Chapter 3

Day 2

I have no idea how many hours I sat there, in the dark, the rain pounding down on me. I eventually cried myself out, but couldn’t get back to sleep, or even persuade myself to lie down again. I had just about convinced myself that I’d gone completely blind for some reason, when I noticed that I could see the outline of the nearest tree in front of me.

My waking nightmare of becoming a near-worthless work slave dissolved, and my spirits rose momentarily. But I plunged into despair again when I thought about my friends at the Academy. I started crying again, thinking about being a Noose girl and then losing all that.

Somehow, an image of Andrew, smirking at my fate, drew me out of my funk. My depression vanished in a hot flash of anger. He can’t beat me! I insisted to myself. I can’t let him beat me.

The rain had subsided to a light sprinkle, then gave way to a heavy fog. I could only see about ten feet. Maybe that’s good, I decided. Nobody can see me.

I roused myself enough to crawl to the still-rushing river for a drink. I had no idea whether it was the same one I’d been following yesterday, but if it was, at least I was on the opposite bank, so I’d made some progress.

I stood up and started walking, looking for food. After a time I saw one of the nut trees looming in the fog, and sat down to begin gathering nuts.

I piled about a dozen of them beside the trunk, and picked up a heavy rock to smash the shells. I scooted back against the trunk, then noticed something hard under my buttock, and brushed at the offending spot with my hand.

I bent down for a closer look. It wasn’t a rock, as I’d assumed. It was an oval of steel. I pulled up on it; it was a link in a chain, half-buried in the mud.

The chain was wrapped around the base of the tree trunk, slightly below ground level and covered in dirt so it couldn’t be seen. I carefully traced the chain in the other direction, away from the tree.

I gasped as I found the platter-like shape it connected to. My first impression was of a bear trap, but as I uncovered more of the device from the mud and ivy concealing it, I was more puzzled. It was about eighteen inches across, eight-sided like a stop sign, each side having a metal rod enclosed in a spring projecting out from one corner in line with the side. I wasn’t sure what the purpose was but I took the fist-sized rock I’d picked up for cracking shells and dropped it on the middle of the platter.

Even though I expected something of the sort, I was still startled when the spring-loaded rods simultaneously shot along the edges of the plate, closing to form an unbroken octagon an inch above the periphery of the platter. I tried to pull one back to its original position, but it was now locked in place.

Suddenly, I realized the purpose of the trap, and I tossed it away from me in alarm. No!! I came so close to stepping on that without ever seeing it!

The trap had been invisible to me as I walked around the tree gathering nuts. I’d only noticed it when I accidentally sat on the chain securing it to the tree. If I had stepped onto the middle of the trap, one of the rods would have shot across directly over my hobble chain, and trapped the chain between the rod and the platter.

No doubt slaves did run away on occasion, despite the hobble chains and the vigilant dogs watching them. Slaves were worth too much to want to injure them so they couldn’t work. This trap was designed so that it wouldn’t hurt a Runaway slave, it would simply catch his hobble chain, and hold him where he was until he could be reclaimed.

I tried desperately to release the rods, any one of the eight. All were locked in place. I saw keyholes in the mechanism. Whoever had put this trap here could come and unlock it. I sat fiddling with the trap, my breakfast forgotten for the moment. I realized that I simply couldn’t open the trap without the key. If it had caught me, I would have been stuck by this tree until somebody came to let me go.

There was food in the tree, which indeed was probably the reason that particular tree had been selected—it would attract a runaway trying to live off the land. But the food would only last so long. A few days, at the most, and I would have consumed all of the nuts I could reach.

And if I couldn’t get myself loose, then what? Starve?

Shivering, I shook my head. There was no question in my mind about priorities. I would call for help, would scream myself hoarse if I had to. I was close enough to the farm I saw yesterday to be heard from there. My guess was that the farmers there had set the trap here. That farm would become my new home for the rest of my life. But even a lifetime of strenuous drudgery as a work slave, was better than dying alone, my body left to rot and be torn by animals, my thanerone never recovered. My whole life had no meaning if I couldn’t end it properly, providing thanerone: fertility, health and luck for other people. Even if it meant protecting the horrible slaveowners of Purity Island.

I had no doubt that any subling would feel the same. To become thanerone is the reason we are here, I reminded myself. Not that I needed the reminder; it was the central fact of every subling’s existence.

I’ve got to figure out what to do, I told myself, and I’ll think better on a full stomach.

I reached for the rock again and began cracking nuts.

Wishing I had a toothpick, I hugged my knees, biting my lip in thought. I’m not going anywhere until I can figure out how to be safe from these traps.

It seemed reasonable to assume I hadn’t found the only slave trap on the entire island. They must be scattered all around. It had been a complete accident that I had discovered this one before springing it. I might not be so lucky next time.

I still have some hopes of getting home, but as soon as I step on one of these things, all that hope is instantly gone.

If I could somehow...

As the fog had begun clearing, I could see more of the world around me, and I noticed the creeping vine spiraling up a nearby tree trunk as if the tree were a barber pole. I’d been seeing the things all along the way, but hadn’t given them much attention.

I sprang to my feet and walked awkwardly toward the tree, bent over to hold my hobble chain off the ground. I can’t keep walking this way, but I won’t need to. Solution right here. I reached the tree safely, knelt and scraped several square feet in front of the trunk to make sure I hadn’t missed one of the mechanisms, and breathed a sigh of relief.

Reaching as high as I could along the trunk, I pulled the vine away from the trunk—it was clingy, but it gave. It was too thick to cut through it with my fingernails, so I picked up a rock and used it to break the vine. I unwound about ten feet of it, and broke it off at the far end.

I wrapped it around my waist at the center, and tied it in a knot in front of my stomach. After a moment’s thought, I slipped it around my waist so that the knot was in back. I bent down then, lifted up the center link in my hobble chain, and tied the loose ends of the vine around the link. The vine would now hold the entire chain off the ground as I walked. If I stepped on a trap now, it would miss the chain. As an added bonus, the chain wouldn’t get snagged on rocks any more. I’d nearly tripped a hundred times, already. No more of that. The one problem was that I’d have to take even shorter steps than before; I couldn’t stretch the chain could out in a straight line. I was willing to pay that cost.

With a feeling of accomplishment, I resumed my journey along the bank of the river.

The rain had stopped, but the air was still heavy with moisture. I’d been creeping along for perhaps an hour, listening more intently than before, after yesterday’s near-disaster. My carefulness was rewarded when I identified a sound that seemed very much out of place. It seemed to be children laughing, shouting—playing.

Oh, right. Not out of place at all. I realized I was close to a breeding farm.

I dropped to my stomach and crept forward on my elbows and knees. The river I’d been following upstream was coming from under a wooden fence, about forty feet long. Where the fence crossed over the river, vertical metal bars projected downward from the bottom of the fence into the water. No kids getting out that way. Assuming the thought of escaping even occurs to them. The fenced pens holding various age groups were the entire world for the youngsters inside them.

The fence made a right turn, then went on for at least a hundred, maybe two hundred yards. In front of the fence there was a well-trodden walkway of packed dirt. At its far end, two slaves were struggling to pull a heavily-laden wheeled cart. Probably food for the pens. The slaves were accompanied by two doggirls. As I watched, both slaves pushed several buckets of what I assumed were food through a window-like opening in the fence. They received an equal number of buckets in return. Full of waste, probably. And the waste is probably used for fertilizing the fields.

I won’t be following this river any farther. There’s probably more of the co-op beyond the end of the breeding farm pens. I don’t want to check to find out.

I turned to the side and crawled for some time before I felt safe enough to stand up again. I started walking again, looking for another river to follow.

At my second stop for food, I stepped on a trap. I stifled a shriek as the rods snapped closed, but they missed my hobble chain because of the vines.

Day 3

The rain had started up near nightfall the previous day, this time with lightning and thunder. I’d spent a sleepless night huddled against a tree trunk. As before, the rain was slowed by the leaves but it still poured down on me. The absolute blackness of the night was interrupted by frequent lightning flashes, showing my surroundings in near-blinding, split-second images. Each flash was followed by a rattling boom that echoed through the trees.

At daybreak the rain had slacked off to a tolerable drizzle. I spent an hour or so gathering nuts and peaches for breakfast, and thought about the increased danger of trying to travel on inadequate sleep. After eating I sighed and tore some limbs out of the middle of a nearby bush. Then I crawled into the hiding place I’d made, and immediately fell asleep.

I woke up feeling groggy but better, ate again, and resumed walking. But sunset came in just over an hour. The heavy cloud cover made the night nearly pitch-black, so I curled up on the ground in a dense stand of trees, and finished catching up on sleep.

Day 4

I woke up crying. I’d been dreaming about a practice session with Jana, and now I was feeling overwhelmed by how much I missed the Family, missed the excitement and commitment to purpose so central to life at the Academy. Above all, I missed hanging.

I sat up and peevishly adjusted the vine so it wouldn’t chafe my waist so much. I hated having to wear it, but I needed it to keep me out of the traps. As I pulled at the vine, I had an idea.

The one vine isn’t strong enough. But there are plenty more.

I didn’t even wait until after breakfast. I jumped up and looked around for a tree with vines. There, that one.

I worked up a sweat in the warm, humid air, but I soon had three ten-foot lengths of vine strung out along the ground. I started braiding them together, and only stopped when my stomach finally insisted on some attention. I ate quickly and returned to work.

I looked around, again, for just the right arrangement of trees ... there! There were any number of fallen logs amid the standing trees in all parts of the forest. So far, they had just been obstructions for me to walk around or step over. I found one beside a tree with a perfectly-placed overhanging branch.

I tied a slip knot in one end of my impromptu rope, flung the other end over the branch and secured it. My heart was pounding. This was the first excitement I had felt on the island, I stepped onto the log and slipped the noose over my head. I had nothing to use to tie my hands, and I didn’t want to without a partner, so I simply clasped them tightly behind my back. Almost too excited to breathe properly, I closed my eyes, spent a moment calming myself, and carefully stepped off the log.

At once, all of the tension, all of the fear, all of the worries fled, replaced by a feeling of being ... at home. No matter what horrors the future might hold, as long as I could hang, I felt better. After a few minutes, I started a practice drill including several of the new elements Jana and I had been working on—I couldn’t do full kicks with the hobble chain, but I could easily manage Jana’s feet-tied moves.

At last I reluctantly stepped back onto the log, and reached up to the branch to steady myself. My internal clock told me I’d been hanging for thirteen minutes. I could have gone longer, but I didn’t want to overdo it. This was my first session in five days.

I untied the rope from the branch, wrapped it around my waist and tied it in place. There was no way I would leave it behind. Feeling it around me warmed the cold, desolate place inside me that the island’s heat couldn’t reach.

Around midday, patches of blue showed through the clouds for the first time in three days. I lunched on peaches, sitting in the welcome shade beneath the tree that had grown them. Lunch had the lighthearted feeling of a picnic. I wished I could share it with Grant, and soon lost myself in a reverie of what Grant and I would talk about on this picnic, the laughs we would share, the love we would make. Finally, I stood up and went on.

I froze suddenly in mid-step, holding my breath. The lightness ahead had resolved itself into a clearing much larger than those I’d been skirting around. I slowly crept closer, and saw that I had reached my immediate goal—the island’s central mountain ridge. I’d been walking up a gentle slope for some time.