10. The Great Escape
I’m sorry for leaving you to do this alone, Talia, but there’s no hope for my sister and I can’t leave her; they’ve already taken her to the reformation centre and I’m planning on joining her soon. I would have loved to have gone with you, as well as Mabel herself, but I’m afraid that’s not possible now. But you must go, Talia. You have a chance to escape and you better well take it, because I know you can do it. Remember all that I have told you (though I’ve attached some clippings here just in case,) and most of all: do not be frightened when you hear him past the gates. That’s when the barrier’s gone and they can’t block him out anymore. Listen to him.
I love you,
Mara
I felt my chest ache with sadness with I read that my friend, my best friend, could not join me in escaping. After all, it had been her that had discovered that the Witches were out to separate us females from our mates. It had been her that discovered they’d been pretending to help us all these years when, really, they’d wanted the wolves to die out. God knows, how Mara had done it, but she’d managed to see that some religious storybooks in the library were all talking about keeping us, the mates, from the wolves. Then she’d looked at the yearbook photographs down in the hall, noticing how, each year, the groups got smaller and smaller. They were only five females in each group this year.
So wasn’t it fair, really, that she come with me?
I knew that she couldn’t; Mara had to stay with her sister, and there was no way that I could convince her otherwise. Actually, she was probably creating a scene of opposition down in the Hall as we spoke, on her way to reformation. The thought of what she was willingly going to do made me shiver; horrible things went on in there.
Not allowing myself to dwell anymore, I started to shove random items of clothing into my backpack, as well as various other necessities. As I grabbed my hairbrush and reached up to my neck to make sure my late mother’s necklace still hung there, I thought about what we’d heard that night we went spying on the head Witch.
Some of them are getting suspicious.
No, don’t worry. We are doing God’s will. He will help.
They thought that, by extinguishing the wolves, they were doing some kind of Divine Act. They thought God wanted them to. And, no matter how many times I tried, I couldn’t come up with a reason for why they’d think we were unnatural. If anything, the Witches were the most unnatural of us all; they purposely altered the earth with their sinister spells and creepy chants, but wolves couldn’t help it. It was a part of who they were when they shifted on the Seventh day of the week, which God had intended for rest. It was a natural transition.
After I’d made sure I had packed my bag readily and checked that Mara’s papers were still in the pocket of my jeans, I went over to stand by the wardrobe we shared. It looked perfectly normal, just standing there, until I peeled it back from the wall to reveal a shocking, person-sized hole. If I crouched enough, I could just about fit, which meant it would have been difficult for Mara and Mabel to as I was a lot shorter than them both. Some of my friends even called me ‘tiny.’
I disagreed.
It was scary, to have to pull back the wardrobe, submerging myself in darkness, but somehow I did it. I knew that, even if I had to leave Mara behind and go through a scary tunnel, it was better for me in the long run. This way I could be free from the Witches; I could meet my mate....
Oh, the idea of my mate was the most motivating thing going through the tunnel! I’d been in here before, of course, as a test-run with Mara after she’d discovered it just sitting there, but it was still scary. The thought that my mate’s voice was just waiting to be heard on the other end, and he was just waiting to sense me... it was glorious. I was finally getting what I wanted.
