We walked on no path. The country did not change and there were no landmarks, except, very far off northward, a blue line that might be clouds or might be hills across the river. I had nothing but the sun to tell me the direction to go. It came on to evening. We stopped at a grove of trees to eat supper, then rolled up in our blankets and slept there. We had seen no sign of anyone following us, but I was certain that Hoby was on our track, that he might even be waiting for us. The dread of seeing him never left me, and filled my restless sleep. I was awake long before dawn. We set off in the twilight of morning, still heading, as well as I could steer us, northeast. The sun came up red and huge over the plains.
The ground began to get boggy, and there were low places of marsh and reed. About midday we saw the Sensaly.
It was wide—a big river. Not deep, I thought, for there were shoals and gravel bars out in midstream, and more than one channel; but from the shore you can’t tell where the current quickens and has dug deep places in such a stream.
“We’ll go east along the river,” I said to Melle and to myself, “We’ll come to a ford. Or a ferry. Mesun is still a long way upriver from here, so we’re going the right direction for sure, and when we can get across, we will.”
“All right,” Melle said. “What’s the river’s name?” “Sensaly.”
“I’m glad rivers have names. Like people.” She made a song of the name and I heard the thin little chant as we walked, Sen-sally, sen-sallee.., Going was hard in the willow thickets above the shore, and so we soon went down to walk on the river beach, wide floodplains of mud, gravel, and sand.
We could be seen more easily there; but if he was on our track there was no way to hide. This was an open, desolate country. There were no signs of humankind. We saw only deer and a few wild cattle.
When we stopped for Melle to rest I tried fishing, but had little luck, a few small perch. The river was very clear, and as far as I waded out in it, the current was not strong. I saw a couple of places I thought might be fordable, but there were tricky-looking bits on the far side; we went on.
We walked so for three days. We had food for about two more and after that must live by fishing. It was evening, and Melle was tired. I was too. The sense of being pursued wore me down, and I had little sleep, waking again and again all night. I left her sitting on a sandy bit under a willow and went up the rise of the bank, scouting as always for a ford. I saw faint tracks coming down across the beach, ahead of us; indeed there looked to be a ford there in the wide, shoal-broken river.
I looked back, and saw a single horseman coming along beside the water.
I ran down to Melle and said, “Come,” picking up my pack. She was frightened and bewildered, but took up her little blanket pack at once. I caught her hand and brought her along as fast as she could go to the track I had seen. Horses and wagons had crossed the river here. I led Melle into the water, saying to her, “When it gets deep I’ll carry you.”
The way to go was plain at first, the clear water showing me the shallows between shoals. Out in the middle of the water I looked back once. The horseman had seen us. He was just riding into the river, the water splashing up about his horse’s legs. It was Hoby. I saw his face, round, hard, and heavy, Torm’s face, the Father’s, the face of the slave owner and the slave. He was scowling, urging on his horse, shouting at me, words I could not hear.
I saw all that in a glance and waded on, crosscurrent, pulling the child with me as best I could. When I saw she was getting out of her depth I said, “Climb up on my shoulders, Melle. Don’t hold me by the throat, but hold tight.” She obeyed.
I knew where I was then. I had been in this river with this burden on my shoulders. I did not look around because I do not look around, I go forward, almost out of my depth, but still touching bottom, and there is the place that looks like the right way to go, straight up to the shore, but I don’t go that way, the sand gives way beneath my foot. I must go to the right, and farther still to the right. Then the current seizes me with sudden terrific power and I’m off my feet, trying to swim, and sinking, floundering, sinking—but I have foothold again, the child clinging to me hard, I can climb against that terrible current, fight my way up into the shallows, scramble gasping up among the willows whose roots are in the river, and from there, only from there, I can look back.
The horse was struggling out in the deep current, riderless.
I could see how all the force of the river gathered in that channel, just downstream from where we had found our way.
Melle slipped down from my back and pressed up tight against me, shuddering. I held her close, but I could not move. I crouched staring at the river, at the horse being carried far down the river, swimming desperately. Now it began to find footing, I watched it make its way, plunging and slipping, back to the other shore. I scanned the water, the islets, the gravel bars, upriver and down, again and again. Sand, gravel, shining water.
“Gav, Gav, Beaky,” the child was sobbing, “come on. Come on. We have to go on. We have to get away.” She tugged at my legs.
“I think maybe we have,” I tried to say, but I had no voice. I staggered after Melle for a few steps up into the willow grove, out of the water, onto dry land. There my legs gave way and I pitched down. I tried to tell Melle that I was all right, that it was all right, but I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t get air enough. I was in the water again, under the water. The water was clear and bright all round me, then clear and dark.
When I came to myself it was night, mild and overcast. The river ran black among its pale shoals and bars. The little damp hot bundle pressed against my side was Melle. I roused her, and we groped and crawled up through the thickets to a kind of hollow that seemed to offer shelter. I was too clumsy to make a fire. Everything in our packs was damp, but we took off our wet clothes, rubbed ourselves hard, and rolled up in our damp blankets. We huddled together again and fell asleep at once.
My fear was gone. I had crossed the second river. I slept long and deep.
We woke to sunlight. We spread out all our damp things to dry and ate damp stale bread there in the hollow among the willow thickets. Melle seemed to have taken no harm, but was silent and watchful. She said at last, “Don’t we have to run away any more?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. Before we ate, I had gone down to the shore and, concealed in the thickets, scanned the river and the snores for a long time. Reason told me I should fear, reason said that Hoby might well have swum across and be hiding near; but all the time unreason told me, You’re safe; he’s gone; the link is broken.
Melle was watching me, with a child’s trust. “We’re in Urdile now,” I said, “where there are no slaves. And no slave takers. And…” But I didn’t know whether she’d even seen Hoby behind us in the river, and didn’t know how to speak of him. “And I think we’re free,” I said.
She pondered this for a while.
“Can I call you Gav again?”
“My whole name is Gavir Aytana Sidoy,” I said. “But I like Beaky.”
“Beaky and Squeaky,” Melle murmured, looking down, with her small, half-circle smile. “Can I go on being Miv?”
“It might be a good idea. If you want to.”
“Now are we going to see the great man in the city?”
“Yes,” I said. And so when our things had dried out we set off.
Our journey to Mesun was easy enough, as indeed all our journey had been, but wonderfully freed from the dread that had dogged and darkened my way between the rivers. I had no idea what I was going to do when I got to Mesun, how we were to live; but to ask too many questions seemed ungrateful to Lord Luck and Lady Ennu. They’d been with us so far, they wouldn’t leave us now. I sang Caspro’s hymn to them under my breath as we walked.