The Boy and His Ribbon (The Ribbon Duet, #1)(19)

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.”

It didn’t occur to me until much later why he didn’t have a last name. That night, he wouldn’t let me sleep until I’d wrapped my infant tongue around those three little letters.

Apparently, once I’d mastered it, I never shut up.

I said it all the time, to the point he’d slap his hand over my mouth to stop me.

Even without his bedtime stories filling in the blanks and painting pictures I’ve forgotten, I can honestly say Ren is my favourite word.

I love every history attached to it.

I love every pain lashed to it.

I love the boy it belongs to.

I don’t know if Ren looked the same when he was ten as he did when I started to remember him, but I can say his hair never changed from its tangled mess of sable and sun. Dark brown in winter and copper bronze in summer, his hair touched his shoulders one year then cut short the year after. But the tangled mess was always the same, shoved out of his coal-coloured eyes with nine fingers not ten, his nose slightly crooked from being broken, his cheekbones so sharp they were cruel.

Even as a boy, he was beautiful.

Too beautiful to carry the depth of suspicion and guardedness he never fully shed.

Too beautiful to be responsible for the wake of misdeeds left in his path.

Too beautiful to be normal.





CHAPTER ELEVEN





REN



2001




FOR FIVE MONTHS, we lived in that tent.

We walked to new campsites when we wanted a change or if I felt we’d overstayed. We never settled too close to civilization, and I always ensured we had enough supplies to last two weeks completely self-sufficient.

Della grew every day, to the point where she was too heavy to carry along with my backpack for long distances, and had to trot awkwardly beside me for short lengths.

The longer we chose trees to house us and stayed alive by hunting and foraging, the less fit for society I became.

I adored the open air, freedom, and ability to do whatever I wanted whenever I pleased.

I loved jumping in the river naked. I loved napping under a bush with the sun kissing my skin. I loved being quiet and not having to fight to survive.

Life away from people was the easiest path I’d ever chosen, and I wouldn’t give that up.

For anyone.

But that was before winter hit.

For five months, the weather stayed consistently warm before gradually growing colder and colder. Our tent no longer kept the icy chill from our bones, and the sleeping bag wasn’t warm enough to exist without other forms of weather protection.

My shorts and sunglasses were traded for jacket and beanie, and I ensured Della wore all her clothes, including a layer of mine, tied in places and pinned in others, to ensure she stayed as snug as possible.

One night, as ice started forming on the grass before we’d even crawled into the tent to sleep, I faced a decision I’d been putting off since my last hunt in a local town and a raid of their lacklustre supermarket.

I regularly visited towns to supplement our diet of meat and fish with things my body craved—sugar, salt, and carbohydrates. I had no qualms about stealing and did my best to break in as subtly as I could and only take things that would go unnoticed, so police would remain none the wiser.

We were a couple of days’ walk from the last town and too far north according to the chilly air and the way Della shivered even hunched close to the fire.

Winter was fast approaching, and if I didn’t change our circumstances, we wouldn’t make it.

So I put aside my reservations of people and houses and began the long journey to the next congregation of matching homes and cloned society, doing my best to go south as much as possible to outrun the frosts determined to freeze us.

*

We found a township on the second day, and for a week, we hid in someone’s garden shed where the rickety wooden walls and faded newspaper taped to the only window held the wintery blast at bay.