Chapter 193

Abby

They put a sack over my head before the truck had reached the end of the river road.

I didn’t see it coming. I was sitting in the back, on a bench against the side, with my cuffed hands in my lap and the silver burning into my wrists, trying to see out through the canvas flap at the back. Trying to see anything. A sign. A bridge. The shape of a hill. And then one of the men who didn’t smell of anything leaned across and pulled something rough and dark down over my head, and the world went black, and smelled of old flour and dust.

I made a sound. I didn’t mean to.

“It’s only for the road,” Cressida said, from somewhere in front of me. Her voice was perfectly calm. “You don’t need to see the road.”

I didn’t say anything. I sat there in the dark with my breath hot and close inside the sack, and listened.

***

That was how it went. For days.

I lost count of them. I know that sounds impossible, but it’s true. There was no light i