Page 43 of Kiwi Sin
“I’m not a child,” Oriana said. “I’m seventeen.” She was stiff with tension, but she was saying it. “I was past old enough to marry when I left, and that’s not a child. I didn’t have to leave. I chose to leave, and now I need to get my sister. If she needs persuading, I can persuade her.”
“I want to go,” Frankie said, “but I can’t. Ican’t.”She was feeling how close Prudence was, I thought, and how locked away.
Gray said, “We should decide.”
“We’ve decided,” my dad said. “Constance and me, and Gabriel and Oriana.” Not caring about our being together now, I noticed, but then, this wasn’t exactly a romantic situation. “Take those videos with your phone that you do, Gray, showing us going in, and if we’re not back in half an hour, call the police. I’ve got stakes in the boot we can use for the fence. Gabriel, come help me.”
I got shocked once doing it, and it didn’t feel good, but I’d been shocked before on this fence, out with the animals as a kid. When we had the wicked white webbing staked, my dad jumped across, and then my mum did, lifting her long skirts with one hand and leaping like a Valkyrie. I looked at Oriana and asked, “Ready?”
“Ready,” she said. “I’ve done it before.” She was terrified, I’d swear, but she was jumping, and then I was following after.
Across the bare ground of the deserted yard, the four of us, and I could feel the eyes on me. Oriana said, “We should check the Punishment Hut. That’s the logical place.”
“Two and two,” my dad said. “More chance to get her, and less chance to get stopped. Your mum and I will check the dormitories and the school and the nursery, Gabriel. You and Oriana check the Punishment Hut and the laundry and kitchen. Those are the most likely, where she’d be in a group. If you find her, text us. If we get stopped, get out yourselves. You can’t do any good from inside.”
I looked at Oriana. “OK?”
She was nearly shaking, but she nodded. I said, “If they try to hold us, that’s why we left the others outside the gate. Daisy and Gray know how to raise a stink. They’ve done it before, right?”
“Right,” she said. “Let’s go.”
There was no point in sneaking. Everybody had to know we were here. Where were they, though?
We were past the milking shed, empty now, this long past dawn. Knocking at the rough boards of the Punishment Hut next door, calling out, then listening with an ear against the wood. The padlock was on the door, but it was always on.
Nothing.
Oriana said, “Laundry.” Her voice had steadied, as if leaping across the fence had committed her. She led the way across the beaten earth, the scrubby grass, to a long, low outbuilding that I’d never been into, because washing was women’s work, paused a moment with her hand on the door, then flung it open.
Nine or ten red-faced women inside looked up, frozen in the act of loading a washing machine, folding sheets, ironing men’s shirts. Looked up for that instant, then dropped their eyes, because I was a man. I saw their horrified expressions, though, when they realized Oriana was wearing trousers.
I talked, not Oriana. They’d listen to me, and they’d answer me. They had to. I hated that it was true, but it was. I’d thought about what question to ask, and had decided against the obvious, “Where’s Prudence Worthy? Where have they hidden her?” I’d make it an easier question to answer instead, which was why I said, “What roster is Prudence Worthy on today?”
The women looked at each other. Nobody very senior here, because laundry was one of the worst chores. I picked out Promise Truehope, who was married to my cousin Willing. I didn’t think she was eighteen yet, and she looked much too pregnant for the heavy job she was doing. “Promise?” I asked. “What roster?”
“K-kitchen,” she said. “With Mercy.” And gulped.
Made sense. Mercy was the Prophet’s wife, and in charge of the women. We turned to go, and the second the door closed behind us, Oriana was pulling out her phone, saying, “I’ll text your dad. Then we need to run. They know we know now. We need to run.”
“They can’t tell anybody,” I pointed out, but I was walking faster as Oriana’s fingers flew. “They don’t have phones.”
Her fingers froze for a moment. “I forgot,” she said. “I actually forgot.” And then, “But we need to run anyway. This doesn’t feel safe.”
I felt it, too, the prickling at the back of my neck, on my arms. Some throwback to long-ago ancestors on the plains, I guessed, that awareness of the predator waiting. Watching. I said, “Then let’s run,” and we did. Oriana kept up, because shewasin trousers, and we reached the kitchen just ahead of my parents.
We didn’t stop and talk it over. Nothing to say. I burst through the door, and there Prudence was. Her face red and tear-streaked, her hands kneading an enormous ball of dough. She stood there and stared at us, then dropped her eyes like the other women.
Everybody but my Aunt Mercy. She snapped, “You’re trespassing.”
A stirring in the air behind us, and they were there, crowding through the door: a group of men, some of them holding tools. Not the Prophet, not this time. A younger group, a fitter group, and the man at their head was Loyal Worthy. Prudence’s father, and Oriana’s. He said, same as Aunt Mercy, “You’re trespassing.” His tone flat, his eyes hard, not a flicker of recognition in them for his daughter or his brother. “Get off our land.”
“We’re going,” my dad said. “We’re going now. Come on, Prudence.”
The men took a step forward, blocking the exit. “She’s not going,” Loyal said.
My dad pulled out his phone, held it up, and hit a button. “I’m calling Daisy,” he said. “You’re being recorded, voice and video, and transmitted. False imprisonment, is what this is, and it’s against the law.”
Could you record a call like that? I had no idea. It sounded good, though.
