John Wyndham - The Chrysalids

‘But—’ I began.

‘No. If you were to be seen there would be an alarm. No one will take any notice of me going to his tent, even if they do see me.’

There was sense in that. I laid the spear down, though with reluctance.

‘But can you—?’

‘Yes,’ she said decisively.

She got up and went to one of the niches. From it she pulled out a knife. The broad blade was clean and bright. It looked as if it might once have been part of the kitchen furnishings of a raided farm. She slipped it into the belt of her skirt, leaving only the dark handle protruding. Then she turned and looked at me for a long moment.

‘David—’ she began, tentatively.

‘What?’ I asked.

She changed her mind. In a different tone she said:

‘Will you tell them no noise? Whatever happens, no sounds at all? Tell them to follow me, and have dark pieces of cloth ready to wrap round themselves. Will you be able to make all that clear to them?’

‘Yes,’ I told her. ‘But I wish you’d let me—’

She shook her head and cut me short.

‘No, David. It’d only increase the risk. You don’t know the place.’

She pinched out the candles, and unhooked the curtain. For a moment I saw her silhouetted against the paler darkness of the entrance, then she was gone.

I gave her instructions to Rosalind, and we impressed on Petra the necessity for silence. Then there was nothing to do but wait and listen to the steady drip-drip-drip in the darkness.

I could not sit still for long like that. I went to the entrance and put my head out into the night. There were a few cooking fires glowing among the shacks; people moving about, too, for the glows blinked occasionally as figures crossed in front of them. There was a murmur of voices, a slight, composite stir of small movements, a night-bird calling harshly a little distance away, the cry of an animal still farther off. Nothing more.

We were all waiting. A small shapeless surge of excitement escaped for a moment from Petra. No one commented on it.

Then from Rosalind a reassuring ‘it’s-all-right’ shape, but with a curious secondary quality of shock to it. It seemed wiser not to distract their attention now by asking the reason for that.

I listened. There was no alarm; no change in the conglomerate murmur. It seemed a long time until I heard the crunch of grit underfoot, directly below me. The poles of the ladder scraped faintly on the rock edge as the weight came on them. I moved back into the cave out of the way. Rosalind was asking silently, a little doubtfully:

‘Is this right? Are you there, David?’

‘Yes. Come along up,’ I told them.

One figure appeared dimly outlined in the opening. Then another, smaller form, then a third. The opening was blotted out. Presently the candles were alight again.

Rosalind, and Petra; too, watched silently in horrid fascination as Sophie scooped a bowlful of water from the bucket to wash the blood off her arms and clean the knife.

The two girls studied one another, curiously and warily. Sophie’s eyes travelled over Rosalind, in her russet woollen dress with its brown cross appliqué, and rested for a moment on her leather shoes. She looked down at her own soft moccasins, then at her short, tattered skirt. In the course of her self-inspection she discovered new stains that had not been on her bodice half an hour before. Without any embarrassment she pulled it off and began to soak them out in the cold water. To Rosalind she said:

‘You must get rid of that cross. Hers, as well,’ she added, glancing at Petra. ‘It marks you. We women in the Fringes do not feel that it has served us very well. The men resent it, too. Here.’ She took a small, thin-bladed knife from a niche, and held it out.

Rosalind took it, doubtfully. She looked at it, and then down at the cross which had been displayed on every dress she had ever worn. Sophie watched her.

‘I used to wear one,’ she said. ‘It didn’t help me, either.’

Rosalind looked at me, still a little doubtfully. I nodded.

‘They don’t much like insistence on the true image in these parts. Very likely it’s dangerous.’ I glanced at Sophie.

‘It is,’ she said. ‘It’s not only an identification; it’s a challenge.’

Rosalind lifted the knife and began, half reluctantly, to pick at the stitches.

I said to Sophie: ‘What now? Oughtn’t we to try to get as far away as we can before it’s light?’

Sophie, still dabbling her bodice, shook her head.

‘No. They may find him any time. When they do, there’ll be a search. They’ll think that you killed him, and then all three of you took to the woods. They’ll never think of looking for you here, why should they? But they’ll rake the whole neighbourhood for you.’

‘You mean we stay here?’ I asked her. She nodded.

‘For two, perhaps three, days. Then, when they’ve called off the search, I’ll see you clear.’

Rosalind looked up from her unpicking thoughtfully.

‘Why are you doing all this for us?’ she asked.

I explained to her about Sophie and the spider-man far more quickly than it could have been put into words. It did not seem to satisfy her entirely. She and Sophie went on regarding one another steadily in the flickering light.

Sophie dropped the bodice into the water with a plop. She stood up slowly. She bent towards Rosalind, locks of dark hair dangling down on her naked breasts, her eyes narrowed.

‘Damn you,’ she said viciously. ‘Leave me alone, damn you.’

Rosalind became taut, ready for any movement. I shifted so that I could jump between them if necessary. The tableau held for long seconds. Sophie, uncared for, half naked in her ragged skirt, dangerously poised; Rosalind, in her brown dress with the unpicked left arm of the cross hanging forward, with her bronze hair shining in the candlelight, her fine features upturned, with eyes alert. The crisis passed, and the tension lost pitch. The violence died out of Sophie’s eyes, but she did not move. Her mouth twisted a little and she trembled. Harsh and bitter:

‘Damn you!’ she said again. ‘Go on, laugh at me, God damn your lovely face. Laugh at me because I do want him, me! ‘ She gave a queer, choked laugh herself. ‘And what’s the use? Oh, God, what’s the use? If he weren’t in love with you, what good would I be to him — like this?’

She clenched her hands to her face and stood for a moment, shaking all over, then she turned and flung herself on the brushwood bed.

We stared into the shadowy corner. One moccasin had fallen off. I could see the brown, grubby sole of her foot, and the line of six toes. I turned to Rosalind. Her eyes met mine, contrite and appalled. Instinctively she made to get up. I shook my head, and hesitantly she sank back.

The only sounds in the cave were the hopeless, abandoned sobbing, and plop-plop-plop of the drips.

Petra looked at us, then at the figure on the bed, then at us again, expectantly. When neither of us moved she appeared to decide that the initiative lay with her. She crossed to the bedside and knelt down concernedly beside it. Tentatively she put a hand on the dark hair.

‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Please don’t.’

There was a startled catch in the sobbing. A pause, then a brown arm reached out round Petra’s shoulders. The sound became a little less desolate… it no longer tore at one’s heart: but it left it bruised and aching….

I awoke reluctantly, stiff and cold from lying on the hard rock floor. Almost immediately there was Michael:

‘Did you mean to sleep all day?’

I looked up and saw a chink of daylight beneath the skin curtain.

‘What’s the time?’ I asked him.