I didn’t pay much attention to hiding my tracks – Mama was to good to try and hide any of that, she’s be able to track me pretty fast, so my only goal was to get to Riverside as soon as I could. Once I was in Riverside I could easily hide from Mama, but until then I was easy prey for her to hunt down.

And yes, I was aware how stupid it was for me to attempt something like this, but it was my only hope. No one in town or around our town would protect me from Mama. My Dad’s parents might stall if I hide behind them and begged, but they’d very likely insist I just get it over with anyway.

But I didn’t want to go through a huge ceremony.

I didn’t want to get hit with branches.

I didn’t want to drink that puke juice.

I didn’t want to have empty eggshells thrown at me.

I just wanted to not do any of that, and I didn’t think that was a huge ask.

I heard the rushing of water as I neared where Dead Man’s Creek was about halfway between my town and Riverside. Half the year it was a real gentle creek, the sort that babbled and let you lazily float boats fashioned from sticks and leaves down it, but once the snow on the mountains melted in March it became a real monster up until early November, carving a deeper and deeper scar into the earth every year. At it’s deepest, it was up to about my neck, but the water was faster than any horse could run and it was nearly all rock that it rushed over.

If you tried to cross through the waters on foot or horseback, it would just sweep you and the horse away, and not only that, but it’d thrash you along all the rocks inside it and rip you apart by the time you got to Elk River, the main river that ran through the colony and the one Riverside had been founded along.

Our town was the closest to where the water was the worst, so it was a huge deal for the adults to guard the river so no one was killed. We were always building and maintaining the three bridges that went over the bad parts. People took shifts to watch it during the bad months, with there always being about six men along different parts of it warning travelers which bridges were the safest to use.

“Water’s swollen real bad, fairy bait!” I heard a voice yell. I rolled my eyes and looked over to where a river guard was sitting on a perch in the trees with his lantern, a big smile on his face. It was my cousin Rupert, one of my Mama’s cousins that came down from Daisy Fields to work as a chef at the restaurant in Citrus Grove after Joy died and Laurie was taken to help us out. He was a cousin I looked up to because he would go to the woods to forage for mushrooms and had to take on a boar or two before, once with his bare hands. I mean, it was a small one, but even the little ones could kick your butt. “Take Alma Bridge!” He said, pointing to the direction of the bridge.

I thanked him around a scowl before I followed the path a little further, checking the sign to take the left path toward Alma Bridge, the highest bridge as well as the only covered one of the three our town had build to cross the waters.

Sure enough as I crossed the bridge, I heard the waters violently rushing across the rocks – there was a high pitched squeal of what I was sure was a large boar that was there and gone, and I know it was one that had been caught up in the waters.

By the time it hit Elk River, that boar would be in little pieces no bigger than my thumb.

The river….the creek, I guess.

It was the devil.

I followed the path then, running as fast as I could as the sky became brighter.

Mama would be up now, I think.

I needed to cover more ground.

I licked my lips and ran off the path once I recognized where I was, running through the brush and woods, swiping away at the branches that violently slapped against me. I tripped onto the footpath and started sprinting like crazy, knowing it would take me to Riverside. Maybe not as quickly as the stone path, but I’d get there all the same, and it’d be in a part of Riverside that I could disappear into.

Between us and Riverside there was another town, Iron Horse, which in case anyone couldn’t figure out what a big profession was there, a lot Blacksmiths worked. We had a class field trip there a couple years ago to see what it was like working as a Blacksmith and every year after me they did that same field trip because we still didn’t have one in town yet. They kept hoping one of my generation would do it, but so far I don’t think anyone had any interest.

But I mean, why did we need one?

Iron Horse wasn’t far from our town, and I was there in about forty minutes of solid running.

I took a moment to catch my breath on a bench outside their grocery store, squinting up at the dawn. People were out and about now, but as this wasn’t my town, most people didn’t recognized me and so I was left mostly alone as I went to the drinking fountain to get water.

Someone recognized my boots, however and asked me how Big Blue was doing – they might not know me, or my Dad, but they knew for sure who Big Boris Blue was. He was one of those founders that just...everyone knew. I told him he was doing good and was recovering from knee surgery, and we chatted very briefly as I caught my breath before I started jogging toward the direction of Riverside.

I had about another solid thirty minutes straight of running, but I was so close!

I was about two minutes out of two when I heard the thundering of hooves.

I tensed, whipping around to see a familiar white hat and feathers before I was suddenly yanked off my feet by the front of my jacket and tossed onto the horse. The saddle dug right into my gut and I grunted, kicking out as I struggled, a hand on my back to hold me in place.

“Good try, oh son of mine, but not good enough!” I heard Mama call over the wind.

I growled and slapped her jean clad legs, Mama laughing as I tried to sit up, Mama grabbing the back of my jacket to keep me from sliding off the horse as I pushed up. “This is STUPID!” I shouted, feeling disappointed and angry at myself for not having made it to Riverside.

After I was able to sit up and lean back against Mama, Mama firmly kissed my cheek, saying against my skin “My little fairy bait,” Before she blew air against my cheek and made a loud farting noise. I scowled and reached up to rub my face as she laughed, kicking at the horse to make it go faster as we tore back down through Iron Horse.

“I don’t want to get hit with eggs!” I shouted over the wind.

“Then you shouldn’t have gotten caught!”

“This is stupid!”

“Stupid?!” she laughed, “This is practice, my love! The Woodland Spirit is a far better hunter and tracker than I am, and if you can’t even outrun me, how are you supposed to our run them?!”

“There is no such thing as Woodland Spirits!” I angrily shouted, Mama scoffing. “It’s just a stupid creature people made up because they couldn’t talk bad about the -” I stilled, my mother’s gaze cutting to me briefly. I didn’t need to say it. She knew.

Nightwalkers.

The Novus sapiens.

The New Men.

The Night Men.

The Nightwalkers.

We couldn’t say bad things about our overlords or we’d get our tongues cut out literally. Or we’d end up like grandpa with a plastic jaw.

If we were lucky.

“-and I don’t see why I have to freaking get whipped with branches and pelted with eggs when we don’t have to worry about ever getting snatched by them!” I continued angrily.

She suddenly jerk on the reigns and the only thing that kept me from flying face first over the top of the horse as it abruptly stopped was her arm locked around my chest.

“You didn’t listen at all to what I said last night, did you? Woodland Spirits don’t snatch you. They seduce you. They lure you away from your family until you are lost in the darkness and can never find your way out. They don’t win unless you are in love with them, Renny. They-!” she said, aggressively looping her fingers in the air like she was making a flower with dozens of petal, the sign for the camilla, the flower used as a universal symbol for the nightwalkers. The sunflower was for the daywalkers. “They snatch. They steal. They are creatures of this world and act like animals. Woodland Spirits are an entirely different beast. They are otherworldly.” She got a look in her eye then, a tension in her face like she wanted to say something else, but refused to word it, instead shaking her head a little before she smiled at me. “Woodland Spirits are magical creatures.”

“They’re not real.” I said then, holding her bright gaze, her lips thinning and brow knitting. “And I think it’s stupid that I have to spend my birthday running away from a ceremony that supposed to protect me from imaginary creatures that will chase me.”

If she was upset at my words, it was gone quickly when she smiled slyly down at me. “You and your sisters more than most need to be beaten extra hard with the green pine branch and hit extra hard with the oils, because you and your sisters all LOVE to be chased. Don’t lie to your mother. I know.” She said as she gave the reins another jerk, eyeing me as I rolled my eyes. “If a Woodland Spirit ever found one of you, you would love the attention and you’d love being hunted down because you are exactly the type of daywalker they look for.” I gave her a sharp look and her eyes widened as she lowered her face to mine so I saw nothing but her eyes and big grin. “An intelligent, strong prize to win!” She snapped the air in front of me with her teeth and I pulled back, shaking my head as she patted my chest. “But you are the one I especially worried about. So you know why, my love? My sweet first born?”

I grunted, smiling tightly as cousin Rupert gave me a cheeky wave as he watched us trot by, giving me a nasally ‘happy birthday’. I made a rude gesture at him, Mama slapping my hand.

“I worry about you in particular because your sisters can identify a threat,” she continued, “And so at least I would know that if they left with a Woodland Spirit, it would be their own choosing. But you, my love, my firstborn son, my sweet little artist-” she said in a sweet tone, then dropping to a flat one “-are to much like your father.”

“Handsome to a fault?” I said as I sneered at the early morning sun.

“So handsome you can’t see beyond your own nose!” She laughed, grabbing my side and making me wince away with it with laughter, Mom cackling. “You only see what you WANT to see, and then when the truth reveals itself, you panic and freak out and then you mourn when it’s to late to escape the corner you’ve backed yourself into. You would go with the Woodland Spirit, and then you would be miserable the rest of your life because it wasn’t really your choice – you just foolishly go into the darkness thinking you were going to help someone, or have a good time, or maybe because you thought you couldn’t live without the character they pretended to be...and then when you realized the truth, you would be to far gone in the woods to ever come back home.” she kissed my cheek hard, saying with with a sigh. “I think you should always keep blessed oil on you, my love. You out of all of my babies will need it the most...”

I sighed, aggravated that I was caught, and super aggravated that my younger sisters were seen as more aware of things than me when they would all count out twenty six spins exactly whenever one of them broke a promise to protect themselves from karma.

“So stupid.” I mumbled.

“Boo.” Mama said as we neared town, patting my hand. “We need to stop by the store to pick up a few things before we go back home. Do you need anything?”

“I don’t think they sell normal parties, so no.” I hissed, Mama laughing before she roughly reached up and pulled on my cheek.