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  “Please, don’t do it again. It h — h — hurts!” Her sobs also hurt, and she clutched her straining belly. “I promise I won’t tell anyone if you’ll let me go now. Really, I promise.”

  “Hell, you ain’t gonna tell anyone, anyway,” Jackie said. “Because if you do,” he picked up a long sheath knife beside him and let the sunlight glitter on the blade, “I’ll cut you up like a rabbit for the stew-pot. But first, I’ll let you watch me gut your momma. They’ll find her sitting in her favorite chair with her innerds curled up in her lap.”

  Jerry heaved himself up out of the water and joined in this new bit of fun. “But before we carve her up, we’ll have some fun with her.”

  “Stop! Stop it!” Tina cried. She held her hands over her ears to block out the sounds, but the images were already in her mind. “Please, stop. Let me go, please…please!”

  “Hmm…” Jackie moaned as he stretched again before he answered, like he was actually considering her pleadings. But, then, “Naw, I ain’t done.”

  Tina shivered at the pictures in her mind of the threatened mutilations to her mother. But if she told what had happened, surely Jackie and Jerry wouldn’t be left free to carry out their threats. Would they? What if no one believed her? It was her word against theirs. And Jerry’s father was important in the village. Even Jackie’s father could be very persuasive when he wanted to be, when he had a reason to be. And he certainly wouldn’t sit quietly while Jackie was punished on her say-so. So, was she doomed to stay here and let them do it again? And again…and yet again? How many times could they do it? How many times could she stand it before she died? If they kept doing it, how much damage would they do to her? And how did she know they wouldn’t kill her when they finally were done? That would probably be the safest thing for them to do. And the more she thought about it, the more certain she became that they wouldn’t let her leave the glade alive. They couldn’t.

  Jerry had let himself slip backwards into the water again and lazed there with his face skyward, his eyes half closed. Jackie was flat on his back again with his eyes closed, soaking up the filtered rays of the sun, and his head still rested firmly on her clothes.

  Tina launched to her feet, and, abandoning any hope of recovering her clothes, she turned and dashed off down the trail to the village.

  She was coming up to full running speed when she heard Jerry splashing to the bank and Jackie bellow out, “You goddamed bitch! Get your ass back here!”

  “You can’t get away! We’ll run you down!”

  “Don’t you forget what I said! I’ll carve up your momma good! I’ll gut her like a fish!”

  “Yeah, then we’ll come and get you. You think anyone’s gonna believe you? You’re dead meat, bitch!”

  But she continued to run, and she quickly realized their voices were fading in the distance. They weren’t chasing her.

  She stayed on the trail even though it contained small rocks and twigs that cut and poked into the soles of her bare feet. Each footfall was like stepping into a nest of angry wasps, but she didn’t dare slow down. The forest floor would have been easier on her feet, but it would slow her down. And if Jerry and Jackie did pursue her, they would most likely stay on the trail where they wouldn’t have to go slow.

  The warm wind from her flight had almost dried the blood on her thighs, but the source of that flow, the tearing of tender flesh, sent lightning flashes of pain through her groin with the movement of her legs.

  Her vision blurred periodically with the tears that streamed down her face, tears of pain, and of fear, anger, rage beyond anger, embarrassment at the ease with which she had been trapped, disappointment and disillusion in persons she had trusted. But she knew the trail back to the village and kept her pace at a sprint even with her gasping lungs threatening to burst through her ribs.

  She would tell. She would make them pay for what they did. The people of the village wouldn’t let them hurt her or her momma. They would punish Jerry and Jackie and would never let them do what they had said they would do.

  Or would they? Maybe Jerry and Jackie were right. Maybe they knew no one would believe her. That’s why they didn’t even bother to chase her. They knew it wasn’t necessary.

  Suddenly, as she rounded a bend in the trail, a figure stood in front of her, dark-skinned and with arms stretched wide as they reached for her. With her tear-blinded sight feeding off the images from her mind, she put Jerry’s face to it and screamed.

  “No! Let me go! Please, don’t do it again!”

  The arms that enveloped her were strong and relentless. She might as well have fought against the limbs of one of the forest oaks.

  “No! No! Not again! Please, not again! It hurts! Let me go!”

  Her screams covered over the words spoken into her ear, words that didn’t threaten; words that finally, in their relentless insistence, broke through the wall of panic about her.

  “…not hurt you. You’re safe now. No one will hurt you. No one will hurt you. That’s right, take a breath, honey. Another. Take a deep breath, hold it…now let it out. That’s better. You’re going to be okay, now. No one is going to hurt you.”

  It wasn’t Jerry, after all. It was his dad, Uncle Joe. Standing head and shoulders above most of the men in the village, and, indeed, seeming to have the strength of an oak tree in his mighty arms, Joe Louis McDaniel was the classic gentle giant. She had seen him pick up a baby bird in his massive hands and return it to its nest with a delicacy most people would never have achieved.

  And now she was in his arms. She could not imagine a safer place in all the world. She wrapped her arms about his waist and clung, burying her face against his shirt front.

  “Tina, child,” Joe’s baritone was like the rumble of distant thunder. “What happened? Why are you running like the devil himself was after you? Where are your clothes? And, oh, Lord, child, what is all that blood about?”

  She felt safe in Uncle Joe’s arms. She had lived next to Uncle Joe, his new wife, Thuy, and Jerry since they had all come to the river six years ago. She and her momma had relied on Joe Louis McDaniel for much in those years, and he had filled much of the void left in her heart by her father’s death in those terrible days long ago. Growing up, Tina saw Jerry as an older brother or uncle, although, with ten years between them, not very close. But how long could she stay there if she told Uncle Joe it was Jerry, his own son, who had done that terrible thing? She could say it was just Jackie, but she couldn’t think clearly enough to work out how it was Jackie but not Jerry. Would Jerry back Jackie with an alibi? Of course, he would, because, if he wouldn’t, Jackie would certainly implicate Jerry if he was about to be blamed. What would Uncle Joe think of her then? Would he still love her if she brought about the downfall of his son? She couldn’t say nothing had happened; it was obvious that something had. But she couldn’t tell who had done it. At least, she couldn’t say it was Jerry and Jackie that had done it.

  “Who did this to you? Tell me, Tina. It’s okay, they won’t hurt you, I promise. Who did it?”

  She kept her face buried against his shirt, shaking her head as she quickly formed a plan, a lie that she thought would stand up.

  “I don’t know who they were. I’ve never seen them before. They weren’t from the village. There was two of ‘em, one black and one white.” Too late, she realized she had said too much. How many pairs of men, one black and one white, are roaming around the countryside? She bit her lip for a moment, and then went on, “The dark one might have been Hispanic or something. He might not have been black like you and Jerry — I mean, he was dark, but it was dark in the woods, so I might not have —”

  “Hush, now, hon. Let’s just get you back to the village and to Lila right quick. You can tell me and Jason and the others after we get you better. Come on now,” he picked her up as gently and as easily as he had the baby bird. He didn’t seem to be suspicious about her lie. Maybe he just took it as the ranting of a panicky rape victim. She wrapped her arms about his thick
neck and buried her face against his broad chest as he turned and strode back down the trail.

  CHAPTER 6

  Raven looked back at Sherri and the man who cradled her in his arms. Judging from the frowns and the looks of confusion and puzzlement they both wore they had heard at least part of the conversation between Raven and Emmie. She looked back down the steep slope of the trail to where the kryls would soon appear from behind a pile of boulders and brush. She looked back at Emmie, at Emmie’s pleading eyes, and nodded.

  “Okay,” Emmie said, relieved. “We’ll do one at a time. You go first with the baby. Then you can be there for Satan. He may get a little agitated and need some soothing. Then the girl, Sherri, him, and me last.”

  Raven peered down at the creek bubbling and cascading down the steep cut in the hillside before tumbling over boulders sixty feet below. She gazed over at the top of the trail fifty feet across the canyon. She looked down into the trusting eyes of the infant in her arms and again at the baby’s wide-eyed mother, and finally into Emmie’s eyes. Remembering the time back in the beginning when Woody had carried across another waterway in her first, terrifying encounter with levitation, she managed a weak smile and nodded.

  Emmie heard gasps from Sherri and the man with her, but she kept her concentration on Raven and the baby as they rose up a foot and floated out beyond the edge of the cliff. She maintained eye contact with Raven until her friend closed her eyes, after which she switched her focus back and forth between Raven’s receding figure and the clearing near the top of the hill across the chasm.

  Moving at about double the speed of a fast walking man, it didn’t take Raven long to reach solid ground. When her feet settled on the ground, she opened her eyes and waved back at Emmie.

  Satan took the trip better than Emmie expected. He had become accustomed to the feeling of floating above the ground, so whether the ground was two feet beneath him or sixty, the feeling was the same. Most likely, Raven was telling him over and over that all was well, even when, partway across, he did squirm a couple of times when his head turned enough so he could look down. But he never whimpered a sound. On the far side, Emmie settled him down as Raven directed her to a bed of pine needles she had hastily pushed together with her toe.

  When Emmie turned to Sherri, two frowning and determined faces glared back at her. The man had knelt so Sherri could comfort her daughter, whom she had wrapped in an encircling arm.

  Sherri started to protest, but Emmie cut her off. “Your baby is over there. The only way you are going to get him back is by going over there, yourself. You can’t go back down the trail; there isn’t time. Those kryls are going to be coming along any time, and we’ve all got to be over there and out of sight when they do. So, we really don’t have time to argue. Now, let go of your daughter, or we’ll all die right here.”

  Emmie saw her chance when Sherri released her grip on Sarah in order to settle into a more secure position, from which, Emmie feared she would have resumed her protective hold on her daughter. So, in the moment she was not held, Emmie grabbed her with her mind. In the next moment, the girl was hovering four feet off the ground, six feet from where Sherri and her bearer crouched in renewed horror.

  Emmie reached out to caress Sarah’s cheek and smiled away the girl’s own growing anxiety. Emmie said, “You won’t be afraid, will you? I promise, promise, promise that I will not let you fall. You saw how Raven and your baby brother were okay, right?”

  Sarah nodded.

  “And you saw how Satan was okay, right?”

  Sarah nodded again.

  “And as soon as you are over there with all of them, I’m going to send your mommy over, too. Okay?”

  Sarah looked over at the open space just beyond the edge of the trail, then across to where Raven held up the baby and waved with her other arm. The still frightened girl glanced over at Sherri, back at Emmie, and nodded. “Is it okay if I close my eyes?”

  Emmie gave her another big smile and said, “Sure you can. If it makes you feel better, you can close your eyes, you can sing, you can do anything you want. Just don’t scream, okay? It might make your mommy even more afraid. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Emmie did her best to ignore the mutterings from the two on the ground behind her as she sent the girl across. She prayed neither of them would try something stupid like grabbing her or hitting her or anything else that would disturb her concentration. She was pretty sure she could hold Sarah’s small weight with her peripheral mind for a minute or two while she dealt with any distraction — if she was conscious — but she didn’t want to put it to a test.

  Emmie let her breath out in a long sigh when Raven wrapped her arms about the girl’s waist, and she was able to release the hold of her mind. But she had no time to dwell on her accomplishments. Time was running out.

  Sherri was still kneeling on the ground with the man’s arm about her shoulder, as though he had completely accepted the switch in rolls he had made from executioner to protector. They both stared up at her with eyes wide in apprehension, fear and awe.

  “No more time to discuss it,” Emmie said. “I’m gonna send you over there right now, and no conflict. That right?”

  Sherri peered at Emmie for a moment, and then nodded and closed her eyes. She let out a cross between a gasp and a yelp when she immediately began rising off the ground. Her eyes flew open for just an instant confirming what she knew to be the case, that she was indeed floating through the air, and then clenched tight again.

  Emmie wasted no time in propelling her to the far side, faster even than Sarah had gone. It was like she was warming up unused muscles and was feeling a gain in confidence along with the ease with which the levitation was going.

  With Sherri safely on the ground beside Raven and hugging her children as though they had been apart for long months rather than short minutes, Emmie turned to the man who still knelt behind her. Before she could say anything, he stood, nodded his head, and closed his eyes, accepting whatever fate awaited him.

  Emmie could feel the difference in mass between the man and the other, lighter subjects. But he wasn’t even as heavy as Satan, and the additional size of the man made no noticeable difference in the ease with which she was able to transport them. Her capacity was so much more than what each had represented. She was pretty sure she could have carried all of them at the same time. But, short of being in a situation that was life or death and more immediate than it was now, it just wasn’t worth the risk. But, now, with the man on solid ground again, she must do something she had never done before. Something that she had heard of others doing successfully, and of others who had tried it and met with disaster. But, as she had told Raven and the others, there was no choice. And there was no time to sit and consider all the what-ifs.

  She glanced across at Raven and the others, briefly down at the rocky streambed, and at the trail upon which two kryls were rapidly approaching but were not yet in sight.

  She wasn’t sure if she should close her eyes. It might make it easier to concentrate, but she also had to be able to monitor her progress. It wouldn’t do to slam into the stone cliff fifteen feet to the side of the clearing at the speed of a running man. She didn’t think she was afraid of heights, not to the extent that she might freak out from gazing down at the sixty feet of open air beneath her. But what if she was — and did?

  No more time.

  She half closed her eyes, focused her mind to a point, and then set that point upon the task before her. She held her arms at her sides, not stiff, but not hanging loose, either. Her posture didn’t change from when she stood on solid ground, with the exception of her toes curling downward on their own inside her boots in an involuntary quest to again touch firm ground, or even to grasp a branch like a bird.

  She almost gave in to the temptation to look down to make sure the ground was no longer beneath her, that she was actually moving across the gap between her and her companions. But she resisted, holding her gaze firmly on Raven’s f
ace, gaining strength in the certainty that her friend’s face was growing larger as the space between them narrowed. Sherri and Sarah and the man beside them all stared out at her, silently urging her closer. And, finally, at last, they all reached out their hands and helped her settle onto the firm, solid ground between them.

  “You did it, girl!” Raven gathered her into a tight hug. “You really did it!”

  Emmie pulled herself free after a moment and said, “Yes, but I’m not done, yet, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Raven said as she peered over the edge at their back-trail. Still no sign of the kryls, but they had to be close. “Okay, everyone, move back over this way away from the edge. We can’t let them spot us up here, or the whole thing will have been for nothing.”

  With everyone well back out of view from below, Raven and Emmie crawled back to peer over the lip of the cliff. And they no sooner got into position before the need to rush became apparent. The kryls came around the corner of the trail and up along the creek, just as they had done. Without hesitation, the kryls took the path to the left where it climbed the rocky hillside as though they followed a clearly marked trail of brightly painted footprints.

  The two kryls walked side by side until the trail became narrow and steep in its ascent, then the larger one fell behind the other. There was no apparent order or suggestion, no stopping or slowing to ponder the best course, no testing the trail ahead for solid footing. They simply plodded ahead, climbing the winding, gravelly path, occasionally reaching out to grab a rocky outcrop or branch for support, but they never stopped.

  Emmie thought about how hard it would be for humans, especially a couple of young women encumbered by wounded companions and a small child, to outpace such pursuers. Just about impossible for any distance, she decided.

  The kryls glanced upward at the overhanging mass of cracked rock but continued upward with no hesitation. They came to a tight place in the trail where it made a bend before going around a smaller boulder protruding from the steeply sloping ground like a giant molar. At that point the kryls were completely beneath the tons of rock hanging out over the trail, and the bend forced them to slow almost to a full stop to maneuver around the rocky projections on both sides.