Katherine

Hurt.

It was everywhere.

Her face throbbed, one eye refusing to open and her jaw sending lancing bolts of pain through her head every time she moved it.

Her chest ached, agony strangling the breath from her lungs when she dared draw too much air into her lungs.

Her heart... her heart was still and cold. Worn and torn.

The hard floor dug into her knees and she leaned to the side, bracing one bloodied hand against the wooden slats as she stared at her husband's still body. Was he dead? No, his chest still moved. His face twitched. She had hit him hard with that heavy cord of firewood, but she hadn't hit him hard enough. It was one thing to kill a man who stood poised to hurt her daughter. It was entirely another to kill him while he lay bleeding and helpless on the kitchen floor.

"Ma?"

The world whirled around her as she spun to face her daughter. Isobel was crawling forward across the floor, a bruise blossoming across the side of her perfect cheek. Tears had turned her eyes red and her cheeks puffy. She looked as rough and worn as Katherine felt, and it was only a small comfort that looks were deceiving.

Her daughter would survive, but Katherine had made peace with the Almighty. Death loomed in the outskirts of her vision and she would welcome it when it came. Fatigue and pain had replaced all the myriad colors that used to paint her life. Her world was sketched in shades of gray. Terror and hatred. Sorrow and guilt. And through it all, heavy lines of black that showed her the last clear picture she knew she would see-- hard, unyielding love.

"Come here," she said, her voice raspy from screaming. "Come here, Izzy."

Her daughter crawled faster, and Katherine's ribs wailed when the girl slammed into her. Instead of pushing the pain away she clung to it. Clung to Isobel. Those harsh black lines of protective love were all she had left, and damned if she wouldn't see them through.

"Go get your bear," she rasped, stroking her daughter's lush hair, midnight black and falling to her trembling shoulders.

"Ma..."

"Go get your bear," she said again. "We're leaving."

"Where?" Isobel asked, her whole body shaking with shock and fear.

"Somewhere better, sweetpea. Go now. I'll wait here."

Isobel was only four, but already so strong. So old. The wisdom burned in her hazel eyes and broke Katherine's heart with more force than her husband broke her bones. She wanted her daughter to be free and innocent. Fearless. Blind to the evils of the world, as she had once been. Once upon a time, she had thought herself weak for her innocence. Now she knew that the bitter tonic of reality didn't make a person stronger. It tore them apart. She had been stronger before she knew what this world could do to her.

With Izzy gone, Katherine fought the weakness, the dizziness, and the pain, and pulled her apron over the top of her head. Pain screamed, but she felt strangely numb to the world as she crawled forward and wrenched her husband's limp arms behind his back. Blood spilled from the split in his temple, and he twitched but didn't wake as she bound his wrists together with the apron's neck strap. Tears of agony spilled down her cheeks, her breath coming in pants as she wrestled his legs up and secured his ankles to his wrists with the strap that usually wrapped around her waist.

It wouldn't hold him forever, but hopefully it would keep him long enough.

Just long enough for the sun to rise.

In her fantasies of escape, she always packed a bag-- her favorite dress, her hidden journal, a hairbrush. Soap and ribbons for her hair. Her Bible and the little knife Gabe had given her when they were children, secreted away beneath a loose floorboard in Izzy's bedroom. Now that it was time, she hadn't a mind for any of it. There would be no need for it.

Isobel returned to the kitchen, clutching her ragged stuffed bear to her chest. "Ma?" she whined, as if the terrible shock of the night had robbed her of the power of speech.

"We're going," she gasped, shoving to her feet and leaning hard against the table for balance as she extended one hand to her daughter. "Come on, now."

How could she be in such pain and yet so numb?

It was lucky it was summer, because she wasn't wearing any shoes. Wet grass squelched between her toes as she dragged her daughter across the churchyard toward the woods. Isobel whimpered but didn't whine, trailing along in her mother's wake in stoic acceptance. Her own feet were bare as well, and the first pain Katherine truly felt since hitting Jacob with that beam of firewood was her daughter's. The girl cried out as they moved from the soft, cultured grass of the churchyard to the prickly dead pine needles that littered the forest floor.

"I know," she gasped, pressing one hand to her aching side and dragging her daughter forward with the other. "I know, sweetpea. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Isobel cried but hustled along in her wake, her beloved stuffed bear dragging in the pine needles as she struggled to keep up. Katherine barely felt the pricks of the needles, or the shooting pain as her toes slammed into raised roots and half-buried rocks. She was made of pain, deep crimson bleeding into the grayscale tapestry of her consciousness.

They were close.

She and Gabe had chosen the spot because it was close. Close but far enough away, and in the one direction nobody would start to look. The church sat on a hilltop near town. To the west lay a vast, open plain, broken only by herds of cattle and jagged white peaks. To the north lay endless wilderness. To the east was the town, and to the south was the river.

When Jacob got free, he might suspect she'd gone to town, seeking assistance. He might chase her into the plains, where she could have holed up with some sympathetic ranching family. He might even think she'd struck out into the wilderness, because only he knew as well as she that grizzly bears and moose were no match for his rage.

The one direction he'd never expect her to go was south. South toward the frothy white river that ran, wide and wild, away from the mountains. There was nowhere to go, to the south. Nowhere except the bridge.

"Tomorrow?"

"I'll have to think about it."

"I'll wait by the bridge."

The bridge. The bridge, the bridge, the bridge. The word bounced around her in her throbbing head as she staggered through the woods, yanking Isobel along behind her. It wasn't really a bridge. Anyone might suspect that they'd meet at an actual bridge. No, it was just a spot in the river that they called the bridge because when the waters were very low, a series of rocks jutted from beneath the frothy surface like the stones in a pathway. They'd never dared cross "The Bridge" but they'd made it, once, to the third rock.

It had been their favorite spot. They used to lay on the bank of the river and talk about what lay across the Bridge if only they could make it over.

"I bet there's a whole other wilderness," Gabe had decided. "No people to bother us. It's just dogs and bears and deer and stuff. We could build a house."

"I bet it's like London," Katherine had posited. "There's people there, but everyone is kind and sophisticated and they drink tea and they talk funny."

As far as Katherine now knew, nothing special lay beyond the far bank of the river. It was the near bank that concerned her.

"Every day, Katie. I'll be by the bridge every day, just before dawn. All you have to do is show up."

It had been years since he'd made that promise. She'd only seen him twice since that horrible night, and then only from far away. Striding down the far side of the street in the corner of her eye with that tall, confident way of his. Like he owned the town that hated him. Fearless and powerful, like her severing of their ties hadn't wounded him at all. Maybe it hadn't.

Maybe he wouldn't be there.

All you have to do is show up.

She hoped so, because it was all she could do anymore. It was all she had the strength for.

She heard the rush of water before she saw the river, glinting in the moonlight between the trees. Pulling up short, she cried out in pain when Isobel slammed into her leg.

"Sorry, ma," Izzy whimpered.

"S'okay," she gasped, bending double. The world tilted and dipped beneath her feet, and heavy darkness dimmed the silver moonlight around the edges of her vision. "Come," she breathed, mustering her waning strength and hauling her daughter forward again.

Thank God she had spent her youth in these woods. Thank God she hadn't forgotten the landmarks. Crooked Tree and Big Rock and Icycle Stream. The tree Gabe had fallen out of and broken his arm. The hill she'd tumbled down and banged her head. The overhang where she'd kissed him, the night before her wedding. These woods were a map of memories that even Jacob's fists couldn't erase.

They reached the river and she collapsed to her knees with a sob of relief and agony when she saw the telltale spikes of the Bridge, poking above the water.

"Ma!" Izzy cried, grabbing her shoulder. Her little fingers hurt. Everything hurt.

"Come," she gasped, the word pitiful and grating as it rubbed her aching throat. She wished she could offer her daughter words of encouragement and comfort, but all she could say was that one desperate plea for the girl to follow.

On her hands and knees, she dragged them both through the mud of the riverbank. The river had carved a small hollow into the mud, and she pulled them into it, chilly water licking at their bare toes. She pulled her feet inward, groaning in pain as her body sagged into the arms of the soft mud. Isobel snugged herself beneath Katherine's arm, her warmth penetrating the deep cold that had overtaken her. It was warm outside, the air dewy and thick. Why was she so cold?

"Are you okay?" Isobel whispered, her fingers tapping gently at Katherine's jaw.

"I'm okay," she lied, tugging her daughter closer in spite of the pain it caused her. "Listen to me, sweetpea--"

"Ma, I--"

"Listen," she rasped, lowering her head to her daughter's coal black hair. "I'm going to go to sleep, now--"

"But ma--"

"Listen, Isobel. I'm going to go to sleep. When I go to sleep, you need to stay with me. Stay here, where it's safe, until the man comes."

"Papa?"

"No, sweetpea, not your papa. This man is tall and he has dark hair. He looks kind of mean, but I promise you he won't hurt you. When you see the man, you can come out, but not before that. Don't leave my side until you see the man."

"I'm scared," the girl whimpered, burrowing harder against her side. Tears leaked down Katherine's cheeks at the jagged pain of her daughter's closeness, but she grit her teeth against the moan.

"I know, Izzy. I know." Her words were hard fought now, darkness invading. Pain strangling. She panted out the reassurance, desperate for the words to be true. "Be brave for me, sweetheart. You're going... to be alright. You're going to... be safe. You can... trust the man... I promise... I love you... sweetpea... Love you with everything... everything I have... You'll be safe... I promise... trust him..."

She heard the words from far away as they left her mouth, trailing behind her in tatters as she fell into darkness. Her last thought, as she tumbled towards a cold and lonely death, was a desperate fear that she'd been wrong.

All you have to do is show up, he had said.

Five years ago.

If she'd had the strength she'd have wept. Her final act on earth was to trust her daughter's life to a five year old promise from a man with the eyes of the devil.