ISLAND

Chapter 16


They made love again at first light -- more slowly, more deliberately, each sensing what the other liked from reactions. Sara kept her eyes closed, wanting to experience Cherise more fully by touch, by scent. By sound. By taste.

Cherise came first, setting off Sara immediately after. They lay still for a time after, kissing lightly, Sara still atop Cherise. At last Sara disentangled herself from Cherise and scooped up a few handfuls of water from the creek -- the water was no longer flowing, but there were plenty of small pools. Afterward she went for some food. As she fed it to Cherise, Sara said, "We need to decide what to do. I don't know how far north we got yesterday. Probably only a couple of miles, with all the stopping and starting and going around things. The mountain crossing is going to be watched, so we can't go back there. I was thinking we should go to the northern end of the island, cross over where the mountains are low, and then come back down. I'm guessing it will take about six days -- three up, three back down."

"Are you sure they'd still be looking for us?"

Sara sighed. "After the cave guys and the farm guys compared notes? Yeah, I'm sure they'll still be looking. I'm Public Enemy Number One. And they must know who I am, now. The guy who took you, he'd remember me from the restaurant, as soon as the farm guy described me, and he'd know I came for you. And that we have to get back across the mountains. They'll be on the lookout for a pair exactly like us -- one carrying the other, because it'll seem pretty unlikely I got you loose from the chains and cuffs. So anybody would be able to recognize us, even ones who didn't see us."

Cherise frowned. "How many days till your roast?"

Sara looked down and said softly, "Four."

A tear ran down from Cherise's eye. "I want to tell you we need to try the trail, but I was just thinking -- they can't have any idea where you got clothes from to begin with. They might think you got some more, so they'll be extra-vigilant."

Sara sighed again, extra deeply. "I didn't really think of it that way. I figured we were in enough trouble as it is, but that makes it even worse. They'll be looking closely at anyone who comes near the trail. The trail is just totally out, for the time being. We already know the guys on that farm set traps for people who are messing with them. Now that they know it's a woman they'll work that much harder, and the mountain trail is almost at their front door."

"But if we go north, we can't get to the restaurant in time for your roast!"

"We still might. When I figured six days, I was assuming the worst. Everything could go smoothly and we could get back sooner than that. But I'm not thinking about the roast anymore. That was..." She looked at Cherise. "That was so you could eat me. If we get caught trying the trail, which we probably would, then we've lost everything -- not just me getting cooked and you eating me, but also you getting home. The last one is the important part: you getting home and safe. That's the only thing I care about right now." She kissed Cherise softly, long, lingering. She broke the kiss. "You ready?"

"I still need to pee." She no longer seemed so embarrassed by that.

"Of course." She waited as Cherise rolled onto her back, then picked out a place to leave pee and poop, her own and Cherise's.

*   *   *   *   *

Sara carried Cherise differently today: Cherise upright, facing her, arms and legs around her -- like last night, only standing. Sara kept her left hand cupped around Cherise's buttock to support her from below, and her arm wrapped behind her shoulders to keep her from tipping backward. Sara found that carrying Cherise that way was easier on her back, along with being very pleasant. Cherise kept her chin mostly on Sara's shoulder, and remained silent like yesterday, so that Sara could concentrate.

When they stopped around noon to eat, Cherise frowned suddenly, looking to her left. "That tree over there, that's split down the middle, like by lightning or something. I think I saw that same tree a couple of hours ago." She bit her lip.

Sara stared at her. "The same tree? Are you sure?" She looked where Cherise was facing, saw the tree. "I don't remember it."

"You've been mostly looking straight ahead. It was farther away. You passed it on the left."

"You're absolutely sure?"

"Not a hundred percent, but I have a pretty good memory for shapes."

Sara suddenly realized it was very possible. Yesterday Sara had angled away from the mountains, afraid of the possibility of search activity in progress on the wide-open shelf, and now they'd been traveling all day out of sight of both the mountain ridge and the shore -- the trees cut visibility in all directions to at most a hundred yards, usually less, and there was no way to see in what direction the mountains and the ocean lay. They'd had to make a detour around a farm sometime back. Sara thought she'd walked halfway around it and then struck off in the direction she'd been going before. But now she wasn't sure of that. And that wasn't the only problem with direction. There was no water flowing today, nearly twenty-four hours after the rain had stopped. They had passed any number of damp creeks, some of which might have been the same ones crossed in opposite directions. The slope of the land from mountains down to the sea was so gentle that it was almost impossible to perceive it. There hadn't been any break in the cloud cover in days, so Sara had no idea where the sun was.

Sara had a sudden swirling feeling of vertigo. All sense of direction, on which she had been depending all day, abruptly left her.

Cherise saw the look in Sara's eyes, and said quickly, "It's okay! The island isn't really that big. We can't be more than a few miles from the mountains one way and the ocean the other way. Don't!" She gave Sara a little smile. "Don't say you're sorry! You've been doing more than anyone I know ever could, and this is just a little setback. Okay?"

Sara smiled back. "How did you know what I was going to say?"

"I guess I'm getting to know you. I always wanted to."

"I'm glad." Sara leaned forward and kissed her. She sat back again and closed her eyes. Then she opened them and pointed. "If we follow that creek there, it has to go either to the mountains or the beach. One way or the other it will take us to a place where we can get oriented."

Cherise nodded. "I'm ready."

Sara crawled again into the circle of Cherise's arms and legs, picked her up, mentally flipped a coin and started following the creek to the left.

*   *   *   *   *

An hour later, Sara heard the barking of a doggirl just before seeing a clearing up ahead. The creek ran directly into it. She muttered "Shit" under her breath.

Cherise twisted around to look. "What is it?"

Sara sighed. "We need to go around this. I can go left or right, but one of them will be taking us closer to where we want to go, the other farther away. And I don't know which is which." She made a frustrated growling sound in the back of her throat. "Another coin flip." She set off to the left.

After about fifteen minutes, she stopped suddenly. She could just distinguish the sound of breakers on the beach from the rustling of leaves in the trees. It was ocean ahead of her, not the mountains. "Shit, shit, shit," she intoned softly. "Hear that?" Cherise nodded. "I picked the wrong way. Turning left took us south instead of north. And now the farm is in between us and our goal."

As of to mock her efforts, a sprinkle of rain began falling from the leaden skies, turning to steady rainfall within minutes. Soon all the streams would have water running towards the beach. If it had been raining the whole time, they would never have gotten lost. Sara growled again.

Cherise said, "If you keep going ahead, that should be shorter than turning around. We want to get to the beach, so we can follow it the rest of the way to the north end."

Sara nodded, and set off again.

In another fifteen minutes she sank to her knees, moaning. Cherise quickly asked a worried, "What?"

"The clearing goes all the way to the beach. If we walk in front of it, we'll be in plain sight. We have to back up and go all the way around."

Cherise kissed her cheek. "Do you need to stop and rest awhile?"

Sara shook her head. "Can't. We're losing too much time." By the time she walked completely around the farm and hit the beach on the other side, they'd be starting to lose daylight. With the time lost earlier going in a circle, then later taking the wrong direction around the farm, they had lost an entire day, ending no closer to the north end of the island than they'd been at daybreak. If it took six days to get back to Purity Town from here, they'd arrive after the boat had sailed that morning.

She sighed heavily and turned to start walking the other way.

She thought of one thing that would lift her spirits. She jiggled Cherise and said, "Hey."

Cherise looked up from Sara's shoulder and responded, "What?"

"I love you."

Cherise's smile lit up Sara's path the way she wished the absent sun would. "I love you too."

It was the first time Cherise had said it! Sara shared a long kiss with her, then resumed walking.

*   *   *   *   *

TWO DAYS LATER

Lovemaking at dawn again. As it had each time before, the world outside their bodies receded, unimportant, unperceived. Only Cherise's touch, her lips, whimpers of passion, made their way into Sara's world. They knew each other's needs much better already, and managed to come together for the first time.

It was only afterward, as Sara still lay on Cherise, stroking her hair, planting soft kisses on her lips, that the thought of time intruded.

As she seemed to do with little effort, Cherise read her mind again. "We really can't make it to your roast, can we? It's day after tomorrow. I mean, they'd wait if they knew you were still out here, but..." They both knew that, though the day of the roast hadn't come yet, it was a physical impossibility for them to reach Purity Town in the amount of time left.

Sara gave her a tiny smile. "Don't. You know the rule." They had agreed on a permanent ban on apologies, Sara's for being trapped and losing a chance at crossing the mountains, Cherise's for both of them being out here in the first place.

Cherise maintained her serious look. "Can I do a no-fault apology? Like if your friend's dad died in a car wreck, and you say 'I'm so sorry,' even though you didn't have anything to do with it? I'm so sorry about your roast, Sara. I know it's hard for any woman to make plans for her consumption and see them fall through."

Sara shrugged, then smiled again. "Maybe you could still eat me someday."

Cherise smiled. "I'd love that. Having some of you inside me." Then she frowned. "What do you suppose they're doing about it?"

"I'm pretty sure Jill must have volunteered." She laughed, and told Cherise about how excited Jill had been, to the point of having to run off and masturbate, from picturing herself being the subject of the end-of-summer roast next year.

Sara withdrew from Cherise's bound embrace and scooped some water from the adjacent creek for Cherise to drink. "We have to be pretty close to the north end now. We might even reach it this morning. We can get across and start heading south to Purity. Of course, on the east side of the island there'll be more detours. More farms, more people. But getting there before the boat leaves still looks okay." They still had five days. Though Sara thought she probably should count it as four. The boat would be leaving the dock early in the morning, to make the ten-hour return trip in daylight.

Cherise gulped down the water and nodded. "We'll make it."

"Back in a minute. Grabbing some food."

The nearest peach tree overhung the creek. Sara had gathered three peaches, and was reaching for a fourth, as many as her hand could hold at once. She looked down to make sure of her footing. It looked safe, with her left foot on the soil, her right on a smooth-topped rock at the edge of the creek.

As she reached out for the peach, closed her hand around it, and put more weight on her right foot, her foot slid along the slanted, rain-slicked surface and over the edge into the creek. It slammed down onto the bed of the creek, in shallow water about nine inches below where the rock had been. She hadn't had time to straighten her ankle, and she came down hard on the side of her foot.

Cherise looked up in sudden horror at the sound of Sara's loud cry of pain. She saw Sara pitch over into the water. In a harsh stage whisper, not wanting to add any more attention-getting noise so soon after Sara's, she rasped, "Sara! What happened? Are you okay?" She turned onto her side and began to wriggle along the ground in Sara's direction.

She stopped as she saw Sara sit up in the middle of the creek, her face scrunched up in a soundless howl of agony.

Sara's ankle hurt so much she couldn't breathe. The initial shock gradually wore away, but the pain didn't show any sign of leaving.

She saw Cherise trying to reach her, and held up her hands to tell her to stop. Gasping as waves of pain continued radiating from her ankle, she used her hands and other foot to lever herself out of the creek.

Cherise, ignoring the "stop" gesture, continued wriggle to the edge of the creek, stopping beside Sara as she sat up on dry land. "Is it broken? Can you tell?" Cherise bit her lip so hard it started bleeding.

Between gasps, Sara managed to say, "I don't think... it's broken, I just... I got it twisted... really bad when... I fell. I... landed wrong."

"Let me see. Please?"

Sara turned on her butt to present the ankle to Cherise. Sara could see it was already swelling.

Sara could tell Cherise was trying not to say anything really stupid, like "Does it still hurt?" when obviously it did. Cherise finally said, "At the least, it's a bad sprain. You can't walk on it, can you?"

Sara pushed herself up to a standing position with her hands and stood balancing on her left foot. When she started to put weight on her right, she bit back another cry of pain and sank back down to the ground. Miserably she shook her head.

Cherise said, "You need to keep it elevated." As Sara nodded that she knew that, Cherise looked around, and gestured with her feet. "That log over there." The forest had no shortage of fallen trees. "Put it up on that."

Sara looked back at the peach tree. "I need to get you..."

Cherise said firmly, "I'm not hungry. Go put your leg up. Please?"

Sara looked in Cherise's eyes and saw a degree of worry far beyond what being lost yesterday had inspired. And she had a strong sense that it was all empathy for Sara's pain, and nothing about the loss of her only means of transportation.

Sara nodded, leaned over to kiss Cherise, and crawled over to the log. She stretched out on her back, her calf muscle resting on the log, and threw her arm over her eyes, suppressing a moan. She shifted the arm slightly, so that it shielded her nose from the rain so it wouldn't run in.

A few minutes later she heard Cherise coming up behind her, inchworming along the ground. Sara twisted her head around to watch Cherise's awkward progress, made more difficult by clutching a peach in each hand.

"I ate a couple, and I brought you some."

Sara reached gratefully and took the peaches out of Cherise's hands. She hoped neither of them was the peach she had grabbed just as she fell. She wasn't feeling especially friendly towards that particular peach, but it was impossible to tell. She bit into one, and said, "I think I'll be okay in a few minutes."

Cherise shook her head. "Sara, I can see what your ankle looks like from here."

"I've had broken bones. This doesn't feel like that."

"Sara, please, you need to at least take the day off."

"We don't have time..."

"Yes we do. But not if you try to walk on it too soon and do more damage to the tissues. Even if there's no break. Sara, we can still make it. If we get over the ridge at the north end early tomorrow and get partway back south along the coast, we could get to Purity in two more days. But you have to rest it now to do that. Please? You know I'm making sense."

To Sara, that was exactly the trouble. She felt a desperate need to keep going without any delay, but she couldn't argue with what Cherise was saying.

She sighed deeply. "Okay." She tried to smile. "Kiss?"

Cherise smiled back, and wriggled close enough to put her face up against Sara's for the kiss. Then she moved a little farther down and rested her head on Sara's stomach. Like she's pinning me down to make sure I don't move, thought Sara. But it does feel nice. She stroked Cherise's hair and, following orders, lay there quietly.

*   *   *   *   *

It was very lucky, Sara decided later, that Cherise had turned so that her head on Sara's stomach was facing away. Cherise could see, with one eye, just over the log Sara had her legs propped on, which Sara, in her reclining position, could not.

After only a few minutes of rest, Sara barely made out, over the sound of waves dashing against the beach, the softest possible whisper: "Sara... don't... move... stay... very... still... doggirl."

Sara, who had been about to move her left leg to get more comfortable, froze. For a tense time, that seemed like an hour but she decided later was more likely five minutes, Sara remained still, though an itch on her thigh was starting to drive her crazy. Shit, she thought, double shit! It must be a doggirl alone, Sara told herself, or Cherise would have given the still more disturbing news that there was a man out there. But there was nothing that could be done if a doggirl saw them -- the girl would start barking, and no doubt her owner would show up soon after. Neither Sara nor, obviously, Cherise was capable of running away or, alternatively, catching the doggirl and silencing her. The doggirl couldn't have seen them yet, or there'd be a lot of noise right now.

Sara could just hear the soft padding of the doggirl's stubby limbs crinkling fallen leaves underneath. Adrenaline shot through her body, uselessly. It wasn't going to help, but the body reacts automatically regardless.

At last Cherise sighed and said, in a whisper only barely more audible than before, "She's gone now. Turned and wandered off."

Sara whispered back, "She must have heard me yell when I turned my ankle. Decided to check it out." The sound of a female voice in an unexpected place, or anything else a female did that didn't seem right, was exactly what a doggirl was trained to watch out for.

Cherise snorted. "I imagine so. They probably heard that back in Purity."

Sara dismissed the thought that the doggirl had pretended not to see them so they'd stay put while she went to get reinforcements. Doggirls are smarter than they seem, she told herself, but they aren't that subtle. And her owner couldn't have made her understand an instruction that complicated. "How close did she get?"

"Not very. Maybe fifty feet."

Sara nodded. It wasn't too surprising the doggirl hadn't seen them. The light under the forest canopy and cloud cover was dim, and the human animal, like almost any other animal, sensed movement in its visual field much more easily than anything standing still. But she would definitely have caught them without Cherise's warning. Sara was glad that a doggirl's sense of smell was merely human, nothing like a real dog.

In the absence of further untoward noises Sara or Cherise might make, they were probably safe for now. In a very relative sense of the word "safe."

Sara said, "We need to get out of here in the morning. We must be closer to a farm than I thought." In the stillness, Sara now heard the distant bark of a doggirl -- a single bark, no doubt directed at a balky slavegirl, not an insistent repeated sound that would mean "Hey, follow me and check out what I found in the woods."

Cherise responded only, "See how it feels in the morning." She didn't need to clarify what "it" was.

*   *   *   *   *

As the day wore on, Sara managed to crawl back to the peach tree, keeping her right foot off the ground but still feeling pain in her ankle with each movement, at a just-tolerable level. She got herself and Cherise fed, which was as much as she felt capable of doing.

Sara didn't feel up to sex that night, but was content to lie behind Cherise, the two of them nestling as spoons, Sara with her arm draped over Cherise protectively, kissing the back of her neck occasionally. She heard Cherise whisper, "I love you," and whispered the same in return, smiling as she drifted to sleep, the exchange clearing her mind of worries, replacing them with the thought that that was the first time Cherise had said it spontaneously rather than in response.



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