Page 66 of The Blood of Gods and Monsters

“If Mira heard you talking like that, she’d tan your hide,” I warn him.

Ralf shakes his head. “Nu-uh, Dad talks like that and she can’t tan his hide.”

I don’t argue the fact that Ralf’s Dad is also Mira’s and that though the man seems like a gentle giant, I doubt Mira would feel comfortable telling her dad not to curse around the young ones. Not when the man himself doesn’t even seem to realize it. Instead, I just tug at Ralf again.

“Come on,” I wheedle. “Mom says we’re moving today and I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye to you.”

That has Ralf fully awake in a split second and he tosses back the covers. “You’re moving?” I release him so that he can crawl to the end of his mattress and sit up more fully.

I nod. “Yeah. I told you that my mom and I travel a lot. Well, she said it’s time for us to go to the next place.”

“Why?” Ralf looks at me in what I guess is the same way I’d looked at Mom this morning. “Can’t you stay a little longer? We were supposed to go to the Day of Descendance Festival together.”

I drop down to sit cross-legged on the floor as Ralf starts searching through the side of his bed for the clothes he’d been wearing the day before. Scratching out a line on the grain of the wooden floor, I wait for him to finish dressing.

“She seems pretty set on leaving today,” I say. “I asked her if we could stay, but she…” I shake my head and lift it again to see that Ralf has his trousers on over his hips and is tying the too loose waist tight with the laces practically folded in half under his belly button. “I’m sorry, Ralf.”

Ralf quickly tugs on his tunic and then grabs my hand. “Come on, let’s go to the clubhouse.”

I don’t argue as I let Ralf lead me back to the ladder. He releases me, and together we climb down to the first floor to see Samson sitting at the table, his dangling feet swaying back and forth. Mira waves at the two of us as Ralf offers her a quick goodbye and pulls me towards the door.

“Don’t forget the herbs you need to gather with Sammie!” Mira calls out.

“I’ll be back soon,” Ralf promises, and then the two of us are off.

We run back up the street, towards my house, and past it. Though no one dares go too far into the Hinterlands, the edge woods that linger closer to the outskirts of Yette are safe enough. About two weeks into our new friendship, Ralf and I had discovered a hollowed-out tree facing the city, big and dry enough for the two of us to sit in during a light summer storm. Since then, it’d become our secret clubhouse and hideout when neither of us wanted to return home for one reason or another.

I wave to a few familiar faces of the other inhabitants of the slums of Yette—men and women who’d welcomed my mom and me with open arms and even helped her to gain work closer to the village’s center. It was thanks to them that I’d come to love this place so much and I’m going to hate trying to set up somewhere new. Few villages are as kind as Yette.

Ralf and I pause at the edge of the woods and then track along its exterior until we spot the three marks we’d made on one tree to mark our path. Once we see it, we climb over the roots and underbrush off the normal path that other villagers take when they come to collect herbs and other roots to sell in town.

Our clubhouse is a massive tree that’s wider than any of the smaller trees that hover around it like sentinels guarding their King. We circle it and Ralf pulls off the web of moss that we’d woven together to hide the interior during the times we had to leave it unattended.

“Come on.” Ralf waves his hand for me to go first and I do, hooking one foot over the side of the massive trunk’s opening and then dropping to the floor of crushed leaves and foliage. In the next instant, Ralf is next to me. The inside of our clubhouse isn’t big to begin with, barely a five-foot perimeter. With both of us inside, it becomes smaller, but it’s private, and more importantly, it’s ours.

“Okay, so talk,” Ralf demands. “Why does your mom say you have to leave?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. She just does. We’ve never stayed in one place for very long.”

"Hmmmm.” Ralf hums in the back of his throat and crosses his arms over his chest. I kick at a twig sticking against the toe of my boot. “That’s suspicious, don’t you think?” he asks.

“I don’t know. I never really thought of it.” It’s a lie. Of course, I’d wondered why my mom and I had to move so often. I’d asked and her answer had always been vague, but I think I know the truth. It’s because of me, because of what I can do. More than that, though, I have the sneaking understanding that we’re running from something or someone. Whoever it is scares her, though, and despite my earlier begging to stay, I know that I don’t want my mom to be afraid. If that means moving, then so be it.

“Listen, Ralf, I’m sorry,” I say, blowing out a breath. “But I promise when I get older and I can make decisions for myself, I’ll come back to see you.”

Ralf eyes me and then drops his arms. His eyes grow glassy just like I expected. He sniffles. “I don’t want you to go,” he confesses.

I don’t want to go either. I hug my friend, squeezing him tight. Suddenly, I have the thought that the two of us could grow up together. We could keep coming back to our secret clubhouse and when we have muscles like Ralf’s dad, we could build it bigger—maybe even make it a real house.

That hope blossoms inside my chest and swells bigger and bigger until it consumes my whole mind. Around us, the wind whips through the trunk of the massive tree. Ralf and I pull away as the ceiling of the tree hole widens and expands, growing upward. My eyes widen. The wind swirls faster and faster, fog rolling in and spreading over the floor to sweep away the dust and debris. When the wind settles, the clubhouse is transformed. It’s become a real place, no bigger than my mom’s shack, but wide enough with carvings into the interior wood and even a window.

“Whoa, what in the world…”

My heart beats faster when I realize what I’ve done. Almost as soon as that thought occurs to me, the illusion vanishes and Ralf blinks at me with big, almost owlish eyes. “What was that?” he demands.

I repress a flinch and instead offer him a laugh that sounds too sharp to even my own ears. “What was what?”

Ralf narrows his eyes. “Our hideout, it just got?—”

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