no such thing. He cut a link from one of the hanging sausage chains, took a fat bite, and stood back to enjoy the show.
Talen raced toward the woods beyond, but River had the angle on him and sprinted to cut him off. Thank the Six she hadn’t had time to pick up anything but a stick. Talen veered toward the garden.
“Pick up the pace,” Nettle called out. “They’re gaining on you.”
“Coward!” Talen yelled back. He dashed around the garden fence, turned to avoid Ke, ran back toward the house, and found himself boxed in between the midden and the barn.
He had two choices. He could make a run at one of his dear siblings and hope to blow by, or he could go up the old walnut tree and hope they would stay at the bottom and do nothing more than shout insults and threats up at him.
He wouldn’t get by Ke and his long arms. Talen had enough room to get by River, but she was daring him, grinning at him to just try.
He made his decision.
Da had fashioned a wooden slab bench and put it next to the trunk of the giant walnut tree. Talen ran for the bench. When he was close enough, he took one running step to the bench then another to an old knob sticking out about five feet up the trunk. He followed the momentum upward, grabbed a branch, pulled himself up, and stood on a fat arm of the tree well out of the reach of his brother and sister.
“That’s about the dumbest place you could have chosen,” said Ke.
Talen climbed a few branches higher and looked down at the two of them. “The joke’s up.”
“We don’t have your hog-worn trousers,” said Ke. “You’re the one who loses things on a regular basis.”
Talen did not lose things on a regular basis.
He saw Ke bend over and pick up a number of rocks. “You come out of that tree or I’ll knock you out,” said Ke.
“No,” said Talen. “I think you need to give up your childish games.”
But Ke threw a rock instead.
Talen ducked. The rock flew straight and true and would have made a pretty bruise, but a small branch stood in the way and sent the rock wide. Goh, he needed to put more branches between him and those rocks, so Talen climbed until the branches were no bigger than his thumb.
He couldn’t see Ke or River from this height. Nettle stood over by the well, finishing his sausage, and using one hand to shade his eyes from the sun.
“You smelly bum,” Talen called down to him. “Do something!”
“Jump!” shouted Nettle. “He’s coming up.”
Talen heard the leaves rustling below as someone ascended toward him.
Nettle was a fine one to stand there and call out instructions. Talen must have been at least forty feet up in the air. The barn roof would have been perfect had it not been thirty feet away. There was nothing else around him but hard ground below. He had nowhere to go. He could not simply jump out of the tree at this height.
Ke was right—running up this tree had been idotic.
He caught a glimpse of Ke climbing below him and to the left.
Maybe he could get around him. Talen did not want to be at his mercy in the tree. He climbed down toward Ke. He would get close, then move to the other side and away.
“I’m going to give you one last chance,” said Ke. He looked up at Talen with that happy look that said Talen was a rabbit and he was a dog that had just found his next meal. He was maybe only six feet away.
Talen scuffed the branch and sent small particles of bark down into Ke’s face.
Ke ducked, and Talen made his move. All he needed to do was get to a branch four feet below him and to the right. It would be a quick climb from there to the ground.
He swung down, but Ke had been expecting the move, and suddenly he was grabbing at Talen’s leg.
Talen moved out on his branch. Ke followed. Talen jumped for another branch. He grabbed it with both hands, pulled himself upward, but before he could get a leg up, the branch cracked and swung him to the side.
It was dead and rotted.
Talen looked for something else to grab, but he couldn’t see anything close; then the branch popped again and broke entirely from the tree.