Miracles are a luxury you cannot afford, she told herself sternly. You have only yourself to depend on.

Elizabeth looped the strap over her head, swung the gun across her back, and set off cautiously. She thought of Treenie now, hot regret welling up in her eyes.

* * *

She had feared hunger and exhaustion, and found instead that she was suffused with energy, uplifted with it, rendered almost weightless. By the time the night sounds had begun to recede and she was able to make out irregular patches of sky, Elizabeth had begun to hope that she had evaded Jack Lingo. She would soon reach the crest of the hill, and there would be enough light to check her compass. In the early light, walking steadily, she could make Robbie's camp in two hours from that point.

There was a spring and a trickle of water; she drank at length, glad of the icy cold. She filled her palms and splashed her sunburned cheeks with it. When she looked up, she realized that it was light enough to see the ferns and grasses that circled the spring. She took a handful of wild mint, tucked half of it into her shirt and the other into her cheek, and drank again.

Able to move more quickly, Elizabeth picked up her pace, pausing now and then to listen. Near the crest of the hill, she paused for a longer time, and felt her pulse take up an extra beat. Six weeks in the bush under the tutelage of Runs-from-Bears and Robbie and Nathaniel had made her aware of certain things. She could not always put a name to what she heard, but she could say if it was out of place. The faint crackling might be a moose, or it might be a man. She headed uphill again, hoping for a clearing at the top. What advantage this would bring her she was not sure, but it was a goal and she moved toward it.

And then stopped, finding herself at the edge of a small clearing. Afraid to step out, she hesitated.

She started at the sound of his voice, yelping one high, clear tone.

"Don't run," he said easily. "It is such a waste of energy. In the end I will catch you anyway."

But she ran, without looking back. She felt his knife thump against the rifle on her back; heard him curse and stop to retrieve it. She ran faster, into the woods again, downhill now, she ran hard and clean, her toes turned safely inward, leaping over a small stream and dodging a deadfall. Branches tore at her hair like grasping hands. Elizabeth heard Lingo behind her, and she ran harder.

The scream was like a woman's, high and shrill. It pulled her up short as nothing else save Nathaniel's voice could have done. Elizabeth tripped and righted herself and turned back to see the panther dropping out of a tree to take Jack Lingo to the ground. She had passed under that tree just seconds before.

Elizabeth stood taking in great burning gulps of air while she watched. Unable to turn away, unable to run as she knew she should, she must. She watched first in horror as they struggled, and then in disbelief and amazement and unwilling admiration as Lingo extricated himself from the dying animal.

He stood looking at her, blood dripping from the scratches on his upper body, his bloody knife at his side. She turned to run again, and again she tripped. In seconds he was on her, one foot on the small of her back as he reached down to cut the rifle strap. He was careless with the knife; the cut burned. Then he was up again, kicking her until she rolled over to face him. Lingo leaned down, his breath rancid on her face, his eyes glittering. His sweat dripped onto her, and his blood. She heard a hoarse whimpering, and knew it was her own.

"This will take a very long time," he said, not bothering to grin now.

She tried to roll away and he slapped her, and slapped her again, until she lay still looking up at his face and the canopy of trees with her ears ringing. Behind him was a wild cherry tree in full bloom, framing his scratched face in delicate white blossoms. It was a strange sight. Elizabeth smiled.

Lingo started at her smile, and then his face darkened. His eyes traveled down over her breasts. With a small flick of his knife he cut the first tie, nearest her throat.

"There's no hurry," he said, his eyes darting wildly. "Let me tell you first what I've got in mind." He was speaking French now, his voice low and easy, talked on and on while he played with the knife, laying the flat of the blade on her cheek, touching the tip to the corner of her eye. She learned that steel had a smell, bright and hard.

Elizabeth wished for the ability to close her ears as she could her eyes. She turned away inwardly, tried to gather her thoughts. She could not reach for her knife. The musket was useless.

"I see I have lost your interest," he said after a while. The knife jerked again, cutting her skin this time with the tie. He grinned, and the bile rose in her throat.

"Ah," he said, lifting up the silver chain with the bloody tip of the knife. "You have been hiding treasures from me."

"Take it," Elizabeth said.

"Oh, I shall. When we are ... finished."

If she struggled, perhaps he would kill her outright. For one moment, she could not decide if that was something to be wished for, or not.

She tried to fix on Nathaniel's face in her mind, but he would not come to her, as if he could not bear the sight of her pinned underneath Jack Lingo.

Elizabeth sobbed. Lingo slapped her, and her lip split against her teeth. He rubbed one finger in her blood and drew it down between her exposed breasts. She began to retch.

Lingo jerked back, his face creased with disgust. Elizabeth rolled onto her stomach and hauled herself to her hands and knees, vomiting into the soft mass of moldering leaves. Her whole body shook with it.

She heard him moving away. She hung her head and brought up the last her stomach had to offer, blood and bile, mint and bitterness. Gagging, praying, she lifted her head and heard an unexpected sound.