The two groups continued their face-off. The boys seemed to be making a silent decision. Should they ignore the women? Or alert the adults? The one holding the dead fruit stepped forward. He stared at Tabitha with cold, reptilian eyes. “Who are you?” he demanded. Tabitha said nothing. Anna could see her friend’s hands trembling beneath her tunic. The boy picked his nose. “Who are you?” he whined, taking a challenging step forward.

Anna felt her hands tightening into fists.

“Ta-ta-tabith-th-th—” she stuttered, shaking from limb to limb.

The boys howled.

“Did you hear that?” the boy with the pomegranate shouted. “She’s a half-wit! A ha-ha-ha-half-wit!” He exploded forward in a punctuated lunge. Tabitha tumbled back. Her fear elicited another round of bawdy laughter. Without thinking, Anna took a step forward, positioning herself between flock and predator. Startled by her sudden move, the boy tripped backward. His comrades laughed at his frightened stumble. Anna held her ground.

The boy became enraged at having been made to look foolish. With a single burst, he hurled his shrunken fruit at Tabitha. It smacked her forehead with a hollow thud. The boys broke into hysterics. Ruth pulled Tabitha to her. She had been dizzied by the blow. Anna knelt to grab the pomegranate. But before she could get her hand on it, a torrent of stones assailed them.

“No!” Anna shouted between salvos. She hurled stones as fast as she could, but the boys fired incessantly, pelting them with a rain of rock. When Ruth and Tabitha started running back into the plains, Anna followed.

The boys hurled insults and errant stones. “Sinful women! Do not ever come back! You half-wits! You freaks!”

The hollow within the rock was so small that the Sisters’ legs overlapped when they lay down. Despite the discomfort, they were too afraid to leave the hiding spot, lest they be discovered.

Anna stared at the cave’s ceiling and said nothing. She kept her arms wrapped tightly around her chest. She tried to steady her nerves by practicing Communion, but failed. Her mind would not leave the confines of her head, and her painful thoughts wound around themselves like pot-bound roots.

“Would you like a sip of water?” Ruth asked. Anna did not respond. Ruth watched her friend fall deeper into a rut of torment. She knew that no words would suffice or still the storm inside her. “Anna,” she tried. “You could not have prevented what happened. You did everything you could to protect us.”

There was no response.

“We need food,” Ruth said, two days later. Their supplies had dwindled and the grumbles of their stomachs echoed against the rock.

“I will go,” Anna said. She uncoiled and slipped out of the hollow like a snake let slip from a sack.

“We will come with you,” Ruth insisted.

“No. Stay here. I will be back.”

“But what if—?”