Page 15 of The Thirteenth Child
My heart beat heavily in the hollow of my throat. Her audacity shocked me, but I found myself hoping he would answer her. These were the same questions that had filled my thoughts for years—when would he come again, why had he ever left me behind at all.
“I’ve returned,” he said, offering no further explanation.
Mama made a noise of disgusted dismissal. “What good does that do us now? She’s nearly grown. We raised her in your stead. We cared for her, clothed her, fed her. All the things you promised you would do. All the things you swore you’d pay for.”
I winced.
She sounded so hard, so full of condemnation. It didn’t seem as though she was speaking to a god at all, more like she was chastising the village butcher over a bad cut of meat.
I expected his anger to rise, for lightning and thunder to strike us down, for the earth to tremble and part beneath our feet and swallow us whole.
But none of those things happened. Instead, my godfather nodded carefully, consideringly.
“I suppose you did, Madame. What would you estimate all your care and effort to be worth?”
Mama frowned skeptically. “What?”
“How much money do you suppose Hazel has cost you over the years? That’s what you desire, is it not? A reimbursement? A settling of the books? Go on. Name your price. What has Hazel’s first ten—twelve”—he corrected himself, his silvery red eyes darting toward mine—“years cost you?”
Mama’s eyes drifted across the yard toward the house, oddly unfocused. “I…I couldn’t begin to—”
“What do you think is a fair price, Hazel?” my godfather asked, turning toward me.
My mouth dried as terror spiked up my throat. My chest felt as though it would split in two. Where did my allegiance lie? With the mother who had raised me, most begrudgingly, or with the godfather who claimed to care but had only just arrived? “I…I don’t know.” I looked helplessly toward my mother, but she didn’t notice.
“Would five gold coins be enough?” he asked, his attention whipping back to Mama. “A year? Five gold coins for each year of care? That makes sixty. Do you believe that enough, Madame?”
“Sixty gold coins?” Mama repeated, her eyes suddenly growing sharp. She sucked in a breath of air and it whistled through the crooked gap between her front teeth. “Do you mean it? Truly?”
The Dreaded End snapped his fingers and the coins fell out of the sky, conjured into existence midair. “As you say, I owe you. And you’re right, of course. I do. So let’s double it.” More coins fell. “Triple, even.” Another snap and the golden disks rained down, showering the ground where Mama stood. “Do you think it enough, Madame? Is this sufficient payment for the care and keeping of your own flesh and blood?”
Part of me longed for Mama to say no, to say that she’d changed her mind and no amount of money in the world was enough to ease the pain of losing her daughter.
I held my breath, wishing, waiting.
After a painful pause, she nodded.
“Good,” he said, and then held out his hand to me. His fingers were too long, too long and dotted with too many joints. They bentinto impossible angles, like the strangely segmented walking sticks found deep in our woods.
“Come, Hazel,” he said as though we were about to go for an afternoon stroll, as if he wasn’t about to take me away from my home, away from my entire life, all my knowns and certainties, however painful they could sometimes be.
I glanced back to my mother.
Surely she was going to stop this.
Surely she would protest.
She couldn’t just let me leave home with a complete stranger, however venerable he might be.
“Go on, Hazel,” she said instead. “You always knew this day would come.”
Had I?
I’d been told of it often enough. I’d heard my parents rail and lament each year he did not come. But with every year that passed, the story grew a little less defined, less a promise and more a concept, an event that might never occur.
I turned to the Dreaded End.
“Where are we going?”
