The Old Gods Return

In this week’s odd prompts challenge, Misha Burnett and I traded writing ideas. I suggested he detail why someone was both prickly and poisonous. He challenged me to explore the old gods’ return after a young girl is removed from a cult. However, I seem to have forgotten about the “twenty years later” part...

“Blast the rotting spots!” Savannah swore, and glanced sideways to see if anyone had overheard her. She tossed the book aside onto the wooden plank floor.

Her brown eyes met Hugh’s, across the porch steps. Her shoulders slumped for a moment before remembering no one here would care, in this strange neighborhood filled with cookie-cutter houses and bread with no personality trapped in shiny, colorful plastic bags.

“Why do you say that?” Hugh asked. “You say it like it’s a swear.” His eyes were half-shut under long lashes she envied.

Savannah turned her head and studied him with narrowed eyes. His face was blank, but she thought his core was tense. Perhaps he was interested after all. Perhaps he was bored. She couldn’t tell.

“It is a swear,” she muttered.

He closed his eyes but didn’t move away. “I don’t understand it.”

“Everyone tells me not to talk about it, but nobody will tell me why.” Savannah leaned back against the railing and tried to imitate his laid-back posture. She breathed in the scent of new grass and damp earth.

He sighed. “So tell me.”

She glanced up over her shoulder. The back door was open with only a screen to stop the words she was tired of holding inside, but she didn’t care anymore.

“You know that I’m a foster kid.” It wasn’t a question. They were all foster kids here.

He nodded.

“My parents were part of a big church. In that compound with all the buildings. Mama Rosa says it’s a cult,” she said.

The carefully pronounced words felt odd in her mouth. A cult meant bad, meant weird, meant crazy. This was the crazy place, with its trimmed unnatural hedges and carefully planted gardens, not a weed found between the perfect, uncracked sidewalks, covered with pastel chalks.

Hugh opened his eyes. “So?”

“So, it’s a swear in the church,” Savannah said. She glared at him and frowned. She gave up on copying his cool don’t-care pose and kicked a stubby leg out over the porch stairs.

He was unfazed. “Okay, so it’s a swear. Why were you swearing?”

“This history book doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t match anything I ever learned before. I was a good student until I came here.”

She felt her eyes starting to water and stared out into the yard with its too-perfect leafy green tree, fresh with early spring buds. So what if the swing hanging from a thick branch was fun? It wasn’t home, filled with the smell of sourdough bread baking and the sounds of chanting.

Savannah tried not to blink and failed. Water dripped slowly down the right side of her face. She pressed closer to the railing and rubbed her face against the round wooden pillar, hoping Hugh wouldn’t see.

He grunted. “Least you can read it.”

She wouldn’t acknowledge his weakness, but was grateful he’d shared. Foster kids had to stick together. She’d been here only two weeks, but even she knew that.

Something moved in the woods behind that perfect tree and the rope and tire swing. “Hey, you see that?”

“What is that?” Hugh sat up. “Something yellow. Big, too.”

Branches crackled as the big yellow blob emerged from the woods, crashing through the undergrowth.

“Oh, sweet holy pudding,” Savannah breathed. She jumped to her feet.

Hugh rose more slowly. “Was that another swear?”

“They were right,” she said, jumping up and down.

“Who was right?”

Savannah couldn’t keep the grin off her face. Her bare feet danced over the worn wooden porch. “My real parents were right. Mama Rosa can call it a cult all she wants, but they were right!”

Hugh backed toward the door. “Uh-huh.”

She stepped down and spread her arms wide. “Hail and blessings, holy giant banana!”