“Celestine!” A voice calls louder, and another hushes him.
Why are they hushing? I’m dizzy, I think I’ve cut my head, all I know is that I need to keep running; it’s what my mum told me to do. Granddad said don’t trust anyone. Dad said to trust Granddad. I need to keep moving.
The torches suddenly go off and I’m running in pitch blackness. I stop still, my breathing all I can hear. I don’t know which way is forward or which is back the way I came; I am utterly disorientated in the dense forest. Panic descends again, then I take control. I close my eyes, allowing calm to encapsulate me. I can do this. I turn round, trying to see light from the farmhouse in the distance, or any clues. As I move, twigs snap between my feet.
Then I feel strong arms round my waist, a smell of sweat.
“Got her,” he says.
I fight against his grip, but it’s no use: there’s no room to move. I keep trying anyway, wriggling with all my energy to hopefully exhaust him, hit him, scratch him, kick him.
A torch goes on, someone is shining it in my face. Both my captor and I look away from the harsh light.
“Let her go, Lennox,” says the man holding the torch, and I stop wriggling immediately.
The arms release me, and the torch is passed to Dahy, who holds it so that the speaker is illuminated.
The man is amused.
The man is Carrick.
I’m buzzing as I follow Dahy back to the farmhouse. Carrick and his friend Lennox are behind me. I want to keep turning round to get a look at Carrick, but with Lennox there I can’t. I’ve done it twice already, and Lennox caught me both times. I feel nervous, happy, surprisingly giddy at being reunited with Carrick. Finally something is going my way. My birthday wish came true. I bite my lip to hide my smile as we walk single file back to the farmhouse; now is not a time for smiling, though they couldn’t possibly understand my relief.
“Any word from Granddad?” I ask Dahy quietly.
“No,” he says, turning round briefly so I can catch the worried look on his face. “But Dan is doing everything he can to find out.”
I’m cynical of trusting Dan, who is the farmworkers’ Whistleblower. His arrangement with Granddad to loosen the reins on the Flawed workers was more based on feeding his alcohol addiction through gifts from Granddad’s home whiskey distillery rather than common decency.
“You’ll let me know when you hear something?” I ask Dahy.
“You’ll be the first to know.”
“You’ll make sure Granddad knows that I’m safe?”
Dan never knew I was here at the farmhouse – their arrangement was never that sweet – and so he can’t possibly relay the message to Granddad that I’m alive. Maybe the Whistleblower Kate told Granddad, but placing my faith in any Whistleblower is the last possible move, regardless of whether she let me go or not. I reach out to grab Dahy’s arm so that he stops walking, my hand grips his Flawed armband. Lennox and Carrick stall behind me.
“Dahy, can you contact my family? Tell them Granddad’s at the castle? Tell my parents that I’m okay?”
“They already know he’s at the castle, but it’s too risky to tell them about you over the phone, Celestine. You know the Guild is probably listening in on the phone lines.”
Members of the Guild aren’t super spies, but if Juniper and I figured out a way to overhear our neighbours’ phone conversations through Ewan’s baby monitor years ago, and a journalist can find a way to tap phones, then the Guild certainly can.
“You have to find a way to tell them. And you have to tell him I’m okay.”
“Celestine—”
“No, Dahy, listen.” I raise my voice and I hear the tremor in it. “I cannot have Granddad sitting in a cell, or wherever they’ve put him, thinking that he has just burned his granddaughter alive.” My voice cracks. “You need to get word to him.”
Dahy finally understands. He softens. “Of course. I’ll find a way to tell him.”
I let go of his arm.
“He’ll be okay, Celestine; you know he’s made of tough stuff.” Dahy adds, “If anything, they’ll want to let him go quickly, before he conspiracy-theories them to death.”
I smile weakly at his attempt at humour and nod my thanks. I try to ignore the tears that are welling, try not to picture the terrible scenarios for Granddad that my mind keeps wanting to create. Granddad being booed and heckled as he walks across the cobblestoned courtyard of Highland Castle. People looking at him and shouting at him like he’s scum, throwing and spitting while he tries to keep his chin up. Granddad locked in a cell. Granddad having to answer to Crevan in the Guild court. Granddad in the Branding Chamber. Granddad being put through all the things that happened to me. When it’s yourself, you can take it; when it’s happening to the people you love, it can break you.
What Crevan did to me was rare, at least I think it was; it was a moment of stress, of his utter loss of control. All I can do is hope that he won’t treat Granddad as he’s treated me.
We walk back to the Jeep they parked at the farmhouse. There is no time for catching up on old times; I sense that the three of them are all anxious to get back to safety. It’s after 11:00 PM, we’re all Flawed and should be indoors. Three of us are ‘evaders’ who have disobeyed the Guild.
I have time to very quickly gather some of my things from the house: the small amount of clothes Granddad managed to successfully retrieve from Mum on a recent visit to her, the longest day of my life when he left me at the farm alone. It’s not much, a small backpack, and I suppose it’s all I need, but I think of all my clothes in my wardrobe at home, each item that meant so much to me, every one a part of me, a way of expressing who I was. I’m stripped of those now, realise I have nothing but my own words and actions to truly show who I am.
We say goodbye to Dahy, he wishes us luck and I beg him again to get word to me about Granddad as quickly as possible, and vice versa.
Carrick holds the door open for me. Our eyes meet and my heart pounds.
“We need to see to that cut,” he says, focusing on my forehead, the small wound from where I slammed into a branch moments ago. With the surge of adrenaline I didn’t feel the pain, but now I feel it sting in the breeze. As Carrick studies my forehead, I’m able to take in his face. This is the closest I’ve ever been to him, in the flesh – every other time was behind glass, or comatose after the supermarket riot. It’s like I know him so well, and yet we’re perfect strangers at the same time.
Feeling flustered, I step into the Jeep and bang the top of my head on the doorframe.
“I’m okay,” I mumble, hiding my flushed face in the darkness of the Jeep.
Carrick drives and I sit behind him, our eyes meeting often in the rear-view mirror. Lennox sits beside him in the passenger seat, equally large in stature. Both of them looking like soldiers.
“Where are we going?” I finally ask.
Carrick’s eyes meet mine in the mirror and my stomach flips. “Home.”