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Chapter 2 ~ Escape

The night was cool—cooler than it had been when Otter left the factory. Although the compound’s great structures now obscured the factory’s blazing artificial lights, the stars were no brighter, so the sky seemed darker, as well.

Otter stood silent and still for a moment, waiting for her eyes to adjust. Then she looked around.

The drab stone outer wall of the Home was directly behind her. A long, flat lawn of short, dry grass lay before her. The factory compound abutted Junkton’s edge on one side, and Otter knew that the fence that marked the boundary of both stood far across the parched yard ahead. But she could make out no hint of it in this light.

Taking great care with every step, she began walking toward the outer fence, which stood between her and freedom.

The night’s odd sounds skittered and crawled from every direction in the darkness. Noises belonging to creatures heard but unseen crept into Otter’s ears as though the sounds themselves were alive. Otter had been many times between the factory and the Home after the curtain of night had been drawn. But this was the first time she had ever truly been outside after dark.

A passage from Surviving in the Wilderness flitted across Otter’s mind. Many animals are active at night and dormant in the day. Typically, such animals have keen senses adapted to the dark. Many are predators. She tried not to imagine what predators might be making those sounds as her cautious steps carried her forward.

Slowly she proceeded across that close-cropped yard. The poorly fitted libertyslippers on her feet were the reason she continued to walk with such great care. Otter knew that if she were to fall while wearing them, she would not stop at the ground.

Otter shuddered as this thought took her back to her first day of work inside the factory. An older boy named Crim had been demonstrating how the libertyslippers worked by putting them on and walking back and forth through the assembly line’s conveyor. But he was careless. So after he showed her the libertyslippers’ power, he turned to Otter and, with a cocky grin, asked, “Any questions?”

And then he leaned on the conveyor.

Before she could blink, his hand passed right through, and Crim was gone.

The soles of the libertyslippers had stared up at the conveyor from the floor, but Crim was nowhere to be seen. In a desperate attempt to save the boy, Otter had grabbed the slippers and tried to pull him back up. The slippers had come up in her hands, empty. The girl had stood there, staring in horror at what she held, knowing then that Crim would never return. That was when she first realized just how dangerous libertyslippers could be.

Otter was given charge of that line the following day.

Remembering those empty libertyslippers in her hand, she treaded ever so lightly through the darkness.

A tall fence loomed before Otter, towering over the yard. Its black iron bars rose high above her and ended in sinister spikes. The bars were far enough apart that Otter thought she could squeeze between them, which she found surprising. But as she approached closer, it became clear that this fence did not enclose the compound but was instead a separate enclosure. To keep what, exactly, in? Otter wondered. She soon found out.

Just within the iron perimeter lounged a pack of immense beasts, their enormous maned heads resting on massive paws. A dense mat of fur covered the creatures from the tips of their long, thick tails to the bases of the cruel-looking claws that protruded lazily from the paws beneath their chins.

Otter had seen so few animals beyond the imaginaries she had spied from her window, and she had never seen anything quite like these. But judging by their mass captivity in Junkton, and by the vaguely familiar look of their fur, she suspected that these were libertylions, the magical creatures from whose hides libertyslippers are made.

The beasts’ menacing paws and teeth gave the impression of ferocious hunters, and Otter imagined they could devour her in no more than three bites. But as she continued to stare at the caged brutes, Otter thought the eyes looking out from those giant heads seemed somehow…sad.

The libertylion pen was massive. Going around it would take time. She briefly considered walking straight through, but she did not dare. Otter knew next to nothing about libertylions, and Surviving in the Wilderness advised one to avoid any large animals encountered in the wild. And these were magical creatures, whose magic she knew little about. Maybe their power would allow them to touch her despite the slippers. And although she might have imagined it, Otter thought the creatures had a hungry look about them. So she turned to her left and began her trek around the cage.

As she walked, Otter had the odd sense she was being watched. She looked over to the enclosure and gasped.

Dozens of libertylions now followed her along the fence line and looking at her with their forlorn, longing eyes.

Slightly shaken, Otter pretended to ignore them and turned back to her walk.

But it wasn’t long before the impulse to look again became irresistible. The number of libertylions had again increased! What, she wondered, could they possibly want?

“You wouldn’t want to eat me,” she whispered, pleading. “I’m too skinny, and I’m dirty, and there isn’t enough of me for all of you.”

The libertylions looked on at her without any change in their dolorous expressions. One pushed its face to the fence’s bars until its great muzzle protruded slightly between them. Its teeth were each longer than the blade of her pocket knife, and they dripped with wicked-looking saliva. But the lion’s eyes remained sad, and Otter couldn’t help but think the creature had no interest in her as a meal.

“What is it, then?” Otter could hear a slight edge of panic in her whisper. She had no time to waste in making her escape—let alone for talking to caged animals that might want to eat her. “If I knew what you wanted, I’d give it to you,” she said.

The libertylions’ eyes all seemed to shift in unison to a place just behind the girl.

With a sense of dread, Otter turned slowly toward what the beasts seemed to want her to see. Her eyes involuntarily shut as she came completely about. She could not imagine what might be lurking behind her that so captivated these sad monsters.

Bracing for the worst, Otter forced her eyes open to behold—

A wheelbarrow.

Several wheelbarrows, actually. A long row of wheelbarrows ran along the enclosure’s near side like a separate, intermittent fence line. Some were nearly empty, but most were piled halfway or higher with dark lumps that Otter could barely make out in the night’s scant light.

Squinting a little, she could just make out beyond the row of wheelbarrows what seemed to be a small, thin forest (or perhaps an orchard?) of massive trees with smooth, towering trunks.

She approached the nearest wheelbarrow and reached in. Her fingers passed through its contents as though it were smoke. Otter nearly lost her balance and only barely stood upright before falling forever into the earth. Her breath caught and her heart raced as she realized what she had nearly done.

She choked back the urge to cry.

Otter stepped back from the wheelbarrow and looked again at the solemn libertylions. They had not stopped watching her, but they did not seem to notice that she had nearly met her doom. I’ll have to take the slippers off if I want to know what’s in the wheelbarrows, she thought. But that would leave her vulnerable. The prospect was nearly as frightening as her fall had been.

The nervous girl craned her neck in every direction to see whether anyone besides the lions was in sight. She saw no one, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. At only a short distance, the darkness was nearly absolute. But anyone else who could have hidden in it would be as blind as she.

Having reassured herself as best she could that the coast was clear, Otter slowly and cautiously squatted until her fingers could just reach the libertyslippers on her feet. She peeled the slipper completely off her foot, pulling it carefully by the loop of fabric above her heel.

Otter’s care was justified. Libertyslippers do not know where on a person’s body they are being worn, and only their soles make physical contact with the ground. The small silk loops alone made removing the slippers possible without the risk of meeting Crim’s fate.

Once she had both slippers safely off, she folded them and placed them back into her front pocket. Then she reached again into the wheelbarrow.

This time, her fingers found fist-sized fruits with supple, slightly bumpy skin. She gave the fruit in her hand a soft squeeze, and its skin gave way, letting her fingers sink deep into rich, ripe flesh.

“You want…fruit?” she asked.

The libertylion that had stuck its nose through the fence made a sound that was to a roar what a whisper is to a shout. Otter could not say why, but she was sure this noise meant yes.

Relief and surprise washed over her. On one hand, it was nice to know that the libertylions didn’t want to eat her. On the other hand, she would never have guessed these terrifying animals would eat fruit.

As a test, she took one of the dense fruits in her hand and lobbed it at the bars.

The libertylions’ eyes followed the fruit’s arc through the air and, as it hit one of the cage’s iron bars and fell with a thud, the beasts reached their great paws between the bars and scrabbled to seize the fruit until it had been pulverized and slurped clean from between their furry digits. As soon as the ravenous licking had stopped, all the animals’ sad eyes came to rest again on the girl.

Otter’s eyes goggled as her guess was violently confirmed. That settled it. Otter made her decision.

First looking around once more for anyone who might see, she pushed the wheelbarrow to the fence. The libertylions backed slightly away, an edge of anticipation softening their sadness. With one great heave, Otter upended the wheelbarrow, and its contents tumbled onto the ground in front of and through the fence’s bars.

The libertylions reacted at once. They fell upon the fruits, and the night was saturated by the sound of their fanged mouths mauling the juicy lumps.

Otter returned with another wheelbarrow and dumped it beside the first. Then she dumped another. And another. She began to take pleasure in knowing that, whatever she was doing, she wasn’t supposed to be doing it. Junkton’s authorities—those overseeing the factory, the Home, and the libertylion farm—wanted the fruits in the wheelbarrows just outside the lions’ reach. These were the people whose children played just outside her window as she and the Home’s other residents toiled. These were the people who regarded child workers as an expendable commodity—the people who were relieved to find the libertyslippers undamaged after Crim vanished into the floor. And if they wanted these fruits safely in the wheelbarrows, then Otter wanted the opposite.

By the time she was done, a dozen wheelbarrows lay on their sides as an avalanche of fruits spread between the bars of the libertylions’ prison.

The lions paid Otter no further mind. Still, she kept her eyes fixed on them as she unfolded her libertyslippers and carefully donned them once more. Satisfied that the lions were happier eating fruit than eating a little girl, she turned back to her imminent escape.

She walked a long time in the darkness. At times, Otter worried she had strayed from the right direction. Or that she had misjudged Junkton’s size and would now not make it to the border before the sun rose to betray her and she was caught.

And if I’m caught, she thought, I’ll certainly be punished.

Just when despair began to ease its tendrils around her heart and then rise as panic in her throat, she noticed that the darkness engulfing her path was no longer empty. Something lay ahead. Something tall. It was the fence.

The fence surrounded the Home, the factory, and most of Junkton, deterring the more adventurous factory children from wandering too far from their work. On the fence’s opposite side rose the countless immense trees of Oakwood Forest, their tops disappearing into the night’s black heights.

Otter had learned from Surviving in the Wilderness that the great forest had once taken up most of the countryside surrounding Junkton. Even when that book was written, the forest had been vast and ancient. Some of the forest’s trees were older than memory. Junkton’s first inhabitants had cut and burned and built the town from Oakwood’s living flesh to make a home for the mighty factory so those who could afford the costly libertyslippers could have them on demand.

Looking out into the forest, Otter knew she could not count on the accuracy of the terrain and geography she had memorized from Surviving in the Wilderness. Written many decades earlier, the book depicted a land long gone. But even here in the dark, she could see that some part of Oakwood remained wild and unconquered.

Still mindful of the need to mind her step while wearing the libertyslippers, Otter tiptoed toward the fence. Pushing out one last breath within Junkton’s bounds, she stepped through the bars of the fence as though they were fog.

The next breath she inhaled was her first breath of true freedom.

Otter squatted warily and again peeled the rough hide shoes from her feet. She would no longer be able to walk through walls, but she would not have to worry about the dangers that accompanied that ability. She deliberately folded the libertyslippers back into tiny triangles and placed them once more in her front pocket.

The fence at her back, Otter now stood among the mighty towers of Oakwood Forest. She reached into the pack at her side and removed her tiny knife, finding comfort as her thumb absently worried at the knife’s smooth surface.

Setting her jaw firmly, Otter began walking into the dark woods.

And dark they were! After only a few minutes, Otter could barely see her hands as they groped from tree to tree. A few minutes more and she could see even less. Otter held the knife in her right hand with its blade extended ahead of her as her tiny, tentative steps carried her blindly forward into the blackness. Every time her fingers scraped a tree’s rough bark, she stopped and cut a gouge into its trunk. She could not be sure that her path was straight, but her knife’s marks in the trees would at least allow her to find her path again when the sun rose.

Otter counted fifty trees with fifty marks and then stopped. She could have carried on till dawn, but she was afraid of going too far off course if her bearing had not been true. Tonight she had only to get far enough away from the fence so that no one from Junkton could easily discover her when the sun rose. Blotch or someone like him would look for her in the morning, but the search would be short and shallow. Other children occasionally escaped, and little time or effort was spent recovering escapees who would be unlikely to survive long on their own. It mattered little, since the flow of laborers to the factory never seemed to run dry.

She felt around the great trunk of that last tree, trying to determine which side was opposite—and therefore hidden—from the fence line. Having made her best guess, Otter curled up on the ground at the tree’s base.

The chill in the air, which had smelled of freedom when Otter first stepped into it, seeped into her bones as she lay on the leaf-covered forest floor. She could not see the woods around her. But she heard the low, continuous chatter of whatever creatures shared Oakwood with her. At times, she thought she saw dimly glowing eyes spying down on her from the soaring ceiling of branches.

Shivering, Otter closed her eyes against the dark. Invisible sounds echoed for a long time in her ears before exhaustion overtook her and sleep finally arrived in her first night of freedom.

* * *

A cold, pale light gently worked Otter’s eyes open.

Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she rolled over on the forest’s thick carpet of leaves. Most of the sounds of night had fallen silent, and birdsongs now cheerfully filled the air. Cold droplets of dew—that’s what it’s called, Otter recalled—burst pleasantly on her cheeks. Otter had awakened as a free girl. She smiled faintly. Freedom was certainly an improvement.

Otter pushed herself up to her feet and looked around.

The gouges she had made were easy to spot, even in the dawn’s low light. Looking back along her path, she could no longer see Junkton’s fence. Looking in the opposite direction, Otter was surprised to see daylight pouring into Oakwood Forest, illuminating the forest’s leafy floor and tree-trunk walls ahead while the terrain she had covered last night remained in shadow. At the moment, however, she was hungrier than she was curious. She would find out soon enough, she thought. But first, breakfast.

Otter judiciously pulled a little bread and cheese from her pack. Frugality was a necessity; Otter had no idea when she would next have access to more supplies. Reminding herself of this fact soothed her mind, but it did nothing to placate her belly, which rumbled with dissatisfaction over a breakfast that was tinier than usual.

After she had collected her things and quickly taken stock to ensure that she had lost nothing during her flight, Otter walked to where the light bathed the forest. The sunlight, she found, flooded in from that direction because Oakwood Forest abruptly ended. Although she had expected to hike for many hours through the vast woods, Oakwood had turned out to be far less vast than she had expected. Surviving in the Wilderness was old indeed, and she had not appreciated how much human activity might affect the map.

As Junkton had grown, the woods had receded. Once, Junkton was only an island in the mighty forest. Now Oakwood Forest was more like Junkton’s outermost layer, a meager eggshell containing the dirty industrial town it once dwarfed. Eventually, Otter imagined, even this modest strip of untamed wilderness would be gone, and Junkton would burst through the wooded shell whose broken pieces would soon be discarded and quickly forgotten.

That’s why it took so long to get to the fence, Otter realized. The distance from Junkton’s center to the fence has grown while the distance from the fence to Oakwood’s perimeter has shrunk.

She turned in place for a moment and took in the dappled sunlight as it danced playfully along every surface; the tiny, scampering animals chasing their kin from branch to branch; the pleasant, chaotic songs of the birds welcoming the morning. The idea that all this might perish so that Junkton might bulge saddened Otter in ways she had trouble understanding. But she could not free Oakwood Forest from Junkton as she had freed herself. So she carried on.

Otter emerged from the shadows of Oakwood’s trees, blinking in the raw rays of the early morning sun. A narrow ledge of grass—dry and shorn, like the lawn that pervaded Junkton—lay between her and a colorless expanse of hard-packed dirt and stone that crept back to Junkton in one direction and toward the horizon in the other. On one side of the great serpentine path, a decrepit sign warned travelers that they were about to enter Junkton. On the other side, an equally decrepit sign named this place: Dirt Road.

Staying just off the road to avoid other travelers, Otter began walking away from Junkton, which she hoped never to see again.

Next Chapter: Chapter 3 ~ On Dirt Road