But when Isme did not immediately respond, Pelagia’s surprise cast over her features. “You really are completely innocent, aren’t you? All you must know is goats!”
Isme was going to play along, hoping that this would make Pelagia explain why a boy would be needed to play women on stage when there were perfectly good women standing about, but in the distance someone began shouting.
Everyone was on their feet. Pelagia stood and looked about wildly; but when Isme rose from her crouch, she had eyes for only one thing. Her father. Where was her father? She focused toward the front of the caravan: surely he had to be up there…
Her thoughts were interrupted by the scream of an animal, followed by men’s voices yelling and threatening, all simultaneous so Isme had trouble telling the words apart. She had never had to listen to more voices than her own and her father’s at the same time. Pelagia seized Isme by the wrist, more distraction—
“Come,” she cried, “We must hide under the wagons, this must be robbers!”
And she dragged Isme, who realized that she was to play along with mainlanders: if women hid, that was what Isme should do too. Pelagia hurried her to the nearest wagon, and she recalled her father’s words: if a man knows what he is doing, you will never defeat him with staves... Outthink to outfight...
A hard thing to do, thought Isme, if I hide under a wagon.
Yet as Pelagia crouched on hands and knees in the mud to crawl under, Isme glanced into the woods, hoping to see whether the attackers were many or few, and her eyes fell on the stone where Kleto had been sitting.
Kleto, who had stomped away into the woods and not returned.
If there are robbers in the woods, Isme considered, surely a woman would be a good prize. They may even have taken her already and nobody will ever know...
Much as Kleto seemed opposed to Isme, she had not done anything to her. The thought of having seen that golden hair for the last time, and only a few times at that, and all of those times with the hair bundled under that veil—it seemed intolerable. Isme wanted to see if it was as long as her own hair—all the way to the waist—which was hard to do when all of the women here had their hair tied in knots.
Something seized Isme’s ankle and she nearly kicked out, stopping when she realized it was Pelagia. Under the cart, Pelagia cowered and tugged Isme’s limb again. She said, “What are you doing? Are you mad? Get under here, goatherd girl—”
And Isme concluded: nobody else remembered where Kleto was. This made up her mind. She kicked, escaping Pelagia’s grip and seized her staff from the back of the wagon where she had placed it. Then she turned to the woods.
Besides, she thought, Isn’t this what people do in the stories?
They always rescued each other from trouble...
~
The woods were darker than the sunlit road. The trees were all unfamiliar—and Isme realized she knew the island so well she could navigate simply by the placement of the trees in the woods. But that skill was a distraction now because she felt disoriented in location—she should turn here, only that was wrong, the pattern of trunks all wrong...
Crouching low, Isme crept parallel to the road, looking for where Kleto had entered the woods. The woman had stomped away so her trail should not be hard to find. There—an overturned leaf and a broken twig, perfect size for a human foot. Skirting the trail, Isme hoped to stay at a distance to spot before being spotted. An absent thought: her father would be angry over her running into this.
An irregular thumping noise. Isme thought it was feet, and then when she paused, listening, she concluded the noise was her own heartbeat. Placing a hand between her breasts, she told herself to go still and silent like the stalking fox.
But under her palm was not the frantic fluttering that she expected. And she understood: she had been more right with her first idea. These were footsteps.
Behind came the voice in the woods: “What are you doing?”
The impulse to flee rose up in Isme like nausea, but she swallowed it down like vomit. Now was not the time to go tearing through the woods toward the caravan. For all she knew the men there would think her one of the attackers and strike first.
Besides, the voice in the woods did not sound cruel, she realized. It sounded curious, like a child inquiring what happened next in a story. Isme resisted the urge to turn around and look, knowing that there would be nothing among the trees.
Still, there was no reason beyond her own fear why she could not speak to the thing. It had understood her before. She said, “Did you see a woman walk through here?”
A pause as the voice in the woods contemplated her question. Isme crept forward at an angle to the path that Kleto must have cut into the forest, assured herself that the voice in the woods would follow. That seemed to be the one constant about the creature.
At last, the voice in the woods said, “You know this is foolish.”
“What choice do I have?” Isme asked. “Nobody else noticed her. I can’t just do nothing—it’s not as if we are enemies, she is just very confusing.” Although, Isme amended without speaking aloud, perhaps Kleto considers us enemies. But that’s no reason I should be forced to agree with her.
“Everyone has choices,” said the voice in the woods. “Saying things like ‘I have no choice’ is an excuse to escape the consequences of decisions. But the gods will not
