* * *

The day was already warm. The wind that blew from the west was hot and dry. Dust swirled around her, and the bottom of her skirts dragged along the dirt road. She couldn’t remember the last time it had rained; the hills that were usually lush and verdant were the color of silt. If lightning struck, the flames would easily catch and quickly blanket the hills with their orange light. There was no water between the hills and Settlement Five, and there wasn’t enough in the well to do anything besides put out a stove fire or two. The drought was unsettling, but Lady Mae and her mother had lived through worse. And their rations did not dwindle like that of the other residents’ in times of duress, though Lady Mae wished they did; receiving anything from the Deputies—especially that which the other residents did not get—made her sick.

The first rock struck the small of her back. It didn’t hurt, but she knew what it was and kept her eyes down to the ground. Her mother had told her: if the other children, especially the younger ones, saw how much their actions pained her, how it tormented her, they would never relent. And so she tried to ignore them as the pebbles and sticks soared through the air toward her. Instead, she focused on the tips of her boots and the way her fingernails felt on her palms, pressing into the skin until it was as though they would slice right through. The children called after her, their voices whirling together like a cyclone, trapping her in the middle of the road. A rock flew past her head. Another hit her in the shoulder. Laughter floated past her ears, and she looked to her right, catching a small body disappearing behind one of the shacks. It mattered not who it was—they were all the same: vile, unseemly beasts that had taunted and teased Lady Mae ever since she could remember.

She kept walking, digging her heels down in the dirt faster and faster until she was nearly running, tripping over laces that had become untied and kicking up the dust around her. She could see the depot down the road, its door open. Maybe her mother was watching and would come running out quick, throwing her body onto her daughter’s to protect her as she always had, as she had always promised she would.

“Your mother’s the devil!”

“You the devil!”

Lady Mae’s pulse skipped. A sudden sweat appeared at her hairline. The sun shone down, and there was the flash of metal off the tin roofs to her right. The children were better when her mother was around, who had more than once grabbed one by the ears or the collar and dragged them back to their own shack kicking and screaming. Their parents behaved accordingly, whipping and haranguing their children in front of the butcher in hopes it might lessen their own sentence when it came time. But her mother was not there in the dust with Lady Mae, and any elder that stood behind the tattered curtains of their front window offered nothing but a quiet disappearance from view. Did they hurt you too, Mama?