EIGHT WEEKS LATER

Sara could hear the carpenters working outside. The front windows were open -- rain was threatening, but holding off. Construction was going on on the other side of those windows.

From either side of the front wall of the restaurant, a line of poles, about eight feet apart, came straight outward into what would normally have been an open town square. By next week, the carpenters would begin stacking leafy tree branches, tied together and piled high, between each pair of poles. The parallel lines of poles and tree branches would serve as windbreaks on the left and right. The fourth side of the rectangle, across from the front of the restaurant, would remain open. As a final step in construction, a huge tarp, brought along on the original trip from the mainland for just this purpose, would be tied to the tops of the poles to serve as a roof and complete the shelter in which the end-of-summer party would take place, where Sara would be ceremoniously barbecued.

Sara wiped down another table, trying to tamp down the worry that was gnawing at her.

The worry wasn't about her upcoming public snuff and barbecue, now just twelve days away. She was growing more excited day by day about that, as any woman would. Bart had asked her a week ago whether she wanted some other method than the guillotine, in use daily in the kitchen. It should be something within reason, he'd said, but alternatives were possible. After some thought, Sara had told him that she thought perhaps staying with the same method used by the islanders themselves would be better -- they did dispatch their slavegirls by beheading, but using something more along the lines of a machete. Sara suspected Sid could do a job at least as quick and painless, wielding a machete, as a guillotine could do, and her point was that she didn't want the method of snuff, by being unusual, to draw attention away from the subject of the snuff, herself. Bart smiled and said he understood.

No, her approaching death wasn't the problem.

It didn't help her mood at all that she missed Cherise terribly. Nothing was wrong with Cherise, other than that she was having her period. She'd been bleeding the last couple of days, and it had been determined long ago, in the initial planning of the program, that the girls should not wait tables while menstruating. Obviously, to begin with, waitresses dripping sweat was one thing, but dribbling menstrual fluids in a public eating area was out of the question. On first thought, it seemed as though stuffing a sufficient number of tampons inside would block the problem, but the experts were wary of the possibility that the tampons might be visible, and objectionable, to the island men, who might, by a stretch aided by unfamiliarity with the whole idea of devices to stop the flow, regard the tampons in some sense as clothing. There was disagreement on that point, but caution had won out. In practice it was simple enough for the girls to trade off shifts, and Trish had taken Cherise's place in the dining room last night. Since the night before, and the night following were off-nights for Cherise anyway, this was Sara's third consecutive night without Cherise (and Trish's third consecutive night working, but all the girls were accustomed by now to piling up shifts to help out a coworker who was out of commission). The bleeding was pretty much over with now, from what Sara had heard, and Cherise would be back working tomorrow. But it felt to Sara as if she'd gone forever without that indispensable part of herself.

But Cherise's absence wasn't really the problem either.

Sara's gnawing worry was that, since yesterday, she hadn't been able to speak at all. That feeling of disconnection from her vocal machinery persisted at all times now, even when Cherise wasn't anywhere in sight. Even when Sara was alone.

Sara had written and handed Bart a note to explain the trouble, to the extent it was explainable. She had fudged the truth a little: in her note she said her trouble speaking was a periodic problem that came and went unpredictably, and she should be fine soon. Bart had nodded and looked very understanding, patted her arm and made a small joke about the amount of speaking Sara's job required, which was none. Sara had smiled at the joke, and knew that the fact that everyone here knew that Sara always had some trouble with speech would make her present malady much less puzzling to everyone than it would otherwise be.

Other than Sara. It puzzled the hell out of her. Puzzled, worried, tormented...

She only had twelve days left to talk to Cherise. And she had felt so sure that, when the right moment came, her increased confidence from being at the center of the most important event of the whole summer, an event that excited her and that validated every effort she had made to be part of the program, would loosen her tongue and she'd be able to tell Cherise everything she wanted her to know.

Instead, the one thing she had needed to complete her life happily, the knowledge that Cherise knew at last how important and special and unique she was to Sara, that thing seemed to have been taken from her.

Sara only considered for a brief moment writing down everything she wanted to say and giving it to Cherise to read. The idea reeked of junior high school, of adolescents leaving anonymous notes for their crushes. The deep, profound love for Cherise that Sara wanted to, had to express, had to be expressed face to face, eyes looking into eyes. To write it all down and hand it to Cherise was only marginally less ridiculous than the idea of sending it as a text message on the phone.

Sara picked up the plates and silverware from another table, returned them to the kitchen, and came back to wipe the table.

She gasped as a hand brushed her arm on her way past a table. Somehow, without actually gripping and holding, the fingers curved in front of her arm just sufficiently to impede her progress and make her look at the arm and the body they were attached to.

Sara smiled involuntarily. The face of the man who'd stopped her was the handsomest she'd seen on the island. Clean-shaven, strong face shaped on classical lines, long hair wavy and somehow rakish... It occurred to Sara that if someone on the mainland decided to produce a weekly television drama series taking place on Purity Island, this man would have to get the starring role. Female viewers would swoon over him.

Sara decided not to signal Sid that a diner had groped her. It wasn't like that, really. The man had been as polite as it was possible to be in intercepting someone striding past him.

The man returned her smile and spoke just loud enough to be heard over the background hubbub, "You are pleasing far beyond your race. I would be happy if you would meet me after darkfall. Look to the building straight across from here..." He made a small pointing gesture, indicating the front of the restaurant, "Go then to the next building that way..." a flick of his hand to the left, "...and the next. I will be waiting there for you."

It took Sara a moment of audio playback in her head to assemble that speech in understandable form. Island men had a strong accent, consisting mostly of a shift of the vowels, all of them closer to the "oo" end of the spectrum and away from the "ee" end. Sara had sat in with all of the waitresses as they were instructed how to understand the accent, since the waitresses were all going to have to be taking meal orders. Luckily, island men, while sounding odd, at least enunciated what they were saying fairly clearly.

A second level of interpretation was required after getting the individual words figured out. Island men tended to refer to the collective population of all women as a "race," which fit with their attitude that women constituted a separate, inferior breed, a "race" not quite human. He was, she realized, simply saying that he found her a very attractive woman. The absurdly awkward set of directions he'd given were his accommodation to his belief that Sara would not be able to count to three, and that she didn't know left from right.

It took her just a few seconds to put it all together and realize she'd just been hit on by an islander. And he'd done it in rather a romantic way that she hadn't been aware they were capable of.

She gave him a little bigger smile than before -- it really was flattering -- and then a tiny headshake. Somehow she didn't want to make a big deal of rejecting him. He'd been rather sweet and didn't deserve to be slapped down in a very public way, and deserved even less drawing Sid's attention and getting tossed out on his ear. This was nothing like the occasional rude hands that reached out for a feel of buttock, or mound, or sometimes breast, which had happened about a dozen times in the eleven weeks the restaurant had been in operation, including twice to Sara herself.

She simply took another step in the direction she'd been going, avoiding yanking her arm away from him. As she moved, his fingers slid off her arm naturally.

She decided to store it away in her "nice memory" file. At some point she would write it up for consideration by the Foundation's panel of experts. Was it a good sign? She supposed they would debate that for awhile. She'd also mention it to the other girls, assuming her voice returned so that mentioning became possible.

At least it proved Sara was making an impression on the men of the island -- a positive one, it seemed -- which was exactly what the planners of the End of Summer Party had been hoping for.

The man -- in her mind she gave him a name, "Cute Guy" -- caught her eye twice more during the evening, flashing his smile at her, perhaps hoping she was thinking it over. She wasn't, of course. In the years since meeting Cherise she'd always turned down every invitation, clear or hinted, from women, many of whom she found physically attractive. She wasn't about to break that pattern in response to a male come-on.

She was relieved when Cute Guy finished his meal and left. As she cleared his table, she half-expected to find a tip, though islanders didn't use money, or a note, though she knew he would never have imagined she could read. There was nothing. Good, she thought. That's over with.

As the last of the diners left, and the waitresses mostly departed, Sara wiped down the last of the tables. She looked up and saw that Katie had stayed behind. On Katie's face was a quizzical grin. "I saw that guy talking to you. What'd he say?" Immediately she remembered, and waved her hands in apology. "I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking. Okay, let's see. The nearest thing I could think of was it was like he was asking for your phone number." She laughed at the absurdity of the idea. "Was it kind of like that, though? Like he was asking you for a date?"

Sara gave her a you-got-it smile and nodded her head.

Katie laughed again. "Okay, that's a first. You going to go out with him?"

Sara held up her hands, with an are-you-crazy? look on her face. To make sure the point was absolutely clear, she shook her head emphatically.

Katie nodded, with a smile. "Yeah, I know. But really, he was cute! I might even be tempted, if I didn't think he was going to slap me in chains and set me to work digging up carrots. You done here? Let's get to the shower while there's hot water."

Sara gave her a small smile and nodded. She was used to the sweat creeping down all sides of her, but she still didn't want to go to bed that way. A shower was going to be welcome. But a shower without Cherise in the room was only a shower.

THE FOLLOWING NIGHT

Sara was so glad to have Cherise back in the dining room with her. Seeing Cherise's perfect legs flashing as she walked quickly between the kitchen and the tables, watching her light-up-the-room smile as she politely took orders, seeing the lantern light glint off her wonderful gold slave collar. Sara somehow took pride in the way the men looked at Cherise. They ogled all of the girls, of course, Sara included, but there was always something special about the way they looked at Cherise, a higher degree of yearning.

Cute Guy was back tonight. He had to be visiting from out of town, Sara judged, since a townsman couldn't possibly have waited eleven weeks to check the place out. Obviously he'd enjoyed the experience, despite whatever disappointment he might be feeling over Sara's rejection. Assuming that was disappointing. She wondered if he'd actually stayed up waiting for her last night.

Sara felt uncomfortable whenever she had to approach the far end of the room, by the front window. There was another slavegirl outside on the platform being whipped throughout the day, anytime a slaveowner came by and wanted his slaves to see what happened to bad girls. She was the third girl punished this summer, the first in five weeks. Sara was glad it didn't happen any more often, in Purity Town anyway. At least it wasn't raining, so the girl was spared that added element of misery. If every-four-weeks-or-so was the norm, then there was a good chance this was the last one Sara would have to see.

Sara was reluctantly starting to consider the possibility of writing a letter to Cherise. She hated that she couldn't declare her love to Cherise face to face, but this was her third day of complete aphasia, and Sara felt she needed to face the fact that she might never speak again.

She looked up from wiping a table and saw Cute Guy talking to Cherise. Cherise listened politely, with her usual smile. Sara was too far away to hear, but could watch the man speak with the same earnestness he had last night. Just like Sara the previous night, Cherise seemed to put his stopping her in a different category from the unwelcome groping that got a customer thrown out.

Sara supposed Cute Guy never would have chosen her to hit on last night if Cherise had been in the room. She nearly laughed out loud, thinking: You asshole, I knew you were just giving me a line. And now you're trying it out on Cherise. Not a big surprise you'd pick her out as soon as you saw her, but good luck with that.

THAT NIGHT

It was such a pleasant dream. Sara was lying in a warm, soft bed with Cherise, snug under the covers. Cherise and Sara were facing each other, each propping her head up on an upraised hand, the arm resting on its elbow, as they talked. Cherise was fondly stroking Sara's hip with one hand, and Sara paused during a description of her day -- she was speaking easily, unhindered by any stammering -- pausing occasionally to lean just slightly forward and kiss Cherise, rewarded with a return kiss from Cherise's sleepy smile.

Yet somehow, there was an alarm going off in Sara's head, screaming wordlessly that it was a dream, and she needed to wake up, it was important to wake up. Sara resisted leaving the dream, but the alarm grew louder. You must wake up, Sara! Wake up now!

Leave me alone! she shouted back at the alarm. I'm with Cherise! Let me be!

The alarm at last overrode her resistance. The dream broke into pieces, defying Sara's desperate grasp at it, as she tried helplessly to keep it together.

Disoriented for a moment, she remembered at last where she was. I'm in my bed in the storeroom, she told herself despondently. It was only a dream. Cherise isn't here.

She blinked her eyes, finally sufficiently aware enough to realize the room, though dim, was brighter than it should be.

A sound drew her attention to the door that led outside, the one where restaurant customers came first, to pay for their meals. It was the pattering of rain, and that was louder than it should have been. There was a vertical strip of dim light at the edge of the door. It was standing ajar, just enough to let in a tiny bit of light and sound from outside.

It appeared it must be very near dawn, on one side or the other.

Sara got up and went to the door. Across the door at about waist level ran the handle, one of those auditorium-type handles that you push on to unlatch the door. The door was always locked from the outside, but easily opened from inside, in recognition of the need to escape quickly in emergency.

Sara looked down along the gap between the door and the frame, to the floor. There was a small wedge of cardboard preventing the door from closing.

Sara was absolutely sure the door had been fully closed when she went to bed. She could not have failed to notice it being open like this. Someone had gone out in the night. Someone who, unlike Bart or Derek, didn't have a key and wanted to make sure they could get back in.

Sara sucked in a sudden sharp gasp. Leaving in the middle of the night? Sara herself had been asked to do that the night before. Asked by Cute Guy. The same man who had hit on another girl last night, no doubt making the same request.

That girl was Cherise. Cute Guy had been talking to Cherise.

It must have been Cherise who'd snuck quietly through the storeroom, without waking Sara, and left the restaurant. It made sense that anyone trying to sneak out would exit by the storeroom door, though Sara was sleeping right there. Jeffrey and Joe both slept near the kitchen door, doubling the chance of awakening someone, and opening the front door rang a small bell in Bart's and Derek's room. And it had worked -- Sara hadn't heard the storeroom door open, at least not consciously.

And now it was near dawn, a new day was starting, and Cherise wasn't back yet. Sara had no idea how long she'd been gone. Surely it must have been Cherise who had set off Sara's mental alarm, but Sara didn't know how long it had taken to wake her. She'd certainly tried to ignore it as long as she could.

Sara stood at the door, shaking her head, her breathing coming in ragged gasps as her heart exploded into pounding activity in her chest. No, she said to herself, no, no, no, no, please no!

She eased the door further open, and looked desperately in both directions.

The light was still very dim, though it was possible the sun was already up. The cloud cover made it impossible to tell. If dawn was past, though, it couldn't have been for long. There was no activity whatsoever in the town square. Nobody was there, at least in the part of it Sara could see from the door.

She understood that while out in the farming areas work would already be getting started, the people who lived in town, the tradesmen, the shopkeepers, the carpenters, the artisans, all began their day a little later. They would all be up very soon and the square would be bustling with activity. But not yet.

With her legs trembling and bladder threatening to give up control, in fear of what she knew she was about to do, Sara pulled a cardboard box marked "girlskin" over to the door. She opened the door fully, went outside, and left the box in the doorway, propping the door open wider than before.

Slowly, her whole body trembling now, she began taking small steps towards the front of the building, trying to look every direction at once for anyone who might see her. The weather was warm, as always, with early-morning fog that was helpful in keeping Sara herself less visible, but frustrating in making everything she wanted to see less visible.

She knew anyone seeing her would instantly know she was a slavegirl: she was naked, and that was all they needed to see. Even in the fog, she suspected her sky-blue slave collar stood out, making identification of her status still easier. A slavegirl out on her own, unaccompanied by her owner. That made her a runaway.

It began raining, lightly at first, then more steadily within a minute.

Sara reached the corner at the front of the building, and was horrified to see that the slavegirl she'd seen being punished last night was still there. Right, she remembered. Derek said the punishment usually lasted a full day and night. Sara could hear the girl moan in misery. As Sara watched, the girl pushed herself still higher on tiptoes to relieve the strain in her arms, but could only manage it for a few seconds, losing strength in her legs and sagging back down to hang from her arms. She moaned again. She looked up and opened her mouth, letting the rain run in. She wouldn't be given food or drink during her punishment. She had to rely on the rain for water.

Derek is right, Sara reminded herself, I can't help her. And right now there's someone maybe I can help. If I can find her.

Sara knew where to look. She remembered the directions Cute Guy had given her the night before: across from the restaurant, then two buildings left.

Her heart pounding even harder, Sara swept her gaze once more across the square. Still no movement. She left the safety of the restaurant, going between two of the posts that would eventually frame windbreaks for her own party, her own roast. She crept as quickly as she dared across the space separating the restaurant from the buildings across from it.

Purity Town had no hotels, as such. There were none anywhere on the island. In place of the concept of establishments to house travelers in large numbers, anyone staying overnight in town simply took up residence in an empty house, of which there were more than enough: exactly for this purpose, local carpenters had constructed more log shacks than the permanent population needed. Cute Guy had no doubt made one of those shacks his temporary address while in town.

Sara told herself she was only going to listen briefly at the door of the shack, for any sound that would tell her that Cherise was within. She hadn't wanted to raise the alarm in the restaurant, get Bart and Derek out of bed, and then discover Cherise was snug in her own room. No, she told herself, that's not really it. I'm just rationalizing. This is really stupid, but I have to be here. If anything is happening to Cherise, I have to be there for her!

Sara discarded the "listen at the door" idea as soon as she saw the door standing open. That was how visitors could tell that a shack was available: its door was open.

If this is where Cute Guy was staying, she told herself, he's not there now. He's left town.

The sight of the open door brought something of a sense of relief to Sara. Cherise isn't here, she said to herself. It's all just my own panic over an open storeroom door. Maybe it was like that when I went to bed and I only thought it was closed. Cherise isn't with Cute Guy. He left last night. Cherise is fine.

Sara started to turn to go back to the restaurant, to see if she could somehow get a little more sleep, and perhaps get back into that dream, before she had to get up. Just as she did, something bright on the muddy ground in front of the door of the shack caught her eye. She bent to retrieve it.

It was a scrap of cloth, with Velcro patches at both ends. The bright color was golden.

Not able to breathe at all now, Sara shot forward into the open doorway. Among the many bits of various things discarded on the floor, to be cleaned up by the next occupant, Sara saw several more scraps of gold-colored cloth. And a beautiful golden collar, raggedly sliced through on one side, probably by something like tin snips.

Sara grabbed the collar, shot out the door, and sprinted across to the restaurant, turning sideways to jump through the storeroom door without bothering to open it wider. She stopped then and stood crying.

She threw open the door to the hallway and pounded down towards Bart's and Derek's room. Ashley, Cherise's roommate, was in the hallway, knocking at the door to Katie's and Cheryl's room. As Ashley looked at the sprinting Sara in surprise, Sara suddenly remembered she wouldn't be able to tell Bart anything, not verbally. She could only project severe emotional distress, which would get his attention but not be especially helpful. She ran back past Ashley to the storeroom. The marker Wendy and Karen used to label the boxes was there. Sara slammed into the storeroom, tore the side off an empty box, and started writing on it.

Ashley looked in at the door, very worried. "Sara, is Cherise in here?"

Sara thrust the cardboard at her. In all caps, it read CHERISE IS GONE SHE'S OUTSIDE FIND HER PLEASE PLEASE!!!!

Ashley went pale and ran back the way she had come. Seconds later Sara heard her pound on another door. Bart's sleepy voice emerged in response. Sara heard the door open, and Ashley saying frantically, "Bart, Cherise isn't in our room, and I can't find her anywhere, dining room, kitchen, I asked everybody if she was in their room, and now I got this from Sara."

Sara had already started out into the hallway, ready to go down to Bart's room so he could tell her what to do, when she heard Bart shout, "Derek! Sid! I think Cherise is outside! I'll go watch the front door, and you two get the storeroom and kitchen doors. We have to be there to let her back in."

Sara had no idea, later, how she had managed to have the presence of mind to think: Get out, now, Sara, you have to get out before they get here!

She whirled towards a shelf on which a pile of local men's clothes lay, for use by the faculty members if they needed to go out (they wore regular clothes while in the building), and grabbed shorts, a vest, a hat, and shoes. As quickly as she could she pulled the pants up, slipped into the vest, pulled on the shoes and slapped the hat on her head, while hearing Sid and Derek in the hallway deciding which one would take the storeroom. She leapt towards the door, kicked the box back into the room, and at the last second remembered to rip off her wristbands and ankle bands, unhook the collar, and toss the entire set of slave accessories into the corner, before jumping outside and pushing the door closed behind her. She ran to the rear of the restaurant, to a corner where none of Bart, Derek, or Sid would be able to see her if they stood by their respective doors and glanced outside, and finished buttoning up the vest, tying the drawstring on the shorts, and adjusting the hat. The hat came equipped with a phony fringe of long brown hair, so the professors, all of whom had short hair, wouldn't look out of place as long as they wore the hat. Sara shakily straightened the fringe so it hung evenly to her shoulders. She waited a few minutes until she felt safe from any of the men inside spotting her, then began her search.