her.”
The woman shook her head. “But you? Who will take care of you?”
The door swung wide as a gust of sweet-smelling air swirled in, leaves dancing over the welcome mat, tree branches bristling with speed.
I was being called just as surely as the sirens were running me out of town.
As the police wail grew louder, I stepped from her house and smiled. “I don’t need anyone to take care of me. I have her. She has me. Family takes care of each other.”
Not waiting for a reply, I half-ran, half-stumbled over her lawn, unbalanced with Della’s weight.
I didn’t look back as I raced through suburbia, chased the wind, and then vanished into the forest.
We were just figments of her imagination.
Ghosts she thought she saw.
Children she thought she’d met but would never remember.
CHAPTER NINE
REN
* * * * * *
2000
THAT FIRST NIGHT, I travelled as far and as long as I could.
Della didn’t grumble or squirm, no matter how many times I stumbled over tree roots that I couldn’t see with her on my chest or ducked under low-lying branches.
Running on sealed roads was a lot easier than running through untamed wilderness, but no matter the strain on my back from carrying two different weights, and no matter the gradual aches and pains in my body the more miles I put behind us, I was happier than I’d been since…well, since I could remember.
And it didn’t make sense.
Because I had nowhere to go, no guarantee of survival, and a baby reliant on me for every tiny thing.
I ought to feel terrified and trapped, not the exact opposite.
The same river we’d followed before welcomed us back, and I fell into step with the gurgle and ripple, occasionally tripping over slippery bracken but not wanting to travel too far from its banks.
I followed it for hours, silent and serious, delving deeper and deeper into the forest.
Digging my hand into my new cargo trouser pockets, I pulled out the last thing I’d grabbed on the way out from the camping store.
A compass.
I knew enough from farming that the sun was my biggest ally and greatest foe. The only letters Mr. Mclary thought to teach me were N, S, E, W for the four corners of the world where rain lived one day and drought lived the next.
Back at the farmhouse tacked to his wall in the kitchen, hung a large map with weird squiggly lines over hills and valleys. He’d caught me looking at it one day, and instead of cuffing me around the head and kicking me from the kitchen, he’d clasped my shoulder with dirty fingers and gloated. “That’s mine, boy. Every boundary and treeline from here until as far north as Dead Goat Creek is all mine.”
I’d done my best to study how to read such a magical piece of paper that showed every piece of property he owned, but the scale didn’t make sense and the scratchings of words and numbers hadn’t been taught to someone like me.
W
hen I’d failed to respond in whatever way he expected me to, he’d twisted my ear, dragged me past his wife feeding Della in her booster chair, then threw me out, not caring I tumbled down the stairs to the dusty ground below. “The house isn’t for the likes of you, boy. Boys stay in the barn.” He slammed the door, making it rattle on its well-abused hinges.
I blinked aside old memories and focused on the compass. The needle pointed Northwest.
I didn’t know what existed in that direction but it was the opposite of Southeast where Mclary’s farm was.
Stopping in the middle of the forest with darkness descending rapidly and roosting birds all around us, I shoved the compass back into my pocket. “I’m tired. We’ll sleep here.”
Della’s head raised from resting against my chest, her blue eyes bright and intelligent. Her little legs kicked and her hands raised, complete with filthy ribbon wafting in the air, as if to help me lift her out of the sheet sling.
“Wait.” Stiffness already cramped my muscles now that I’d given my body permission to quit moving. It was always that way after a long day of labour. Keep pushing, keep moving, and the pain couldn’t find you.
Stop…and it leapt on you like a herd of cattle.
I winced as I arched my back and let the backpack slip to the ground.
Hissing under my breath, I massaged the back of my neck where the sheet knot had dug into me for long hours. Fumbling with the tight bow, I gave up and bent myself enough to unhook it over my head.
Della slipped backward without the support.
I scowled. “Hold onto me. If you don’t, you’ll fall.”
Her lips pursed as if trying to understand but didn’t do what I asked.
“Ugh.” Wrapping my tired arm around her, I held her tight as I undid the knot at my waist and the sheet tumbled down my front. Bending, I placed her on top of it, finally ridding my body of the weight it’d been carrying for so long.
It was sheer heaven.
All I wanted to do was leap into the river and fall asleep under the stars, but I had responsibilities now. And I had to do them before all my energy deserted me.
I was used to working on dregs. I was strong and stubborn and been taught by the land that to achieve anything you had to work and work hard.
This was no different.
For the next hour, I set aside the things we’d need from my backpack, fumbled around as I figured out how to erect the tent for the first time, and spread out the one sleeping bag inside it.
Once shelter was finished, I grabbed Della, stripped her of the boy clothes she’d been dressed in, stripped myself until we were both naked as furless animals, and carried her into the river. I couldn’t let her go as the current was too swift, but I managed to at least rinse off the sweat from a long day.
Once we were semi-clean, I pinched her ribbon and used sand from the bottom to scrub it the best I could. She pouted the entire time I handled it as if not trusting me with her prized possession.
By the time we’d dried off, dressed in clean clothes, and eaten dinner of tuna fish on squashed, stolen bread rolls, my eyelids drooped and Della curled into a ball on the sheet by the small fire I’d made.
I curled up beside her.
The tent went unused that night.
* * * * *
We stayed there for three nights, getting used to the equipment I’d stolen, sunbaking in the dappling light through the leaves, eating squished bananas and apples, and growing fat on melted chocolate bars and deliciously salted pretzels.
I’d never eaten so well or had time off just to do nothing.
I didn’t care we went through our rations crazy fast.
I didn’t care we should probably keep moving.
This was every birthday that I’d never had, and I wanted it to last forever.
Della seemed to go through a growth spurt just like the lambs at Mclary’s. One night, the baby sheep were all legs and skinny, the next they were fat and bouncy.
Della did the same thing.
The colour returned to her cheeks with regular food, and the sun browned the rest of her thanks to us barely wearing any clothes.
We learned to share the sleeping bag, clean our teeth with one brush, and scrub our clothes with the single bar of soap.
So many chores just to stay healthy and alive, but everything was so much more rewarding than fighting for scraps after a never-ending day raking, baling, feeding, milking, tending, mending…an eternal list of tasks.
In the evenings, we listened side by side to night crawlers and creatures and stayed dry and warm as a rain shower found us on the second night. The splatter of droplets on the tent lulled us to sleep instead of keeping us awake and shivering under a tree.
Life had never been so good.
And on the third night, when my mind was busy with plans of finding a new paradise, Della wriggled upright in the sleeping bag, pointed at my nose, and said, “Boy.”
CHAPTER TEN
DELLA
* * * * * *
Present Day
OKAY, I MADE my decision, Professor Baxter.
I’m going to do the assignment. I’m going write a non-fiction tale and make it read as fiction. However, I can’t take all the credit as it already reads fake without any embellishment from me.
I suppose I should start this tale with the requisite address that’s always used at the beginning of a story.
I don’t know what sort of grades my biography will earn from you, and I’m still marginally terrified of the consequences of what he’ll do for breaking my promises, but I’m actually excited to relive the past. To smile at the happy times. To flinch at the hard. To cry at the sad.
There are so many moments to sift through that it’s like cracking open a jewellery box after decades of dust, pulling out gemstones and diamonds, and struggling to choose what to wear.
That was what he did to me, you see? He made my entire life a jewellery box of special, sad, hard, happy, incredible moments that I want to wear each and every day.
He always said the truth was ours, no one else’s.
Well, now it’s yours, so here it goes…
* * * * *
Once upon a time, there was a boy and a baby.
This boy didn’t say much, he scowled often, worked too hard, cared too deeply, and nursed a deep distrust of people and society that nothing and no one could soothe. He had scars on his skinny body that clenched my heart the more stories he told. He had wisdom in his eyes that came from suffering, not age. And he had mannerisms born from a man who already knew his fate rather than a boy just beginning.
This boy and the baby were never meant to be together.
They were from different blood, different people, yet because of what the baby’s father and mother had done, they were technically family in a strange, unexplainable way.
They say a child’s earliest memories occur when they’re as young as three years old, but those memories aren’t there forever. There’s a phenomenon called child amnesia that starts to delete those memories when they reach seven or so and continues to erase as you grow into adulthood. Only recollections of great importance are retained while the rest becomes a life-blur with no clarity.
I don’t know about you, but I know that to be true.
When I was younger, I remembered more. I know I did. But now I’m eighteen, I struggle to recall exact days unless something happened so crisp and clear it’s burned into my psyche.
I suppose you’re thinking how then can I tell my life story starting as early as a baby? I don’t know what happened, and my memory isn’t a reliable witness.
Well...I can tell you because of him.
I can tell you every day from the day I came into this world because that very same night—or it might’ve been the night before—my father cut off his finger. I can retell every night we ran and every night we swam. I can tell you every moment until right now while I sit in my room typing this paper.
I know I’m not following the
fiction-writing rules by breaking the fourth wall and talking to you as if you here beside me, but it helps this way. It helps trick me into thinking once I tell you the truth, it will be forgotten the same way I’ve forgotten so many precious things. It helps pretending I’m not writing this down, so there is no permanent scar on the secrets I promised to keep.
So with child amnesia and adulthood slowly stealing my past, how can I sit here confidently and tell you my tale?
I’ll tell you again.
It’s because of my favourite thing of all.
The thing I’d beg for, the thing I’d do anything he asked for, the cherished time of day that no one could steal.
A story.
A bedtime story meant to lull a frightened babe to sleep but turned into something so precious and coveted, I’d get goosebumps whenever he agreed.
You see, he was my only form of TV, book, radio, internet, or cartoon.
Without him, I would know nothing; I wouldn’t have grown through the adventures he gave me. I’d still be a child born to monsters.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Before I share his bedtime stories, I first need to introduce him.
The Boy.
That was my first word, you know.
He said it was because as a baby I would’ve heard my parents calling him Boy. They never used his name—probably never knew it. And because I was their little monster, unchanged yet by what he would make me become, I called him what they called him.
Boy.
A thing not a someone.
A possession.
I don’t remember, but apparently the first night I called him that, he’d left me in a hurry. He’d stalked the forest on his own until his famous temper cooled, and he returned to me in the tent he’d stolen and the sleeping bag we shared.
I hadn’t been sleeping, waiting for him to return with tears in my eyes and my ribbon wrapped around my fingers so tight they’d turned blue to match the satin.
He’d sat cross-legged in front of me, glowered with his endless dark eyes, and thudded his chest with his fist. “Ren,” he’d told me. “Ren, not Boy.”
Ren and Della: Boxed Set (Ribbon Duet Book 3) Page 6
