DAY 19

Amy crawled on her stomach to the protection of a bush sufficiently large that it would shield Runner and Puppy as well. Ahead of her was a large clearing that appeared to serve as a town square, presumably that of Tradition.

They had continued following the path leading to the town of Tradition, Amy pulling the peach cart and following Runner, with Puppy usually following Amy, seeming to enjoy traveling but occasionally whining for either food or attention -- Amy could easily tell which, by now. Though they departed the path at intervals, to rest, eat, or seek what small shelter there was during heavier downpours, Amy and Runner had agreed that it was safer staying on the packed-dirt trail, barely ten feet wide, public though it was. While they were on the path, the appearance of a boy, his slave, and his dog, were accepted as belonging there, at least by the two farmers they had encountered driving transport wagons. Runner and Amy had waited on the edge of the trail to give the wagons room to pass, and their 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 Amy felt that sneaking through the woods, rather than using the path, was likely to be noticed and might generate suspicion.

Late on the second morning since their mountain crossing, Runner, leading the way, had stopped suddenly, as the clearing of the town had revealed itself ahead of her. Amy was glad they had been sufficiently mentally alert to the possibility of its proximity that they hadn't walked out into plain view of the inhabitants. Amy didn't feel ready for that yet. She and Runner had retreated into the safety of the trees, while examining the layout of the town.

The town was oval in shape, about a hundred yards long, forty wide, bisected in its long dimension by a line of wooden buildings, with what appeared to be two more lines of the same behind them, and an open area in front of them. Amy, crouched now behind the bush, was about midway along the periphery of the open area.

The open area, though devoid of buildings, was not entirely empty. In the middle of it, barely thirty feet from Amy, ahead and to her right, there was a stage that reminded Amy of the ones used for hanging Academy graduates, but which had a different purpose here.

In the center of the stage, a single, forlorn slavegirl was semi-suspended, not by her neck but by her wrist cuffs -- chains attached to an overhead beam held her arms widely separated above her head, with her toes just touching the floor of the stage -- she couldn't put her heels down. From where she was, Amy could see that the girl's back and left side were striped with fresh whip marks, as were the backs of her thighs. Even the side of her left breast, just visible from where Amy watched, showed an angry welt from the whip. She was alone now, though probably, as Amy knew, not for long. As Amy watched, the girl groaned as she raised herself high on her toes to take the tension out of her arms, the muscles in her legs standing out and quivering. Within seconds her legs were quaking -- Amy suspected the girl had made this move many times before, and her legs were at the end of their strength. They gave out quickly and left her arms and wrists to bear most of her weight again. Amy could hear the girl's exhausted whimpering. Amy had no way to know how long the girl had been there, but suspected it had been a long time.

It was impossible to guess what the girl had done. Escape attempts were relatively rare, and Amy thought it unlikely she would stumble on the punishment for one the moment she hit town. More likely the girl 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 men each accompanied by a single slave, sometimes with a doggirl. The slavegirls averted their gaze from the suffering girl on the stage. Amy, from her reading, believed she knew why. They had all seen more than they wanted already.

Amy buried her face against her arms on the ground. In Amy's world, slavegirls were rarely disciplined publicly -- control of slaves was generally considered a private matter. But that wasn't the source of Amy's internal discomfort. It was her realization that she was at high risk of the same treatment. She had known it, up to this point, as an intellectual fact. Seeing it made it much more real. Watching the girl, Amy could feel every muscle in her own arms and legs aching in sympathy. And dread.

Runner whispered, "She did something bad, didn't she?"

Not looking up, Amy 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 Amy and Runner had begun whispering. She usually caught on quickly to the need for quiet.

Amy reached for Runner's hand and gave it a squeeze. She looked up at last, making an effort to look beyond the girl on the stage to 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. Amy suspected she might know about exchanging favors from her years growing up in the pen. Runner looked back at Amy. "Shouldn't we be trying to find boats?"

Amy thought about it. With their goal so near, Amy had been putting more thought into the job of finding transportation to the mainland. Her best strategy, she suspected, would be to disguise herself the same way Runner was, in clothes and without the slave gear, allowing her to walk more freely anywhere. So she was hoping to find a way to cut the locks off, before anything else. But it couldn't hurt, she decided, to check out the docks and see what the situation was.

The ocean couldn't be far, she told herself -- and suddenly realized she could hear a whisper of breakers on the beach, almost covered by the insect sounds of the forest. The sound was coming from her left.

From Amy's right, a wagon emerged from the woods into the square, pushed by the usual six-girl team, all of them clearly tired as they arrived at the end of their trip. The farmer driving the wagon, seeing the girl on the stage, ordered the slaves to stop. Moments later he made them divert towards the stage. Out of the corner of her eye, Amy saw a man, who had been lounging in a wicker chair on the boardwalk, stand and begin walking towards the stage, carrying a whip. An involuntary whimper escaped Amy's throat. She didn't want to watch what she knew was coming next.

She nodded to Runner. "Let's see where the boats are." She crawled backward, away from the edge of town, with Runner and Puppy following.

As she stood and began walking, she heard Runner's whisper behind her. "What about the cart?"

Amy blinked. She was surprised she had forgotten about it, but knew that her eagerness to make an exit owed to a desire to get away from the sight of that slavegirl 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? Amy wondered. The tiny seed of hope inside her began to sprout.

Amy led her friends back well away from the edge of the town clearing before starting to circle the town's outskirts, so that their lateral movement would less likely be spotted from within the town.

She wished she could close her ears to the sound she knew was coming. Minutes later, she heard it -- the sudden cry of the girl on the stage following the smacking sound of the whip against her skin. At intervals of about half a minute, the smack and the cry were repeated five more times.

Amy didn't need to be there to know what was happening. She had read all about it. The six slavegirls from the wagon had been led up onto the stage, had been told what the girl had done, and each of them in turn would be required to stand, by herself, within just a few feet of the punished girl to watch her receive a stroke from the whip. During the time the girl was on stage, every slavegirl in town, and every girl just passing through, would see, close up and individually, what would happen to herself if she violated any of the many behavioral requirements slavegirls were expected to meet. Very few of them would ever need to be punished themselves. Seeing it was enough.

The slavegirls Amy had seen on the boardwalk earlier had already had their turns watching. But each new contingent arriving in town would serve as witnesses before continuing on their way.

Amy kept her hand over her stomach for a time, working to keep her most recent meal down. After the six strokes, she knew the worst of the girl's suffering was over. For the time being.

Amy walked as quickly as she could, to put more distance between herself and the punishment stage. I can't help her, she told herself over and over. I can't make them stop.

Runner looked back frequently, seeming distressed. Though she knew less than Amy about what was happening behind her, she could make a good guess.

As they approached a peach tree, Amy felt sudden alarm bells going off in her head. Something didn't feel right. Something left undone.

Runner suddenly said urgently, "Amy, you forgot..."

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

Amy dropped to her knees, desperately scraping away the undergrowth from around her feet. One of the heavy spring-loaded bars of the trap had shot home across the edge of the trap, catching her hobble chain underneath it against the trap's surface. As intended.

Muttering a tense repetition of "Shit! Shit! Shit!" until she noticed and stopped herself, Amy wrapped her fingers around the bar and strained to pull it free, loosen it, bend it, do something with it, but it was far beyond her strength. She was shaking with fear and fury with herself. Since crossing the mountains, they had mostly followed established trails, where her trap-evading vine, tied around her waist, was unneeded and would have looked suspicious as a non-standard slave accoutrement, so she had been removing it for travel, restoring it when they left the trail for rest or refreshment. She had stepped on two traps, and Runner one, since the crossing, but neither of them had been in danger of being caught before.

Now Amy, her thoughts on the punished slavegirl, had forgotten the vine. Her own mind, and Runner, had both tried to tell her. Too late.

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

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

Amy, still trembling slightly but feeling more under control now, shrugged. "They might check the traps every day, or it could be a few days." She looked around, then pointed. "Could you get me that stick, over there?"

Runner went quickly to retrieve the indicated stick and brought it to Amy, who looked it over. Fallen from a tree, it was more or less straight, about three feet long, a bit over an inch thick. Kneeling beside the trap, Amy inserted the stick between the metal bar trapping her 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 Amy's hand flying away from her, almost hitting Runner. Amy gritted her teeth, pounding the ground with her fist. Any stronger stick would be too thick to fit in the space under the bar.

Runner took Amy's arm, biting her lip fretfully. "Amy, they're going to hurt you, like that girl. 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'?"

Amy blinked. "What?"

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

Amy gave her 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." She brushed her hand past her backside.

"Oh." Runner giggled briefly. "We call it poop."

Amy smiled again. "Yeah, we call it that too sometimes." She 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." She gestured in the direction of the town. "Try a farm first."

Runner gave her a serious look. "Amy, I'm not leaving you."

"Runner, I need..."

"You need me to be here with you! If a man finds you here, I need to be with you so he can see you're my slave."

Amy blinked. She wanted to argue, but she knew Runner was right. Even caught in a trap, Amy wasn't a runaway if her owner was with her.

It seemed they would just have to wait. It occurred to Amy they might hurry the process along -- Runner might go into town and tell someone in authority that her slave had been trapped. But it was too worrisome to send Runner off by herself to deal with strange men, barely knowing what to say and what not to. And as long as there was time to consider other ways out, Amy wanted to use it.

Amy sighed, picked up the stick, managed a smile at Puppy, and threw the stick. She and Runner played Fetch with Puppy for a time, then played the rocks-and-circles game, with Puppy going back and forth between them 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 her disliked clothing. The three girls snuggled together for the night, Amy feeling the warmth and closeness of Runner and Puppy that enabled her to forget the new level of danger she'd stumbled into.

DAY 20

Amy and Runner made love in the morning, Amy with a feeling of desperation, willing her senses to record the soft, warm feel of Runner's skin, the look of her face with eyes closed and mouth open, the taste of her lips, the sounds of passion rising in both of them, knowing this could be the last time. Puppy had learned to give them space, understanding she could have a turn very soon.

Amy wished she could feel the peace of hanging one more time. She and Runner had been starting each morning with a practice session. But though she could see a log to stand on some fifty feet away, she had no way to get there. Runner saw her looking in that direction. "It's okay, Amy. We can hang after you get out of the trap." She kissed Amy again.

After breakfast, and repaying Puppy for her patience, Amy sat back with a sigh as Runner dressed. "Runner... we can't just stay here all day waiting for somebody to come. It could be days. And it could even be never. Whoever set this trap might even not remember he did it."

Runner frowned deeply. "I can't just leave you here. A man could come any time." She bit her lip. "We could just call for help now. Make the man come faster."

Amy shivered. She had thought of that herself yesterday, but she just couldn't bring herself to put herself in the hands of the locals. At that point, any number of things could happen, nearly all of them bad. But... "If he sees you here, you can say I'm your slave. But he might not believe you. He could think you just found me here, and wanted him to come set me loose so you could have a new slave. You can't show him anything that tells him you came here with me."

Runner started to speak, and stopped. She looked helplessly into Amy's eyes.

Amy stroked Runner's shoulder. "You don't need to be away very long. Just find us a long piece of metal, that looks like that stick we used. Don't take anything else. I don't want a lot of men to start noticing things are missing."

Runner looked at her a minute longer, and at last nodded.

Amy kissed her. Puppy, who had been standing beside them, looking back and forth as each spoke, took the kiss as a sign to lick Amy's face, making her laugh. Amy said, "Take Puppy with you. I know it will make it harder, but if she starts barking and making noises, it's okay if she's with you, you'll just be a boy and his doggirl out walking. And if somebody does follow you, you can get away. If she's with me, and somebody comes to check out what the barking is about, they'll find me. Okay? Can you do it with her along?"

Runner, stroking Puppy, who had turned to lick her face, nodded. "We'll be okay. I'll be right back as soon as I can, okay?"

It was a rare rainless day, with breaks in the cloud cover allowing Amy to judge time from the sun. Amy could not believe time could possibly move so slowly. Every crackling sound in the branches around her made her heart skip and pound -- it could be Runner returning, or it could be disaster unfolding. It always turned out neither.

At last, after about three hours, Runner did return. Puppy, as soon as she saw Amy, came sprinting towards her, knocking her over with exuberance and happily licking her face. Amy, laughing as always when Puppy did that, looked up at Runner. She could tell the answer from Runner's face, but asked anyway. "Find anything?"

Runner sighed. "Not what I was looking for. I know you said not to take anything else, but this looked really good." She pulled a thick cooked girlmeat steak from her bag.

They hadn't had any girlmeat since crossing the mountains, and Amy's mouth started watering instantly. She smiled. "Yeah, okay."

Runner cut it into three pieces, saying, "There are lots of farms and cabins around here. I tried three different ones. Puppy was really good in between and waited for me. I can try some more places later."

Amy nodded. She didn't want to go through another long wait like the one she'd just been through, but didn't see any other choice. "Okay."

Heavier clouds were rolling in. Amy had lost sight of the sun a few minutes ago, just past noon -- about an hour, she judged, into Runner's second foray in search of a metal bar. Amy tried to maintain hope, but was growing increasingly skeptical of farmers keeping such an implement in their homes. What would they need it for?

A moving shape in the trees to her right caught her attention. Runner, she thought, shouldn't be returning so soon. Unless this meant she'd found something!

Amy's hand flew to her mouth. The movement was in the wrong direction. Runner hadn't gone that way...

A man, dark-haired, bearded, frowning, emerged from the trees, a doggirl trotting beside him. He was tall and muscular, about thirty years old. His eyes went wide as he saw Amy. Amy could hear him say to himself, "Got one!"

Amy felt as though the ground under her was vibrating, rather than herself quaking on top of it. Barely noticed, her bladder let go. Though she was now thoroughly accustomed to being naked, even out in the open on the mountain trail, her arms automatically folded across her breasts. She stared at the man, willing him to be an illusion, to disappear. This isn't happening, this isn't happening, please don't let it be happening, she repeated to herself again and again. After all this time, it can't happen now!

The doggirl ran ahead of the man, towards Amy, her sharp teeth bared, a growl in the back of her throat. Amy scrambled away, her hands walking on the ground behind her, to the limit of freedom the trap allowed her. The doggirl followed her, barking between growls.

The man came up even with the doggirl, and stroked her back. "Easy, Pepper. She ain't goin' nowhere."

The words tumbled out of Amy, unbidden. "Please, I'm not from here, I'm not from the island, I'm from the mainland. My brother..."

"Hush!" he said sharply, and the doggirl crowded in closer, near enough to bite. The man looked exasperated. "Those dang sci-en-tists. I knew they'd start givin' girls ideas. You listen to 'em good, girl? Yoor even tryin' to talk like 'em."

Amy pounded at her brain, desperately seeking some way she could convince him. Anything she could tell him about the mainland that a slavegirl wouldn't know, he likely wouldn't know it either, and in any case would attribute it to overheard conversations of a sociology team. He wouldn't even have any idea what a Hanging Girl was. Amy felt more helpless than she had ever imagined possible.

The man squatted in front of her, a nasty grin on his face. "Yoor a runaway. You know what happens to runaways, don't yah?"

Amy's throat tightened. She couldn't push any words out of it. She nodded helplessly.

"Yah, you musta seen it sometime. Seen the strokes. You gonna be gettin' strokes all today and half tomorrah, till enough girls seen you."

No, she thought, oh no, oh no... In her mind, she could already feel the lashes against her skin. And to be standing on the stage, in pain and misery, all through a dark night, waiting for it to start again in the morning...

Amy cringed as the man came still closer, but it was only to unlock the trap, with a key fished out of his vest pocket. With a twist of the key and a click, she was... free wasn't the word for it, she knew. Able to move away from the tree under which she had been caught yesterday, but definitely not free. Not free to run, any more than she'd been for three weeks. Never again free.

Runner, when she came back, would be able to figure out where Amy was. But there was nothing she could do about it. She would only be able to watch Amy's suffering on the stage. Please, Runner, Amy thought, just get away from here. Don't take any chance on them catching you too.

The man gestured. "Stand up."

Amy couldn't manage to get up farther than her knees. Her legs were trembling too badly.

He grinned, probably having seen that before. "Or don't. Up to you. You'll get help standin' soon enough."

Yes, thought Amy. The chains holding her wrists over her head. Standing in pain for twenty-four hours. Wishing desperately for time to pass more quickly, even as it brought the next round of whipping closer.

"Hold your hands behind you." The man knelt and connected the rings of Amy's right and left wrist cuffs with a padlock. Coming around in front of her, he removed a leather leash, curled up, from his pocket and clipped it to the front of Amy's collar.

He looked her full in the face for a moment, his grin broadening. Amy looked down, avoiding his eyes.

"Yoor a pretty one. I think it's time to have some fun."

Noooo, Amy screamed within herself. Please, no!

"Pepper." He made a twirling hand gesture to the doggirl, who barked excitedly. To Amy's astonishment and still-mounting horror, the girl dropped onto her side and rolled onto her back in front of Amy, her stubby legs held up and spread.

The man spoke to Amy, more harshly than ever. "Now, don't you make me tell the magistrate you wasn't co-woperative. You do what I tell you, and I'll say you came along peaceful. If I tell 'em you fought me, they'll give you two strokes for every girl who sees you, 'stead of one. Understand?" He waited for Amy, unable to breathe, to give him a tiny nod. "Now why don't you do Pepper here while I do you. Go ahead, bend down there. And stick your butt up in the air. You start lickin' while I start stickin'." He chuckled at his own witticism.

Amy, somehow, hadn't cried until now. But now she couldn't stop the streaming tears, the choking sobs.

Amy realized that the sudden pounding sound that she first thought was her own heart was coming instead from her left. Looking that way, Amy gasped as she saw Puppy burst out from behind the trees at full gallop, barking furiously, more angry than Amy had ever seen her. Puppy rounded in front of the man, alternating growls and barks.

The man gave ground involuntarily, then stood, his hands held out in front of him. "Whoa, girl, you hush. I got everything under control here. You... stop! Dang it!" Puppy had lunged closer, making him back off again.

In front of Amy, the doggirl Pepper rolled and scrambled to her feet, and looked on in perplexity. Amy assumed she would defend the man, but doing so against another doggirl was outside the range of her training. Why a strange doggirl would be threatening a man to begin with just seemed to mystify her.

Still growling, Puppy lunged again, her sharp teeth aimed towards the man's shin. He jumped back away again. "What in the hell...?"

Amy turned her head to watch his retreat, in time to see, out of the corner of her eye, Runner standing behind him, swinging a thick fallen tree branch like a club. There was a loud thump as it connected with the back of his head. The man dropped instantly to his knees, then toppled slowly forward, landing on his face with a thud.

Amy, wide-eyed, watched as Runner bent over him, her free hand clenched in a tight fist, and screamed, "You shit!!!!"

Puppy, her teeth still bared, turned towards Pepper. Pepper saw that Runner was looking at her as well, raising the branch again, Runner's own growl nearly doggirl-like. "You get out of here!"

Squealing in fright, Pepper turned and galloped away through the trees, back towards town.

As the man lay unmoving, Runner dropped the branch, and lifted Amy to her feet with a hand under her shoulder. "Amy, let's go!"

Amy shook herself, her brain beginning to function. "Wait! A key! He'd have a key!" She twisted awkwardly to show Runner the cuffs locked together behind her.

"Where?" She knelt beside the inert form sprawled on the ground.

Amy used her foot to turn the man partly over, touching his pocket with her toes. "In there!"

Runner reached into the pocket and found two keys. Amy recognized the one used for the trap, and indicated the second. "That smaller one. Remember how I used that other one, before?"

Runner nodded, saying, "But that didn't work!"

"It'll work on this lock." She twisted her arm around to brush her fingers against the new padlock. "His lock. His key."

Runner knelt behind Amy. "Just put it in that hole?"

"Yes. Hurry. He could wake up. I don't want him to see you."

After some fumbling, Amy heard a click. She shook the lock free as soon as it came open. The first thing she did with her arms was to throw them around Runner. She wanted to hold her and never let go.

Runner kissed her, then said, "We need to go!"

Amy nodded, broke off the hug, unclipped the leash from her collar and threw it down, started away, then stopped. "Wait just a second." She knelt beside the man, her hand on his neck. His pulse seemed strong. Good, she thought. I don't want to kill anybody. Not even him. "Okay." With Runner and Puppy, Amy shuffled as quickly as she could towards the trees.

They waited, crouched down in the trees, about fifty feet from the man's prone body, talking in whispers. Runner had wanted to go farther, but Amy, sensing the man would wake up soon, didn't want to make noises he could follow.

Amy, in the middle, had one arm across Runner's shoulders and the other over Puppy's, nuzzling her face against Puppy's as Puppy licked her. As usual, Puppy understood the need for quiet in the other girls' whispers, suppressing the happy whimpering she would usually be doing. Amy looked at Runner. "How did you get Puppy to do that?"

Runner whispered back, "I told her 'Go help Amy.' She seemed like she understood that. I think it helped that you were crying, so she knew you were in trouble. I just wanted her to make him watch her so I could come up behind him."

"You weren't gone very long. Why did you come back to soon?"

Runner looked uncertain. "I don't know. I felt like you needed me."

Amy shook her head in wonder. "I did. I really did." She kissed Runner's shoulder. "I want to make love to both of you all night."

Runner grinned and, in imitation of Amy a few days back, said, "Oh, okay," as if Amy had worn down her resistance. Amy choked back a giggle and kissed her.

Runner pointed suddenly. In the distance, Amy could now see the man stirring. He sat up slowly, his hand rubbing the back of his head. Amy could hear him weakly calling, "Pepper?" He seemed to listen for a time. At last he stood, and, seeming dizzy, stumbled off through the trees towards town.

After a few minutes, Amy took Runner's hand. "Okay, let's get far away from here."