The Boy and His Ribbon (The Ribbon Duet, #1)(6)

She blinked and stuck her thumb in her mouth with her ribbon dangling from her fist.

“Good.” I nodded. “Don’t…don’t be afraid.”

With a final look at her silky hair and innocent trust, I yanked up the zippers, drenched her in darkness, and swung her substantial weight onto my back.

She cried out as she thumped against my spine.

I stabbed her side with my elbow, striding fast toward the river. “Della Mclary, you make one more sound, and it will be your last.”

She fell quiet.

And I ran…for both our lives.





CHAPTER THREE


REN



2000




THE FIRST FEW nights of something strange and new were always the toughest.

I’d learned that the hard way, and the lesson came again as I crashed to my knees next to a falling down shed in the middle of an untended field.

Adaption.

That was what I’d done when I’d been sold to the Mclarys, and if I didn’t remember the struggle it took to fall into routine, accept the inevitable, and find a new normal, then I probably would’ve curled into a ball, yelled at the vanishing moon, and suffocated the damn baby in my backpack.

Those first days at the farmhouse had been the worst because I kept expecting something more. Something kinder, better, warmer, safer. It wasn’t the conditions I’d been thrust into or the back-breaking work I was assigned, but the hope that all of it would vanish as quickly as it had arrived.

But once that hope had been eaten away by my starvation, life had gotten easier. Acceptance had been smoother, and I’d saved up my tears for when they truly mattered.

Breathing fast, I peered into the dawn-smudged gloom for signs of a hunt.

My clothes were still wet from walking thigh-high in the stream for as long as I could physically stand it. My muscles had bellowed from the chilly water, my ankles threatening to snap every time I slipped off an unseen rock on the bottom.

It would’ve been far easier to sink below the surface and let the ripples take me. To lie on my back and rest.

But I couldn’t do that because the baby zipped up tight would drown in the wet canvas, thrashing like the fish Mclary caught in his pond.

She’d cried a few times in our night-time journey. Once, she’d whined due to me slipping up to my waist and getting her wet. Twice, she’d mewled like a kitten, hungry and tired. And at some point, as the straps of the backpack cut into my shoulders and I leaned more and more into her weight, forcing myself to put one more step in front of the other, she’d squalled loud and angry as if in protest for her conditions.

I’d elbowed her again.

She’d fallen quiet.

And we’d continued on until I couldn’t walk another step.

Rolling from my knees to my ass, I reached up with stiff arms and seized fingers to slip the backpack off my shoulders and scooted away to lean gratefully against the weathered boards of the shed.

The long grass kept us hidden. The light breeze kept us quiet. And the morning light revealed it was just us in the sea of rye that hadn’t been cut or baled in years.

That meant the farmer didn’t tend to his crops, and we were far enough away from the Mclary’s holdings to be safe for a few hours of rest.

I barely managed to unzip the bag and let little blue eyes and blonde hair free before slipping to my side and dreaming.

*

Three days.

Three days of broken sleep, sore limbs, and the never-ending need to run as far as possible.

Three terrible days of learning what a baby ate reappeared ten times worse a few hours later. I’d had the gag-worthy task of figuring out how to remove a wriggling annoyance from clothing and clean up a mess that needed a hose rather than dry grass.

I didn’t have a replacement diaper and didn’t want her getting my backpack and food disgusting, so I ripped up my only spare t-shirt and Frankensteined a covering for her squashed little butt.

On the fourth day of hard-won freedom, Della Mclary crawled from the backpack and waited by my nose until I woke from exhaustion. I hadn’t even thought of her wandering off while I slept, and her shadow hovered over me, creating horrors of farmers and enemies and guns.

My survival instincts, already on high-alert, lashed out, and I shoved her away from me.

She rolled away, silent with shock until she came to a roly poly mess covered with leaves.

And then she cried.

And cried.

And cried.

The code in the barn was to stick to yourself. No one got too close because no one wanted to risk getting hurt, either by Mclary punishing the friendship or because of the inevitable ticking clock that meant everyone left eventually.

Della had no such qualms.

She’d sat in her pink onesie, stinking like shit and chubby legs kicking in dirt, while her midget finger poked at my cheek; over and over until blurry sleep became blurry awake.

And now, I’d struck her.

I tore at my hair, not knowing what to do, itching to shut her up by any means necessary.

Crawling over to her, I cringed against the ripe smell and plucked her from the ground. Her weight felt heavier in my arms than on my back.

I twisted her closer, ready to slap my hand over her mouth, frantically looking at the horizon to see who or what had heard us, but the minute my fingers went near her tear-stained face, she clutched my index and sucked on it.