The song powered me, for it reminded me of Lem and the Holiday, Thena and Sophia, and all of us gathered together. Even in the darkness some part of me smiled.
And I felt freedom, brief as it was, in those nights of flight. Even as I was hunted, I felt it in the cold wind cutting against my face, the branch scratching my cheek, the mud under my brogans, the heaving heat of my breath. No Maynard yanking at me. No trying to discern the motives of my father. No creeping fear of Corrine. Out here, it was all so clear. In running, I felt myself to be in a kind of defiance.
And I was growing crafty. I remember being out one night for what must have been hours. And I knew it had been hours because by the time they’d finished with me and hauled me back, pummeled and beaten, to the ordinary man, I saw something incredible—the sun rising over what I could now see as green hills. And remembering the promise made to me of freedom, I knew that I was close. I learned to cover my tracks, to double back over them, so as to confuse them, and learned, too, that I could track them as sure as they tracked me. And I realized that I had a gift that I could bring to bear—my memory. It was always the same crew, and they were unoriginal in their workings. Memorizing the terrain and their habits gave me a sudden advantage. I would find my way to their flank. One night they split up. I felled one, and then pummeled another. They gave me an extra hard licking for that one, and I was forced to confess the limits of my operation. I was running, when what I needed was to fly. Not just in my mind, but in this world. I needed to lift up away from these low whites, as I lifted away from Maynard and the river.
But how? What was that power that could pull a man out of the depths? That could pull a boy out of the stables and into the loft? I began to reconstruct events. Both of those uncanny moments featured blue light and both brought me, in different ways, close to my mother, or to the dark hole in my memory where I’d lost her. The power must have some relation to my mother. And I needed the power because I needed to fly, or I would die trying to outrun these wolves.
Maybe the power was in some way related to the block in my memory, and to unlock one was, perhaps, to unlock the other. And so in those dark and timeless hours in the pit, it became my ritual to reconstruct everything I had heard of her and all that I had seen of her in those moments down in the Goose. Rose of the kindest heart. Rose, sister of Emma. Rose the beautiful. Rose the silent. Rose the Water Dancer.
It was a cloudless night and I was running. I could feel that it was now spring, for the nights were no longer so fierce upon me. My heart no longer pounded against my chest as I ran. My legs were fluid. And the men must have known this, for I had noticed that they had increased their numbers. And whereas before they would split up to pursue the whole line of fugitives, I now began to feel that the entire team was focused on me above all the others. So it was that night that I heard them, closing in. And then the forest opened up and I saw a pond glistening, wide and dark. I had to make an effort around the water. I could hear the cries and whoops of the men behind me. I pushed around the pond as hard as I could, the voices of the men steadily closing, and I dared not look back. And then my foot caught on something, a branch, or a root, I cannot be sure, and a sharp pain, an old pain, shot up through my ankle. I felt myself falling and then I was down in the fens, and I felt the cold muddy water on my face. I crawled for a moment. But delirious with pain, and knowing the hunt was over, I called out, but this time not in my mind but out loud for all to hear: