Apalachee

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

up, and then once again she was running toward the cornfield, Blue clinging to her, not making another sound. There was no pack to surround them now, only a scattering of people running through the fields. Up ahead, the group Lucia had been with before suddenly spread out, and she knew that the enemy was there, cutting them off from the river. She was still far up the field, and she turned and started running parallel to the river, wishing it were summer and the corn high enough to hide her. Blue was heavy and the field was rough and she had a pain in her side. But if she could keep going, and if the enemy would keep busy with those others . . . She turned and looked back and gave a little cry. Two warriors giving chase. Trying to run faster, she cut down toward the river, the slope of the land increasing her speed. Blue bounced against her and she held her tightly and all she could think now was to save her. There was the river, not far to go. If only her legs would hold up and not buckle. If only those men would stop at the water and not follow her across on such a cold day. She did not look back to see how close they might be. But now from the corner of her eye she saw one moving out to cut her off from the river. She veered away, still going toward the river, but not so directly. The other remained behind her, his breathing and the quick fall of his running feet almost on her. The one cutting her off was closing in. She could not reach the river. Blue clung to her in silence, weighing her down. She turned aside suddenly and started up into the field again, pushing with all that was in her, panting and desperate, and for a moment longer she eluded them, veering this way and that. But then they were on her, one of them reaching out and grabbing her hair and pulling her to a halt. She gave up then without any more struggle, for she remembered Ayubale and the camp of Salvador, and she knew it had to end this way. 381 chapter forty-six Lucia sat on a bench in the sun, leaning back against a high paling fence, watching Blue as she played with the other children in the slave pen. Three sides of the pen were formed by the walls of surrounding buildings, all with their windows barred, and the fourth side, facing the back alley, was closed in by the fence against which she leaned. The building on the opposite side of the yard from the fence belonged to the merchant who owned the slaves, and the man who tended the slaves for him lived in the upper story, where there was a railed balcony on which the slave tender or his wife or one of their sons would sit to keep watch on the yard below. Today it was the wife who was there with another woman who had come to visit her, both of them sitting with their shawls pulled close, for they did not have the sun on them as Lucia did, and the air was still cold. But the sun was warm and Lucia was grateful for the pleasant feeling of it on her face and arms. She was grateful, too, for the laughter of Blue as she ran in and out of the sunlight chasing after the other children. Blue’s nights were not so carefree as this. Her memories came back to her in the darkness, and she often woke from her dreams in tears. But this laughter was good and this warmth from the sun, and Lucia savored it, looking neither to the future nor the past. Carlos was dead, assassinated. She had learned about it from the Cherokees during the time that they had held her, though she had known already that he must have been dead, for the Cherokees would never have attacked had his mission been successful. Her grief was not as terrible as it might have been. She was oddly at peace, finding an unexpected release in knowing that this time she was not leaving him behind. Whatever misery she would suffer now, at least it would not be that. The whole of her life would go with her wherever she was taken, and she would live it...