EIGHT WEEKS LATER

Sara had found her joints were a little achy this morning, and wondered whether she had overdone her workout the day before. Though she hadn't added anything new to the workout in awhile. The pain was mostly gone in her ankle, though it was still stiff. She'd picked out a circular path through the woods that didn't require dodging too many trees, and ran fifty laps around it as part of her daily regimen. She'd been doing the fifty for a week now, so she thought she should be used to it. She was thinking of upping it to sixty starting tomorrow.

She smiled when she looked at the wreath hanging from a projecting knob of rock. It was Sara's first contribution to the decoration of the permanent home she and Cherise would be sharing for life. Sara had devoted about a half-hour a day for two weeks to constructing the wreath, picking out twigs of a certain length, doing her best to braid them together, experimenting because she wasn't sure how braiding was done, using long stalks of grass wrapped and tied around it to make the twigs stay together as she gradually formed them into a circle, and then finally picking several dozen yellow and purple flowers, sticking their stems into the spaces between the twigs so they stayed in place. She'd finally showed it to Cherise yesterday, and hung it over the knob. Cherise had loved it, and she and Sara had made love with Cherise facing towards the wreath so she could admire it. Sara knew she'd need to replace the flowers every few days, but she was already considering other ways she could make the cave into a home.

When Sara's thoughts turned, as they often did, to trying for ideas on how to obtain some girlmeat, the truth about her aching joints suddenly hit her: she was starting to show early symptoms of girlmeat deficiency.

She came into the cave and sat in front of Cherise, who was sitting up against the wall of the cave, her preferred position for as long as her butt could stand it. "Cherise? Are your joints kind of achy lately?"

Cherise managed a wan smile. "They always are, at least a little. I'm glad I've got you to bend me different ways and help me do my exercises, but I spend so much time in any one position, everything's always a little painful."

Sara frowned. That made it harder to decide whether lack of girlmeat was affecting Cherise. It would eventually, inevitably, but she might be one of those who could get by longer. "We really have to get some girlmeat."

Cherise was startled. "Oh! You mean you... that's why you were asking about being achy?"

Sara nodded.

Cherise looked stricken. "But... we can't get any! We've been out here a couple of months, and if there was a way..." She looked helplessly at Sara, and then a determined, don't-argue-with-me expression came over her face. "Sara, I want you to snuff me and eat me."

Sara's jaw dropped. For Cherise to want Sara to eat her was beyond the wildest fantasies Sara had ever had before coming here, but she immediately saw the difficulties. She put her hand over her heart. "Cherise, I am so, so honored..."

Cherise smiled. "Stop that. You know how much I love you!"

"...and I'd be happy to eat you raw, but the problem is, I could only eat a little of you before your meat spoiled..."

"I don't care! Just so some of me is inside you."

"But it would only help me temporarily. Eventually I'd still have to get girlmeat somewhere else. I'd still be left with either dying alone..." She saw Cherise shudder at the idea, "...or trying to find some, like I want to try to do now."

Cherise's eyes suddenly glowed, as if she thought she had the perfect idea. "Eat me a little bit at a time! I mean, cut off parts of me, without snuffing me. You know you could get by a long time, we both could, on the meat from my arms and legs." She laughed. "I'm not using them. We could stretch it out maybe a couple of years, because we don't have to eat only my meat. Just the amount our bodies need. And that way you could get my arms and legs out of these cuffs, after you cut off my hands and feet. You know those vines that grow around a lot of the trees? You could use those for a tourniquet. Just cut off a few inches of an arm or leg each time."

"Cut with what?"

Cherise opened her mouth, and suddenly tears started rolling down her cheeks. "Shit."

Sara scooted over on the ground to sit beside Cherise, and wrapped her arms around her. "Listen, I think I can find us some girlmeat. I haven't exactly really been trying, you know. But there's a good chance I could find some leftovers on a farm, from what they feed the slavegirls..."

Cherise shook her head violently. "We agreed we weren't going away from here. We're safe here!"

"That was about getting back to the restaurant. We assumed we could just live right here safely as long as we wanted, and I really, really want to do that. But this is about survival. Living here as long as we want is exactly what we can't do, if there's no girlmeat. Listen, I really think I can do it." She told Cherise the plan that had been germinating in her mind.

Cherise looked at Sara steadily, her tears still flowing. At last she nodded. "Keep holding me awhile, okay?"

Sara grinned. "You know that's not all I'm going to do."

THE NEXT MORNING

Sara woke before Cherise, just as the waterfall in front of the cave was becoming visible in the light of dawn. She and Cherise had slept in spoons position, Sara behind Cherise, her stomach and legs pressed up against Cherise, her arm draped over Cherise with hand lightly cupping breast. She backed away carefully without waking Cherise. She windmilled her arms and did a few squats. Her knees and shoulders felt about the same as yesterday -- tolerably but annoyingly achy. Exercises had caused many aches in the last several years. They weren't the cause this time. Luckily, she told herself, we should have some girlmeat soon.

Sara had decided that she needed to try exploring a nearby farm in the very early morning hours, before anyone was awake, in the hope they had left some girlmeat out. She would need to get there around sunset the night before, so that she would be ready, on-site, at the first hint of light the next morning. Cherise insisted she would be all right if Sara left her alone for all of one night and part of the next morning, and Sara had reluctantly decided that, in the absence of a better plan, she would need to try to put this one into motion over the next few days.

Today Sara wasn't headed for a farm. She wasn't ready for that yet. First she wanted to scout, from the safety of home, the layout of the closest farms so that she would know exactly where to go when the time came.

She padded softly to the pool, squeezing out around the edge of the waterfall into the open air.

The usual light rain fell on her unnoticed as she jumped to grab a branch over her special tree and hoisted herself up into it.

The tree was sufficiently taller than average, so that from its upper reaches, Sara could see a significant tract of the northern part of the island's west side, mostly a blanket of densely-packed trees looking like a giant-sized broccoli salad, with occasional oval gaps that represented the clearings for farms. Sara, on discovering the height of the tree a couple of weeks ago and climbing it, had determined, from her view above the surrounding treetops, that all farms were sufficiently distant that none of them threatened the safety of herself and Cherise. Today, Sara wanted to refine her observations: for each of the nearest farms, she wanted to construct a mental map of its exact whereabouts, matching its location with visible landmarks in the mountains and on the shoreline, and also map the locations of any buildings she could see, preferably including the covered area where the slavegirls were fed. She wanted to know beforehand where to go so that she could hide herself safely within the shortest possible distance from potential caches of food. She was doing her survey in the morning because she thought she might also be able to determine how soon any activities began on each farm. If any farm delayed the start of its workday longer than the others, she would try that one first.

Sara had climbed many trees in her life, but this was the only one she'd ever climbed naked. Twigs that would normally have brushed against her clothing were scratching at her bare skin, sometimes in very sensitive places. She tried to ignore it, while staying carefully out the way of anything that might cut too badly, especially her unprotected crotch. The barely sufficient light made it harder.

At last, well above the height of the average island tree, she stopped to start her survey.

She managed to pick out the local farms she'd seen in better light before. With the usual heavy cloud cover delaying significant daylight, it would still be awhile before she could start making her mental map and making judgments about points of attack. So the first order of business was observing when each farm's working day began.

An odd phenomenon of lighting about a mile to the south attracted her attention. At first she thought it might be caused by shafts of sunlight breaking through the clouds, but it didn't seem the sun should be high enough to shine beyond the intervening mountains yet, no matter what the clouds were doing. It seemed as though the light was coming from underneath the trees, presumably at or near ground level. As Sara focused on the light, it seemed still harder to account for. It appeared that there were two somewhat raggedly parallel lines of light, separated by perhaps a hundred yards or so. The lines ran directly across the island east to west, more or less the entire distance from the mountains to the shoreline.

Of the farms Sara could see, most of them were beyond the lines of light. Only two, in fact, were on the near side of the nearer line.

Sara had only observed from the treetop once before, and that had been in mid-afternoon, when the daylight was much brighter than now. These lines of light might very well have been there at the time, but as dim as they were she wouldn't have been able to see them then. But she and Cherise had passed that part of the island weeks ago. The lights couldn't possibly have been there then, or they would have been easily noticed.

Sara gave up trying to puzzle it out, and turned her attention to the two nearest farms. On the closer of them, near the mountains, she could see slavegirls, like tiny ants at this distance, beginning to populate the fields. On the farther farm, nothing was happening yet. If Sara had been at the edge of this farm at first light, she would probably have had thirty minutes to explore it by now. She tried to see... there it was. A flat roof, probably the eating area she'd been hoping for. There was a slight inward bulge in the line of trees not far from it. That should be a perfect hiding place, she thought.

She carefully noted the surroundings of the farm, in particular where it was in relation to the shoreline. There, that little promontory where the shoreline went out to a sharp point, like a thorn on a rosebush. She could go to that, then turn inland at an angle and arrive at the point she wanted on the periphery of the farm.

She wouldn't do it tonight. She wanted at least a couple more days of observing to make sure the farm's morning routine was consistent.

She hoped no one had been stealing from the farm already. She thought it was unlikely, but she would look out for traps. As for the stealing that she herself would be doing, she thought there was a good chance it would never be noticed. A portion of meat, leftover and forgotten, would disappear. Big deal.

She began the climb down to the ground, eager to tell Cherise what she'd seen.

THE NEXT MORNING

Sara, as she neared the upper reaches of the tree, weighed the possibility of going out to the farm tonight, rather than waiting through one more day of observation tomorrow. No, she told herself. I've made a plan, and it's based on preparing as much as possible. If I get impatient, that's when disaster happens.

As she cleared the surrounding trees, she focused immediately on the farm she'd picked out yesterday. She glanced over to the other periodically, but spent most of the time with her eyes locked on that farm near the beach.

She sucked in a sudden breath. That light phenomenon from yesterday was present again, only closer. It was so dim she had almost missed it, and caught sight of it only because the memory of yesterday reminded her she should look for it. The two parallel lines of light, still separated by about a hundred yards, were now on Sara's side of the farther of the two farms she had observed. Only the nearer farm now lay on this side of the lines.

She'd matched the lines up with landmarks yesterday, and tried to determine how far they had moved. Looking toward the place where they had been, it appeared they had covered about a quarter of the distance to Sara's location.

Without having formulated any theories about what was causing the bands, she had nevertheless assumed they were something fixed in position. The idea they would move made her very uncomfortable.

Then she gasped, her left hand flying to her mouth, her right instinctively but barely managing to hang onto the branch she had hold of. No, she thought, oh no, no, no!

She knew immediately she was right. There was no other explanation that made any sense.

She climbed down the tree as quickly as she could, almost falling twice, then ran to the cave, and plopped down cross-legged in front of Cherise, who roused herself sleepily at the sound of her entrance.

"Cherise! The lights I told you about. It's... they're from people looking for us! They're doing a search of the whole island! This half of it, anyway, the half we can't get off of. And you know it can't be anybody friendly."

Cherise's eyes went wide with shock at the idea. "There's not enough men on this island to search all of it."

"There are if they section off the island, and do it really methodically. That's what the lights are about. They probably started from the south end, that's what took them so long to get here. Or maybe started from the trail and went out in both directions. They set up a line of torches across the island, and set men watching the line, so we can't sneak past them, day or night, and another line a hundred yards or so ahead, with men to watch that line too, and then a team of men sweeps through that corridor between the lines, trying to find us. Once they see we're not in that corridor, they pull up the rear line of torches, and carry them past the forward line and plant them again, and sweep the next corridor. That's what happened since yesterday. Several times. The lights moved. They're about a quarter mile ahead of where they were."

Cherise was shaking her head. "Why all this for us? They can't possibly go to this much trouble every time a slave runs away."

Sara bent forward, her head in her hands, rocking back and forth and speaking through her hands. "I don't think they've ever had anything like me before. They're really mad. They can't let me get away with what I was doing. I was wearing clothes to pretend to be a man, and they think I used that disguise to steal stuff from that one farm, and I did steal a slave, you. I fought with some men and probably hurt them. Worst of all, there are bunches of slavegirls who know I did all that. The cave's slavegirls didn't see me steal you, but they know it happened. The ones on the farm didn't see me stealing herbs, because I didn't do it, but they would have seen me fighting the farm guys, and saw me get away with it, and afterwards would have heard the men blaming me for the thefts. The men are going to be afraid of what their slavegirls are thinking. That the girls might start resisting, trying to fight the men like they saw me do." She sat up and threw her arm outward in a gesture towards the mountains. "And if you think the men from this side of the island are mad at me, and worried, they might even have run into the guys I told you about from the other side. I really did hurt those two pretty badly. So it could be the entire island over here trying to find me. They know I'm on this side because they've been watching the trail ever since the farm fight. Shit, shit, shit..." She buried her face against her hands once more, her whole body shaking.

"Sara, look at me."

Sara looked at Cherise immediately.

Cherise went on, "You said you think they're a mile away? And it looks like they're moving about a quarter mile a day?"

"I'm not that great at judging distances. It might be less than a mile. And more than a quarter mile of movement. And they'll go faster as the island gets narrower. Less time searching each corridor. I think they'll be here before nightfall today."

The top priority of Sara's existence remained as it had been the entire time -- protecting Cherise. She would do whatever she had to do. She said in a low voice meant only for herself, "We have to get out of here, we have to get out of here..."

"Could there be a way to scale the rock wall up to the shelf? It's, what, ten feet?"

"Well, that was never really the big problem. There are trees adjacent to it. I can climb one and get up to the shelf. The problem is getting you up to it." Sara continued rocking back and forth, her body insisting on action but not sure what it should be.

"You could make a rope out of those vines on the trees, tie one end around your waist and the other around me, and pull me up after you get up there. And once you're there, you might see a way to scale the rocks and get over the ridge."

Sara shot to her feet, and dove out past the waterfall and into the pool, vaulting out of it and running to the nearest vine. It unwound easily, though stickily, from the tree, but proved impossible to tear apart with her bare hands. She found a sharp rock, and tried to decide how much of the vine she wanted. About twenty feet should do it, she decided. She wanted it all one piece, thinking it might be weaker if she tied separate pieces together. She managed to get about twenty-four feet of it, using her armspan to measure it, and sawed it free of the rest of the vine with the rock.

Leaving the vine by the pool, she went into the cave again, noting irrelevantly that the rain had stopped for the present, so that the waterfall was reduced to an almost negligible dribble. Without a word, she picked up Cherise, and splashed out through the pool once more.

Cherise, blowing water away from her lips as Sara set her on the ground, asked, "Are they coming?"

Sara, standing over her trying to decide the best way to tie the vine, shrugged. "Not right this minute. But I'm sure they're getting closer." She finally decided to run the end of the vine around Cherise's chest just below her armpits. She did so, and tied a knot in the end as secure as she could make it. She raised the vine to lift Cherise a few inches off the ground, to make sure it would hold her weight.

Satisfied, she carried Cherise over to the rock wall, and picked out a tree that offered an easy climb. Tying the free end of the vine around her waist, she reached up for a branch and pulled herself up into the tree.

As she reached the level of the shelf, she paused, caution now ingrained into her. With just her eyes above the edge of the shelf, she looked down the trail to the south.

Her caution was rewarded. In a sense.

Perhaps a half mile down the shelf there were three burly, bearded men, dressed in standard island garb, standing in various attitudes of attentive boredom as they looked out over the shelf into the forest -- one with his arms folded, another with hands on hips, the third merely standing upright, leaning forward slightly. Sara withheld an automatic groan when she recognized one of them: Dad, the man from the farm where she had been trapped and gotten away. Whether because of being the party most offended, the farmer from whom valuable herbs had been stolen by the thieving woman, or else perhaps because he was a local leader already, he seemed to have been given a portion of the supervisory responsibility for the search. Likely he was the organizing force for the search to begin with.

None of the men were looking towards Sara, or had much chance of spotting her amid the foliage in any case. But all chance of escape in this direction was gone. Sara would be spotted immediately if she emerged onto the shelf carrying Cherise.

To the extent Sara had retained any shred of optimism at all, it owed to two hopes -- that she had been wrong to interpret the mystery lights in the forest as a search in progress, and that the search might, against everything she had been told, have been initiated by friendlies from the mainland. Both hopes were gone now.

Slowly -- she was in no hurry because she had nowhere to go -- Sara descended through the branches. Cherise was watching her, puzzled and worried. "What's wrong? What's happening?"

Dropping the last few feet to the ground, Sara fumbled with the knot on the vine and untied it. She gestured vaguely, and said in a dead voice, "They're up there. Watching from there. We can't go that way." She felt her eyes stinging. She worked to hold the tears back. She felt she shouldn't cry right now. She had tried everything she could, all this time, to save Cherise. It hadn't been enough. She told herself she shouldn't feel ashamed, but she did anyway.

Cherise was staring up at her, her mouth moving but no words coming out.

Sara dropped to her knees beside Cherise. The tears started now. "I love you, Cherise. Love you, love you, love you. Do you..." She stopped, and made herself go on. "Do you want me to snuff you? So they can only have your meat, not your lifetime of service as a slave?" This was the one last thing she could do for the love of her life. Cherise must be allowed to choose the time and place to be snuffed. Every woman had that right. Sara could not imagine letting it be taken away from Cherise. If she did, then she would know she had failed Cherise.

Cherise pressed her lips together, her own tears starting, and nodded her head. "Would you wait until they're here, though? I want to spend any minutes and seconds I can with you. And then kill yourself, okay? They can't have either of us."

Sara bent down and wrapped her arms around Cherise's head, cradling it against her breasts. "Of course, of course." She stroked Cherise's hair, as she loved so much to do.

Cherise seemed to relax a little. "I love you. After all these years, we did finally get to spend a couple of good months together. I love you!" She managed a tiny smile.

Sara gave her a shaky one in return.

Sara picked up a stick, and hurriedly began sharpening one end of it against the flat side of a rock. She knew she would never consider denying Cherise's request to wait until the men came. It was what Cherise wanted. To Sara, that settled it. She was glad Cherise had simply assumed Sara would have time to kill herself afterward, rather than ask her if she would. Sara had never lied to Cherise and never would, and it felt bad enough that she was, for the first time, not telling Cherise what she was thinking -- that in waiting until the oncoming men were in sight, Sara wouldn't have time to use the stake on herself after impaling Cherise, because she would have to make absolutely sure Cherise was dead. Sara was going to be captured, but that couldn't be helped. The next few days were going to hurt, physically, more than anything Sara had ever imagined. She was sure it would be much more painful, and much more prolonged, than what she had seen Cute Guy do to Cherise at the cavern, and what she'd seen done to that girl in the square. Sara's crimes were that far beyond anything any other girl on the island had ever done. And it would all be very public. They would make sure every single slavegirl on the west side, at least, would witness Sara's suffering up close, one by one, as was the custom here. And then for the next twenty years after that, Sara would belong to someone else, someone to assign her to dreary, backbreaking tasks, someone to whip her if she failed.

Sara pushed all thoughts of the future out of her head. They were interfering with her attention to Cherise. Cherise would soon be gone, eaten, but Sara would have memories. She would be able to transport herself back to this time spent in love, relive any event of it. That would keep her going.

She had come to know Cherise so well, she told herself. She knew how much Cherise loved having her breasts sucked, and how much she loved sucking Sara's tongue deep into her mouth. She knew about the collection of dolls Cherise had loved as a young girl, and how much Cherise had hated those trips with her family to visit her Aunt Renee, because it was so boring there. She knew how much Cherise loved pizza and hated seafood. She knew how much Cherise had loved algebra class but hated chemistry. Sara would carry all of those things with her, and never forget. It would be an inadequate substitute for carrying part of Cherise's meat within her own body, but all treasured nonetheless.

The best way, she decided, to carry out Cherise's wishes most completely would be to take her to the point farthest north on the island that she could get to, presumably the very last place the searchers would reach. With the sharpened stake in one hand, she picked up Cherise, arms under her shoulders and knees, and began walking ahead, through the trees, to the point on the bay where the beach met the seawall. With the shelf denied her, it was the best she could do.

She set Cherise down gently on the sand just in front of the trees, and knelt beside her, her eyes closed, wiping tears away with her shoulder. Behind her, between the explosions of wave hitting seawall, she could hear the barking of a doggirl. Still distant, but Sara knew that the doggirl, and all the men with her, would be here before long.

Sara took a deep breath, and blew it out shakily. How long? she wondered. Probably a couple of hours. No more.

She needed to open her eyes to look at Cherise, to decide exactly where to stab her with the stake. Just below the ribs, she decided, angled upward so it would penetrate her heart.

Sara's attention, once she could see, in wavery vision through the tears, was caught by something that her mind told her didn't belong there. She blinked, not quite sure what she was seeing, or whether she really was seeing it.

There was a boat about fifty yards out, rolling gently with the waves. It was a pretty damned big boat, about the size of the one that had brought Sara to the island, but of a different type, powered by sails, judging from the furled canvas around various uprights. It seemed to be anchored there, as the best explanation of why it wasn't going anywhere.

Sara's first thought was that the boat had joined in the search, though it wasn't clear to Sara that the islanders had boats like that. For a people who lived on an island, they weren't much given to seafaring.

The boat had its stern facing Sara. Across the flat surface, in large letters, Sara could make out the name: "AMY."

For at least a minute, Sara could only kneel there, staring, barely conscious of muttering over and over, "Holy shit holy shit holy shit..."

The spell was broken when Cherise said, "Sara? What's that doing there?"

If it's a hallucination, thought Sara, it's contagious.

She sprang to her feet and ran forward across the sand to the edge of the water, jumping up and down, waving her arms. There was a flurry activity on the deck. Within minutes, a small rowboat was lowered to the surface.

Sara kissed Cherise, said "I'll be right back," and ran back to the cave.