Chapter 2
“What just happened?” Max coughs out. “What the eff just happened?”
He doesn’t say “eff,” of course. Max swears a lot when Mom and Pop aren’t around. I try to stand, get myself ready to run again. Max tries to do the same, but his leg is pinned under a log, maybe even the one that hit us.
“Ben?” he says.
I clamber awkwardly over to him, feeling extremely wobbly on my legs, and I lift the log with one arm, just enough for him to scramble out from under.
“Are you hurt?” he asks.
I shake my head. I start to sign that I feel weird, but then I realize my other arm, the one I didn’t use to lift the log, isn’t moving. Max stares at it, wide-eyed.
There’s a bone poking up through my wrist.
Okay.
So there’s that.
I don’t feel any pain yet, but the sight of it makes me sit right back down, hitting the ground hard with my tailbone. No wonder my legs are wobbly.
“Can you run?” Max asks.
I gesture with my non-broken arm, like Obviously not, you idiot.
I’m not even sure I can stand up again. I know what Max is thinking, and that’s if he leaves me here, I’m not going to be able to get out of the way if the god comes back out of the lake.
Or for that matter, if any more gods come from the trees.
What if there’s a whole herd of them back there?
I think what Max just said: What the eff just happened?
“I’ll go get Pop, okay?” he says. “I’ll go as fast as I can.”
He grabs my shoulder and looks me in the eyes.
He can be an absolute shit sometimes (most of the time), but he’s still my brother and is hardly going to let me die.
He looks like he wants to say something, but I don’t know what I’d say in his position either.
Don’t die? Don’t disappear but also don’t stay here?
There’s nothing to say, so off he runs, dashing back through the non-burning part of the forest toward our farm.