We look at each other. I look and I think.
"Will you hurt me?" I say after a moment, since that's the most important thing right now, really. "If I do this. If I ask them to set you free, will you hurt me if I do?"
The tied-up woman shakes her head.
"Do you promise?" I say.
She seems surprised. She keeps looking at me for a moment, then she nods, almost solemnly, and says, "I swear."
"You swear that you won't hurt me?" I say.
She looks surprised again, then smiles. "I swear I won't, yes."
I think about that. I look around at the crowd. "And you'll all really kill her if I don't do this?"
Several people in the crowd say yes, although they say it as if they don't actually mind what I do. The speech-making man nods, as well. "That is the law," he says. "If none will speak for her, then it is death or the river."
The tied-up woman sighs a little as he says that.
"And if I do this, if I speak for her, then she goes free?" I say.
The speech-making man nods again.
"And you don't mind if I do?" I say to the crowd. "You won't be angry with me if I do this?"
YOU ARE READING
Eden
FantasyAshlin dies, and then wakes up, very surprised that she has. She remembers dying, remembers it precisely, and is completely certain that she did. She is equally certain that she hadn’t expected there to be anything else afterwards. But yet, here som...
