I raise the rock again, but a wet rattle when he breathes stops me cold. It sounds like the dying man in New York whose clothes I still wear. I hover with the rock, knowing that if I keep striking him, I’ll kill him. I imagine the terrible gush of blood from the traveling blacksmith’s head coming out of Mulch’s. I want to smash his skull in. I want to. But the doing it. I hover, confused.

My hesitation is all he needs. He swings up his hand, which now clutches a knife he must have fished out of his trousers somewhere. It slices through my arm. He knocks me off him and turns the blade to slash again. I bash at his knife hand with my rock, knocking it from his grip, and dive after it. He throws himself on top of me, pounding and kicking. Blood gushes from my arm, seeping into the grass. The knife lies under my belly, and I know I ought to try to fish it out from under me and use it on him, but my arms are like lead. If I pull it from its hiding place and he overpowers me and takes the knife, he could use it to finish me off. My vision blurs and I know my best chance is to stay where I am, hiding the knife but taking the blows until my vision darkens and I finally black out.

Chapter 69

Sarah

Maple sucks at her teeth and rolls her eyes when Red pokes his head into the kitchen house to say there’s going to be one more for supper.

“We already made most of the meal,” she tells him, huffing. “Who they got coming at the last minute like this? They need to stop inviting any old body who gets it in his head to come wandering up the driveway.”

I step outside ’cause I can see she’s fixing to ramp up her meanness. Just outside the kitchen house, my foot lands on a toad that took a wrong turn somewhere. I yelp and hop off it.

Red checks to see what’s what and gives me a look that says just what he thinks of me getting scared by a toad. He grabs it by its hind leg and bashes it twice on the doorframe and throws it in the grass. Then he turns back to Maple. “Reckon you best get working,” he says. “Or you can tell Master you won’t feed his fancy guest.”

When he goes, he don’t even look at me. I got nothing against Red, but he’s sure building up to have some bitter feelings about me.

When we’ve bulked up the supper, Maple sends me to set the table. I hurry along to the carry-through and up the back stairs where I almost crash into a round-faced stranger poking his head down the stairs that seem clear ain’t for no visitor.

“Sorry, sir,” I say, pulling back before I run clean into him. I sure don’t see what business he’s got down in the carry-through, but I drop my eyes and wait for him to get on out the way.