When Rusk’s father saw him standing there in the rain with a girl slung over his back and bleeding, he almost shut the door in his own son’s face. But then Rusk’s mother was gasping and fretting and pushing her way through the threshold past the father, and there was nothing more to be done. The girl would stay, and Rusk would get nothing more than a lecture.
While his mother tended to Mandy’s cuts and bruises, hands fluttering in concern yet still competent and comforting as they sopped up blood with bits of cotton and wrapped everything snug, Rusk’s father watched Rusk hover and pace by the bed. Eventually he dragged Rusk from the room and shoved him harshly into the hallway wall out of sight and earshot of the girls.
“Why did you bring her here,” said the father, his inquiry a demand rather than a request.
“Why do you hate the idea of helping people so much,” said Rusk bitterly. He was shaking with cold, concerned for Mandy with every fiber of his being, and aching from the long walk home, not to mention the fight with her monster. He had no energy left for making nice with his father. “Is it so terrible to be kind to our neighbors?”
“Neighbors, you say, but I’ve never met that girl before.”
“She’s from school. A friend.”
“A friend.”
“Is that so hard to understand?”
“Stay your tongue, boy,” said Rusk’s father in the older language. “Don’t give me that poor attitude.”
“If you don’t want my attitude then show some concern instead of acting like a monster yourself,” said Rusk, also in the older language.
That earned him a hard shove to the shoulder. His father’s grip clamped down, a strong adult thumb jammed into the top of Rusk’s collarbone until he was forced to sink to the floor. He wasn’t even a teenager yet. His father’s glower cast a long shadow over him.
“That’s the attitude I’m talking about,” said his father. “You brought her here, and along with her whatever luck she harbors.”
“She needed help,” said Rusk from the floor. His father had released him as soon as he dropped, so Rusk sat with one leg extended and rubbed the pain out of his shoulder with his working hand. His father’s affront had rendered the other one tingly at the extremities. “I helped her. That’s all.”
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“She’s resting,” said Rusk’s mother, appearing from the bedroom doorway. She extended a hand toward Rusk, an invitation to be aided to his feet. “We’ll clean you up and speak of this as a family in the morning. Come now, a wash and then bed.”
Rusk’s father skulked off without another word, Rusk slept on the floor of his room since Mandy had his bed, not that he minded after what she’d been through, and the night passed in uncomfortable silence. Not even bugs sang their tunes, and in the morning Rusk tripped through the hall to breakfast table in his fatigue. He hadn’t slept more than a half hour collectively, and he’d only managed that much in spurts.
The smell of roasting river crab revitalized him marginally as he took his usual seat. The table was round, covered in a mat of material made from rubbery brown leaves that dipped over the rim, smelling of smoky dried foliage to keep the bugs away, and the table itself grew out of a square opening in the cottage floor, the flattened top simply an extension of a tree that had been chopped at the trunk long ago. When Rusk sat on a matching wooden stool, his legs dangled over the roots of the tree that ran underneath the entirety of the cottage flooring, and loose dirt swam with rivulets of water from the storm. The cottage itself was elevated to prevent flooding of course, but not so much as one might expect. Only enough to prevent actual damage. The moisture from last night’s storm sank through the wooden walls of the rest of the abode and up from the visible forest floor in the kitchen so that no room was empty of atmosphere. Usually this was a comfort, but today, on a morning when Rusk knew he had an argument coming, the smell of the morning dew weighed down on him. Pressing. Condensing.
“Your mother and I have been talking,” said Rusk’s father.
His mother laid the plates.
Rusk dug into the roasted crab meat, sectioning off a morsel, but he didn’t raise it to his lips until his father completed the thought.
“She can stay until she recovers.” His father elongated the moment by chewing and swallowing. “But only until then.”
Rusk gleefully wolfed down his food.
“Why don’t you bring her a plate to speed up the process?” His mother held out their only spare dish. She’d given Mandy more than Rusk’s share of crab, plus a pastry that smelled of lime. “I can’t have people going hungry in my house. Go on, then.”
Rusk scrambled off with the plate as fast as he could, delivering it to Mandy with no hidden amount of enthusiasm. She thanked him but tilted her head at his flushed, relieved expression.
“Does this mean they don’t hate me?”
Rusk devolved into anxious giggles.
It took Mandy weeks to recover. Rusk healed faster, but he hadn’t been as wounded as Mandy, physically or emotionally. When the time was right, she approached him.
“A hero needs a weapon,” she announced. “I know how to make one.”