Page 14 of The Thirteenth Child
And yet I couldn’t deny what I’d heard. He was uncertain. He had offered a question, not a command.
The Dreaded End swayed back and forth on feet restless with apprehension.
What was he worried about? Did he believe I would say no? Did he truly think it in me to disagree with a god?
“Yes, Godfather,” I said, and waited for him to turn. For all the newfound bravado coursing through my veins, I didn’t think I could be the one to make the first move, the one to walk past him, brushing too near his cloak, too close to his strangely elongatedform.
He seemed to pick up on my reticence and backed out of the stall. He filled the narrow hall, blocking every sunbeam cast through the barn door, a literal eclipse.
It was only then that I remembered Mama.
She’d gone terribly pale, the sickly yellowish color of goat’s milk, and there was a damp sheen coating her forehead.
“Are you all right, Mama?” I asked, feeling indecision tear at me. My body wanted to approach her, feel her temple, make sure she was all right—she looked sonotall right—but my feet shifted toward the stall door.
“I…” Her cheeks puffed as if she was about to throw up, and I wondered just how much liquor she’d already had.
“Hazel?”
The uncertainty filling his one word spurred me into action.
“Come on, Mama,” I said, and slipped out of the stall, out of the barn, after the Dreaded End.
He waited for me in the yard, an incongruous smear of black against the white linens dancing from the clothesline as they driedin the early-spring breeze. The robes made it nearly impossible to be certain, but I had the distinct impression his shoulders were hunched tightly against his frame, as if he was expecting to receive some sort of harsh words from me, or even a physical blow. After a moment of pained silence between us, his eyes—red and silver and so very strange—brightened as he remembered there was something he could do.
“Your gift,” he said, as if he were reminding himself as much as me. He reached into his cloak and removed a beautiful box. It was tufted with velvet and was the loveliest shade of lilac I’d ever seen, like mist rising over the lavender fields on a moody morning, when the earth was finally warm and the air smelled sweet and new.
“I…I wasn’t quite sure what you’d like,” he apologized, stumbling over the words. “But I imagined you wouldn’t have anything like this.”
A cry escaped me as I opened the tiny box and the sun hit the treasure nestled within.
“It’s a necklace,” he explained unnecessarily. “Gold. It’s probably a touch extravagant for a girl of ten, but—”
“Twelve,” I corrected him thoughtlessly, trailing one fingertip over the thin chain. It was finer craftsmanship than anything I’d ever seen my mother or sisters wear, each link sparkling. A small stone hung from its middle, caught in a net of gold and winking brightly, neither green nor yellow.
“It reminded me of your eyes,” he said, his voice rounding out with fondness. “Everyone always says babies have blue eyes, but when you first looked at me…”
He trailed off, clearing his throat, and I could hear Mama finally making her way out from the barn.
“What is it, Hazel?” she asked, tottering unsteadily.
“A necklace,” I said, turning to show her the box.
She swiped the present away from me, raking one of her fingernails across the back of my hand. She didn’t notice my wince of pain. “You brought this for a child?” she asked, and her eyes were sharp and hard as she looked up at my godfather.
“Not just any child,” he said, the corners of his lips turning downward as he took it from her. He lifted it up and fastened it round my neck. “My child.”
“Yours,” she repeated, and there was something about her tone that charged the air around them, electrifying the space between us. It was as distinctly felt as an approaching summer storm. The oppressive might of it rolled over me, a weighty foreboding.
My godfather didn’t reply but studied my mother with fresh interest. There was a slight tilt to his head that reminded me a little of Bertie, when we would roam the river basin, searching for berries. He’d spot a sleek green lizard or a little snake winding its way through the brush and stop everything he was doing to watch it, his eyes wide with curiosity, seeking to understand how this tiny creature functioned.
That was how my godfather looked at Mama, as if she were a little tiny something that would normally carry out its life beyond the notice of someone such as him but that he found fascinating now that he had stopped to take note.
Such rapt focus made my insides quiver like a bow screeching over the strings of a violin. It felt decidedly wrong to have the full weight of a god’s attention on me.
“Mine,” he finally said, his agreement given most begrudgingly.
“If that’s so, where have you been all this time? All these years? You were meant to collect her when she was a babe. You were hereon the day she was born, and then you just…” Mama made a gesture of something flittering away, nearly losing hold of her bottle.
