Chapter 31
Three was still a blubbering mess an hour later, still, I pulled her through the woods behind me. I was going to give her one chance to explain herself. One. And it had to make sense, otherwise she was about to be abandoned in the middle of the water-logged woods.
“You have a lot of explaining to do,” I spoke low as we quick-stepped through the underbrush.
I was hoping enough time had passed from Three’s initial onslaught of tears that when she spoke it would be at a reasonable volume. But her crying renewed, and she was at risk of dehydrating herself. I needed to wait, though not for much longer.
While we worked our way through the woods, I tried to unpack what occurred in the swamp, not just Three’s behavior, but the strange unfolding of events, and I’d come to the conclusion that the snapping turtle had been someone’s pet.
Probably illegally kept, fed dog food, then released when it got too big.
Which was a lot more common occurrence than one might think.
Despite my displeasure at someone keeping a wild animal as a pet, the thought made me hopeful. Because of what it could mean.
That we were close to civilization.
Even though we wanted to avoid the roads, being near a public place meant our odds of success increased.
It was simple. Town good, road bad. Because roads could be isolated. Roads didn’t have cameras. And they certainly made it easier for our pursuers to not only catch up to us, but capture us and take us back to the dungeon, without anyone else ever knowing.
Towns, on the other hand, had phones. People. Witnesses.
But witnesses could be a two-way street. They could easily speak to law enforcement should our pursuers try to take us in a public setting, but they could just as easily tell our pursuers where we were last seen.
We needed to fly under the radar. Not make a scene. For that, I needed to be sure that if we got to a public place, Three wasn’t actively working against me.
And I most definitely needed to put an end to the crying.
Coming to an abrupt stop, I spun to confront the woman-child. “That’s enough.”
Three inhaled deeply like she was about to let a renewed stream of tears fall.
“No, no more tears,” I snapped. I’d been kind enough already. And being kind to the wrong people in my line of work killed. “I need answers, now, or we go our separate ways. Nod if you understand.”
Her head bobbed up and down.
“Good. Now, why did you betray me?”
The timing of my renewed questioning had been planned.
I’d waited not only for Three to stop crying, but to give myself an advantage.
If I needed to extricate myself from the situation, I needed a way that Three couldn’t, or wouldn’t, follow me.
The answer was the large stretch of swamp that stood before us.
It was expansive. It was sulfuric. It was still, with a film of iridescent oil that would have been pretty if not for what I had to do.
Here bald, knotted, trees dotted the waterline. It stank of death and decay. And I was going to traipse right down the middle of it.
Yay, me.
“I… I didn’t betray you, Two. I didn’t, I—”
“You betrayed me.” Anger flashed, gnashing its pointed teeth. “I wasn’t asking if, I was asking why.”
She shifted foot to foot. “Madame was concerned you would hurt yourself. Said if you ever made it out you would be in danger.”
“When?”
“When she gave me the treat bag.”
“When?”
“When she took me out to see the sky. She told me how dangerous the woods around us were. How there were monsters and bad things just waiting to hurt us. She gave me the snack pouch and said it was the only way to protect you from yourself. That the dogs needed to come to your rescue.”
"Do I look like I need rescuing?"
“Uhh.”
On second thought. “Don't answer that.” The first thing I would do when we got to a town would be to find us some clothes, and a tie for my hair. “But you knew about the dogs. You knew and you lied.”
“Because if you knew they were coming, they wouldn’t be allowed to rescue you!”
“If the dogs find us, they won’t be rescuing us, Three, they’ll be bringing us right back down to that dungeon.”
“And is that so bad?”
“Yes! It is!”
“It’s better than out here!” Though her tears had stopped, splotches of popped vessels were left in their wake. “I thought you said that life was going to get better, that there was more to life than what I’d been part of, that there were choices.”
“There is! What we are doing right now, Three, isn’t living. It’s escaping. Right now, we have to get through something difficult, so we can make our way to freedom.”
“Why won’t you just play your role? You’re important.”
“I’m not important. I’m dispensable.” I could feel the color bleeding into my cheeks.
“If we get brought back underground, my life is as good as over. I’ll be forced unconscious until they take my passenger from me, and then I’ll no longer be of use.
They’ll get rid of me, Three, just like they’ll get rid of you! ”
Three stared at me a long while, until she said, “Your passenger?”
Unbelievable. “That’s all you got from what I said?”
“I’m just trying to understand. What is your ‘passenger?’”
I just needed to be out of the woods. It wasn’t lost on me that I was getting scratched and rubbed by all sorts of plants and material. Poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac. But skin irritation seemed favorable to having to explaining the level of separation I created for myself.
Instead, I ran a hand over the swell of my belly. The sun was starting to set, and I was tired. So very tired. “Are you with me, or against me, Three?”
“I’m with you.”
“Any other tricks up your sleeve? Anything else Madame told you to do that would ‘protect’ me?”
Shaking her head, she was on the verge of tears again. “I’m sorry, Two. I’m so sorry.”
“Save it. If you want to continue on with me, you need to call me by my name.” For the months we’d be held underground, she’d refused to do me this courtesy.
If she didn’t call me by my name, she wasn’t capable of following instructions.
She wasn’t capable of respecting my wishes.
She wasn’t capable of doing anything other than what she’d been told by the Seal. “Say it.”
Three swallowed, her red-rimmed lids searching mine for the soft-underbelly I’d shown before saying, “Delilah.”
“Good. Good, that’s good.” Whatever flowed through me wasn’t relief, it was more like a momentary reprieve. It was tiring being on edge all the time, but I’d need to be on edge a while longer. “You only call me by my name from here on out, got it?”
She nodded with enthusiasm. “Yes, of course, Delilah. I’ll call you Delilah, Delilah.”
“Things are going to get worse before they get better. The sun is setting, and we are going to walk through this swamp hoping we get to land before nightfall. It’s going to be unpleasant.
It’s going to be dangerous, and I need you to follow my every instruction.
” I was giving her one last out. “Any questions?”
Three took in the large expanse of flooded forest before us. There was no clear end in sight. It could have stretched feet or miles, and the temperature was already starting to drop. But of course, her only question was, “When are we going to play hide and seek?”
?
Night descended swiftly, as Three and I made our way through the never-ending swamplands. We darted from tree to tree, surveying our next move, any threats in the water.
I hated every second of it.
Experiences like this made me really appreciate the indoors. The lack of bugs. The lack of risk. Temperature control. Access to fresh water. Access to soap, a bath.
Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a bath. A real one.
The stagnant water and decomposing vegetation clung to our skin, our hair, our clothes.
Our hospital gowns muddied with earth tones, hid the familiar antiseptic blue, making us a lot more difficult to spot.
Despite the smell, it gave me hope that we were encased in enough essence of swamp that the tracking dogs wouldn’t reconnect with our trail.
At the very least, it would make the unbearable odor mean something.
And through it all, I’d kept Three motivated by playing games. I spy, rhyming games, twenty questions, the duckweed is lava, and my personal favorite—the silent game.
Unfortunately, Three wasn’t very good at it. I’m pretty sure she kept losing on purpose.
Slowly, but surely, the scent of sulfur and decomposition gave way to earth and wet dirt. We were so close to semi-solid ground I could taste it. And I really wanted to be out of the water—mud—before total darkness.
We were almost there. We could do it.
To make the final push to land, I just needed to keep a handle on my nerves, and stay motivated.
Scanning the water before us, I did yet another risk assessment. The tea-colored pits, and milky whorls suggested deeper water. The moss-sodden logs and bulbous bald cypress trees looked like wax melted on candle wicks. In the middle distance, there was a large rock. And it was moving.
Smiling, I reached my hand back for Three.
What I’d learned, as we trudged through the muck, and murk, and moss, and duckweed, was that snapping turtles were a lot more common than I’d expected, and seeing them became somewhat of a relief—because if a snapping turtle was around, their predators weren’t.
Aside from the hand-trained pet we’d encountered earlier in the day, Lawrence had been right about the creatures, they were docile.
They avoided us every chance they could, disappearing under the surface to get away.
I was also fairly certain I stepped on one at some point, before feeling a rock shift and lift beneath my feet.
If it was a turtle, it seemed unaffected, but feeling the ground move made me wonder what else lurked below.
Swallowing, I tried to keep my thoughts away from what was possible. Alligators. Water snakes. Giant catfish. Leeches. Bodies. Alligators. Water snakes. Giant catfish. Leeches. Bodies. Alligators—