📖 The Ghost of Emily - Chapter 11
In which a mythical house on wheels is discovered and an ally made.
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Gus ducked behind a rotund pine tree and peered into the clearing ahead where the house he had slept in stood. Nimrod lay flat on his belly beside him. Gus was desperately supressing his instinct to run, to scream, or to panic.
He watched four men with rifles step around the exterior of the house, speaking to each other in drawling voices that terrified him. One man stepped out of the back door, onto the porch, shaking his head to the other men as he lowered his gun. Another man stepped out, and he held something up in the air to show them. Gus squinted to see what it was. A towel? A fur? No, it was a shirt. It was the thick cotton T-Shirt that he had been wearing for the last several months, water-soaked and dripping. Papa had placed it in the laundry sink of the house with some powdered soap to clean it for the next leg of their endless, inescapable journey in the woods.
Gus had truly loved the experience of staying in a house, with solid walls, no breeze blowing across him in the night, no sudden snapping of twigs and branches waking him sporadically. He had enjoyed a deep and peaceful sleep in the plush, warm bed. But his awakening this morning had been far more terrible than any he had ever experienced.
Maisie was gone. Papa had gone after her, like a wild animal tearing through the streets of this unknown town. His screams had echoed farther and farther into the distance, until finally Gus couldn’t hear them. He cried under the bed until he drifted into sleep on the scuffed and scratched stock of his rifle.
But in his hyper-vigilance, it had taken only the sound of a laughing kookaburra in the hills to snap him awake. He could see the moonlight had been overwhelmed by the first dim glow of morning, and his father was not back. It was time to go.
He had gathered all of their things and found a trapdoor in the floor of the pantry, which led to a dark space beneath the house, filled with earth and cobwebs. He lowered Jake’s and Maisie’s travel packs into the space, along with his father’s two spare rifles, his bandolier of ammunition, and the bow and quiver. With the unconscious instinct of a true survivalist, he had replaced every item in the house back to its place of origin. Before the sun had broken above the distant rocky peaks to the east, he was climbing over the wire fence at the back of the house’s plot. He crept silently into the forest with his ammunition-carrying dog, his child-sized rifle, and his backpack, full.
As he watched the armed men holding his sodden t-shirt in the air, he cursed himself with the few innocent words of admonishment he knew: That was a mistake!
His Papa and mother had never called him any names, nor each other, other than given names, or terms of endearment. His Papa had never cursed another person, a situation, nor even himself. Words of scolding or of blame were foreign to Gus.
The time that Gus had teetered on the edge of a rocky embankment in the woods, lost his balance and slid down a three-metre cliff, tearing the skin off his shin and elbow, Jake had rushed to his side and aided him as he cried in pain. Jake said nothing, but carried him to a stream and helped to undress him and bathe him in the running water. He then applied some liquids to his wounds that had been collected from farm houses on their travels. Each ointment had stung his wounds more, but Jake’s confidence and silence aided Gus in containing his pain to a grimace and not a squeal. When it was done and Jake had dressed the wounds with clean cloth wraps, Maisie seated silently watching, Jake spoke a few words to his son. “What happened, Gussie?”
“I slipped.”
“And how did you slip?”
“I was too close to the edge.”
“Did you need to be there?”
“No, Papa.”
“Alright, son. Now you know. This isn’t a deep wound, so you’ll be fine. But we’re on our own out here, Gus. We can’t afford a worse accident to happen. If we can avoid it, we will. Understand?” Jake had smiled as he spoke.
“Sure, Papa. It was a mistake. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. You learned something. Never be sorry for the mistakes that teach you something important.”
Gus watched the men throw pointed fingers in several directions, then storm off clutching their weapons, and he knew his mistake had informed these strangers of his existence. He was not safe. He had learned a lesson about paying attention to the details, and of the danger of other men. He breathed in worry, and breathed out gratitude for the knowledge he had gained. He thought of the rusted-out car. He imagined it gliding along the flat, black man-trails. He imagined the machine at its front, sucking in air like his own lungs. His lungs were his motor, fuelled by the raw emotions of his dangerous life and transforming those fears, those pains, those joys, into the motive power of his body; the out-puff of steam its only waste by-product.
Gus silently sprung to his legs and uttered a muted click from his tongue. It was a sound that blended perfectly with the chirps and clicks of the fauna of the forest, alerting his four-footed companion. They crept, low and silent, into the unknown woods.
The sun was high in the sky when Gus finally stopped to rest. It beat down through the gaps between high Bunya trees, some reaching thirty or forty metres into the blue above. Gus and Nimrod stepped effortlessly around the sharp spikes of fallen branches whose needles promised a nasty sting if they breached the skin of an ankle, or if they pierced a weak point on the sole of his boots. Every now and then Nimrod stopped to smell a rotting pile of Bunya pod cells, in search of something to snack on. Gus looked at him the third time, no longer feeling the threat of being heard. “You won’t find any nuts, Nimmy. These fell in the summer. We have the whole spring ahead before they start to grow again up there. Come on." He clicked his tongue again, and in full understanding, Nimrod raised his head and powered on with his young master.
The pair reached a small hill in the middle of the thick forest, and Gus decided it was safe and necessary to sit and eat something. He pulled some dried meats from his pack, and a small pouch that contained Maisie’s collection of berries. As he ate, he dwelled desperately on the absence of his sister and the shocking mystery of her disappearance. He had noticed that the elephant carving was gone as he packed up the house, and his mind raced with questions. He thought of the story Papa had told them about the elephant, and the man who had told it to Papa. This man with many books had sat with Nanna Xan and her friends around a fire, sharing food taken from the strange ‘house on wheels’ that the man and his daughter lived in. He thought of the story of the ghosts. He took another deep breath and his hand unconsciously crept onto his thigh. He felt the square bulge in his pocket and was jolted back to the present as he looked down and recognised the impression of its form.
He pulled it out and felt the coarse leather, cool in the palm of his hand. It was Papa’s notebook. He had fallen asleep clutching it, and Papa had left it with him. The sight of the book in his hand emptied Gus’s mind of any thoughts of Maisie, or of fear, death or loss. All he felt was curiosity.
One word repeated in his otherwise emptied, serene mind; how? Like a chant that opened some doorway in his soul, it invited in his most trusted guest; knowledge.
He unravelled the cord of leather and peeled back the black cover, exposing the yellowed pages and their seemingly magical inscriptions.
His Papa’s book was an encyclopaedia; a system of communication Jake had invented himself. In lieu of written words, its sections were headed by symbols, sometimes detailed sketches. The first section began with a large drawing of a crescent moon, below which sat a neat grid of small drawings of the moon in six rows of five images. Each image showed the stages of the moon’s phase, gradually opening outward from the thin peel of a waxing crescent, into a Cheshire cat smile, through the perfect hemisphere of the first quarter, to its full glorious circle, then returning in identical reversed steps to its opposite quarter, finally shrinking down to a circle fully filled with strokes of graphite. In the thirtieth drawing depicting the new moon, there was a diagonal slash across the grid square, slicing the new moon in two segments. One side was shaded slightly.
Gus remembered his Papa explaining that the moon’s phases were not perfectly synchronised with the solar days. He found a two-page spread of scribbles, tallies, miniature moon drawings and a repeating circle with a sun moving around it. These were Jake’s calculations over a long period of time. When he had gathered enough data from observations over the course of a year, followed by a second year to corroborate, he had composed the grid on the previous page to outline his theory of lunar phases.
On the next page was a tally of days sorted by seasons. Four clusters of tallies were encircled into roughly even sections, each with a sketched image above it. For summer Jake had drawn an orb with tongues of fire lapping wildly from its edge in all directions. For autumn, he had drawn a maple leaf. For winter, he had drawn a symmetrical crystalline shape. It was foreign to Gus. For spring, Jake had drawn a simple flower.
Gus studied every page of the book closely, noticing all kinds of counting and measuring systems that Jake himself had devised. Some systems were self-apparent to Gus, as Jake had laid out symbols and grids in a manner that was logical to even an uneducated child. Others, Gus could only recognise because Jake had explained them to him the night before.
Sporadically throughout the book, Gus found the crystalline symbol appearing again and again. Sometimes large, sometimes tiny, sometimes repeating over and over. It was always in the same configuration, but it never seemed to be connected to any of his graphs or tables. It was detached, but Gus knew it was something that his father had not been able to stop thinking about - or perhaps hoping for.
“I’m going to ask him what this is, next time I see him," Gus said out loud, eliciting a groan and laboured head-raise of his canine pal. His eyes remained fixed upon the pages of his Papa’s book.
Gus reluctantly lifted his gaze from the notebook when his hunger became too much to bear. He reached for more of the snacks in his bag, but knew that small dried meats and berries would not be enough to sustain him, and his supply would run out very soon. He stood up and Nimrod followed.
The shadows of the trees were growing longer on the forest floor as they quietly walked, hoping to happen upon a wallaby or hare to eat for dinner.
They reached a small plateau that offered a vantage point from which to search for animal trails. Gus turned in a slow circle, trying to decide which way was best to go, when he noticed something to the east that caught his eye; a flash of light, close to the ground.
He stepped towards it, and it was gone. He leaned to one side, and it appeared in his vision again. He quickly realised it was a reflection of sunlight. He closed his eyes to concentrate his hearing. He could hear no running water. It was not a stream.
“Come on, Nimmy!” he commanded, and he raised his rifle cautiously and began a purposeful march towards the flicker of light. As he approached the source of reflection, he continued to reposition his body so that the flicker was visible as often as possible. Soon he could tell it was a large flat sheet of glass, surrounded by branches. Several hundred metres later he could see the panels of something off-white peeking through the spaces between branches and leaves.
He reached it, and his mind was awed at the sight. Buried under piles of cut tree branches, hidden in a thick grove of pine trees in the bottom of a gully several kilometres from the outer edge of the town, was a large white box with a window, a door, some rusted steel steps -and wheels!
Gus dropped his rifle and backpack immediately and started pulling branches away from the vehicle. His heart raced in the thrill of discovering an object of his most recent wonder.
The house on wheels!
He knew that this must be the very vehicle his father had described, and he felt certain that if he could penetrate these walls he would find the clues to his sister’s whereabouts.
Maybe the little travelling girl and her father have Maisie! What was her name again... Olivia! Wait - she won’t be a little girl anymore. She’ll be a woman. Maybe Olivia and her father are taking care of Maisie until we find her! Maybe there’ll be a map in here showing me where to find them. Maybe they have a secret camp somewhere with lots of other people. Maybe everyone from that town is still alive, and Maisie is with them! Maybe my Mama is there too!
He paused his frantic clamour, disappointed in himself at the foolishness of his last thought. No. Mama is dead.
He continued lifting branches and sticks away from the wall of the vehicle until the door was fully exposed. He lifted himself onto the small step and grabbed the door handle.
If it’s locked... he thought, but did not allow himself to complete that thought. He did not want to indulge the possibility of another disappointment.
He twisted the handle, and it gave way. The door did not swing towards him, however. He jerked at the handle and felt the rubber seals around the door wiggle a little, a tiny sound of cracking in time with his tugging. He pulled harder and heard them start to peel away from the aluminium frame. With one last desperate wrench, the door burst open and Gus lost his balance and fell backwards onto the dried brown litter of pine needles on the forest floor.
He sat still for a moment, looking into the doorway of this majestic vault before him. It was dark inside, but he could make out a cornucopia of small objects in various sizes and colours. Nimrod stood, looking on too, his head cocked in curiosity. He did not growl, and Gus trusted the calmness of his friend as confirmation that it was safe to enter.
He picked himself up and stepped into the house on wheels. As he stepped in, his mind was flooded with a total image of his surroundings in an instant, and he processed the meaning of each object almost simultaneously. He allowed himself to study each area and object closely, slowly, and fully indulge in the sensory overload of this fantastical place.
To his right was the driver’s cab, with two large seats separated by a gap large enough to walk through. The steering wheel in front of the right hand seat corroborated his notion that this was indeed a motor vehicle. Ahead of him, opposite the door, was a small workbench. Strewn haphazardly across its surface was a collection of seemingly random objects, some foreign, some familiar. Some pliers, pieces of copper wire, some electronic instruments, a clamping device with a magnifying glass hanging from its side.
Gus stepped forward, his mouth hanging open slightly, his eyes wide. He caressed the objects one by one, to feel their texture, their weight, their temperature. His touch was delicate, sensitive to the notion that these objects were not his, and that some may not be safe for touching.
He lifted his chin and looked at the cupboard above his nose that jutted out from the wall. Its door was a brilliant shining panel of mirror and Gus took a moment to look into his own eyes. He recognised himself, but at the same time, it was the face of a stranger. His perception of his surroundings began to melt away, the unfamiliar image of his clean hair and cheeks pulsing slowly into a blur, the black centres of his eyes the only remaining object of his sharp focussed vision.
After a moment, his eyes snapped involuntarily to the side, cutting himself off from the depth of the empty blackness he felt himself slipping into, and locking his sight and his mind on the small plastic handle that was attached to the edge of the mirror. He raised his hand and grabbed it, fully feeling its geometrically precise contours, a translucent rose-coloured gem of synthetic composition, cut into shape by some machine beyond Gus’s imaginings. He slid the mirror door to the side, exposing the contents of the shelves within.
Books!
Dozens of books were lined up side by side, with every cavity above them filled by smaller books laid horizontally. Gus ran his finger along the spines and enjoyed the variety of textures on his skin. He closed the cupboard, feeling overwhelmed with an urge to sit and examine every volume. But he knew something was more urgent. He needed food.
He reached across to the recessed mirror on the other side of the cupboard, and slid it open. Despite a lack of food, his heart still fluttered at the sight of another three shelves stacked full of books. Tears welled in his eyes, and he blinked to press them away from his vision. Why am I crying? He felt as though his mind was as hungry as his belly.
Nimrod jumped up into the vehicle’s living quarters behind Gus, and began to sniff about. Gus shut the cupboard door and leaned forward to study the objects on the bench top more closely. He felt a handle pressing into the flesh of his thigh, so he stepped back and saw another compartment to explore. He knelt down and pulled the handle open. Inside was an assortment of tiny plastic drawers, each with words marked upon them in scribbled handwriting on white tape. Gus recognised that they were words, some of the shapes stood out to him as familiar from the books he had studied the night before. He pulled a few drawers open to find tiny metallic and plastic objects. They looked like miniature buildings; some looked as he imagined flying machines would.
After a time, he was overwhelmed at the sheer newness of everything he was seeing, and he closed the cupboard doors with haste. He stood up, and turned to look towards the back of the room in which he stood. There was a bunk bed with two levels and a small ladder attached. The beds were made neatly, with a pillow and sleeping bag on each, and cupboard space above and below. Next to them was a small sink with a pump for drawing water through the faucet. Opposite the sink was a small table with fixed box chairs on either side, each with tiny cupboards built into them. Nimrod was furiously sniffing at one of the small cupboard doors.
“What is it, Nimrod?” Gus asked, as he stepped forward and kneeled down to open the cupboard. There was a sharp silence as the door opened and Gus sat in slack-jawed delight, staring at its contents. The silence was broken a moment later by Nimrod’s heavy panting as a strand of saliva swung from his drooping lips and slapped upon the carpeted floor.
The cupboard space, a deceptively large cavity that reached back under the entirety of the dining bench, was stacked full of objects that seemed foreign to Gus at first, but became familiar as he pulled them out and studied them. Food!
At the precise moment of recognition, Gus’s stomach emitted a gurgle of desperate hunger, and he did not hesitate to grab the first tin he could find and pull its ring to peel back the aluminium lid with a satisfying crack. The tin had no pictures on its label, but the contents were self-evident to Gus. It contained chickpeas. He had eaten these once before when a few cans were found in a cellar of an old farm house he and his father had raided some years ago.
Gus frantically slurped down the murky water that filled the gaps between legumes, followed by a large mouthful of soft chickpeas. As he chewed the first load, he poured some onto the carpet next to him and Nimrod began to lick and snort furiously to suck the small beige orbs into his jaws. Both were in raptures, Gus feeling the sheer joy of eating an uncommon food item and knowing that it was in abundant supply.
At a glance Gus could count at least forty cans of food, and another twenty foil packets. The packets had pictures to describe their contents: dried vegetables, some cut into peculiar warped discs; nuts; jerkies. There were some small bottles that contained a clear liquid. Gus opened one and cautiously licked its contents, relieved to discover it was water. Other larger bottles contained strange red coloured liquids that Gus did not recognise, so he opted not to touch them.
As he dropped the last remaining peas into his mouth, he suddenly heard a crunch of leaves outside, followed by another, and another in steady rhythm. The sound grew in frequency and volume and Nimrod’s ears pricked up, both he and Gus leaping to attention and gazing in fear towards the door. A low growl began to rumble in Nimrod’s throat.
Someone was coming.
Gus reached across his chest to unshoulder his weapon, but grasped only at his shirt. I dropped my gun outside! No! That was a big mistake! He began to panic and look around him for a weapon, or some other way to escape, but it did not appear to him. He was about to dive into the top bunk and hide under the sleeping bag, when he realised that Nimrod would not be able to hide like him. He looked at his dog, and for a moment he considered with terror the prospect of sending Nimrod out to defend him, sacrifice himself, and give Gus a chance to run. He knew his friend would do it. He thought it may be the only choice.
But then he noticed that Nimrod was no longer growling. His head was cocked again, in curiosity, and he was calm. Gus suddenly wondered if the person running towards the vehicle was his father, or his sister! He took a step towards the door, but halted when a voice called out.
“Hello!? Who’s in there?”
It was a woman. Gus didn’t know her voice, but it was warm and unthreatening. He wasn’t sure what to do. To be silent could invite suspicion and cause a slip of a trigger. But to call out would most certainly reveal him. He looked around and took a split second to re-evaluate. There was no chance to hide or escape. He made up his mind.
“Hello! I’m not armed. I’m with my dog. Please don’t hurt us!” he called out, his voice shaking with fear. The footsteps slowed down to a steady walk and the woman called back to him.
“It’s okay, I won’t hurt you.”
He believed her.
A face poked through the frame of the door and looked at him. She studied Gus for a moment, looked at the dog that was sitting on its hind legs and panting in her direction, his lips peeled back in a shape that resembled a human smile. She smiled back at them, noticing the empty can sitting on the carpet, spilling a few last drops of water that were being drunk by the soft blue pile.
“Hello," she said as she stepped into the vehicle. She had a rifle, but it was hanging over her shoulder in a state of peaceful dormancy. She wore a brown jacket that was covered in pockets and pouches, and wrapped across her chest in a fold that resembled ancient armour. Her hair was red, and tied back in a loose plait behind her, odd strands swaying about her freckled face. Her legs were encased in tight, thick denim trousers that had smears of mud, and dried blood across them, and she wore a pair of small-sized men’s leather work boots, so scuffed they appeared like suede.
Gus studied her face as she adopted a relaxed stance, looking down at him. Her smile didn’t waver.
She was beautiful.
He smiled back, as he stood up, and flicked a chickpea off his shirt. Nimrod gobbled it quickly, then stepped towards the woman, his tail wagging furiously as he sniffed and licked at her hands. She squatted, laughing and began to scratch his neck and jowl. His excitement grew and he pounced on her shoulders and licked her face. Her laugh broke into an unashamed cackle when she gently pressed him down and he fell onto his back, begging for a scratch on his underside. Gus joined in the laugh and they shared it until, eventually, Nimrod turned over again and lay on his belly, raising his head and looking proudly at his young master as if to say can we keep her?
“Who are you guys?” the woman asked. Her accent was not like his or his father’s, he noted. Her consonants were hard and her vowels were drawn out somehow.
“I’m Gus, this is Nimrod. Is this... your house?” he enquired, a little sheepish thinking about the tin he had stolen.
She chuckled. “Yes, this is my motorhome. But don’t worry, you can have the chickpeas.”
He grinned with gratitude at her. Then his face fell serious. His mind connected some ideas and the words fell from his lips like a stray chickpea succumbing to gravity.
“You’re Olivia!” He almost shouted it.
Her smile dissolved, her eyes widened.
“Why... yes. I’m Olivia. How... how did...” she seemed genuinely stunned.
“Oh wow!” Gus was elated to have been right, and to have discovered a piece of the puzzle. “This is great! My Papa was only just telling me about you yesterday. Oh wow!” His body was trembling with excitement, his knees bending and lengthening of their own accord.
“Wait a second!” Olivia laughed as she stepped forward, placed a hand on his shoulder and kneeled down to face him on a level plane. “Who is your father?”
Gus looked closely at her face. He noticed the freckles across her nose were more pronounced up close. Her eyes were green; the kindest eyes he had ever seen.
“My father is Jake Thorne. He told me that when he was a little boy, he was travelling in the forest with his Mama and they met you and your father. He said you fed them, and you told them about the elephant and you read to him!”
Olivia’s eyes grew wide, and she seemed to look through him. “Jake Thorne...” she muttered, quietly. “The elephant...” Her lips pursed between involuntary utterances that seemed to direct the vision in her mind. “His mother...” suddenly her eyes snapped back to Gus. “Xan! Was that his mother’s name?” the words leapt from her mouth triumphantly.
“Yes! That’s her. Alexandra. Nanna Xan! You remember?”
“Yes, I remember! I remember your father too. Jake! He was so sweet. Yes, I remember it all, I read to him. He’d never seen a book before, I showed him some words. Xan... she was a fierce woman.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh... she was so strong. She was a survivor. I would bet she’s still alive somewhere, right?”
“No,” Gus shook his head solemnly, “snake bite.”
Olivia’s expression mirrored Gus’s and she nodded, in understanding. “And where is your father? I would love to see him again. To see what he looks like all grown up!” She was smiling again, her green eyes twinkling.
“I don’t…” his voice faltered as his chest heaved involuntarily, “I don’t know… where he... is!" Gus choked as he uttered the words that described his desolate loneliness and worry. His eyebrows pressed together, the corners of his lips compressed downwards, and he fought to hold back the tears.
Olivia simply looked him in the eyes. Her eyes made him feel like he was truly seen, truly heard. And, as if this were the permission he needed, he fell into her enfolding arms. She asked no questions. She let him cry, and held him close.
Olivia felt as though a long time had passed. Gus had stopped crying some time ago, but he remained cradled in her arms. She had felt him go limp, and she leaned back to look at his face. His cheeks were no longer flush and wet, now he was pale, his eyes closed. He had fallen asleep. She stood up, lifting him with her and carried him to the lower bunk at the back of the motorhome, where she tucked him in and left him to sleep, as she went about her search for the three electronic components her father had asked her to retrieve.
In the two years since she had hidden the motorhome here in the woods, she had returned many times to collect items for her father and his secret work. He did not need to describe them in detail to her, only name them in a whisper by the crackling fire in the town hall, where the favoured gang members socialised most nights through the winter. She was intimately familiar with all of the items held in this mobile fortress, both in name and in function. Her father had taught her everything he knew. In the forty-two years since her birth, she and her father had never been apart for longer than the four days between his capture and her re-joining him in the town, surrendering herself to the marauders to share whatever fate had awaited him – and whatever darker fate that may have been reserved just for her.
As she moved away from the bunk bed where Gus lay, Nimrod approached her again - tail wagging - and she scratched his neck, smiling and gently cooing at him. She gestured towards the floor near the bed and clicked her fingers softly. He obeyed and lay down on the floor, his chin pressed to his paws, as he looked up at her dotingly, barely containing his animal urge to leap up and play with this new friend. She knelt down next to the dining bench, and picked up the emptied can of chickpeas, placing it on the counter above. Reaching into the bulging pocket on the outside of her jacket, she pulled out another can - this one labelled Spaghetti PLUS Sausages - and two small vacuum sealed packets, one containing dried shiitake mushrooms, the other freeze dried sweet potato slices. She placed the food items in the cupboard and closed it. This had been a ritual every time she visited the motorhome, which was not often. She would smuggle away as many small food items as she could fit in the pockets of her hunting jacket without being conspicuous.
Once she had been caught stealing the food away from the town hall, but the amount she had pocketed was small enough that her explanation of needing food for her hunting trip was convincing, as she planned to stalk a boomer she had been tracking the day before.
“It may take all day. I’ll need to eat!" she snapped at the armed militiaman, whose hand gripped her upper arm a little too tightly, and whose jaw slid from side to side as he licked his teeth looking at her. She knew what he wanted from her. It was not the food, but the excuse to hit her and to expose her to their leader as a fraud, as a thief, and as just another human chattel that he could rape, pass to his friends, then discard to starvation. But the thug who held her by the arm could not do this. Her reason for taking food was plausible. She was also the best hunter in the town and provided more meat for the men than any of them were capable of. But most importantly, she was Reynard’s woman, and Reynard was his leader.
What the thug did not know was that she was not truly Reynard’s woman at all. She played the part, willingly, convincingly, but only as a means of survival. To be the woman of this gang’s leader was to avoid being raped by each and every one of them, and it was to keep her father alive. Her father was an old man, and though incredibly wise and skilled, Reynard and the buffoons who followed him were too stupid to see his value. He would likely have been beaten to death for the sport of the militiamen, if it were not for Reynard’s interest in the fiery-haired woman who arrived a few days after him. She realised quickly, that playing this part was the difference between life and death for them both now; that Reynard was far too possessed with lust for her to ever let her leave, or let her father live without her there to speak for him.
Her father had played his own part too. He had told her of the day he was captured. He knew that his mind and the knowledge in it could get him killed, or worse, forced into servitude for any manner of evil plan. On the day that three of Reynard’s men caught him pulling pieces of a car motor out of a rusted chassis at the edge of the town, he immediately decided that he would need them to think he was mad. The men had been rough with him as they tore him from under the car’s bonnet, and in an instant he had willed himself to shrink into a limp, decrepit geriatric with a grey glistening fog across his eyes. He had overplayed the aged husk of his voice, and he babbled random words in an animal-like panic. The men who dragged him back to the town hall and to their leader seemed to completely forget what they had caught him doing. Or perhaps they had thought it of no importance - he was mad, after all.
In his pocket however, Olivia’s father had hidden a small black box he had torn from the car.
The box was labelled WellsCell 72v.