Into the darkness, I spoke, and I felt their minds out there. Mapped like a constellation. I reached into the nearest one. “Untie me,” I said. My mother’s voice still there underneath mine, holding it steady when it threatened to crumple inward.
After a second, fingers scrabbled at the knots. It took longer to undo the knots than it had to secure them. I listened for Cate and Isabelle, tried to feel out their specific minds. Cate, wounded and cautious; Isabelle, blank and smooth as dark glass. The ropes slithered away from my wrists. “Take off my blindfold,” I said. My hands ached. I shook them out, feeling the reassuring starry pain of pins and needles as the blood crept back.
Fingers at the back of my skull, pulling at my hair, stinging. The blindfold fell away and I could see everything. I almost wanted to shut my eyes. Not just against the tender brightness of the sun, but the ugliness of what had been revealed to me: the men statue-still or collapsed, Isabelle bandaged and tear-soaked, Cate. Cate.
Cate lay very still, curled into a rough fetal position, one eye bloodied and bruised. The strap of her top was pulled off her shoulder, her jeans unbuttoned, and I went to her, kneeling in the grass. Carefully, I fixed her clothes again, slipping her strap back into place against her collarbone. Just a few hours ago, we’d been in the motel room, and I’d been laughing and hungry as I’d tugged her clothes off.
I looked a question at her, and Cate shook her head, her eyes barely lightening. But coming even that close was too much. The careless greed—feeling like they were owed any part of her miraculous self—
“How are you doing this?” she asked under her breath, where nobody else could hear. “Your eyes. You were blindfolded.”
I shrugged. I didn’t want to waste words. My power felt stronger here, rooted in my breath, than it had when it was tied to my gaze. I gripped Cate’s shoulder once, a reminder that I was here with her, and stood.
Across from me, Isabelle’s face was sticky with tears, eyes blotted and swollen. Her arms were bandaged, bulky and white and distorted, spotted with blood—but no. It was the stranger’s shirt—the stranger Isabelle had attacked first, now lying in the grass, not moving, his tender, graying skin exposed. Orange Shirt must’ve ripped it from his back and used it to blunt Isabelle’s touch. Just like I’d been blindfolded.
I was rattled by their efficiency. How quickly they’d looked at us and charted out our softest spots. The places where our power could be extracted, muted, and stripped from us.
Orange Shirt stood too close to Isabelle. The other two men were arranged in a loose semicircle, watching me. They didn’t talk. They didn’t move. Their faces held only a dulled, distant panic, the fear of dreamers. There was a strange silence suspended over everything, everybody just waiting, held still by my voice. Like game pieces waiting to be rearranged.
I went to Isabelle and untied her myself. The knots were harsh and tangled, hard to pick loose. The insects kept keening as if nothing at all had changed. I couldn’t tell whether any of the blood was hers.
“I’m sorry,” Isabelle whispered. “I thought we were stronger.”
“We are stronger,” I said, unraveling the last knot. Pulling away the bloodied T-shirt, I examined Isabelle’s arms. Unwounded. She flexed her fingers reflectively. “You’re okay?”
A quick nod. “What are you going to do to them?” she asked.
“What do you want me to do to them? This is your plan.”
“I want to deal with him.”
I knew which one she meant. Isabelle turned toward Orange Shirt. His sunglasses were crooked, his whole face out of alignment. He looked so young. I wrapped myself around his brain, held him still for her. “Stay,” I said.
Rising onto tiptoes, Isabelle pressed her mouth to his. The kiss seemed to last too long—it wasn’t seductive or kind or intimate. I thought of Delilah, her body turned into a means to an end. Proof to these men that their genes would thrive, predictable and safe—and then they’d killed her and the unborn baby anyway. I watched Isabelle as she reached inside Orange Shirt and untied the thin threads holding him together. Let them go.
I watched the life drain out of Orange Shirt almost immediately. He dropped to his knees and his mouth drooped open, the blood glossy on his teeth. He fell forward into the grass and was still, his unseeing gaze fixed on me.
Cate came to us. Isabelle and Cate and I joined hands, interlocking our fingers. The insects and the sunlight and the murmur of the river, the silent trees, the skeletal birds. Everything felt especially real. Full and vivid around us.