Page 26 of The Thirteenth Child
Where had Merrick gone? What was he doing? How did gods spend their days?
“Merrick?” I called, hoping he could somehow hear me.
Nothing stirred. No one answered.
“Merrick?” I said again, a little louder. I paused, indecision twisting my insides. “Godfather?”
I glanced out the nearest window, squinting at the darkened landscape. I couldn’t see anyone, but that didn’t mean a thing, did it?Weren’t the gods always there, watching, judging? We were taught to pray to them—all of them—told that they were forever listening, ready to hear us.
So where was Merrick now?
I didn’ttrulyneed him, I tried to tell myself as worry prodded at my middle. I had food, shelter, heat. All my needs were taken care of. He’d seen to that.
So why did the thought that Merrick might have wandered off and forgotten me make me want to crouch down and throw up?
I wanted to laugh my panic away. He wouldn’t have taken me from home, from my family, to the Between and created this house and all these lovely things—the dresses, the books, the trees—just to leave me. I was his goddaughter. Everything he’d done here proved that I meant something to him, that I was important, that I was treasured.
“He wouldn’t forget me,” I decided out loud. It seemed reasonable, my logic sound.
“Wouldn’t he?” a terrible little voice whispered in my mind.
For a moment, it sounded so real I glanced about the cabin to see if someone had truly spoken.
“No,” I said, trying to firmly banish the treacherous thought. Itwasa thought, I decided. I was here by myself, so that voice was nothing more than a thought.
My thoughts—how I prayed they were thoughts—laughed at me. “He would.”
“He wouldn’t,” I insisted, wondering if I’d lost my mind.
“He has before.”
I fell silent, unable to argue.
Hehadleft me before. Back when I was tiny and small and hadneeded him most. He’d come and he’d gone and it had taken him twelve long years to remember to come back.
I pushed myself up, nearly falling out of the chair, my body stiff with disuse. Never before had I spent a day so idly, still but for the turning of pages, the lifting of a teacup. I ached in ways I wasn’t accustomed to and had the sudden and startling horror that I had been in this cottage, asleep, for far longer than one afternoon. I felt as though I had wandered into a strange and liminal space where so much time had passed, too much time. Merrick had been gone not for a day but for years, decades, millennia. I was no longer a young girl of twelve, nimble and lithe. I was a crone, ancient and eternal, and in that moment, something broke within my mind.
I found I could scarcely draw breath. There was a band of pressure across my rib cage, squeezing and tightening. I could feel it building in my chest, climbing higher and higher, until I was certain my eyes were about to pop from my skull.
“From my orbital sockets,” I murmured, and the phrase, learned only hours before, acted as a spell, lulling me from my panic, allowing me to breathe, to think, to hear things other than the racing of my blood, the pounding of my heart.
He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t keep me here in the cottage, as a captive, jumping to perform whatever task he required. I was not some mindless automaton that would carry out his orders, silent and without protest.
I was his goddaughter, and I was tired of being forgotten.
Without thinking, I threw open the door and greeted the storm, which, predictably, rose to a frightening pitch.
The wind howled.
The rain fell.
If Merrick summoned the storms, conjuring them up whenever I dared to disobey, I wanted him to know that they would no longer hold me back.
I walked into the storm.
The rain drenched me within seconds, soaking my dress, my under layers, my boots. It was colder than I’d thought it would be, colder than the warm spring rains that had begun to shower the Gravia.
I shivered, but I did not let it stop me.
