Too frightened to rise, Otter remained on her hands and knees without moving, as though remaining perfectly still might cause this startling stranger, this Eliza, to lose interest and go away.

“Are you okay, little girl? Can you talk?” Again, the young woman’s voice struck her as off somehow, and Otter fliched a little at its high pitch.

She took in a deep breath and attempted to collect herself after her fright. Otter rose slowly to her feet and brushed the dust and leaves from her overalls, never quite taking her eyes from those of the unblinking Eliza. On reaching her full height, Otter found that the stranger was several inches taller than she.

Otter also noticed for the first time that she and the stranger were not alone. Just behind Eliza’s right shoulder stood another girl who seemed slightly younger than Eliza. The girls were dressed nearly identically, but the second girl’s dress seemed to fit her less well than Eliza’s did.

Although still gripped with fear, Otter could not help but be momentarily distracted, even fascinated, by the other child. Nothing about the girl’s physical features invited particular interest. Her flat brown hair hung limp around her face. The color of her brown eyes perfectly matched her hair, and her tan skin seemed to be only a lighter shade of the same color. A shabby cloth doll that had once been white dangled by its arm as her hands twisted and tugged on the worn appendage. But the girl seemed to pay no mind the constant motion of her hands as they worked over the doll’s straining arm.

But what Otter found most captivating was the girl’s odd expression. Slack jawed, tongue protruding slightly, Eliza’s companion stared blankly at Otter with a vague, unwavering grin. Her eyes seemed to see almost look through Otter, but they would periodically blink a few times in rapid succession and refocus for a moment before finding some hidden point in the distance once more. Whenever that gaze did settle on Otter, she couldn’t help but feel that she was being sized up the way one might evaluate a ripe piece of fruit before taking the first bite. To Otter, that look could only be described as hungry.

“I don’t think she can hear me,” Eliza said, turning with a slight smile to the other girl. Smiling, the girl looked at Eliza and licked her lips, causing Otter to shudder slightly.

Otter found her voice in a hurry. “I can hear,” she said. “My name is Otter. I was just—” Here, she paused. How could she explain to these strange girls why she had been sneaking around their house in the failing light? Thinking fast, she said the first thing that came to her mind. “I just didn’t want to bother anyone?” This last sounded more a question than a statement.

As soon as the words were out she regretted their obvious falseness.

In response, Eliza merely shrugged as if it were unimportant. “It’s okay,” she said, her smile returning unfazed. “You won’t bother us. Do you want to come inside?” The girl behind Eliza nodded vigorously at this, and her tongue lolled outside her mouth in much the way Otter had sometimes observed the tongue of Blotch’s squat, scaly imaginary at the Home. The involuntary comparison did not put Otter at ease.

Again, Otter had to think fast. “I...I really should keep moving. I’m in kind of a hurry?”

“Really?” Eliza frowned momentarily. “Where are you going?”

Otter had no answer for this, and Eliza nodded as if she’d confirmed a hunch. “Great. Well, just come in for a little while to eat with Desdemona and me. You can rest before you go, can’t you?”

Otter could not help feeling from the look in Eliza’s eyes that only one answer would suffice.

Just then, Otter’s tummy complained with a rumble, reminding Otter just how nice it would be to have a warm meal. She pushed her fears and internal protests aside.

“I...I guess I could sit down for just a little while. But then I’d really need to be on my way before—” But before Otter could even finish, she had been flanked by Eliza and Desdemona, who locked their arms in hers as they marched her irresistibly toward the shack’s lone door, with Eliza chatting all the while about snacks and journeys and rests, and Desdemona simply nodding and occasionally emitting an odd, guttural chuckle. The three girls squeezed side by side through the shack’s door and into the lamplit room within.

Otter quickly survey her new surroundings. Curtains covering the the shack’s few windows and two interior doorways, although threadbare, were hung with delicate attention. Rough-hewn furniture was arranged just so. A long rectangular table with a rickety-looking wooden chair at each side dominated the center of the shack’s main room, and a kitchen embedded in an array of cabinets and cupboards stood neatly behind the table. All in all, the interior was surprisingly tidy. It seemed to Otter that much more care had been recently paid to the cottage’s aging interior than had ever been spent maintaining its outside. Otter wondered about this for a moment, but her attention splintered as Eliza and Desdemona shuttled her into the middle of the room and sat her down abruptly in the chair at the long table’s head.

Desdemona sat down too, plopping into a chair across from Otter at the table’s other end. Her hands held the doll beneath the table, and she looked back and forth between Otter and Eliza as the latter bustled in the nearby kitchen to accommodate their guest. All the while, Eliza chatted away.

Otter tore her eyes from Desdemona and turned them to Eliza’s frenetic activity and idle chatter.

Otter’s host bounced from cabinet to cabinet, opening each, reaching within to extract cracked plates or tarnished silver or assorted packages decorated with pictures of food, and then shutting each in turn. The images declared contents of greater varieties of food than Otter had ever known, and most depicted only enticing mysteries. With the cabinets all closed once more, the food packages covered nearly every inch of the counter.

Otter’s stomach growled again, louder than before.

Eliza seemed to hear it, and she smiled at Otter knowingly, momentarily interrupting her prior chatter. “Let’s get you some dinner!”

In minutes a stove was flaming and pots were bubbling. Eliza continued to talk, although as near as Otter could tell, the talk was not about much. “Isn’t it funny how you were crawling by our house like that? I saw a cat chasing a mouse who crawled along next to a wall like that once. You weren’t chasing a mouse were you? It’s good that you came around when you did. It’s not good to be out at night. It’s better to be inside where we have lights and it’s warm and cozy. You haven’t been out around here at night have you? You have to be careful.” And with this she stopped and turned to Otter. “You never know what you might encounter around here.”

Otter gulped involuntarily at the other girl’s look. She tried to smile in response, but she knew her nerves had ruined the expression.

With her unsettling, unblinking stare, Eliza smiled back all the same.

Then came the food.

The tabletop’s length quickly became crowded with dishes, all steaming temptingly as they arrived. Bowls piled high with mounds of some white, squishy substance. Porcelain boats of thick brown liquid. A basket of fluffy bread-like lumps. As the table filled with food, delicious scents filled the air.

Otter had never seen foods like these. During her years at the factory and the Home, she seldom ate anything other than the plainest bread, meat, and cheese. Some years for her birthday, someone from the Home’s staff would slather sweetened lard over bread and bedeck it with a candle. Besides those rare instances, the food had varied no more than her routine at the factory.

Nonetheless, Otter could just sense that the vessels before her held deliciousness to dwarf anything she had ever tasted.

Even as she stared and her mouth watered, Otter was struck by the room’s sudden stillness. Fighting to wrest her gaze from the tantalizing serving dishes, Otter looked up at her hosts.

Eliza wore an expectant, uncertain expression, as though she was unsure how her guest would regard these offerings.

Desdemona’s blank stare held no more emotion than before. But her smile had widened considerably, and the tip of her tongue had begun to absently flick her lips. To Otter’s eyes, the other’s girls features seemed tighter, as though an invisible hand behind her head were stretching the skin of her face toward the back of her scalp. The effect was almost—reptilian.

I’m sure it’s just my imagination, Otter thought. All the same, Desdemona’s demeanor put Otter ill at ease, and she looked quickly back to Eliza.

Eliza was still regarding her guest expectantly. Otter, having no experience with eating at another’s house and table, reached for the nearest serving spoon, hopeful that this was the proper response. As soon as Otter had dolloped the first spoonful of the white stuff onto her plate, the chatter began again as Eliza took her seat and began heaping generous helpings onto her own and Desdemona’s plates.

The white mounds, Otter learned, were potatoes that had been boiled and smashed into paste. The brown liquid was gravy, which Otter poured over her potatoes as she had observed the other girls doing. The lumpy bread things were biscuits, which could be dipped into the potatoes and gravy. Dish after dish of these three items, food beyond Otter’s most extravagant dreams. After years of only the dullest sustenance, and several days of dwindling travel supplies, Otter could no more stop herself from devouring the food before her than she could remove her mouth. Forkful after forkful disappeared between her teeth, and she savored every bite. Otter had never before experienced what it was like to be full. It had never occurred to her that someone could eat so much as to become uncomfortable. But even that discomfort was a strange thrill, and she found herself enjoying it as she had never enjoyed anything before.

Eliza and Desdemona ate, too—Eliza, slowly and daintily, and Desdemona with an abandon like Otter’s but without even Otter’s untrained manners. While Otter was clumsy with her utensils, Desdemona handled hers like shovels. Every time the odd girl cleared her plate, she licked it clean before refilling it.

As the meal’s pace slowed and the food began to dwindle, Eliza’s incessant monologue changed course. Rising to clear the dishes, she turned to Otter and, as their eyes met, asked, “So, Otter, where are you from?”

Otter hesitated. She did not want to seem rude to her host. But she did not want it known that she had come from Junkton. What if Eliza figured out that Otter had escaped? What if she told someone and it got back to Mr. Pickle or someone else who might want Otter returned?

“Not from around here,” Otter lied. “From far away.”

Eliza smiled quickly and nodded as as she had earlier done after asking Otter where she was going. “Well,” she announced with finality, “I think we should have some dessert, then. I hope cookies are okay?”

Otter had never had a cookie. But the other foods had been divine, and Otter found herself nodding her assent without thinking.

Turning from the kitchen with a flourish, Eliza marched toward Otter with a stately air, carrying one final platter.

Otter’s eyes bulged at the tower of circular objects, golden brown and dotted with dark spots. The smell accompanying the plate—warm and sweet and hinting of subtle spice—made Otter’s mouth water despite her full belly.

Eliza placed the platter squarely before Otter and then turned about and walked back to the other end of the table.

Confused, Otter asked, “Aren’t you having any?” Certainly it seemed to her from the longing, almost animalistic look on Desdemona’s face that the odd girl wanted some of her own.

“Oh,” said Eliza somewhat sharply, “I couldn’t possibly. I’m stuffed. And Desdemona—” Both girls turned to Desdemona, who had, to Otter’s eyes, come to seem decidedly more reptilian. “Desdemona has had plenty,” and her voice carried a slight edge of command. “I’ll just start tidying up,” she said as she turned nonchalantly away from Otter once more.

Still concerned that ill manners might give her away, Otter took the the pile’s uppermost cookie and, after the briefest examination, devoured it. She ate it so fast she barely tasted it. But what she did taste was the sweetest, most delectable flavor she had ever dreamed of. A tiny pool began to swell in her eye as she thought of her whole life before cookies and of the possibility that her life could have gone on till the end without her ever having tasted one.

Otter dug in with gusto, and the pile of cookies slowly diminished. As she ate, she could not help but notice as Desdemona’s eyes rolled with impatient hunger. “Are you sure you don’t want one, Desdemona?” Otter asked, extending a cookie in her hand.

“No!” Eliza said, oddly loud, as she turned momentarily from her labors. “She loves them, but she’s allergic to the chocolate chips.” Eliza stepped nearer to Desdemona and, with a look of deep affection in her eyes, caressed Desdemona’s head and said, “What would she do without me?” Then, turning suddenly back to the tidying and seeming to want a change of subject, her monologue began again. “Does everyone where you’re from look like you?”

The cookies were too many for Otter to eat by herself, but she could not bear the thought of them going to waste. And so while Eliza spoke, Otter decided to slip the cookie she had offered to Desdemona into a pocket of her overalls, looking around furtively to make sure she had not breached normal etiquette. No one seemed to notice. But on hearing Eliza’s question, Otter’s brow furrowed, and she struggled to understand what the other girl meant. “Look like me?” she asked.

“People around here don’t look like you,” Eliza cheerfully explained. “I see a lot of travelers here. But you’re the first brown person I’ve seen.”

Otter shook her head slightly to dispel the strange sense that Eliza’s voice was coming to her from far away. She suddenly felt as though she had to think hard to make sense of Eliza’s statement, and her cheeks flushed warmly as she pieced the words together.

Otter had never really given her appearance much thought, and no one at the Home or the factory had ever commented on how she looked in any meaningful way. She found herself shocked that she had never given any thought to the fact that none of the other people she’d met in Junkton had dark skin like hers.

“I—I’m not sure,” she said. Her own voice also sounded strangely distant, and her tongue felt thick and heavy in her mouth.

“You’re not sure what people look like where you’re from?”

Again Otter found herself having to ponder the far-away voice and the confusing words, trying to make sense of them as Eliza probed her for answers she didn’t have. “I—” the girl said, but she never finished.

Alarmed, Otter found that her mouth would not respond. She tried to lift her hands, but her limbs hung heavy and limp. Her eyelids began to sag beneath their own weight, and her vision began to swim. Panic rose in Otter’s mind even as unnatural exhaustion stifled it and stuffed it away beneath her sinking consciousness.

“That’s okay,” Eliza said as she walked over to Otter and pulled back the platter of the cookies that remained. “I guess it will just have to stay a mystery.”

The room began to fade in and out. Or maybe it was Otter who faded in and out. But everything Otter saw went from light to dark and slowly back to light again. In the moments of illumination, Eliza’s voice floated calmly to Otter’s ears, never ceasing, never rising above a tone of casual conversation.

At some point Otter realized she was being carried from the table, with Eliza hoisting her up on one side and Desdemona on the other. Her legs would not move on their own, and her feet dragged along the ground.

“I really am sorry,” Eliza said. “But Desdemona is almost completely changed. And when she’s changed, she can’t eat just anything. It’s a good thing you came when you did. We always have trouble when nobody comes around in time.”

None of these words made sense to Otter, and even in this state Otter didn’t think her confusion was all on account of whatever Eliza had done to her.. What did she mean, eat? She has so much food. What does any of this have to do with me?”

Otter’s senses faded again, and when her consciousness surfaced again, tiny gasps and grunts punctuated Eliza’s speech as she and Desdemona squeezed Otter through one of the interior doorways and into an unlit room. “That’s why they don’t let me live in the town anymore. They tried to hurt Desdemona when they found out. But she was already changed, and they were afraid of her.”

Otter’s mind clawed at Eliza’s words, struggling to reveal the meaning buried within them. This is important, she told herself. You have to listen. But the words were slippery, and Otter’s ability to comprehend worked them numbly, like fingers exposed too long to frigid temperatures.

As her fluctuating vision grew accustomed to the new room’s lack of light, Otter saw she was being dragged toward a squat cage in a dim corner. That’s odd, Otter thought with drowsy concern.

Eliza continued, panting slightly from the exertion, “They told me I could stay in the town, but only without Desdemona. Even my parents said so. ‘She’s just a little girl,’ they told the other grownups. ‘She doesn’t know any better,’ they said. But I knew. It wasn’t my fault, but it wasn’t Desdemona’s fault either. That’s just how she is. She can’t help what she has to eat. And I couldn’t just leave my imaginary.”

The flutters of panic in Otter’s chest began to creep around the edges of her impaired consciousness as the girls got closer and closer to the cage. During a flash of awareness, Otter realized they intended to put her into the cage. She felt a tear trace a meandering path down her cheek, although she could not muster an audible sob.

“And so we left the town and moved to this shack. It was here, empty for years. I’ve heard older people say it used to belong to a hermit. But there was no hermit when we came. And now we stay here and wait for travelers for Desdemona.” Eliza’s voice took on a hurt, almost apologetic tone. “We always tried to be good when we found someone for Desdemona. We always found people who were sick or who had no one to miss them. You know—people like you. I mean, you don’t even have an imaginary.”

Otter’s bizarre plight seemed increasingly like a bad dream. Was Eliza saying what Otter thought she was saying? That Desdemona was no girl but was in fact Eliza’s cannibalistic imaginary, whose voraciousness had forced Eliza into exile, and whose hunger for human flesh Eliza helped nourish. Eliza had given up a family, a thing Otter could only dream of, to stay with her hideous creation. If she could have moved her face, Otter knew her expression would have betrayed absolute horror.

But before Otter could reflect on her horrific realization, Eliza and Desdemona were folding her and shoving her into the cramped cell on the floor. Otter was vaguely aware of how tight and uninviting these confines were. Once they had her awkwardly in place, Eliza knelt down by the cage and turned a key in its sturdy metal lock.

“I’m sorry about this,” Eliza said again. “I wish we could just finish while you’re knocked out by the medicine from the cookies, but poor Desdemona is very sensitive to it, so we have to wait. But we’ll try to make it easy for you.” She paused meaningfully. “If you can, stay asleep in the morning.” With that Eliza’s face grew sad and serious. “It will be worse if you’re awake,” she said.

The last thing Otter remembered was thinking how strange it was to be given advice on how to be eaten by a monster.

***

When Otter awoke, she did not know where she was. She was uncomfortably contorted. A sour smell filled her nose, and her face was pressed against a wet, sticky surface. Otter was vaguely aware that she had thrown up while she was unconscious.

Trying to straighten her neck, her head bumped severely against an unseen surface. Fear crowded out all other thought as Otter struggled to piece together what had happened. Then Eliza’s words came rushing back to her, and she knew. Morning seemed a long way off still. If she had not vomited from her gluttony, she might not have awakened at all.

The cage left little room to move, but Otter had just enough space to twist about and shift her weight to find a more comfortable position. Once a bit better settled, she turned her head away from the wall abutting her cell, and she was startled to see the dim outline of someone staring at her, mere inches from the bars that held her. Desperate, she whispered, “Please, help me!” Then, squinting in the dimness, she realized with dread that the figure outside her cage belonged to Desdemona. Otter suspected Eliza’s ravenous imaginary would offer no help.

Otter squinted in the darkness and was startled anew to find that Desdemona looked much changed. Her face had grown far more angular and, indeed, reptilian. Desdemona’s arms had shrunk, leaving only tiny appendages, one of which still gripped the dingy cloth doll by its neck. She—or it—perched on what could have been her knees, but her legs now seemed fused nearly down to the feet—feet which had become far less footlike as well. Her facial features had grown flatter against her head, which had stretched forward into a rounded point. Her eyes were black and circular, and her nose had receded to mere slits. Most unnerving of all, her teeth had grown into sharp, sinister curves. A long, slender tongue, ending in a delicate fork, flapped back and forth lazily at the air. The faded pink dress now hung limp on Desdemona’s greatly transformed frame.

Even as Otter watched, the remaining vestiges of humanity faded from Desdemona’s features. With every second that passed, Desdemona came to look increasingly like a giant serpent, until her elongated frame could no longer support her dress, and no limb extended to hold her doll. Both items fell to the floor with a muted rasp like the sound of autumn leaves in the wind. Otter shuddered with revulsion at what Desdemona had become.

Desdemona’s eyes rolled dramatically around in exasperated impatience. Slithering as near to Otter as the bars would allow, the great serpent inhaled deeply from the air about the caged girl and lapped her with that dry, forked tongue.

Otter shuddered at the contact, and her heart sank into her belly. Her stomach, still unsettled from the evening’s feast and the drug she’d been given, wrenched sickeningly.

Through her disgust, Otter couldn’t help but wonder, Why would anyone imagine a friend like Desdemona? Was it a mistake? Or did Eliza mean for Desdemona to be like this? Could other people’s imaginaries be equally horrific? Or even worse? Flinching away from Desdemona’s tongue, she was having a hard time imagining what might be worse.

In a moment of desperate inspiration, Otter suddenly remembered the libertyslippers in her pocket. She could put them on and escape the cage, the cabin, and her captors.

But when Otter attempted to reach for the libertyslippers in the front pocket of her overalls, she realized her cramped confines would afford her no room to don them safely. She might be able to retrieve them and maybe even get them onto her feet. But she would have to lie on her back to put them on, and that was out of the question.

Not knowing what else to do, Otter lowered her head and cried.

Life had always been sad, even horrible, but there was always hope. Hope that she would someday escape. Hope that her plans to leave the Factory would take her someplace better. Hope that she would someday have a magnificent friend and would play like the other children. And so she had not often cried, despite all that tormented her. But now there was nothing. Now she cried bitterly, knowing it had all been for nothing.

When Otter had no more tears to shed, she curled up as comfortably as she could in her cage, trying to keep her face away from the rancid former contents of her stomach, and attempted to do as Eliza had advised and sleep once more.

But sleep eluded her. And not just because of what faced her or because of the smell of her sick. Or even because of Desdemona’s expectant panting and the shivery sound her tongue periodically made as it whipped into the world and then back into her mouth. No, something else tingled in the back of her mind, refusing to let her rest. Then Eliza’s words came back to her: You don’t even have an imaginary.

But what if she did?

The idea unleashed a torrent of conflicting emotions in Otter. Of course, an unexpected path to escape buoyed her with dim hope and relief. Yet her heart sank into her belly at the thought of wasting her chance to have the perfect imaginary just so she could imagine one that could save her from her cruel predicament. Either way, she was desperate. This might be the only way to save herself. So she came up with a plan. A sad, simple plan that would save her life but end her mission forever.

Gently, carefully, her imagination explored and shaped the kind of friend that could help her. Perhaps a giant who could overpower Eliza and her monstrous snake. Or maybe a ferocious beast that could eat her captors. Each new idea pained her as she thought of being bound forever to a monster created only as a weapon and how, in a sense, this was little better than how Eliza had wasted the precious magic of an imaginary friend. But the more she thought, the more creative she became.

The night wore on, and at last her plan was fully formed. Otter steeled herself to wriggle into a better position to meet Desdemona’s gaze once more before summoning an imaginary that would release her from captivity. As she moved, she felt a slight crunching and crumbling from one of her hip pockets. It was then that she remembered the cookie she had stored away for later.

Maybe there’s another way, she dared to hope.

Thinking fast, she twisted her arm until her hand could reach into her pocket and remove the largest chunk of the cookie, which had broken into a few pieces in her pocket. She then turned to face Desdemona who still sat like a serpentine gargoyle, staring at her presumed prey.

Otter waved the cookie in front of Desdemona’s face. “Hey, Desdemona,” Otter whispered. “Do you want a cookie?”

The Desdemona-monster-thing’s eyes narrowed for a moment then widened in surprise. Otter was startled as Desdemona rushed violently toward the cage, banging her face repeatedly against the bars. After a few strikes, Desdemona realized she could not get through, and she writhed around on the floor, whining in frustration, her snakelike tail whipping about with a life of its own.

When Desdemona’s antics had calmed, Otter spoke again. “Do you want this cookie, Desdemona? Because I can give it to you.”

Desdemona shot upright again like a flash, and she moved close to the cage. Her nose pressed between the bars as far as it would go, and her tongue strained to probe at Otter and the cookie. But her eyes shifted to meet the captive girl’s, and Otter knew Desdemona was listening.

“Do you know where the key is, Desdemona? The key to the cage?”

Desdemona did not—perhaps could not, Otter realized—respond in words. But after a momentary pause, her stare became more intense, and Otter thought she detected a slight nod from the giant snake’s head.

“If you bring me the key, I could unlock this cage and give you the cookie. I just,” she paused, breathing deep, trying to appear calm and confident even as she bargained with a monster for her life. “I just need the key. Can you get it?”

Desdemona’s eyes narrowed again. Otter held her breath, wondering whether Desdemona was intelligent enough to forego the treat out of loyalty to her master. But after only a few seconds, the snake’s giant form swung around and glided off into the dark adjacent room.

Otter listened close but heard nothing from the other room. As the minutes passed, she began to worry that her scheme had failed. Just when she was sure she would need to give up and return to her prior plan, Desdemona came slithering quietly back, the key clasped firmly in her fanged, lipless mouth.

Otter sighed with relief. “That’s it, Desdemona,” she whispered. “Now bring it over to me so I can give you the cookie.”

Desdemona approached, her sinuous body making a soft rustling sound as it moved across the floor. Otter drew back slightly as Desdemona’s face drew up against the cage, her nose protruding slightly between the bars. Holding out her hand, Otter fought the urge to snatch the key from the jaws of her terrifying and unexpected accomplice. Just as Otter’s patience began to wilt, Desdemona’s fanged mouth parted, and the key fell to the floor of the cage.

The monstrous maw closed, but the head did not withdraw. Desdemona eyed Otter expectantly, awaiting the promised reward.

Like a flash Otter grabbed the key and tossed the cookie away from the cage.

Desdemona rushed to where the cookie had landed and she fell on it with abandon. In seconds the cookie was gone, and Desdemona returned to her previous perch in front of Otter’s cage as though nothing else had passed between girl and snake.

Otter withdrew into the cage as far from Desdemona as her tiny cell would allow. Then she watched and waited.

She didn’t have to wait long.

In only minutes, Desdemona’s eyes seemed to lose focus, her tongue slowed in its incessant flickering, and her head began to sway and draw closer to the ground. With a dull thud, her great scaly head dropped the last few inches to the floor. Otter knew from experience that Desdemona was helpless.

Otter waited a few moments more to be sure Desdemona was indeed unconscious. And that the beast’s graceless descent to the ground had not disturbed her slumbering master. Once satisfied on both counts, Otter scooted quietly toward the cage’s door and reached through the bars with the key in hand. She bent her wrist awkwardly but carefully into the proper position and delicately inserted the key into the hole.

Her exaggerated caution reminded her of when she had first donned the libertyslippers back in the bunk room of the Home. Both instances presented an unforgiving need for precision and no opportunity for second chances.

Turning the key gently, Otter felt the lock engage, and the door popped slightly open with a click.

Otter realized with alarm that Desdemona had fallen so as to partially block the door’s path. Holding her breath she pushed gently but firmly against the door, slowly nudging the sleeping monster’s limp body out of the way, hoping her gentle shoves would not wake it. When she thought she had opened the door just enough, she twisted and turned to squeeze her body out through the opening and then lay on the ground panting as quietly as she could.

Once she had regained her breath, Otter stood and began looking quietly around the room for her things. She found them spread out on a small table as though someone had been going through them.

Someone has been going through them, she thought. Otter felt this intrusion somehow compounded the terribleness of the fate she’d nearly met.

As she began to gather her few possessions back up, she looked around for her makeshift bag. She saw it on top of a pile of other empty bags beside the table. A mound of assorted clothing lay next to the bags. In a moment of horrid realization, it occurred to Otter that the bags and clothes must belong to other travelers whose journeys had ended in Eliza’s horrid shack.

Otter pushed her own improvised bag aside, revealing a sturdy-looking backpack. The backpack could carry far more than her cloth, and it would not weigh her down unevenly or bang against her hip. Swallowing an awful pang of guilt, she removed the bag from the pile and placed her meager possessions one by one inside, until only her knife was left.

She reached again into the belongings of Eliza’s other victims, this time searching for clothing. She removed a sturdy pair of pants and a comfortable-looking shirt. Glancing self-consciously over at Desdemona’s motionless coils, Otter quickly stripped out of her threadbare overalls, which were damp and rank from her sickness. She tossed the old overalls in a ball toward the other clothes and pulled the pants and shirt on in silence.

She reached now for last item on the table, her knife, and held it tight as she closed her bag and heaved it onto her back.

She looked once more to the cage and the monster sleeping beside it. Fading terror and anger and hurt warred within her mind, threatening to overwhelm her. For a moment she thought of what she might do to this sleeping beast that would have devoured her, just as it had done to others, with neither remembrance nor remorse. Her grip on the knife tightened as she approached the drugged brute’s body. For a long moment she stood there, staring down at Desdemona. But in the end, she could not bring herself to do more than that.

Instead, she walked to the cage and pulled the key from the lock. Placing it in her pocket, she permitted herself a moment of happiness in thinking that at least the cage could never hold another prisoner if she took the key with her.

Knife still in hand, she crept into the other room. Eliza lay sleeping on a smallish cot, her legs a little too long for it and her feet extending over the end. Once again, Otter was overcome with conflicting emotions. Once again, she contemplated her knife and what she could do to make her captor pay. Once again, she could not do more than contemplate.

Careful not to make a sound, Otter turned to the kitchen and looked for supplies she could carry with her. She unslung her backpack and filled it with a half-dozen biscuits and a few of the boxes with pictures on their fronts, although she was unsure how to turn their shaky-sounding contents into the lavish dishes featured in the pictures.

Her supplies fully stocked, Otter reached into her overall pocket and unfolded the libertyslippers. She leaned over and pulled them onto her feet, careful not to lean on anything nearby. She stood up to her full height and looked over once more at the slumbering figure of Eliza. Anger and sadness and pity and terror fluttered and collided in Otter’s head and belly so that she almost thought she might throw up again.

Otter made her way to the sleeping girl’s bedside and looked down on her. Otter thought she might wake Eliza and tell her that she and Desdemona had failed. That they had been unable to hold Otter. That they would never again lock an unwitting traveler in that cage. That she had taken what she needed and would escape, never to be caught. That she didn’t deserve to be treated like cattle. That Eliza was bad for what she did to travelers.

In the end, though, Otter said nothing. She looked around the room and got her bearings, recalling which way the road led away from this shack, its resident, and the town that had made and spurned her. Then she walked away from them all, passing through girl and cot as if they were nothing but mist.