“Is she here then?” Sorrel said.

“She’s in detainment.”

“Detainment?

“Prison. Punishment. Torture, probably. Colonel Drax takes a woman, one of us, every few weeks. We never know when it’s coming, and we never know who’s next. He thinks it keeps the rest of us in line. It was your mother’s turn yesterday.”

CHAPTER 32 – BIBI

They found me at dawn. I almost drowned but managed to keep hold of the tree branch that took me downriver. I crawled out on a stony beach where the river curved and there was no more shade from trees or the ravine walls. I was cut up, bleeding. I just lay there, feeling the pebbles starting to warm. I heard barking and I realised canines were close by. There was a whole pack of them around that place; they fed on whatever the river brought down. Then I heard voices and I had no choice, I got up and went towards them. Three Toplanders, all males. Turned out they were just like ferals; came to this place to scavenge dead animals, and stones for their buildings. They tied my hands behind my back and marched me to their camp, following a narrow, twisty dry stream course which still had a few trees.

One said I was too old. Another that a slave woman had died and a replacement was needed. A third told them the colonel would hurt them if they failed to bring a Lowlander to camp and it was for him to decide what happened to me.

I was too grief-stricken to be afraid.

They threw me into a concrete building that was half underground. The sun was well up by then and I thought I would die there. But it was cool in that room. Enough light came under the door to see some details – a bed, a desk and two chairs. An unlit old-time lamp. A bucket in a corner. A shackle hanging down on the wall.

After Colonel Drax came into that room, I learned that everything ends but what comes after an ending can be worse. Pain racks the body, but it’s humiliation that brings you true defeat.

They let me stay in the old camp at Cibao and I became their slave. They fed us just enough, because they wanted us to work, and kept us in line just by the memory of our time in the halfburied room where they let us know that anything – anything at all – could be done to us and no one would know or care.

I was glad to be with other women, though. We took it in turn to talk about our children. It was possible to work in the day for most of the year up there in the mountains, so we often slept at night. The last thing we said before going to sleep were the names of our children, whom we knew we’d never see again.

CHAPTER 33 – LOWLANDER WOMEN