A freak accident at Chloe's seventeenth birthday party reveals her psychic abilities, and the community responds by condemning her as a witch who must be burned alive. As she attempts to escape across the dystopian, war-ravaged territory of her home...
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CHLOE ADMIRED WAYNE'S HANDLING of their escape as they rode through the night. On several occasions, he led both horses through shallow stream beds. First he would trot forward a certain distance, and then he somehow managed to coax the horses to backtrack in reverse, before entering the stream. From there, they would ride up the stream bed for at least a quarter-mile before exiting and continuing on their journey. This was just one of several tricks he used to throw off the hounds and their human masters. At one stop, he took out a jar of dried cayenne peppers that he'd possessed the foresight to bring. Using a rock, he crushed them into the fabric of an old shirt. He dropped the shirt onto the trail.
"They always use an article of clothing to put the hounds on the scent," he said. "When the dogs get a whiff of this, their noses will be out of commission for a good twenty-four hours."
"It won't hurt them, will it?" Chloe asked.
"Nah," he said, "they won't get a full nose of hot pepper, just enough to give them a very, runny nose. Besides, you're not going to tell me you'd rather get burned at the stake?"
He's got a point, she realized. A little discomfort for the dogs meant the difference between her own life and death. They'd put as much distance as possible between themselves and the sheriff's men. Wayne had told her that they wouldn't rest until absolutely necessary. Fortunately, he had stolen the two fittest horses among the herd. At some point though, they would have to hole up and recuperate. The sun was rising, and she was already feeling exhausted. She had never ridden for hours before. It made the muscles in her thighs and buttocks sore in a way that she'd never even imagined possible. She would've felt sorry for the horses, if her own body wasn't already riddled with pain.
"Do you feel that?" Wayne asked, squinting at the rising sun.
"Feel what?"
"The wind," he said, "It only ever blows from one direction at once. But I could swear that it has been blowing from two opposite directions."
"You're right," Chloe said, astonished that she hadn't noticed it herself. "And it's giving me a headache to get it in both ears at the same time."
"Bizarre," he muttered, "It's blowing from the east and the west. If this keeps up, we'll be getting the worst of it the closer we get to the mountains." He smiled. "But on the bright side, it'll also confuse the hell out of the hounds."
Riding onwards, they encountered numerous dust devils whipped up by the conflicting winds. Chloe wondered, If the wind gets any stronger, are we going to see tornadoes?
And the wind did pick up until it was whipping around them. Chloe tied her shawl around her ears to keep her sanity. The gale cut out their conversation since the words seemed to be swallowed up as soon as they were uttered. Instead, Chloe kept herself going with the hope that had taken root inside of her head. The longer we're on the road together, she plotted, the more chance I have of making him understand that he loves me. She couldn't reconcile the risk he'd taken to be with her as the result of mere friendship.
