Folio Two, Page Five (svegra mos sjek)

It is really no good to explain to a person—especially not to you—the gravity of the situation I found myself in on the morning of my mother’s funeral. No one with authority in the family would have condoned locking me in the blanket cupboard, but the police would not have understood that.

I had yet another reason to writhe my hands towards my feet and undo the clumsy bonds Anumë had made. A sensation deep in my gut warned that if I did not do something to secure my future with the Niksubvya family, I would lose the shadow of my mother forever. While the state certainly had her genetic code on file, no one would think that the pallid illegitimate was her daughter—at least, unless I showed myself at the funeral and performed the traditional rites. Even those who remained skeptical of the genetic proofs would believe. The superstitious would understand that lightning did not strike me dead when I uttered the words of release. My mother had ordered me never to register my DNA, and perhaps superstition would help me obey without creating an awkward situation.

Anumë had bound my wrists together much better than my feet. I would need a knife to untie them, and for that I would need to go to the kitchens. The once-distant sirens nearly screamed. Two blocks away? three?—it hardly mattered.

My legs went out from me when I began to run. Needles of pain rushed up my legs. I snaked forward and rolled myself out into the hallway and down the stairs, wincing as each step hit a shoulder or slammed into the back of my elbow.

At the bottom of the stairs, I got up again and ran. Car doors slammed outside. I heard someone walk up the front steps and knock once. It would only take the officer a moment to slam the door open and see the girl in rough blue nightclothes running toward the kitchen—but then I made it through the door and pushed it shut behind me—no one followed— I found myself——I found myself reaching———reaching————reaching—————and at the front of the house I heard the door break open. My fingertips grasped the knife. I held it in my teeth. The bindings came loose.

We kept spare change for the milkmen beneath the sink. I took from it freely and rushed out the back door.

My pants did not have pockets, so I held the coins in my cupped palms. I heard someone running behind me, so I ran faster and skidded down the mud bank behind the house, catching myself on vines and brambles so I wouldn’t hit the rocky stream bottom too hard. Once I stopped moving, two tranquilizer darts zinged past my head. Crouching down behind a stack of fallen branches, I decided to give it to the count of fifty before I moved farther downstream.

As the officer waited for me to appear somewhere along the stream, the neighborhood’s sound system sang the two o’clock prayer. My entire body tensed; a part of me wondered whether he would stop his chase to meditate to the music. I closed my eyes and imagined the chords as iridescent strings playing through the trees and houses. It made more sense to wait.

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