ACADEMY GIRL - Book 5: The Graduate

Chapter 18


DAY 2

Amy didn't know how many hours she sat there, in the dark, the rain pounding down on her. She eventually cried herself out, but was unable to get back to sleep, or even persuade herself to lie down again. She had just succeeded in convincing herself she had gone completely blind for some reason, and wondered what that would do to her market value as a work slave, suddenly realizing that would condemn her to the even greater hell of being a breeding slave, and had begun visualizing a lifetime giving birth again and again, with no activity other than eating, sleeping, and breast-feeding in between, when she noticed that she could see the outline of the nearest tree in front of her.

Her waking nightmare of the empty life of the breeder dissolved, and her spirits rose momentarily, only to plunge into despair again when she thought about her friends at the Academy, especially her girls, and thought about the life and death of a Hanging Girl, so long worked for and now lost. She resumed crying.

Somehow, an image of Andrew, beginning his day at this moment, smirking at Amy's fate, drew her out of her funk, replacing her sorrow with a hot flash of anger. He can't beat me! she insisted to herself. I can't let him beat me.

The rain had subsided to a light sprinkle, and in the increasing light, Amy now saw that her surroundings were enveloped in a heavy fog, limiting her range of vision to about ten feet. Maybe that's good, she decided. Nobody can see me.

She roused herself enough to crawl to the still-rushing river for a drink. She had no idea whether it was the same one she'd been following yesterday, but if it was, she was at least now on the opposite bank of it, so she shouldn't be in danger of running across that same farm she'd seen before.

Standing, she began walking near the bank, looking for food. After a time she saw one of the nut trees looming in the fog, and sat down to begin gathering nuts.

Piling about a dozen of them beside the trunk, and armed with a heavy rock to smash the shells, she scooted back against the trunk. She moved aside when she felt discomfort under her buttock, and brushed at the offending spot with her hand.

She bent down suddenly for a closer look. It wasn't a rock, as she'd assumed. Astonished, she saw it was an oval of steel. She pulled up on it, and discovered it was one of the links in a chain, half-buried in the mud.

The chain was wrapped around the base of the tree trunk, slightly below ground level and sufficiently covered in dirt that it had been invisible. Carefully, Amy traced the chain in the other direction, away from the tree.

Pulling the chain up further from the ground, Amy gasped as she found the platter-like shape to which it connected. Her first impression was of a bear trap, but as she pulled upward yet more carefully, uncovering more of the device from the mud and ivy concealing it, she became 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. She wasn't entirely sure what the purpose was but, with the image of a bear trap still in mind, she took the fist-sized rock she'd picked up for cracking shells and dropped it on the middle of the platter.

Even though she expected something of the sort, she 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. She tried to pull one back to its original position, but it was now locked in place.

Suddenly, insight into the function and purpose of the trap flashed through her, and she tossed the trap away from her in alarm. No!! she screamed in her mind. I came so close to stepping on that without ever seeing it!

The trap had been invisible to her as she had walked around the tree gathering nuts, detected only when she'd accidentally sat on the chain securing it to the tree. If she had stepped onto the middle of the trap, one of the rods would have shot across directly over her hobble chain, trapping the chain between the rod and the platter.

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

More desperately than before, Amy tried to release the rods, any one of the eight. All were locked in place. Amy saw keyholes in the mechanism. Whoever had put this trap here could come and unlock it, she told herself. As Amy sat, her breakfast forgotten for the moment, fiddling with the trap, she gradually convinced herself that, without the necessary key, she simply couldn't open the trap. If it had caught her, she would have been stuck by this tree until somebody came to let her go.

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

And if she couldn't get herself loose, then what? Starve?

Shivering, Amy shook her head. There was no question in her mind about priorities. She would call for help, would scream herself hoarse if she had to, knowing she was close enough to the farm she'd seen yesterday to be heard from there. The farmers there had, in fact, most likely been the ones who'd set the trap here. That would become her new home, that farm, for the rest of her life. But even a lifetime of strenuous drudgery as a work slave, or still worse, a lifetime as a Purity Island breeder, was better than dying alone, uneaten by humans. Her whole life had no meaning if she couldn't end it in human stomachs, becoming part of their bodies and sustaining their lives. Even the stomachs of the dreaded and feared men of Purity Island.

Amy had no doubt that any woman would feel the same. To be food is the reason we are here, she reminded herself. The reminder was unnecessary, since it was the central fact of every woman's existence.

Maybe I can be slave meal, she said to herself hopefully. There are more of them than there are men. The idea of being eaten by the local slaves, instead of the men, made her feel slightly better.

I've got to figure out what to do, she told herself, and I'll think better on a full stomach.

She reached for the rock again and began cracking nuts.

*   *   *   *   *

Wishing she had a toothpick, a sanitary one, Amy hugged her knees, biting her lip in thought. I'm not going anywhere, she told herself, until I can figure out how to be safe from these traps.

It seemed reasonable to assume she hadn't somehow found the only slave trap on the entire island. They must, she knew, be scattered all around. It had been a complete accident that she had discovered this one before springing it. She might never be so lucky again.

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

If I could somehow...

The direction of her thoughts suddenly meshed with the botanical phenomenon that caught her eye at that moment. As the fog had begun clearing, she had a gradually widening view of the world around her, and she found herself looking at the creeping vine spiraling up a nearby tree trunk as if the tree were a barber pole. She'd been seeing the things all along the way, but hadn't given them much attention.

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

Reaching as high as she could along the trunk, she pulled the vine away from the trunk -- it was clingy, but gave. It proved too thick to cut through it with her fingernails, so she picked up a rock and smashed the vine with it, several times, until the vine broke. She then unwound about ten feet of it, and broke it off at the far end of that length.

She wrapped it around her waist at the center, tied it in a knot in front of her stomach, then, after a moment's thought, slipped it around her waist so that the knot was in back. It had occurred to her that, if it hung down in front of her, it might, if she were found, be interpreted as an attempt, however inadequate, to hide her female genitalia, one of the most serious of all crimes around here. Instead, she let the loose ends hang down behind her buttocks. She bent down then, lifted up the center link in her hobble chain, and tied the loose ends of the vine around the link. The vine, as she walked, would now hold the entire chain off the ground. If she stepped on a trap now, it would miss the chain, and, of course, there was the added bonus that the chain would now stop getting snagged on rocks. She'd nearly tripped a hundred times, already. No more of that. All of this at the expense of having to take still shorter steps than before, since the chain could no longer be stretched out taut in a line. She was willing to pay that cost.

With a feeling of accomplishment, she resumed her journey along the bank of the river.

*   *   *   *   *

The rain had stopped altogether, though the air was still heavy with moisture. Amy had been creeping along for perhaps an hour, with her now-shortened hobble chain and frequent stops to survey her surroundings and listen for sounds of danger -- listening more intently than before, after yesterday's near-disaster. Her carefulness was rewarded when she stopped to evaluate an unexpected sound, and identified it as one that seemed very much out of place. It seemed to be children laughing, shouting -- playing.

Oh, right, she said to herself. Not out of place at all. Amy realized she was close to a breeding farm.

Dropping to her stomach and using her elbows and knees to creep forward, she saw that the river she had been following upstream was emerging, ahead of her, from under a wooden fence, about forty feet long, straddling the river. 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, she decided. Assuming the thought of escaping even occurs to them. The fenced pens holding various age groups were, for the girls inhabiting them, their entire world.

Moving slowly to her left, Amy saw that the fence, after a right turn, went on for at least a hundred, perhaps two hundred yards running away from her. In front of the fence there was a well-trodden walkway of packed dirt. At its far end, Amy saw two slavegirls struggling to pull a heavily-laden wheeled cart. Probably food for the pens, Amy decided. The slavegirls were accompanied by two doggirls. As Amy watched, both slavegirls pushed several buckets of presumed food through a window-like opening in the fence, afterwards receiving an equal number of buckets in return. Full of waste? Amy speculated. And the waste is probably used for fertilizing the fields.

So much for following this particular river, Amy said to herself. 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.

She turned to the side and, crawling for some time before she felt safe enough to rise to her feet, started looking for another river to follow.

At her second stop for food, she stepped, for the first time, on a trap. She stifled a shriek as the rods snapped closed, missing her uplifted hobble chain.

*   *   *   *   *

DAY 3

The rain had started up near nightfall the previous day, accompanied this time by lightning and thunder. Amy had spent a sleepless night huddled against a tree trunk, the rain, as usual, slowed by its downward progress through the leaves but undiminished in volume as it poured down on her. The absolute blackness of the night was interrupted by frequent flashes, showing Amy her surroundings in split-second images near-blinding in contrast with their absence, followed by rattling booms echoing through the trees.

At daybreak, in lighter, quieter rain, Amy had spent an hour or so gathering nuts and peaches for her breakfast, reflecting on the increased danger of trying to travel in her sleep-deprived state, while fretting helplessly again about the lack of girlmeat. After eating she sighed, spent some time tearing limbs by hand out of the middle of a nearby bush, crawled into her constructed hiding place within, and immediately fell asleep.

She awakened feeling groggy but better, ate again, and resumed walking -- but, it turned out, just an hour or so before sunset. With all light again hidden by heavy cloud cover, she curled up on the ground within a stand of unusually dense tree growth, and finished catching up on sleep.

*   *   *   *   *

DAY 4

Amy awoke crying. She'd been dreaming about a practice session with Jana, and now she was feeling overwhelmed by how much she missed her girls, missed the excitement and commitment to purpose so central to life at the Academy. Above all, she missed hanging.

She sat up and peevishly adjusted the vine tied around her waist, which was chafing. She hated having to wear it to keep her out of the traps that lay potentially under any food-bearing tree. As she pulled at the vine, she suddenly sucked in a breath as an idea came to her.

The one vine isn't strong enough, she decided. But there are plenty more.

Not even waiting until after she could gather breakfast, Amy jumped up and looked around for a tree bearing the vines. There, that one.

Quickly working up a sweat in the warm, humid air, Amy soon had three ten-foot lengths of vine strung out along the ground. She began working at braiding them together, the way her mother had done her pony tail when she was little. She stopped grudgingly when her stomach finally insisted on some attention, ate quickly and returned to work.

She 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, which had so far served only as obstructions to be walked around or, if not too thick to negotiate with her hobble chain, stepped over. She'd found one, now, beside a tree with a perfectly-placed overhanging branch.

Quickly tying a hangman's knot in one end of her impromptu rope, she flung the other end over the branch and secured it. Her heart pounding in the first excitement she had felt on the island, she stepped onto the log and slipped the noose over her head. She had nothing she could use to tie her hands, nor did she want to do so without a hanging partner, and instead simply clasped them tightly behind her back. Almost too excited to breathe properly, she closed her eyes and spent a moment calming herself, and carefully stepped off the log.

At once, and for as long as she remained suspended by her neck, 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 she could hang, she remained in the present tense. After a few minutes, she organized her kicking into a practice drill including several of the new elements she and Jana had been working on -- she couldn't do full kicks with the hobble chain, but she could easily manage Jana's feet-tied moves.

At last, reluctantly, she stepped back onto the log, and reached up to the branch to steady herself. Her internal clock, more accurate for hanging than for anything else, told her she'd been hanging for thirteen minutes. She could have gone longer, but didn't want to overdo it in her first session in several days.

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

*   *   *   *   *

Around midday, patches of blue showed through the clouds for the first time in three days. Amy's lunch of peaches, sitting in the welcome shade beneath the tree that had grown them, had the lighthearted feeling of a picnic. She wished she could share it with Megan, and soon lost herself in a reverie of what she and Megan would talk about on this picnic, the laughs they would share, the love they would make. Regretfully, at length she stood and continued on.

*   *   *   *   *

Amy froze suddenly in mid-step, holding her breath. The lightness ahead, which she had been attributing to the sunlight, had resolved itself into a clearing much larger than those she had been skirting around. Creeping slowly closer, she now saw that she had reached her immediate goal -- the island's central mountain ridge. Amy had been walking up a gentle slope for some time. She had suspected she was close.

Amy dropped to her stomach and crawled as close to the forest's edge as she could without breaking cover. Her feeling of success gradually gave way to stunned helplessness. She hadn't been picturing it like this.

Amy wasn't an expert in geology, or botany, or any other field that might explain what she was seeing. She supposed the mountains must be a different type of rock from the part of the island covered with forest growth.

The mountains were devoid of plant life, as far as Amy could see, unless there were some ground-hugging lichens not visible at this distance. The forest ended at a boundary almost surely created by the original earth movements that had formed the island a few millennia in the past. Just past the last trees, a natural wall of rock, about three feet high at this point, served as a step up to the barren surface that led to the sharp upslope at the base of the mountains. Between the step and the mountains was a strip of land about a hundred feet wide, as naked of plant life as the mountains themselves.

The mountains weren't very high, and might more properly be called hills, seeming to agree with Amy's memory that they reached a height of not much more than about five hundred feet. And they were certainly climbable -- they weren't impossibly steep, and there were plenty of rocks of various sizes, useable as handholds and footholds. But to Amy, they may as well have been five hundred miles high.

From the moment I step out onto that strip of land, Amy told herself, I have no cover at all. I can be seen easily by anyone looking in my direction, and they can't possibly imagine any reason for my being there, all alone, other than that I'm a runaway slave.

And there were indeed people around to observe her, she now saw. Backing up a few feet to decrease her visibility among the trees, Amy watched as a wagon approached from her left, along a path that ran along the base of the mountains. Six slavegirls were pushing the wagon, three on each side, driven by a man sitting on a raised seat within the wagon, holding a whip. Behind him, the open cargo hold of the wagon was stacked with what appeared to be girlskins. Two doggirls rode along, at present resting among the girlskins.

Each slavegirl was pushing on a wooden bar projecting out from the side of the wagon, her wrist cuffs chained to the bar. They were the first slaves Amy had seen without hobble chains, other than the doggirls, though they did have the ankle cuffs, and would no doubt be hobbled prior to being released from the wagon. Their legs were obviously very strong, and they pushed the wagon on the level path with little obvious effort. Probably, Amy thought, this is their permanent job.

They must be going to push that thing over the mountains, Amy told herself. Girlskins are one of the main items of trade with the mainland, and they've got to be taking those to one of the trading posts. All of which are on the other side of the mountains.

There has to be a path, a trail through the mountains, she realized. Anybody can climb these mountains, but not pushing a wagon like that.

Directly in front of Amy, the wagon clattered now as it passed over a wooden bridge above the small river Amy had been following. The river was dry now, but would be running again shortly after the rain resumed.

I've got to find that mountain trail, Amy told herself.

She withdrew a little farther into the woods, knowing she didn't need to follow the wagon to find the trail. It would be safer, indeed, to wait until the wagon was well out of sight.

Amy did so. Afterwards, picking her way carefully across the jumbled rocks in the dry river bed, she began walking, parallel to the edge of the forest, a safe distance within the trees.

*   *   *   *   *

After about an hour, Amy froze again, hiding behind a tree, as a wagon came towards her, traveling the opposite direction from the earlier one. Amy couldn't make out what this one was carrying, other than some boxes along the edge clearly labeled as wine. She waited until the wagon was out of sight, then continued on her way.

Her progress, as always, was at a snail's pace, with frequent stops to listen for any sounds of human habitation. To her frustration, she came to another co-op, which she had to take a long detour around. By the time she got back to the forest-mountain boundary, night was falling. Sighing, she gathered dinner, and curled up on the ground for another long night.

*   *   *   *   *

DAY 5

Heavy clouds were rolling across the sky once again as Amy awoke. She gathered some breakfast, setting off another trap under one of the nut trees. The things always were fairly near a co-op, not surprisingly. Amy hoped one of them sometime would warn her of a co-op she hadn't noticed. Ironic, she thought, if the traps could be useful that way. There was no flowing water, but she was able to drink from a small pond.

She retreated a few hundred yards deeper into the forest for hanging exercise, incorporating Holly's stair stepping move into her practice routine -- the hobble chain allowed it, though she worried the chain might be making too much noise. She let herself down after sixteen minutes, sweaty but refreshed, glowing in the euphoria her practice session created.

Returning to the forest boundary, she was about to continue her journey along its edge, but discovered she had passed her goal while circling the co-op. There, on the mountainside directly opposite the co-op, was the trail over the mountains she'd been seeking.

She sighed heavily. She had tried to stay optimistic, knowing that the mountain trail would at least be something different, and anything different had the potential for being useful.

Amy shook her head at the work that must have gone into creating the trail. She'd been expecting something more natural, but this was obviously the result of years of heavy labor with picks and shovels, by slavegirls probably long since eaten. From its base across from the co-op, the trail rose gently and smoothly along the side of the mountain, about ten feet wide, leveling off about every hundred yards, becoming wider at the level points. Amy at first took those to be resting areas, but it occurred to her they were more likely designed so that wagons traveling opposite directions could pass each other. At present, there was a wagon coming down, flanked by slavegirls, their hands chained to the bars in the same way as the wagons Amy had seen earlier, digging in their heels, their leg and arm muscles straining as they worked to hold the wagon's downhill rolling to a walking pace.

No way I can go that way, Amy told herself. There was, as before, no cover for her whatsoever, and, as she noticed another wagon approaching the base of the trail for the trip upward, it was clear that the amount of traffic guaranteed there would always be someone around who would spot her the instant she emerged from the forest.

Amy spent some time considering whether it would be possible to cross over at night. She bit her lip. She wasn't sure what phase the moon was in -- she hadn't spent time watching the sky during the brief periods any part of it was visible through the cloud cover. If I can get enough moonlight, she thought, to see where I'm going, that may mean I can be seen... and if I do start out with enough light, there's no telling when the clouds might roll back in, leaving me totally blind halfway up the mountain. The trail up and down is probably three or four miles, and in complete darkness I'd have to feel my way along it on hands and knees -- probably in a driving rainstorm -- and I'd probably run out of night before I finished, leaving me out there for the world to see.

And I'd definitely need some light to find the start of the trail, she pointed out to herself. I can see where it is now, but to find it at night, I've got to have moonlight, and it's right across from that co-op. I can't even get started before I'm seen.

I have to get over, she told herself again and again. I have to get over. I can never get home if I don't.

She felt tears coming on again.

She wondered briefly whether she could circle around the mountains at their northern or southern tip, but then recalled that at either end of the island, the lowlands on either side of the mountain sank below sea level and disappeared into the ocean. The only way around the mountains, she knew, was by swimming -- suicidal, since the pounding surf would smash her into the rocks as soon as she set out.

She moaned quietly. The mountains were seeming, more and more, like a permanent roadblock to any possible rescue.

But I haven't seen their entire length, she reminded herself. There still might be a place I can cross. I'm not giving up until I've seen the whole mountain range. She shuddered. All forty miles of it.

What I can't do, she told herself, is stay here. There's no escape route here. I can't find one unless I move. So let's get started.

Rather than go back around that same co-op again, she in continued the same direction she'd been traveling.

*   *   *   *   *

DAY 6

It had been raining all morning, but let up around what Amy suspected was midday -- at least her stomach was telling her it was lunchtime. She detoured to the nearest peach tree she could see.

She'd started a pile with two peaches and was reaching for a third when she froze, alarm bells clamoring in her head at the sound that shouldn't be there, and certainly shouldn't be so close.

She looked down and let out a squeal of terror.

A doggirl was trotting towards her, scowling.

Amy's mind seized up, with just one thought able to trickle through, irrelevantly -- how much the girl looked like Shawna. Except not with that glowering expression.

Amy opened her mouth and closed it, not sure saying anything would help. Not sure anything at all would help. She knew she couldn't outrun a doggirl, not hobbled as she was. Amy considered herself the world's least violent person, but she wondered whether she could attack the girl, knock her unconscious.

She help up her hands, instead, in a gesture of defenselessness, and began backing away. The girl growled then, in uncanny imitation of a real dog, and bared her teeth. Amy saw, to her astonishment, that the girl's front teeth had been filed to sharp points. She hadn't heard about that.

Amy gasped at the sound of another growl behind her. It came from a second doggirl, this one with her short hair in soft blonde curls, her rounded, dimpled face belonging more to a cute doll than the vicious animal she sounded to be.

Amy felt overwhelmed with sudden nausea. It's over, it's over, she moaned to herself. I'm caught. She was trembling so violently she almost couldn't stand. Every scene of heavy slavegirl labor she had seen, and every one she had merely imagined, flashed through her head in an instant.

The new doggirl approached Amy and barked twice, as the first began circling around Amy to join it, the girls working together to force Amy towards what she knew must be the co-op to which they belonged. Now that she knew to look for it, she could make out a farm cabin at a distance through the trees, and saw a flash of skin of a slavegirl working in a field just beyond the cabin.

After the sound of the bark, Amy heard a stirring within the trees just ahead of her. Looking that direction she saw a man -- no, a boy, judging from the absence of a beard, and the fact of being slight of build and no taller than Amy. The boy was wearing the usual leather outfit of vest, shorts, floppy hat, and moccasins, a bag by his side held by a strap over his shoulder. His shoulder-length, unevenly cut hair was astonishingly black, and his face seemed exotic in other odd ways, his eyes dark and slightly slanted, his nose slightly flat, slightly wide, upturned at the end, his skin a sort of coppery color that didn't match that of the other locals Amy had seen. It really was an extraordinarily attractive face, if Amy hadn't been so frightened by its mere presence. Even beautiful, a word not often applied to males. Native islander blood? she wondered. There was supposedly some of it still around, as far as anyone knew.

The boy patted the first doggirl on the head, and reached into his bag, pulling out several strips of meat, surely girlmeat jerky -- there was no other kind of meat here. Amy's mouth watered involuntarily. The boy offered a strip to each of the doggirls, who snapped it up enthusiastically, chewing it eagerly, swallowing, and looking up for more. The boy began walking in the direction of the farm, gesturing to the doggirls with more meat held out to them. As they approached, he tossed it farther towards the farm, and spoke his first word, in a high voice, "Go," patting the nearer doggirl on the rump as she passed, both girls scampering after the food.

The boy approached Amy and, to her astonishment, walked past her, away from the farm, back in the direction Amy had come from, beckoning to her and saying, "Come on." The words were spoken in an odd accent, but were easily enough understood in context. Eyes wide, Amy followed him. She was perfectly willing to go that direction. It was better than waiting to see if the doggirls wanted to make Amy their dessert.

The boy broke into a run, looked back, and stopped with a giggle when he saw Amy couldn't follow at that pace.

As fragmented as Amy's thought processes were at this moment, the giggle still stunned her. There was something wrong with the sound of it, beyond the inappropriateness of giggling at all in these circumstances. As tall as the boy was, it had been surprising to Amy that his voice hadn't begun changing yet, though not beyond the realm of possibility. But the giggle. There was something way too effeminate about it.

Following as quickly as she could, Amy noticed something else that didn't seem right. The boy's hips seemed just slightly too wide. It was subtle, not easy to pick up in the surrounding clothing, and Amy wouldn't have noticed at all but for the turn her thoughts had taken after the giggle.

The boy ducked suddenly between two bushes, gesturing at Amy to follow him in. Doing so, she thought to herself, okay, this is getting too weird. Nothing is making any sense here.

She began to speak. A brusque "Shhh!" from the boy stopped her. She waited, listening for the sound of the doggirls returning, and with a strong impression that the boy was listening for the same thing.

At last the boy nodded briefly to himself, rose, and gestured again for Amy to follow, this time with more attention to quiet than speed, and Amy was easily able to keep pace. When she judged they had put enough distance between themselves and the farm, and doggirls, Amy asked very quietly, feeling almost sure of the answer, impossible though it was, "Are... are you a girl?"

He -- she -- stopped in mid-stride and spun towards Amy, with a look of shock. "How did you know?" The accent again. But the girl's face said it all.

Amy immediately understood the issue. She held up her hands. "It's okay, it's okay! I was never sure. I just started thinking that. I'm from somewhere else. Nobody from around here would be able to tell." Amy strongly suspected that was indeed true. Men around here probably barely had the concept of questioning anyone's gender. And Amy herself still couldn't fathom how this girl could be where she was, dressed as she was -- dressed at all, for that matter. With no metal cuffs or collar. "And I won't tell anybody. Please believe me, I would never tell anybody!"

The girl seemed to relax, slowly. She reached towards her bag. "You hungry?"

Girlmeat! With deep feeling, Amy breathed, "Oh, yes!!"



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