Josephine thrust Fargus toward Ida, and with all the courage she could muster, she dove for the sack. She knew that any second the gate could crush her like an ant. She grasped the bag and crawled back under the gate, the metal spikes just grazing her calves. She had made it out just in time.
She ran outside into the cold night air, turning back to see Kitchen Maggie and Stairway Ruth stuck behind the closed gate, reaching for her, screeching like banshees, “You’ll never survive out there!”
Ida giddily shut the door in their faces.
There was sudden silence.
Fargus stood in the darkness, shocked that Josephine had risked her life to go back for their food. She handed him the recovered sack, and he embraced it as if it were his lost child. Ida looked at Josephine with a newfound respect and said, “You nearly got pinned like a bug!” Josephine guessed by the tone of her voice that this was a compliment.
Ida looked back at the Institute one last time. “Good-bye, Kitchen Maggie. Good-bye, Stairway Ruth,” she whispered. “May you each choke to death on a pigeon bone.” And with that she started running, expecting Fargus and Josephine to follow.
Fargus scuttled after her, but Josephine couldn’t get her feet to move right away. Her heart pounded as she surveyed the dark plains spread out in front of her. This was it. She took a deep breath and hurried after the others.
TWELVE
It was a cold night with a small moon. Josephine wasn’t sure she had ever known such blackness. She looked up, hoping to take comfort in the stars, but saw none. A blanket of clouds had left the sky a matte gray.
They had been walking for more than an hour. After the sprint from the Institute, Ida had decided they could slow down for a bit, so Josephine reasoned that Ida must not believe they were in immediate danger.
She trusted Ida knew where she was going, but mostly she just hoped that Ida was right about the Brothers coming out only during the daytime.
The one noise she heard was the squelching of her own galoshes— squish, squish, squish, squish. Josephine found herself mesmerized by the rhythm of her steps: one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.
Suddenly Ida stopped walking and swung around. “Shh. No talking.”
“But I wasn’t!” Josephine whispered back.
“You’ve been babbling for five minutes!” Ida insisted.
Josephine looked at Fargus for support but he nodded, apparently in agreement with Ida. She had indeed been talking to herself. Josephine was happy the darkness covered her flushed face. “What . . . what was I saying?”
“Some nonsense about a factory shaped like a duck,” Ida answered. “And can’t you walk any quieter?”
“Sorry,” Josephine offered. But her boots were too big. There was no way to suddenly make them the right size. Ida scowled and kept walking, and Josephine concentrated on keeping her heels in the backs of the boots, which seemed to make them less floppy.
The land seemed to go on and on. Josephine couldn’t see much in the dark, but she had the feeling she was walking on an endless savanna. The grass was short and dry, and the beautiful purple trees had disappeared. What other animals might be lurking in the dark? she wondered. We’re safe from the Brothers, but what about wolves or snakes? She wanted to ask Ida but was afraid she’d snap at her again, so she kept quiet.
Josephine was exhausted. She imagined them all walking on and on until they died from old age.
• • •
Fargus followed Josephine closely. He didn’t like the dark, but he hated being alone even more. As long as he was with Ida and Josephine, he felt a sense of calm. He looked at Ruth’s lashing stick in his hand and felt it was a sword that could protect them from whatever might come out of the shadows. He gripped it tightly and tried to concentrate on something besides the darkness, like the food he would be eating when they finally stopped for a rest.
Ida’s head was buzzing. She and Fargus had been planning their escape for months, and she could hardly believe it had worked. But their escape was just the beginning of their trials. Only Ida knew where they were headed, and only she understood the kind of dangers they would face.
She knew it was important not to show any fear. Fargus and Josephine looked to her for leadership. So she tried to think about something else, something soothing that would distract her from the challenges that lay ahead.
When Ida was little, she had hated bedtime. So each night when her parents had tucked her in, they would tell her a story to help her relax. The tale was always the same: the story of how her parents had met. Ida now imagined her mother and father walking beside her, telling it to her once more in their calm, loving voices.
“The Dorringtons have always been hunters,” her father would begin. “And when I was young, it was my duty to go into the countryside and gather meat for the citizens of Gulm. The problem was, I hated hunting. I tended to prefer animals to most people. But I did greatly enjoy the outdoors, so most days I would find a field of wildflowers and lie on my back and waste away the hours just daydreaming. Once in a while, I would fire my gun into the air so that people within earshot would assume I was working. And then, when it was nearly twilight, I’d shoot some rodents and take them back to town. I had all the inhabitants of Gulm believing that the larger animals had migrated away and that I was a gifted hunter to even find rats for them to enjoy. And they ate them up—yum, yum!”
Ida always laughed at this part, and her father would take the opportunity to tickle her. It was only when Ida got a little older that she realized he must have been teasing her about making people eat rats.
“It was a beautiful autumn day,” he’d continue, “and I’d just turned eighteen. I was lounging by a brook, drowsy and lazy, and I lifted my rifle and fired it off into the distance—bang. But then I heard someone squeal—eek!—and fall. My heart froze and I ran as fast as I could toward the sound. And I found a girl, a little younger than I was, lying on the ground with her leg bleeding. She was unconscious and I didn’t know what to do. I nearly fainted.
“To examine the wound, I needed to lift her skirt a bit and remove her stocking. I’d never touched a girl before, and I was terrified. Once I could see the wound, I saw that it was superficial. The bullet had only grazed her leg. I had never been so relieved in my life. I gently lifted her and carried her to the brook—”
“Just say Mommy!” Ida would interrupt.
“Okay, sweetie. I carried Mommy to the brook so I could wash the wound, but as soon as her foot touched the water, she woke up and cried out—aaoohh!”
Ida would giggle and say, “And you almost dropped her, right, Daddy?”
“That’s right. I was so surprised, I almost dropped her. I set her down on the shore and said”—at this point, her father would adopt an exaggerated stammer—“‘I . . . um . . . I was trying to . . . uh . . . wash your leg.’
“I wet my handkerchief and handed it to your mother. She wiped away the dirt and blood, and I was able to really look at her for the first time. She was slight and had brown hair in need of a wash, and spotty skin.”
Ida’s mother would playfully slap Jon on the arm. He would ignore her and keep talking. “But she had the reddest lips I’d ever seen, and they were so full that I guessed she must bite them all day long. Finally she spoke and said, ‘I can’t believe how corn-brained that was.’ And I was so ashamed, Ida. I told her, ‘You’re right. I’m a fool. You should have me arrested!’
“But your mother replied, ‘Not you! Me! I know you fire into the air every day. I’ve seen you do it, and yet I climbed a tree so I’d have a better view.’ Oh, Ida, I was afraid the whole town knew of my lies, so I got defensive. ‘How do you know I fire into the air? And have a better view of what?’”
He would then bat his eyes and in a high-pitched voice do an impersonation of Ida’s mother. “‘Of you . . . I come here every day to watch you.’” Ida would giggle.
Then back to his angry voice: “‘To watch me?! Are you a spy?! Who sent you?! What have you told them?’” He would take his wife’s hand in his and smile. “That’s when the most terrible thing happened. The girl, your mommy, started to cry. I was in complete despair. I’d never even spoken to a girl before and here I’d shot one and made her cry in the space of an hour. If this was courtship, then it was much harder than I’d ever imagined. I knelt beside her and pleaded, ‘I’m sorry I yelled. I just don’t understand why you were watching me.’
“And she confessed that she watched me every day, on her way to collect pinecones. ‘Why?’ I asked.”
At this point, Ida’s mother would always chime in. “It never occurred to him that he might be attractive.”
