A String of Beads (Jane Whitefield, #8)(21)

She was not able to forget any of it, and that was the part that she felt most. From the time she was a child she had been strong, physically confident, and occasionally even reckless. She had gotten hurt, even hurt badly, but she had always known that bruises would fade, pain would go away, and she would be fit and strong again. She didn’t know that anymore.

Jane was feeling something that she had never felt before her capture, the suspicion that she was harboring an inner weakness, like a virus, that had begun to attack her during those awful days and nights. Now that she had felt the sensation of being utterly powerless, and the knowledge that somebody had really hurt her—not just caused her pain, but disfigured her, changed her so she would never be the same—she was sure she was the worse for it internally too. Would she be able to face the risk of going through such pain again?

Jane had learned to accept death fifteen years ago, when she started carrying poison with her every day. She had become accustomed to rising from her bed with the knowledge that she might have to die that day—die quickly, a few minutes of sharp pain and then darkness. This new condition was worse, a threat that she could not control by thinking about it. It was a reflex. She had been hurt once, so would she flinch each time after that? If Jimmy needed her, would she be quick and decisive, or would she hesitate?

When the clan mothers came to her she had not felt ready to take on Jimmy Sanders and his problems. She had wanted to agree with Carey and stay home. But having all eight clan mothers waiting on her doorstep had simply not permitted her to make excuses or even tell them that she was not the person they thought she was. They were modern American women like her, but they were something else too. They had inherited the powers of eight women who had lived somewhere deep in prehistory, in the times when the names of matrilineal families were first represented by wolves or bears or herons. In those days the world was a deep, endless forest, and being a lone person was always fatal.

Jane glanced at Jimmy. He was asleep again. Maybe things would be all right. Maybe she had completed this errand without having to test her courage or her confidence. She watched the utility poles going by. Thirty miles an hour, she thought. As long as the train kept going, they might get through this without trouble.

After a time, her own exhaustion caught up with her again. She had been on the trail, moving at high speed, for nearly a week. Her energy was depleted. She remembered there was a bottle of water and a protein bar or two in her pack. When she opened it and looked, she saw there were two of each. She set aside some for Jimmy, and opened hers. She ate and drank, and then slept again.

Next time she awoke, it was dark. The train was slowing down, and when she looked up she could see tall buildings with hundreds of tiny windows in rows. She crouched to look out over the side of the hopper. They were on tracks that had been joined by others, so there were at least five sets in a row. She gave Jimmy’s foot a kick.

He sat up, and then knelt beside Jane to see what she saw. “Do you know where we are?” he asked.

“No idea,” she said. “I’m looking for some sign, or something I recognize.”

“If you’ve been here, you probably didn’t ride in on a load of gravel.”

“No. But it occurs to me that what we’re doing is illegal, and we’re coming to a place where there will be more people to catch us at it. There seems to be a big train yard up ahead. Let’s collect our belongings and get ready to bail out.” She knelt, rolled up her bedroll, arranged everything in her pack, and craned her neck to look ahead while Jimmy packed up his gear.

The train began to slow markedly. Jimmy said, “Ready to go?”

“Yes,” Jane said. She put on her baseball cap, hid her hair under it, hoisted herself up on the back rim of the hopper, found the first rung of the ladder with her foot, and climbed down. The train was slowing more and more. Jimmy was beside her now, so she dropped her pack, jumped, and ran for a stretch to slow her momentum. Jimmy jumped a few yards on, and then they both went back and retrieved their backpacks. Jane slung her backpack over one shoulder. “Carry it this way, so you look like a worker with a tool bag, and not a train jumper.” Jimmy imitated her, and they looked ahead. The train was moving into a huge freight yard, with fences and buildings and lots of lights, so they walked briskly away from it, toward the back of the train. They didn’t walk so briskly that they seemed to be running from something.

When they were in a darker, more deserted area, they crossed several sets of tracks, walked across a weedy plot of land that had been paved once but now had plants thriving in each crack, and came to a street. It was dark, and the old brick buildings seemed to be abandoned with the doors and windows boarded. The next street had a few neon lights, and cars passed now and then.

Jane stopped and said, “Let’s dust ourselves off and straighten up before we get into the light. That gravel wasn’t exactly clean.” They spent a few minutes getting themselves freed of dust, buttoned up, and looking a bit better. The evening was cool, so Jane took her jacket out of her pack and put it on, and then turned around so Jimmy could see. “What do you think?”

“Very respectable, and dust-free. How about me?”

“Much better.”

Jimmy put on a light jacket too. “Are you hungry?”

“Sure,” she said. “Maybe there will be a restaurant on one of the next streets, where there are lights.” She looked at her watch. “It’s only eight.”