Get her, they’d cry. Take what she’s took from us. And then they would charge, pushing into each other, scuttling around the children who were small and easily knocked to the ground. They’d chase each other down the crescent road, past Lady Mae’s shack, to the edge of the settlement where one by one they would crawl through the same brush and scale the same rocks hoping to be the one who got to Lady Mae first. There was nothing to gain from being first but the satisfaction that they had finally gotten their hands on her after so many years. They’d take that anger, that simmering rage that flowed through them even in the womb, and they’d do with it what they would.

Maybe she should let them. After all, she’d done things; it was true. She’d done them because what else was she to do? It was her life or their limbs. She had felt the weight and strength of it as she held on to Arbuckle’s wrist, rubbing the tip of her thumb across the lines in his palm. She hadn’t the chance to make it right like her mother had, to hang forgiveness above one’s own life; she had only the misfortune of watching her most beloved take their last breaths as she knelt helplessly before them.

Maybe she should go back, turn toward those that rushed at her and meet them, chain to chain and torch to torch. They would burn just as easily, their vengeful flesh meeting the sky. An eye for an eye. Would it be enough to levy the grief in her heart? Or would it do nothing but turn her own skin to ash?

She took a breath and wiped her brow. Though the blinding, flood-like rains blurred the mountains beyond, she knew they would shelter her as they had Arbuckle. And so she grabbed onto the branches that scraped up against her, pulled them taut and slid on her stomach until her head was through. She pushed her hands into the earth and sank, her face inches from the steaming ground. The rain fell harder still, and her feet slid in the clay-choked mud. Heaving herself forward, the branches and sticks cut along her arms and whipped the backs of her legs. But then she was through. She scrambled to her feet. Her skirts were soaked and weighed her down, and in front of her were the rocky hills. She stumbled forward and did so heavily, sick and slow in her guts.

What you gone and done, Arbuckle?

Weren’t going to let them make you, my love.

She started climbing the rocks, reaching up as far as her clothes would let her, and pulled herself up little by little. The stone was sharp and scraped her palms and the insides of her wrists. There was the hot burning of open flesh to air, and she rested for a moment to hold her hands faceup toward the rain. The drops fell fast but barely washed away the blood stuck in the cracks of her skin. She lurched forward, stood high on the tips of her toes, and continued to climb. She counted her breaths, her hand over hand, the sound of her boots knocking and grinding into the rocks. One two three four five and she was over. The black gums and yellow birch stood before her, and into them she ran and ran until she could see nothing but the shedding limbs and furrowed bark that surrounded her. When she could run no more, she fell to her knees in the wet leaves and spat. Her chest pinched, and she brought her hand to her ribs, taking in long sips of air until her breath steadied.