Page 34 of Juniper Unraveling

We meet in the kitchen, and I offer him a cooler cup of coffee that he sucks down without incident. Cleaned up and dressed in normal clothes, he doesn’t quite look the same. His scars somehow seem less like the wounds of a victim.

“I’ve some chores to do before it gets too hot. If you’d like, you can come with me, but promise me you’ll stay out of sight. Don’t let anyone see you.”

He gives a nod, setting the cup down on the counter, and I gather up all of the used dishes, setting them into a sink of soapy water. Without prompting, Six immediately goes to work beside me, washing each.

Gripping his forearm makes him pause, and I shake my head. “You don’t have to do that. I’ll do it.”

He twists out of my grasp and continues on, ignoring me as he sets the clean plates into the other basin for rinsing.

With a smile, I rinse and dry the dishes, placing them back in the cupboard, until all of breakfast is cleaned.

We head out toward the back of the house, to where rows of vegetables make up about a quarter acre of the yard. The gardens use reclaimed water, fed through a treadle pump, that I have to manually feed to the irrigation tubes. A job I loathe, but it’s certainly contributed to the strength in my legs. Last week, I broke the pump in my haste to finish chores, which means twice the work on my legs until Papa can fix it.

“I want to introduce you to Papa,” I say, crossing over the cracked dirt and tufts of frayed desert grass that make up our backyard. “But I have to go about it just right. He’s … not very agreeable when it comes to outsiders.”

A rattling noise reaches my ear, growing louder and louder. Before I realize the imminent danger, an object flies out from the right of me, and within a hair of a second, is snapped back. Like flicking a towel against the rock, Six cracks the head of the snake against a nearby boulder.

My heart pounds inside my throat, corking my next breath.

Dangling from Six’s fingertips is a limp Mojave rattlesnake. One of the most dangerous and venomous in the desert.

A shaky exhale seeps through my clenched teeth, when my head finally snaps out of its frozen state, realizing how close I came to the fangs poking out from the head of it. Due to the number of bites, Papa keeps a small stash of anti-venom in his exam room, but I’d probably die before I made it back to the house, since their venom has a neurotoxin that’d leave me damn near paralyzed within minutes.

“Oh, my God,” I manage to spit out, as he holds it up, examining the head of it. “I could’ve … that would’ve …”

His reaction was fast. Almost inhumanly fast. Like he’s been trained to kill them and it was only instinct guiding his actions.

On my own instinct, I rise up on tiptoes and wrap my arms around Six’s neck, noting the tremble in my muscles as I press against his chest. “Thank you,” I whisper.

The thud of the fallen snake is the only warning, before Six’s arms band around my waist, and I can hear his inhalation as he buries his face in my hair.

In the next breath, he pushes me away.

Head bowed, eyes cast away from mine, he rubs his hands across his skull, shifting on his feet, as if fighting some invisible force that I can’t see inside his mind. His eyes are tormented, for reasons I can’t begin to understand, and his muscles harden beneath his skin with the tension that strains his jaw.

He’s dangerous.

Papa’s words from before drift through my mind, and I quickly search for something to divert Six’s attention.

Lifting the dead snake at its tail, I hold it up, and Six pauses, his attention switching from me to the snake and back.

“Dinner?”

The corner of his lips raise only slightly, before he gives a nod, and whatever happened moments ago fizzles away.

* * *

A short break from chores means indulging in one of my favorite pastimes.

I raise the sling over my head and swing it around, whipping it faster, and hurl the stone through the air. It smacks into a battered tin can I’ve perched in a line of four, set upon a log about one hundred feet away. “Takes a bit of practice to get the aim just right.”

Six steps forward, and I string the loop of the sling over his thumb. Gliding my hand down the fibers, I set a rock into the pouch.

He gives me an uncertain glance, and I nod.

“Remember to release the thumb loop.”

Backing away, he puts a small bit of distance between us and swings the sling at his side. Faster and faster, it spins at his hip, before he raises it up to the level of his shoulder and steps into the throw.