Throughout the months when she grew from baby to toddler, I grew harder and older but also softened thanks to her sweet innocence toward everything. She wasn’t dragged down by hate or grudges. She didn’t judge anything before she’d tasted or tested it for herself.
She taught me not to be so narrow-minded, granting a fleeting chance to be a child again when such a novelty had been stolen from me.
I often found my heart swelling with warmth for my young, tiny friend and cracking in pain knowing this life we shared couldn’t go on forever.
She would eventually need more.
She would eventually outgrow me.
But for now, at least, I’d upheld my side of the bargain and kept her safe.
As we hung out, hidden and miserable from the weather in some stranger’s shed, I played the naming game with Della and answered her eager finger as it flew from mower to sickle to drill to axe to rake. Rusted tools rested unused and forgotten, draped with cobwebs and dusted in beetle carcasses.
She repeated the words quietly like an eager parrot, her eyes aglow with learning.
We couldn’t light a fire, so we spent our evenings huddled together in the sleeping bag, looking for ways to entertain ourselves.
This place reminded me of the farmhouse, and for the first time in a while, the fear I’d constantly lived with returned, and I locked my attention on the only entrance as Della grew drowsy and crawled into the tent I’d haphazardly put up amongst discarded household junk.
She grumbled some made-up language of baby tongue and badly phrased things I’d taught her until I obeyed her commands to come to bed and grudgingly agreed to tell another bedtime story.
Somehow, she’d latched onto the stupid retellings and stared at me with dreamy eyes and utmost contentedness on her pretty face whenever I succumbed to her demands.
The first one I’d told out of desperation when she didn’t settle after something large and most likely hungry sniffed around our tent a few months ago.
I’d squatted on my haunches with two knives in two fists, ready to slice any creature that found its way into our sanctuary.
But whatever it was gave up after a while.
It didn’t mean Della calmed down, though.
She’d whimpered and sniffled, clutching that damn blue ribbon as if it was her only friend in the world.
That had hurt.
I’d grown used to her seeking comfort from me—of her crawling unwanted into my lap at the worst times or snuggling too close in the night.
I wasn’t used to contact from another and definitely not used to contact given so readily and often, but to have her deny what I’d grown accustomed to that night, especially after I’d been prepared to slaughter whatever it was to keep her safe reached into my chest and twisted.
Perhaps it was the feral mind-set I’d been in, already bathing in blood of whatever beast I would kill, or maybe it was the way my fists turned white from clutching the knives—whatever it was, her tears cascaded faster once the threat of danger had passed than they had when it’d been snuffling and pawing at our door.
So I’d done the only thing that popped into my head.
I’d placed aside my blades, pulled her into my lap, and told her a horror story to take her mind off the one we’d just avoided.
I told her about the farmhouse and what it was like at dinner-time. I let the fact that some animals wanted to eat us colour my retelling of starvation and helplessness in the barn. I’d killed rats and eaten them raw before. I’d torn pumpkin from another starving kid’s hands. I sympathized with the hungry—human and beast—and did my best to make Della see that it wasn’t personal. It was just nature’s balance, and it was our responsibility to stay at the top of the food chain because we’d encounter so many that wanted to steal that position for itself.
She’d fallen asleep clutching me as tight as she clutched her ribbon, and although it shouldn’t, although I was stupid to be jealous of a tatty piece of blue, I slept with a smile on my face and my friend in my arms all night.
Tonight, though, she wasn’t satisfied with just a normal story.
She wanted the truth, and I was too young to think of sheltering her from it.
A few weeks ago, she’d noticed what I tried to forget every time I washed. She’d gawked at the marked piece of flesh on the side of my hipbone.
We always bathed together out of necessity and safety. I didn’t care about being naked around her because all the other kids in the barn dressed and undressed to the point it was normal seeing each other bare. But there were some things I wished she didn’t see.
Scars I’d endured.
Punishments I’d deserved.