Marta Mitchell's Arc

Chapter 5 of 7

Marta crouched against the well house wall and tried to slow her breath. The wind threw sand against the stone. She watched the gap Finn had told her about. Past the windmill she saw a stack of flat stones piled into a narrow marker, half-buried, pointing toward a low cut between the dunes. That was the way out. She told herself to wait, just like Finn said. She told herself he had stepped between her and the rifle. Then she heard the hut door bang and boots in the sand, and she understood she had counted on the wrong boy. The heavy man came around the corner first. Finn came behind him, hands open, talking fast. "I told you, she ran. I was about to follow." His voice was flat, careful. The man did not look at him. He looked at Marta and smiled the not-smile again. He grabbed her arm and hauled her up. Finn met her eyes for one second and said, "I swear I didn't know." She did not believe him. He had named the gap. He had named the path. No one else could have told the man where to come. They dragged her past a small wooden shack tucked behind the well house, canvas roof sagging, a padlock on the door. Finn's, she guessed. His own little hide. He watched her pass it and said nothing. The man tied her wrists and pulled a feed sack over her head. The cloth smelled of old grain and something sour. He lifted her into the bed of a cart. Wood slats pressed her spine. The cart began to move. She heard hooves, then a second, heavier tread alongside, claws on stone, a wet snort. A quillwing creature, kept on a lead. Her stomach turned. She counted. She counted the cart's bumps to mark distance, the turns to mark direction. They went south for a long time, then east. The light through the sack faded. When the cart stopped she had lost the count. The man pulled her down and walked her over packed dirt into a building that echoed like Finn's shack but larger, colder. He yanked the sack off. A shed. One window boarded. An iron bed frame stood in the middle of the floor, no mattress, just bars. He chained her ankle to the frame. The metal bit through her sock at once. He left without speaking and barred the door from outside. Marta sat on the cold frame and worked her wrist against the rope until the skin burned. She had her answer about Finn. She had trusted wrong and it had cost her every mile she had walked. The old man was still somewhere north of here, and she was farther from him now than when she started. She stopped pulling at the rope and started looking at the room.