SHE EXPECTED THE MAN to change the aim of the gun towards herself, and perhaps he did. Her mind was too uniformly focused on her task to really see the world that blurred around her. She ran low and grabbed the man around the waist, knocking him to the ground as the gun went off. There was a swell of sound from the crowd behind her, the sound of courage, of feet moving forward on the soil. Whim took the gun and climbed to her feet, but the man reached up and grabbed the middle of the barrel, trying to pull it from her.
Then Whim heard a sound she had never heard before. It was the crack of a shovel coming down on a skull. The sound shook Whim’s bones, and as she looked towards the sound, she lost her grip. There was a scream. In the second Whim’s eyes scanned the crowd, the man had jabbed the stock end of the rifle into Whim’s stomach and was walking away. The pain was so great, Whim doubled over. The noise of fighting rose around her.
‘You forest trash need to know your place,’ the man said, now turning the gun to point it at Whim. She willed her body to fight back, but in that moment, she couldn’t move. Before the trigger could be pulled, her father ran at the man, one of the broken bottles from the ground in his hand. He thrust the bottle into the man’s neck. There was blood, there was so much blood. Whim had heard stories of Forester men who lost their limbs and lives on Hill farm machinery, but she had never pictured as much blood as she saw in that moment, bubbling out, pooling in the dirt.
Aelred turned white and dropped to his knees where the man had fallen. Around them were yells and the thuds of shovels, of axes. Whim kept looking up, trying to see if everyone was all right. But the world was out of focus. All Whim really saw was her father beside her, the horror in his face as he took off his own shirt and tried to stop the bleeding. She couldn’t see the man with the heavy stick until it was too late. He came up behind her father. Hit him over the head. Another thud. It took only seconds. Less than seconds.
‘No!’ Whim cried.
‘Whim. My little Whim,’ he said. Then the stick crashed down over her own head. One moment her eyes were filled with her father on the ground, another man’s blood soaking his clothes. The next moment everything went black.
When Whim Moone woke, her father was still there. He was crumpled. Still blood-soaked. Still handsome. He and the man whose head he held were both dead.