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TITHING LOOKED OFFENDED. “It’s an honor.”
“It’s rape,” she said.
He looked horrified. “No, no, never that. That would be Weedlike behavior.”
Ah, Weeds. More nonsense categories. “Maybe I’m a Weed.”
“Oh, I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so because it’s not convenient to your whacked out little—”
“Coral!” said Benjamin. “Hear the man out.”
Tithing shook off his shock and gathered himself together. His look of horror at Coral’s words smoothed into a more pleasant expression. “Thank you, Benjamin. You’re a reasonable man.”
“You don’t think—” she said to Benjamin.
“Sit,” he said, his eyes intense.
“And the horse you rode in on,” Coral said to him. Could he not see what was going to happen to her? Didn’t he care? She took a step toward the door, but Benjamin grabbed her arm.
“Sit,” he said again. He stood and faced her, his face blocked from Tithing’s view. His expression was begging her to cooperate.
Why? Stop, Coral. Stop panicking, and think.
Damn it. She knew that they couldn’t up and run this instant, with no supplies, with a mob of fifteen chasing them with rifles. But Benjamin’s response felt like a betrayal anyway.
She was pissed to find herself fighting back tears as she looked up at him.
Benjamin said, “It’ll be okay. I promise.” And he sat and pulled her down beside him.
“We won’t force you, my dear,” said Tithing. “We don’t even know yet if you’re right for the work. It could be—” and his expression suggested that he was thinking this could indeed be the case “—that you aren’t Seed, and we’ll let you go.”
Coral thought that was unlikely in the extreme. Benjamin, they could toss out. There were too many men already and.... Suddenly, she realized that her outburst was putting Benjamin at risk more than her. She, obviously, had value as a brood mare. They’d choose her for that, she believed, no matter what she said or did, and they’d find a way to justify it.
But Benjamin—he was only another mouth to feed with their dwindling supply of food and a 2:1 male to female ratio. “I’m sorry,” she said, feeling a chill that went much deeper than that from the cold air. “I was just so shocked, and after Pratt hit me....” She took a deep breath and tried to calm herself, for Benjamin’s sake. “Please, go on.”
Tithing looked slightly mollified. “I can see that, just as Pratt’s test is anger, yours is impatience.”
“I think you’re right.”
“That’s part of the plan, too. We are all purposely given a fault.”
“So when will you know? If I’m appropriate for this, um, honor? With the waiting Seeds and all.”
“By next meeting, I should think,” said Tithing. “The one after, at the very latest.”
“And they’re once a week?”
“That’s right.”
So she had seven—no, six—days to devise an escape plan and put it into action.
He frowned. “Now I’m afraid I lost my train of thought.”
“My fault,” she said. “You were saying about the accidentally destroyed bodies, and needing to be back in bodies because...”
“Right.” He smiled. “I’ll be honest. We don’t know exactly why we need to be in human form for the final Reaping. But we know we do. The Ancient Sowers, the most venerable leaders, are coming. They’ll be here soon, and we will be ready to rejoin them.” He pointed at her again. “The question is, will you be ready?”
Sudden enthusiastic converting at this moment would not be believed. The best she could manage was a shrug.
“If you are Seed, I’ve already had a request for you—for marriage.”
Oh, shit. “Who?”
“Alva.”
“He’s nice,” she managed to say. And he had been pleasant enough to her. Of all the men to be raped by in the group, she supposed he was the least objectionable, if a person could rank such things. In the new post-Event world, she supposed a woman had to. The poor girl with the Army, for instance, probably had ones she truly dreaded and ones she only slightly dreaded.
“We don’t share women here. If you are to marry him, you’ll be his wife in every sense. And you’ll create a vehicle for a needful Seed.”
She stared at him. Vaguely, she was aware she had gone emotionally numb. Aliens, rape, weapons from Mars, incorporeal interstellar travel. All perfectly reasonable. Lalalalalalala. She knew she might start laughing at any moment, or screaming, or weeping and rending her own hair...and she couldn’t afford to break down in front of him. She needed to appear strong. “I feel a little woozy,” she managed to say.
“Probably you need to eat,” said Tithing, slapping his legs. “So. Any questions?”
She shook her head.
He stood. “I can let you get over to help the ladies in the kitchen, then.”
She twisted her mouth into something she hoped resembled a smile. She stood, and Benjamin did, and he leaned toward her and rested his hand on her back for two seconds before moving away.
It helped, a little. He was still there. They were both alive. Where there is life, there’s still hope.
At least the brief touch kept her from running out of the compound screaming, willing to take a bullet in the back rather than stay here and wait for what was coming.
* * *
THE REST OF THE DAY, Coral moved like a robot through her assigned tasks. She tried to stay on task but failed—not their tasks, which were doable in a mindless state, but her own, the task of formulating a workable escape plan for her and Benjamin. She hoped he was doing the same.
After dinner dishes were done, Brynn walked her and Polly over to the animal pens. The wire fence surrounded a small enclosure that had a metal shed for the animals to hide from the wind.
There was bagged grain to feed them, and Polly showed Coral how to do the chores involved with keeping the goats alive. Polly squatted on the ground behind the gray and white goat and began milking it, as it bleated softly. The other goat was almost all white. Both had thick hair, or fur, whichever you called it in goats. As a gust of frigid wind cut through Coral’s skirt and jeans, she wished she had fur, too.
“Getting much?” said Brynn, from outside the fence. She was probably there to make sure Coral didn’t run off.
“Not much,” said Polly.
Brynn said, “We might have to butcher them.”
“We still have mutton,” said Polly.
“Once the goats are gone, we could cook the grain they’re eating.”
“They need to be bred in spring,” Polly said. She unclipped the goat from a leash and it bounced back through the snow.
“That’s unlikely to happen.”
“Then I guess they won’t last until spring.” She glanced at Coral then back at Brynn. “Do you want me to teach her how to milk?”
“You can try.” Brynn looked doubtfully at Coral.
“I have no idea what I’m doing. It is possible to hurt her?” she asked. “The goat, I mean?”
“No,” said Polly. “Come on over. I’ll talk you through it.”
Coral stopped and petted the white goat’s head. It studied her, cocking its head like a puppy. Pretty eyes. She didn’t plan on being here long enough to eat it, so she supposed she could risk feeling kindly toward it.
Polly put a bucket of grain down and hooked the goat to a leash near the shed. “Get down next to me, and watch,” she said. “Okay, you wipe your hands first. Next you need to warm the wipe for the goat.” She pulled an antibacterial wipe from a packet of them she’d carried out here and watched Coral clean her hands. She pulled out a second, handed it to Coral and took out a third to ball up in her own hands. “Warm yours up too. When it’s warm, wipe her. Get off any poop.”
Lovely. Coral wadded up the ice-cold wipe and held it.
Polly took her own wipe and drew it over the udders. “Now you,” she said to Coral.
Holding her breath, Coral wiped down the wobbly things the best she could.
“Don’t be frightened. I mean, don’t push or squeeze or hurt her, but you can touch her firmer than that.”
“Okay,” said Coral. “Can I, um, stabilize it somehow, like hold on to the nipple?”
“No, you shouldn’t need to.” She watched as Coral finished wiping off the goat. “Okay. So to milk them, you do this.” She held her hand in the air and moved her fingers one at a time. “It’s like every finger pushes it along more.”
Coral mimicked her, hand in the air. Her hand was getting very cold, very quickly.
“First squirt goes on the ground, then move the bucket up.” She matched actions to words. “Never, ever pull. That hurts her. Your fingers are, like, pushing it down. Then you wait, let it refill. Go again.”
Coral bent down to watch closer as the girl moved her hand to the udder and began to milk the goat. Milk splashed into the bucket, and steam rose from it. “The udder is getting smaller.”
“Well, yeah. That was milk in there. Now it’s in the bucket.” She stopped and pulled the bucket back. She asked Coral, “You want to try the other?”
“I suppose.” She was afraid of hurting the poor thing with her ineptness.
“Remember, like this.” Polly moved her fingers in sequence again.
Coral rubbed her hands together briskly and blew on them, hoping to get them warm enough that the goat didn’t jump out of her own skin at the first touch. Polly scooted aside and Coral moved up. The udder was warm and soft to the touch, like a good leather purse.
“Use your left hand on that one. You’re pinching it off the first time, with your thumb and forefinger. That traps the milk in the teat. Then you’re pushing it out.”
Coral mentally sent an apology to the goat. She squeezed with thumb and forefinger, and then tried to close the other fingers one by one, as Polly had shown her.
“Wait. Not hard enough,” said Polly, touching. “You need to be firm with that first pinch. Trap the milk down there.”
“Okay,” said Coral. “Sorry, goat, if this hurts.” She squeezed a bit harder, then brought her next finger down. She could feel the milk trying escape back up, so she adjusted her grip. A squirt of milk came from the end of the teat, and Coral was so surprised, she snatched her hand back.
“Well, it can’t hurt you,” Polly said, exasperated. “It’s only milk.”
“It surprised me, is all.”
“Get the bucket up there, now.”
The goat tried to turn her head and look back at who was messing with her. Coral sympathized more than she wanted to. The thought of a strange man from this place putting his hands on her made her shudder. And here she was, molesting this poor goat.
Polly must have seen the shudder. “Getting cold?”
“I’m fine,” said Coral. Were she the goat, she’d be bleating and kicking at a stranger’s presence.
“Think you can do it?”
“I’ll try.” She leaned forward again, took hold of the udder, and squeezed off the teat. The thing Polly did with closing the fingers felt very odd, and she was moving far slower than the girl did. But milk was coming out, one slow squirt at a time. If she tried to go faster, she had a hard time keeping her finger and thumb together. It would take practice to learn to do it all at the same time, and to speed up her fingers.
When she’d gotten eight or nine squirts out, Polly said, “Let me finish.”
“Probably a good idea.” She backed away.
“I don’t want to hurt her.”
“Nor do I.” Coral wiped her hand on her skirt and jammed her gloves back on. She stood by the head of the goat, leaned over and whispered to her. “I hope I didn’t scare you. You hang in there, sweetie.”
The goat tossed its head, as far as the leash would let it.
Coral rested her hand on its head, and it pushed up against her in a friendly way. She stayed there until Polly was done. “Good girl,” she said to the goat.
“You can unclip her now.”
Coral found the leash’s end and unclipped it from the goat’s collar. The animal danced away and headed for the other goat. The sniffed at each other and danced around a moment before settling back down.
Polly handed the milk bucket to Brynn, who peered inside and said, “We’ll be able to make cheese again in a day or two.”
Coral perked up at that. “You have cheese?”
“We give it to the men to carry while they’re doing their work. We don’t get any.”
“Shame,” Coral said. She wondered where it was kept. It would be a great sort of food to steal when she left: edible while on the run, and didn’t need to be cooked like oatmeal or beans or rice or potatoes.
Next, they fed grain to the donkey, Jubilee. It had been tied while the milking went on. Coral knew next to nothing about horses and less about donkeys or mules. Polly said, “Let it smell your breath.”
Coral wasn’t sure she’d want to smell her own breath after this many weeks without toothpaste or floss, but she did as Polly said. Then she took off her glove, put some straw onto her palm and let the donkey eat off her hand. The animal was surprisingly gentle, its lips barely kissing her skin.
“Does it ever bite?” she asked.
“Has to be provoked pretty bad. For a donkey, he’s easy-going.”
“Good,” Coral said. In the corner of the animal yard, there was a small two-wheeled wagon. In the small enclosure where the animals could get out of the wind, she saw there was a bunch of leather harnesses hung there that no doubt attached the donkey to the wagon, plus a soft saddle.
She glanced at the donkey again, realizing that this could be their way out. She had been worrying about escaping, about how to outdistance a hunting party of ten angry men with rifles. If they couldn’t get a rifle themselves, they couldn’t fight back. But if they could move faster, they’d outdistance their pursuit.
How long could a donkey run, pulling two people in a wagon, without rest? How many miles per day? Could it do two sessions a day with a rest in between? Would it? And how long could it live, without grain or grass to eat? If she stole the donkey, a bag of its feed would be as important as food for her and Benjamin.
The fence had a single gate. She watched more carefully as Polly unlatched it. Simple enough closure, and no lock, so that wouldn’t be a problem.
As they left, the donkey brayed at them. The poor thing was lonely. She’d volunteer to care for the animals and make a point of making friends with the donkey. They had carrots—horses liked carrots, right? She assumed a donkey would, too. She’d pocket a few next time she had to chop some and bring them to the donkey, hand-feed him, hoping to make him her friend.
As they approached to the central clearing, she asked, “What does the donkey do, exactly?”
Brynn said, “He hauls supplies to and fro. And we have a plow for him in the cave, for when winter ends.”
“You still think you’ll be around when winter ends?” Coral asked. “Or will the final Reaping come before then?”
“Whichever way, we’re prepared for it,” said Brynn. “Now you can help Ellie haul water.”
Coral walked slowly to the big cabin, thinking hard. She might well be able to sneak out at night while Brynn was asleep. With only two people sharing the cabin with her, that should be simple enough. She had her pocket knife. She’d have to grab it the night before the escape, so as not to risk waking Polly by jostling her cot. She needed to know where the cheese was stored. That and a chunk of the meat, which she guessed was stored in the cave, would serve as food for the road.
On the right night, then, she’d get Benjamin, collect the supplies, perhaps hook up the donkey to the cart, and go. She’d need a candle or two so that they’d be able to see how to hook up the harness and wagon. Lucky thing that the donkey wasn’t too near the cabins. If she could make friends with it, would it do her bidding?
If only she could get a weapon. What had they done with her bows and arrows? Benjamin might have seen. They probably wouldn’t be guarding them the same way they would a rifle. It wasn’t much, but any long-distance weapon was better than none. And what of her fishing gear? Where was that?
She had to find a way, an excuse, a job assignment, some way, any way to get her to the cave, so she could see what they had stored there. It seemed the most likely place to find her own confiscated gear.
She wanted out of this crazy place before the next meeting, when she feared she’d be declared an eligible breeder and handed over to Alva. She had six days at most to make an escape plan, set up for it, and find a way to communicate her plans with Benjamin. Now that she thought about it, she should pick a day before then. If they got caught, they might get a second chance. Maybe three or four nights from now.
She was glad she was being fed, but she wished she was getting more calories. Benjamin was, at least, for the men were allowed to eat until they were full. If she could fill up these next few days, then they could run hard for a week, not need to stop to hunt or fish, and survive off whatever she was able to steal from the supplies here.
No one else was in the dining room. She squatted and looked at the front door lock. There was no key in there, but maybe Brynn—it’d most likely be Brynn—carried one and probably locked it at night. If so, she couldn’t just swing by and steal food. Hopefully the cave had no door or lock.
She stood and walked into the kitchen and pantry area. No one was there, either. “Ellie?” she said.
“Down here.”
Coral followed the voice and found Ellie in the small back room, wedged beneath the desk that held the radio. “You stuck?”
“I’m scrubbing. Be done in a second.”
Coral looked at the radio while Ellie worked. Off-on switch, easy enough. She supposed there was something to press on the microphone to send, or a switch on the console there. I wonder if I called for help, is there anyone close enough to come rescue us?
Would anyone out there care? Maybe they would, but they likely had troubles of their own. She had never really thought before about how police, and courts, and jails in the old world kept people in control. She’d been lucky enough to never have the need to interact with them, except for the sheriff’s deputy who’d brought them the news that her parents were dead. But she sure missed them all now, missed the option of calling someone to make the bad people stop.
Ellie crawled out with a damp rag, pushed her hair back from her forehead and smiled at Coral.
It was hard to think of her as a bad guy. But she was.
“Meat tonight,” she said.
“Terrific. Brynn said I was supposed to help you.”
“We’ll braise it tonight, then slice it up. Second and third nights, stew or soup.”
“I’ll be a nice change from beans. What do you want me to do?”
“Hang on while I get rid of this cleaning stuff.” She stooped, picked up a bucket, and walked through the kitchen and toward the front door. For a moment, Coral was alone.
Coral took the opportunity to open the drawers of the desk. She was looking for anything of use—keys, a potential weapon, a map of Idaho, instructions for the radio.
What she found was paper: one lonely pencil and a pad of paper, with the name of a feed store printed on the top of each page. She glanced behind herself—Ellie was still dumping the wash water outside—and tore off two pages. If she took the pencil, they might notice. She snapped the tip off it, leaving herself with a half-inch long piece of lead. That could be an accident, a broken tip.
She folded the paper around the precious bit of pencil, folded it again, and tucked it in her front pocket. Glancing one last time at the radio setup, knowing she wouldn’t have the chance to be alone with it long enough to try to make it work, she backed into the kitchen and gathered up the empty water pitchers.
She had a way to communicate with Benjamin now. It was step one in her escape plan.
* * *
BY MID-AFTERNOON, ELLIE and she had a good fire going in the barbecue pit, and water was set on the iron grates above it to heat. Pitchers of water had been distributed around the compound, and to the kitchen, for the cleaning of vegetables. Pratt—who still hadn’t apologized to her—brought the leg of lamb to the kitchen.
Coral excused herself to go to the outhouse.
Ellie gave her an apologetic look. “I have to go with you, I’m afraid. One minute.”
“That’s okay,” Coral said. She wondered when she’d be trusted enough to be alone, even for such a short time. If there was always someone with her every second, it would be damned hard to prepare to escape. A cooperative attitude was important, for she needed to make them believe she could be trusted—at least for long enough to let her steal supplies or reconnoiter.
On the walk to the outhouse, Coral said, “Tell me about who you lost.”
Ellie shook her head.
“Did they get sick, or was it the fire?” They were at the outhouse.
“I’ll wait for you out here.”
At least she had that much privacy. Coral closed the door and dug the paper and pencil lead from her pocket. She took off her gloves and put them down on the ledge next to the closed toilet seat. Carefully, she opened the folds of the paper and plucked the pencil point out.
What did she need to say to him? In the tiniest print she could manage, she wrote:
Escape in 4 nites ~midnight, meet @ outhouse. I’ll have knife, candle, food. U—weapon, slpng bag, ??
She didn’t sign it. If it were found, there’d be little doubt of who wrote it. She didn’t tell Benjamin to destroy it—he was smart enough to figure that out on his own. There weren’t clocks on the walls here, either, but it didn’t matter so much if they were each off by a half-hour. If she were first to the outhouse, fine. If he were first, he’d wait for her. If the first one of them to reach it were caught, they could swear they needed to pee, and maybe get away without punishment.
Taking the pencil lead between her front teeth, she tore off the thin strip of the message and formed it into a tiny roll, no bigger than half a toothpick. She secured the pencil lead back inside the remaining paper, and tucked it all back into her pocket.
Now she needed to find a way to slip the message to him. For a second, she considered hiding it in his cot, but there was no guarantee that she’d be in the men’s cabin tomorrow, and he could easily miss it. She needed to put it right into his hot little hand.
How to get next to him? This damned segregation by sex was a real problem for her.
She used the outhouse for its intended purpose and came out, smiling at Ellie. “Okay, what next?”
The rest of the afternoon was taken up with food prep. One of the men—Lorne, this time—brought sacks of vegetables from the cave. She’d like to see it. Had they let Benjamin in there? What she’d give for just five minutes alone with him, to exchange information.
The vegetables needed to be sorted. Any with a rotten spot, but still mostly good, were piled on the counter for tonight’s meal. The ones without any blemish were piled into crates, stacked in the corner, for use the rest of the week.
There were turnips and parsnips, but not nearly as many as there were potatoes and carrots. Carrots could be eaten raw, but they weren’t many calories for the weight. “Can you eat these raw?” she asked Ellie, holding up a parsnip that had grown in a sort of corkscrew.
“Sure. The smallest ones taste best.”
“Can I try one?”
Ellie glanced behind her. “I won’t tell.”
Coral scrubbed it off and broke it in half, offering the thicker end to Ellie, who shook her head. Coral bit into it. It was crunchy, more green-tasting somehow than a carrot even though it was nearly white. She swallowed.
“How was it?”
“Fine. Though I think a diet of nothing but would make me belch a lot.”
“They’re sweeter roasted. Sometimes we roast them and potatoes in the coals of the morning fire. The men take them to work.”
“Do you ever have potatoes for breakfast?”
“No.”
“I’d be happy to get up early and make them one morning. It might make a nice change for everyone from oatmeal.”
“Does this mean you’re staying?”
Coral nodded, hating the lie, but knowing she needed to play this role. “I like it here. People are nice. There’s plenty of food. The work isn’t hard.”
“I’m glad,” said Ellie.
“The sex segregation is odd, though.”
“I suppose it might seem so. I don’t think about it much, since I go home to the couple cabin every night. I get plenty of male conversation in the evenings.”
“The couples talk with each other at night?”
“Some. Even if we didn’t, you can hear every word said.”
“Must be hard to fight.”
“We try not to,” Ellie said.
“Any good gossip from listening in?”
“We try not to do that, either.”
“Hmm.” Coral finished sorting the bag of parsnips and Ellie helped her pile the good ones back in the storage crate. “What’s next?”
“Help me with the potatoes. We eat more of them.”
“Sure. So, any nice gossip you’ve heard?”
“Mostly about you. I hear Alva has offered for you.”
Coral schooled her expression. “He seems nice, but of course I can’t get to know him to know that for sure, not if we aren’t allowed to talk to the men.”
“We are allowed after meeting. And Alva is nice. Shy. He stutters sometimes when he’s very nervous.”
“He didn’t when he talked to me. That was on the way here, I mean, after Calex and him found us.”
“Are you sweet on that Benjamin?”
“He’s a friend,” said Coral. “We survived together. We’re partners. We have each other’s back. It means more now than it used to, having a friend like that. It means more to me than any boyfriend has ever meant.” That was nothing but true. Benjamin was family now.
“Will he be upset about Alva?”
“I don’t think so,” Coral said. Not in the way Ellie meant. She hoped he was upset about the idea of her being raped. “He seemed to accept it fine when Tithing told us.” She understood why he hadn’t protested, but a part of her felt irrationally betrayed by that.
“That’s good. Jealousy is a weakness. And sometimes our test.”
Coral didn’t want to talk about her impending “marriage” or about what would happen to her if she couldn’t get away from here. “Tell me about your childhood. You were raised in the—the Seed?” She’d almost said “cult.” That’d go over well.
“From age ten on. We came down from the BC Farm.”
“You’re Canadian?”
“Yes.”
“Living here for how long?”
“In the States, oh, about twenty years. I could be a citizen, if I wanted. But we don’t care about such things.”
They must all live under the radar, or at least some of them must. It’d only take one person, using a legitimate name and social security number and bank account, to buy land and pay taxes. Of course, that was pre-Event. Everybody lived under the radar now—or the radar was no longer functioning, to be more accurate. Coral realized that a person could start a life over, now. If you had survived, you could reinvent yourself. New name, new background, erase a criminal record, debts all gone. Maybe even, for a short, time, pretend to be a different sort of person, until your core personality reasserted itself.
Coral liked the old her. She hated having to pretend to be something else to these people. A month of it would break her, she feared, more completely than their attempts at brainwashing her.
They fell silent, and Coral tried to think through the escape. Food, weapon, and protection against the cold: those were the basic needs. Transportation would be nice. And, most important of all, Benjamin. She’d see him across the room at dinner. She needed to find a way to get close enough to hand him the note.
The smell of the cooking meat, when it was brought in, sent her salivary glands into overdrive. She hoped the men would leave enough for the women. She watched the men array themselves around the table. Benjamin was close to this end. Could she lurch over, pretend to fall into him, get the note to him that way?
She thought not. Too many people had their eyes on her, and the women never approached the men directly at meal time.
The women were dismissed and trooped into the kitchen. Coral racked her brain, trying to figure out a legitimate excuse to go in there. Maybe they’d need something? That never happened, and if it did, Brynn would probably take it out to them. Her mind was a blank, right up until she heard the chairs start to scrape on the floor. She looked down at her hands, still bare from doing the work of slicing vegetables. Then she had it.
She flung open the door to the dining room and rushed through. If she’d been lucky, Benjamin might have been standing, and in her path. But he wasn’t, so she tore through the front door and outside. She palmed the note to Benjamin. With the other hand, she braced herself against the outer wall, leaned over at the waist, and began to cough, trying to make the sounds of a woman on the verge of puking.
The door flew open after her. From the corner of her eye she could see Tithing emerge and pull up short. Maybe he thought she had bolted.
Coral gagged. She could taste the parsnip again. Damn, I hope I don’t make myself vomit for real.
Another man emerged, and a third—Jim and Benjamin.
She gave a moan and made herself gag again. C’mon, Benjamin. Figure it out.
He sidestepped Jim and in three long strides was by her side. “Are you okay?”
She moaned and grasped for his hand. His gloves were on. She took the paper and shoved it hard up into his glove. “Sick,” she said.
Tithing rushed over, as did Jim. The rest of the men were coming out now.
She dropped Benjamin’s hand. Had he felt the paper slide in? She had a terrible image of it falling to the ground and exposing her.
Jim tugged on Benjamin’s arm and he stepped back from her.
Tithing said, “Do you need help?”
Coral stood up and panted, as if she’d just run a race. “I think I’m going to be okay. It was a wave of nausea.”
Tithing moved closer and took her upper arm. “You’re not pregnant?”
She shook her head. “No. No chance at all.”
He glanced at Benjamin, who Jim had herded back to the knot of men by the door.
“No. We haven’t, not ever.” She wiped her hand across her lips. “I tried a bite of raw vegetable today. I think it didn’t agree with me.”
He looked relieved and angry at the same time. “You’re not supposed to eat while you cook.”
“Sorry. I’d never had parsnips, and I was curious.”
“You’ve paid for it, I suppose.”
She tried to look both contrite and nauseated. Inside, she was celebrating getting the note into Benjamin’s hands.
Now she was committed to the escape. In four nights, she’d be more than ready to leave this place behind, let it fade into the bad memories of all the other post-Event encounters.
She was sent to her cabin without supper, with a sour-faced Brynn as a guard. Not having thought through her plan or this possible consequence, she was frustrated that she missed a meal as a result. She almost regretted it when she had to watch Brynn eat her own dinner from a plate on her lap.
But Benjamin had the note. It was worth skipping a meal for that.
That night, after lights out, she was hungry and she was excited, so sleep did not come easily. The benefit to that was that she was awake when the others were asleep. Brynn was snoring softly. Coral crawled from her cot, padded to the blanket door, pushed through, pushed back in, and listened. Neither of them woke. On her way back to bed, in the dark, she stumbled against the cot, and it squeaked. She froze. But still, neither of her cabin mates moved. Not so much as a hitch interrupted Brynn’s snore.
I can do this. This escape is going to happen. If they could keep ahead of pursuit, they might survive their captivity here. She was still buzzed from the thought of it, but she needed her rest, too. They’d likely have to stay up all that night of the escape, so she had to get rest now, so she would be thinking straight tomorrow.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING, CORAL hoped to catch sight of Benjamin, but the men were gone from the compound by the time the women had cleaned up after breakfast. Brynn let her go out alone with Polly to care for the animals.
She hoped that meant they were letting down their guard, coming to trust her a bit.
“Have you always liked animals?” she asked Polly as they walked along.
“I guess. They seem to like me,” said the girl.
“Then you must like them. Don’t animals know when people don’t?”
“I guess.”
What a strange child, Coral thought. Wouldn’t most girls that age dote on pets? Even if these were farm animals, it seemed strange that Polly sounded so distant about them.
The girl said, “I’ll milk. You pour the donkey’s feed.”
Coral had snatched a small carrot this morning in the kitchen and took it from her pocket, looking behind to make sure Polly wasn’t watching. She removed her glove, put the carrot on her palm and let Jubilee eat it. He seemed to enjoy it, and when he was done, he nudged her, no doubt wanting another. “Sorry, sweetie,” she whispered to it. “But I can get you some nice straw.”
She pulled more out of the bale they’d used yesterday, set it into the blue plastic tub that was its donkey-bowl, or whatever they called it. Trough? Maybe those were only for water. Coral really didn’t know much about farms.
“Check the water,” Polly said. She was untying the white goat after its milking. It danced away again and went to nuzzle its friend.
Coral jumped when the donkey brayed at them. “Crap, he’s loud!”
“That wasn’t even a loud one. You should hear him when he gets mad.”
She wondered about taking him for transportation in the escape. Would the animal bray and give them away when they tried to sneak off? She should rethink this part of the plan.
Damn, but that she didn’t miss Benjamin. They were so good together that way, talking through options, bouncing ideas back and forth. She missed him in a lot of other ways, too. He was her only real connection in this new world. Was he doing okay? Were they treating him well? She’d seen no bruises on him, and he moved okay, so at least they weren’t beating him. But what about abuses she couldn’t see? She hoped he was okay.
There were only a couple inches of water in the trough. It had frozen solid. Yesterday, they had to crack the ice on top of the trough full of water. Polly had said she did it morning and night. Coral said, “Out of water.”
“Okay, so we’ll have to haul more. It’ll be faster if we carry four buckets at a time. Can you handle two?”
“I think so.”
When they had retrieved the buckets from the main cabin, they walked to the spring.
“Do you miss your family?” asked Coral.
“I have a family, here.”
“I know what you mean. Benjamin and I are family, too.” She hoped the girl might really get that. If someone here could see them as real humans, with feelings and rights and goals of their own, maybe—
“And I’ll have my own family soon,” said Polly. “Babies, and a husband. You can too, with Alva.”
They had reached the spring. Polly grabbed the pipe they used to crack the ice. Coral’s steps slowed while she worked out what the girl had just said. “Wait. You mean, they’re going to make you marry one of the men?”
“Next full moon. Probably same as you.”
Coral felt lightheaded. “Polly, you’re twelve years old.”
“Almost thirteen.”
“They can’t do this to you!”
“Nobody is doing anything to me.”
“But....” She tried to think of how to say it right, say it in a way the girl could understand. She knew it wouldn’t be enough, but she tried to explain. “It’s wrong. It’s morally wrong.”
“In the olden days, girls got married as soon as she started her menses,” Polly said, horrifyingly matter-of-fact. She banged on the ice crust over the spring.
Coral moved closer and touched the girl’s arm. “It’s not the olden days. It’s illegal.”
“There are no laws now. And there never were that we cared about.”
“They can’t make you.” Her hand was reaching out, beseeching the girl. “We can stop them.”
“They aren’t making me. Don’t you get it?”
“I get that it’s wrong.”
“It’s as it should be. The Reaping has come. I need to help gather the Seeds.”
Coral wanted to scream in frustration. How could she make this poor brainwashed girl understand? “Aren’t you worried it will hurt?”
“What?”
“Sex. Childbirth. Your body isn’t even fully grown.”
“It’s grown enough to bleed. It’s grown enough to Seed.”
Was that one of their commandments or something? A happy child-abuse rhyme? “Which one of them?” she asked.
“Pratt,” said Polly. “He claimed me two years ago.”
“You mean he had sex with you?”
“No. We don’t have sex before marriage. He said he wanted me, and Tithing approved.”
“But he’s mean.”
“He’s okay,” she said. “Good looking. Not old, like Tithing or Jim.”
Coral cast around desperately for an argument that would sway the girl. “Why do you have to have sex at all? Can the Seed just, just...jump into you somehow?”
“That’s not how it works.”
No, it wouldn’t, of course. It’d work for the benefit of the men. Sick goddamned pedophiles. Crazy cult people!
For a brief moment, Coral thought about taking Polly with them. Her imagination saw the three of them, the girl riding the donkey, her and Benjamin walking beside, Benjamin’s rifle miraculously restored to him. They were laughing, in her image, and no one was chasing them. The picture popped like a soap bubble when Polly spoke.
“I’m excited to be married. Get your buckets,” she said.
Numb with the shock of this news, Coral bent down and filled two buckets with spring water. If she had a rifle herself, she’d walk into the dining room tonight and shoot the men, one by one. She was that angry over this news. She looked over at the girl. Her face, half-covered with a mask, was calm. Polly truly didn’t care that she was being made to breed with a grown man.
Coral stood and watched Polly fill her buckets, thinking, if this whole alien thing were true, they aren’t good aliens. If they exist, they’re evil ones, allowing this. Anyone with the IQ of a tree frog could see it. What happened to people that they became so unspeakably stupid in the presence of a belief system? Why didn’t one of them wake up one day and say, “Hey, you know? Rape is a bad thing, and raping children is even worse.”
The two of them said nothing as they carried the water back and put it into the animals’ troughs. It took six trips to fill both containers. “By evening,” Polly said, “it’ll be frosted over again.”
Coral said nothing.
“I know you’re thinking about my marriage.”
“And mine,” Coral said. “And I’m none too happy about either.”
“Mine’s not your business. And you could do worse than Alva.”
That, at least, seemed to be the truth. “At least promise me you’ll tell someone if he hits you or brutalizes you.”
“We’ll be in the couple-house. I wouldn’t need to tell anyone. They’d stop it. But he won’t.”
Coral was not terribly reassured by this. In fact, she couldn’t help imagining the wedding night, with six witnesses to Polly’s deflowering. She wondered if the other men would be getting off on it—or the women, for that matter.
She cut off the thought. Not your business. Don’t think about it. Your job is to escape.
When they returned to the central area, Coral was relieved to be handed off to Mondra, who had prep duties this afternoon. She worked alongside the woman in the kitchen, aware of the other woman chattering happily, and Coral made noises of agreement from time to time, but she tried to think through her escape plan.
Unfortunately, she kept getting distracted by thoughts of Polly. No matter what the child said, it was wrong, what they were doing to her. It was wrong, too, what they were planning to do to Coral. It was wrong to hold Benjamin against his will. They were wrong about the aliens and the whole place was completely wrong, wrong, wrong.
Focus on the escape plan.
Coral looked down at the chef’s knife in Mondra’s hands. If she could get in here that night, she could take all the carving knives. It wouldn’t help against rifles, though. Maybe they could set some sort of trap with the knives? She didn’t know what kind. Benjamin might not either. Setting a trap would take time, time better spent running hard and fast away from this place, so no.
They had the vegetables all prepped, so they went outside to start the fire. A new supply of wood had been set by the barbecue pit. A tarp was staked down over it. As she and Mondra carried pieces of wood over, Pratt and Calex walked up, carrying more wood.
“Got your kindling, Mondra,” said Pratt.
“Thank you,” the woman said.
Pratt let a pile of smaller pieces of wood roll off his arms and onto the grate of the barbecue.
Coral glanced at the kindling—then she did a double-take when she recognized a familiar curve. She snatched at. “That’s my bow!” Her good bow, too.
“It’s kindling now.”
“You idiot!” She grabbed the bow and held it to her chest. “Do you know how long I worked on this? Do you have any idea at all how much time I put into learning to shoot it?”
“It’s men’s work to hunt.”
Coral examined the bow. Her heart sunk further when she saw it was cracked. “You’re an asshole. And your aliens are assholes, too,” she said.
Pratt’s face went red. “You don’t talk back—”
His words were interrupted when she launched herself over the barbecue pit at him. She felt her skirt snag and distantly heard the rip. It didn’t slow her. She wasn’t thinking. She was out of control. She scrambled the last few inches over the pit, grabbed at Pratt, and fell on him, dragging them both to the ground.
He grabbed her hair and yanked her head back.
She screamed wordlessly and pulled her head sharply, feeling hair come out by the roots. Her knee sought his groin.
His hand lost its grip, but he was stronger than her, and she could feel him starting to roll her over. His breath was hot in her face, and he was snarling words she was too angry to hear.
“Pedophile!” she screamed at him. She clawed at his face.
He screamed and batted at her hands.
She grabbed one of his hands and yanked it to her mouth, sinking her teeth in to his thumb. She’d bite the damned thing off. And then she’d go for his privates and do the same thing.
Vaguely, she was aware of voices yelling. She was distantly aware of hands pulling at her. She even knew, as if watching from a distance, that she was acting crazy.
Strong arms hauled her off Pratt. A pea-sized piece of his thumb came with her, and she spat it out onto him. He jumped up, red-faced, bellowing, and lunged for her, but Benjamin and Jim leapt in front of him and blocked him, like football players.
“Let me go!” she said, pulling against the arms of her captors. She wanted to get at Pratt again. Kick him and scratch him and make him pay. Make them all pay.
“I don’t know,” Mondra said, from somewhere behind her. “She just went nuts.”
Tithing appeared in front of her, hands on hips. “What is going on here?”
“That asshole wrecked my bow!” She realized she honestly cared more about that than she did about Polly. Polly, she barely knew. Polly was brainwashed and lost. She had no ability to unbrainwash all these people in a few days’ time.
But that bow was like her close friend. Coral burst into tears, hating herself for it, angry as hell. The tears were half angry-tears, half grief for the bow, half exhaustion, half terror. She knew that was too many halves, but that’s how she felt. Like a bunch of halves, all of them damaged beyond repair. Like her cracked bow.
Jim and another man had pulled Pratt away from the melee, back towards the men’s cabin. Benjamin shouldered Tithing aside and put his arms around Coral. The others let her go and she held on to Benjamin and cried. She was aware of him patting her with one hand and putting the other in her jacket pocket. It brought her to herself. The escape. That’s all that mattered. Not these nutty beliefs. Not the bow. Not even poor Polly, brainwashed participant in her own abuse. She and Benjamin needed to escape here, and that was the only thing that she needed to think about.
But she let herself continue to cry on his shoulder, grateful for the moment of closeness, grateful for even a minute with a sane person. She heard Tithing say, “That’s enough.”
She looked up at Benjamin. “They’re going to breed that little girl to Pratt,” she said.
He didn’t seem surprised. “You can’t fight it.”
She mouthed, “I know.”
Tithing pushed the two of them apart and handed Coral over to Brynn. “Keep her in the sistercabin while I decide what to do about this.”
Brynn yanked her along.
“I can walk.”
“You can’t think, apparently.”
“I did sort of lose it,” Coral allowed. “It’s been a hard few months.”
“That’s no excuse.”
“I wasn’t asking to be excused. And I’m not apologizing.”
“You should rethink that attitude, missy,” said Brynn, “before Tithing comes.” She pushed her through the blanket door and pointed to her cot. “Do I need to put a guard on you? Or will you sit right there?”
“I’ll sit right here,” said Coral.
* * *
THE INSTANT BRYNN HAD left and her crunching footsteps on the snow had faded, Coral crawled down and retrieved her knife from Polly’s cot. She shoved it into her jeans pocket, making sure it was well hidden by sweater and jacket. She stuck her hand into her jacket pocket, looking for whatever Benjamin had put there.
It was the same piece of paper she had given him. On the back he had scratched something with what looked like a burned stick. We’re building a spaceship dock.
A quick laugh escaped before she could stop it. She’d have rather heard something more practical about their escape—but maybe the information was practical, somehow. Maybe he was telling her about supplies. Or maybe he was trying to cheer her up by making fun of them.
She couldn’t know until she had a chance to talk to him. She had blown any chance at all of that by her actions today. She sat down to await Tithing...and her punishment.
* * *
WHEN HE CAME IN WHAT felt to be an hour later, an hour in which she had plenty of time to think through the repercussions of her actions. She stood up and took a step toward him. “I shouldn’t have done that.” It was the truth. She really didn’t need to make things harder on herself. She particularly didn’t want to end up under guard at night and unable to escape.
Tithing said, “Sit.” When she sat on her cot, he settled himself on Polly’s, opposite her. For long moments, he studied her face. Then he sighed, theatrically. “I don’t know what to do with you.”
Coral hoped this wasn’t a lead-up to the news that she had to be done away with. It wasn’t impossible, but her mind had veered away from the thought during the long hour of contemplation. “I—”
He held up a hand to stop her. “I had hoped you’d be a part of the community, that you had come here for a reason, that your role would be to be a fertile field for the lost Seeds.”
Inside, she was shuddering. But she schooled her expression to one of interest.
“I was encouraged by how good a worker you seem to be. And a couple of the married ladies like you. But now I can only conclude that I was wrong about you.” He shook his head, sadly.
“Let me make it up somehow.” She could hardly believe she had to kowtow to this horrible cult leader. “Set me a task for penance or whatever. Let me prove myself. I’ll apologize to Pratt.” It rankled, but to keep herself alive and free enough to escape, she’d kiss the jerk’s feet if need be.
“He’s still bleeding, you know.”
She winced and hoped her expression looked contrite. She’d have bitten his whole hand off if she could. Creepy child-diddler. This one, too. But she said, “I completely lost it out there. I loved that bow. It was a wrench to lose it.” That was the truest thing she’d said so far. She still felt a hot ball of grief about the thought of it going up in flames.
“So this was all over an object? A—a thing?”
She knew not to bring up her objections to Polly’s marriage. “Yes. And the strain of—well, of everything since the Reaping. I miss Benjamin. And how we did things together.” Another truth.
He tilted his head in a gesture that seemed well-rehearsed, a substitute for real empathy. “I’m sure it is a challenge to adjust to a new routine.”
“It is. But I’ll try harder, I promise.” Coral could visualize a little person beside her, a shrunken down Coral, the authentic Coral who she’d had to shrink down and hide since getting captured, now jumping up and down and screaming in protest at what was coming out of her mouth. Shush, she thought at it. Your time will come. “Let me atone somehow. However you say.” The little Coral stuck her finger in her throat and made a gagging sound at the supplicating tone. “I’ll scrub the outhouse or clean out the barbecue pit or whatever job everyone hates.”
Tithing sighed again. “We don’t hate our work. We do it for each other, and to stay healthy, and for the splendor of the Sowers.”
Little Coral thrust up a middle finger toward him at the mention of the Sowers. “I’ve been impressed with how well everyone pulls together here.”
“We’re Flower, and we’re Grain. Of course we work hard and get along.” He shook his head. “But you....”
She waited for more, but it didn’t come. But she was a Weed, she supposed. “I cannot tell you how sorry I am. Fighting like that? It isn’t me. Or it wasn’t me, before the Reaping. The world has changed so much.”
“For the better.”
“When I was alone, thinking I was the only one left, it didn’t feel like anything was for the better.”
“You were ignorant.”
She said, “I know.” About too much. She’d had never known she’d find Benjamin and form such a good team with him.
“Are you willing to learn?”
“I am. Maybe you can—I don’t know—like, lecture me on your beliefs every day? Try and get me up to speed.”
“I suppose someone should. Benjamin seems to be taking it all in rather quickly.”
For a moment, she worried about the note. Could he possibly be succumbing? If she lost Benjamin to the brainwashing here, she was doomed.
But no. She couldn’t believe it of him. He was too hardheaded, too practical, too self-contained. And, if he’d escaped a religious upbringing years ago, wouldn’t he be even more skeptical than she?
Still, a tiny seed of doubt had been planted. Benjamin, stay strong. I need you.
Tithing stood. “Before we can consider that, you need to be punished.”
Uh-oh. This could be very bad.
“You’ll remain here until after supper, when the sisters come back to the cabin.”
“That’s it?” Could she luck out with no more punishment than a time-out?
“No,” he said.
“Do you want me to apologize to Pratt?”
“I don’t think he could listen to that right now. He’s steamed.”
“I can imagine. I hope they get the bleeding stopped soon.” Little Coral said she hoped the bastard would bleed to death. Coral was worried about how real Little Coral was starting to seem to her.
Tithing didn’t respond. He left the cabin.
She let out a groan. Little Coral disappeared—or climbed back into Coral’s own body. This is how it starts. Attacking people you know you shouldn’t. Hearing voices. Seeing little imaginary people. In less than a month, she feared she’d have been broken down enough mentally for them to convince her the space aliens were on their way and that she was lucky to be in Alva’s bed, incubating another Flower.
She folded her legs under herself lotus style and hugged herself, rocking herself a few inches to and fro for comfort. She hoped whatever punishment Tithing devised wouldn’t be painful. Degradation, she expected, and that she could take. In fact, if you had no respect for anyone watching your humiliation, if you cared not a whit about his judgment, could it be humiliation at all? They could try to shame her all they wanted, and she’d be happy to pretend to be shamed, but she didn’t want to get so injured that escape would have to be delayed.
