Chapter 9

Day 19

I crawled on my stomach to a bush large enough to shield all three of us. Just ahead was a large clearing that looked like the town square of Tradition.

We had followed the path leading to Tradition. I followed Runner and pulled the peach cart. Puppy usually followed me; she seemed to enjoy traveling but occasionally whined for either food or attention. By now, I could easily tell which. Even though the path was public and other people occasionally passed us, Runner and I had agreed that it was safer staying on it. On the path, a farmboy, his slave, and his dog looked normal, at least to the two farmers we had met. Runner and I had waited on the edge of the trail to give the wagons room to pass, and our presence had merited barely a glance and a nod from the farmers. The farms on this side of the island were much closer together, and I felt that sneaking through the woods was likely to be noticed and might generate suspicion.

Late on the second morning after our mountain crossing, Runner spotted the town ahead and stopped suddenly. I was glad we hadn’t walked out into plain view of the inhabitants. I didn’t feel ready for that yet. Runner and I had retreated into the safety of the trees, and looked over the layout of the town.

The town was a rough oval, about a hundred yards long, forty wide. There were three lines of wooden buildings, and an open area in front of them. I was facing the middle of the open area.

The town square was not entirely empty. In the middle of it, barely thirty feet from me, there was a stage that reminded me of the ones used for hanging Academy graduates. But here it was used for punishment.

In the center of the stage, a single, forlorn boy was semi-suspended, not by his neck but by his wrist cuffs. The chains were attached to an overhead beam and held his arms widely separated above his head, with his toes just touching the floor of the stage—he couldn’t put his heels down. The boy’s back, left side, and the backs of his thighs were striped with fresh whip marks. Even the left side of his chest showed an angry welt. He was alone now, but probably not for long. As I watched, he groaned. He raised himself high on his toes to take the tension out of his arms, the muscles in his legs standing out and quivering. Within seconds his legs were quaking—I suspected he had made this move many times before, and his legs were at the end of their strength. They gave out quickly and left his arms and wrists to bear most of his weight again. He was whimpering, barely audible from where I hid. I had no way to know how long he had been there, but I suspected it had been a long time.

It was impossible to guess what the boy had done. Escape attempts were relatively rare, and I thought it unlikely I would stumble on the punishment for one the moment I hit town. More likely he had refused to work. Inevitably a few of the younger ones were rebellious. At first.

There were people walking to and fro on the boardwalk in front of the buildings, usually farmers. Each was accompanied by a single slave, sometimes with a doggirl. The slaves averted their gaze from the suffering vicuna on the stage. I was pretty sure I knew why. They had all seen more than they wanted already.

I buried my face against my arms on the ground. In my world, slaves were rarely disciplined publicly—control of slaves was generally considered a private matter. But that wasn’t the source of my discomfort. It was the knowledge that I would get the same treatment if I was caught. I had known it as an intellectual fact. Seeing it made it much more real. I could feel every muscle in my arms and legs aching in sympathy. And dread.

Runner whispered, “He did something bad, didn’t he?”

Not looking up, I nodded.

“Would they do that to us?”

“If they catch us.”

“Well, then they won’t catch us. They haven’t yet.”

Puppy had been whining softly earlier, but had been silent once we had begun whispering. She usually caught on quickly to the need for quiet.

I reached for Runner’s hand and gave it a squeeze. I looked up at last, looking over the rest of the town. “We need to watch for awhile. See what people do there. Maybe I can figure out what some of the buildings are for. If there are any boltcutters here, they might be in one of those buildings. A store—that’s where people get things they need. You can’t just take what you want. You’d have to trade ... like, the man in the store might want you to give him some of the peaches and then he’d let you have the boltcutters.”

Runner nodded. I suspected he might know about exchanging favors from his years growing up in the pen. Runner looked back at me. “Shouldn’t we be trying to find boats?”

I thought about it. With our goal so near, I had been putting more thought into finding transportation to the mainland. The best strategy I’d come up with was to disguise myself the same way Runner was, in clothes and without the slave gear. That way I could walk freely almost anywhere. I was hoping to find a way to cut the locks off, before anything else. But it couldn’t hurt to check out the docks and see what the situation was.

The ocean couldn’t be far. I heard a whisper of breakers on the beach, almost covered by the insect sounds of the forest.

A wagon emerged from the woods into the square, pushed by the usual six-slave team, all of them clearly tired as they arrived at the end of their trip. The farmer driving the wagon, ordered the slaves to stop, then turn toward the stage. A settler, who had been lounging in a wicker chair on the boardwalk, stood up and began walking toward the stage, carrying a whip. An involuntary whimper escaped my throat. I didn’t want to watch what I knew was coming next.

I nodded to Runner. “Let’s see where the boats are.” I crawled backward, away from the edge of town, with Runner and Puppy following.

As I stood and began walking, Runner whispered, “What about the cart?”

I blinked. I had forgotten about it, I was too eager to get away from the sight of that slave on the stage. “We’re going to cut through the forest to get to the docks. It’ll be easier without the cart. We can come back for it if we decide to go into town later.”

“Do you know where the boats are?”

“I can hear the ocean. Listen.”

After a moment of quiet, Runner nodded, and smiled. “I didn’t know we were that close.”

Are we really that close to getting away from the island? I wondered. The tiny seed of hope inside me began to sprout.

I led my friends back away from the town, so people in the town would be less likely to see us moving. Then we started to circle the town’s outskirts.

I wished I could close my ears. There was the smack! of whip against flesh, then a sudden cry from the slave on the stage. The smack! and the cry were repeated five more times at intervals of about a half-minute.

I didn’t need to be there to know what was happening. I had read all about it. The six slaves from the wagon had been led up onto the stage, had been told what the vicuna had done, and each of them in turn was forced to stand a few feet away from the punished slave and watch him receive a stroke from the whip. While the vicuna was on stage, every slave in town, and every slave just passing through, would see, close up, the results of violating any of the many rules imposed on slaves. Very few of them would ever need to be punished themselves. Seeing it was enough.

The slaves I’d seen on the boardwalk earlier had already had their turns watching. But each new slave arriving in town would see the punishment before continuing on their way.

I kept my hand over my stomach for a time, trying to keep my lunch down. After the six strokes, the worst of the victim’s suffering was over. For the time being.

I walked as quickly as I could, putting more distance between the punishment stage and me. I can’t help him, I told myself over and over. I can’t make them stop.

Runner looked back frequently, seeming distressed. He didn’t know as much as I did about what was happening back there, but he could make a good guess.

As we approached a peach tree, I felt sudden alarm bells going off in my head. Something didn’t feel right. Something left undone.

Runner suddenly said urgently, “Amy, you forgot...”

I flinched violently at the familiar snapping sound from underfoot, the vague alarms belatedly resolving into a mental voice shouting Trap! Trap!

I dropped to my knees, desperately scraping away the undergrowth from around my feet. One of the heavy spring-loaded bars of the trap had shot home across the edge of the trap, catching my hobble chain underneath it against the trap’s surface. As it was designed to do.

I muttered “Shit! Shit! Shit!” over and over. Then I wrapped my fingers around the bar and strained to pull it free, loosen it, bend it, do something with it, but it was far beyond my strength. I was shaking with fear and fury with myself. Since crossing the mountains, we had mostly followed established trails. The anti-trap vine wasn’t needed and would have looked suspicious. So I had been removing it for travel, restoring it when we left the trail for rest or refreshment. I had stepped on two traps, and Runner one, since the crossing, but neither of us had been in danger of being caught before.

Now I’d been thinking about the slave in the town square, and I’d forgotten the vine. My own mind, and Runner, had both tried to tell me. Too late.

I pulled the trap free of its semi-burial near the tree, revealing the chain securing it to the tree. Runner and I both tried to find a way to get me free of it, discussing it in low voices, as Puppy padded around us, yipping softly, uncertainly.

Still frowning at the trap, Runner asked, “When will they come and get you?”

I shrugged. “They might check the traps every day, or it could be a few days.” I looked around, then pointed. “Could you get me that stick, over there?”

Runner went quickly to retrieve the stick and brought it to me. I looked it over. It was more or less straight, about three feet long, a bit over an inch thick. Kneeling beside the trap, I inserted the stick between the metal bar trapping my chain and the plate underneath it, stood on the plate to anchor it and pulled the stick upward, straining, trying to bend the bar.

With a loud snap, the stick broke, the piece in my hand flying away, almost hitting Runner. I gritted my teeth, pounding the ground with my fist. Any stronger stick would be too thick to fit in the space under the bar.

Runner took my arm, biting his lip fretfully. “Amy, they’re going to hurt you, like that slave. We have to get you out of here.”

“I know, I know. I’ll try to think of something.”

Runner looked at the trap for a time. “Amy, what’s ‘shit’?”

I blinked. “What?”

“You were talking about it, right after you stepped on the trap. Is it something that would help?”

I gave him a wan smile. “Uhhh, no. It’s ... just something to say when you’re really mad. What it is ... well, it’s the stuff that comes out behind you.” I brushed my hand past my backside.

“Oh.” Runner giggled briefly. “We call it poop.”

I smiled again. “Yeah, we call it that too sometimes.” I picked up the remains of the stick. “We need something like this, only metal. Something they call a crowbar. I don’t know if they have those.”

Runner stood and surveyed the area. “I don’t see one.”

“I didn’t mean just laying around. There could be something like it in a farmer’s cabin. Or in one of those buildings, in town.” I gestured in the direction of the town. “Try a farm first.”

Runner gave me a serious look. “Amy, I’m not leaving you.”

“Runner, I need...”

“You need me to be here with you! If a settler finds you here, I need to be with you so he can see you’re my slave.”

I blinked. I wanted to argue, but Runner was right. Even caught in a trap, I wasn’t a runaway if my owner was with me.

It seemed we would just have to wait. I thought for a moment we might hurry the process along—Runner could go into town and tell someone in authority that his slave had been trapped. But it was too dangerous to send Runner off by himself to deal with strange settlers. He didn’t know what to say and what not to. And as long as there was time to consider other ways out, I wanted to use it.

I sighed, picked up the stick, managed a smile at Puppy, and threw the stick. Runner and I played Fetch with Puppy for a time, then played the rocks-and-circles game, with Puppy going back and forth between us soliciting affection.

At last, as the sun set and it was clearly too late in the day for anyone to come checking on traps, Runner finally shed his clothing. The three of us snuggled together for the night. The warmth and closeness of Runner and Puppy helped me forget the new mess I’d stumbled into, at least long enough to sleep.

Day 20

Runner and I made love in the morning with a feeling of desperation. I wanted to record the soft, warm texture of Runner’s skin, the look of his face with his eyes closed and mouth open, the taste of his lips, the feeling of him inside me, the sounds of passion rising in us. I knew this could be the last time. Puppy stayed quiet; she’d learned that she would have a turn right afterward.

I wished I could feel the peace of hanging one more time. Runner and I had been starting each morning with a practice session. I could see a log to stand on some fifty feet away, but I had no way to get there. Runner saw me looking in that direction. “It’s okay, Amy. We can hang after you get out of the trap.” He kissed me again.