the dark, but the air held the strong scent of manure from the milk cows. The milking shed was next to the Punishment Hut. They’d done that, I was sure, just to make the experience a little more unpleasant. That milking shed would be the first place where men would be moving, but I couldn’t think about that. I had to do this, and I had to do it now.
The little building stood squat and forlorn, a path of beaten earth around it, a single window high up on one side. I looked at the padlock fastening the hasp to the loop, thought about searching for the key that would be hidden somewhere under a rafter, and asked Gray instead, “Can you break it?”
“Yes,” he said. He lifted the shovel high and sent the blade down fast and true, straight onto that rusted hasp, then did it again. And again. Obedience flinched with every ringing blow, and I didn’t.
Four times. Five, and the hasp broke and fell to the ground. I yanked the door open.
Fruitful was just inside, on her toes, her face indistinct in the dark hut. The board floor was rough under her ugly white trainers, and the air was foul from the jar in the corner and too many jars before.
She froze in there for a split second, then ducked around me and ran.
“Fruitful!” I said, as loudly as I dared. “Wait!”
She paused. On her toes again, frozen in motion, like a game of Statues. After a second, she turned and said, “Chastity?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s me. Come on. We have to go.”
I felt rather than heard them coming. A vibration in the ground, or something like that, because my senses were that attuned. And then a male voice calling a question, and another voice answering.
Urgency in the voices, and one of them, I could swear, was my father’s.
Fruitful ran toward me this time, and I reached for her hand, pushed her ahead of me, and said, “Both of you. Run.” I told Gray, “Lead the way.”
“No,” he said.
I thought, What? He went on: “You go first. I’ll come behind. If you hear trouble, don’t stop. Keep going.”
That wasn’t going to happen, but I didn’t argue. I didn’t have time. First, though, I ripped the trousers off and over my trainers. The too-long legs were going to trip me up again, and I couldn’t afford it.
I was naked from the tops of my thighs down, and I didn’t care. I wasn’t Chastity anymore. I was Daisy.
I told the girls, “Come on.” And we ran.
Gray
Those girls ran like it was for their lives.
Daisy in front, her legs and bum pale in the moonlight, still holding the younger girl’s hand. Behind them came the older one, the one who’d been locked into that stinking hut. Both she and her sister pulled their skirts up to their knees with one hand in order to go faster, and I kept behind them, covering the ground easily, checking back to gauge the distance from the men’s torch beams as they swept and crossed.
The shout when they found us, then, or rather, found the bloody dog, because he was dashing between us and the men as if it were a game.
The men were running now. Not slowly, but not lightning-quick, either, and we had a head start and more talent on our team. We were past the first shed already, the outermost one where Obedience had been waiting. Just a couple hundred meters to go to the fence. We were all good.
I was just thinking it when Fruitful tripped over something—a hummock of grass, maybe—and fell heavily. She called out once, a muffled sound, and Daisy was turning back, but I yelled, “No! Go!” I had the girl under the arms, was yanking her to her feet. She started to run, then stopped and said, her voice anguished, “I … can’t. My ankle. Go on. Take Obedience. Go.”
I told Daisy, “Light the way.” They’d seen us anyway. No point in concealment. I threw Fruitful over my shoulder—they were the smallest-framed women in the world, fortunately—told her, “Hang on,” clutched her thighs in one arm and the shovel in the other hand, and ran.
The men were close behind us now. Fifty meters, maybe, and speeding up with the promise of victory. Daisy was all but dragging her sister along, though, and she was bloody fast, especially now that she’d turned the torch to its bright-white setting and could see where she was going. We