Nada's Escape

1- It's time.

Escape plan 73 is finally ready for fruition. I know it's time when I hear scraping in the lock on my cell door. The lock clicks and the door swings inward. I deftly step around it, pulling it shut behind me with a whisper. With any luck I won't be forced back there again.

Just as planned I dive onto the nearest floor mat, closing my eyes against the cool darkness. A flash of distant torchlight burns into my eyelids and I try to calm my heavy breathing. Just for a second I have to appear asleep. The light leaves and the footsteps wait an agonising second before also fleeing. I allow myself one tiny, half-triumphant smile.

My eyes snap open as I push my body into a plank. I gaze along rows of sleeping girls, stretched out between me and the main doors. The doors are like those at the entry to a great castle: heavy wooden affairs, the height of two men and left slightly ajar. When the warden Perkins has the night watch he's a pacer, slipping out into the night to patrol and sneaking back in to flash the torch at his captives. All the better for our escape, I think.

A pale shape shifts from the deep windowsill into the hall and I get moving. Rolling the blankets as we'd practiced I am nervous - is this taking too long? I am quick though, topping my bundle with shredded rag hair. Then I scurry to the doors, not needing to check my work. But I do check for light sleepers.

There are none. My chest tightens at the injustice of it. They sleep peacefully in dreams that they will be fine, with a childish kind of trust in our captors. But there is nothing good in the Huntsmen to hang such a heavy trust on. The sleepers need escape just as badly as us.

"We'll come back for them. By saving ourselves we are saving them." Amy breathes in my ear.

I nod and chant, "Run like Boreas." I can't completely shake my guilt but I accept the responsibility of rescuing the remainder of the girls. "I will not forget you," I whisper.

Amy slips through the gap in the doors first. Following, I can barely keep up with the lightness of her steps. The courtyard blurs in my vision as I throw myself over the half-wall with her.

My back presses to the wall as I count to twenty, breathing harder than I would like. The torch beam comes back, cutting through the sky over our heads. I peek to check its owner is gone and then we are sprinting across metres and metres of hard packed earth. There is not a single weed to lessen each impact on my bare feet.

We make it to a pile of wood that might have, in the days of Clancy and the drovers, been called a shed. Tonight it leans like it is ready to give up and the wood is ghostly pale, even in this darkness. Inside we find Fern hunched and peering through the boards with a stack of ladder pieces beside her. Amy and I pick up the two longest between us, poised to go.

"Just tell us when." I whisper.

"When," she replies after a heartbeat. We manoeuvre out of the shed slowly so as to not hit the doorway but all I want to do is run head long for freedom. Outside, Amy and I measure our paces, increasing speed slowly so as to get to our destination quickly. I hear the disconcerting sound of footsteps behind me, but I know it is only Fern with the last of the pieces.

We have chosen the spot from which to scale the outer wall carefully. It is a third of the way around from the wall gate and it's watching wardens. It's hidden from the view of even the pacing Perkins by the school room. The sliver of the moon behind the clouds ducks behind the height of the wall as we approach, spreading a pool of darkness beneath it. Amy slows so as to not run into the wall or the last two of our companions. Our eyes are adjusted to the dark by now but even so this darkness is both a help and a hindrance.

A voice calls softly, "These two pieces are done."

Amy lays our piece on the earth and I follow suit, reaching behind me to brush Fern's shoulder, letting her know where we are. This next step is slow, allowing my breathing to even out but not my anxious heartbeat. We have one tool with which to join the completed sections together with. When it's my turn I take the hammer from the others, wrapping the cloth once more around the splintered handle. Taking an old restraightened nail from my pocket I line it up.

I can see the outline of my fingers in the darkness but not the tarnished nail. I swing and hit, the nail slipping though my fingers. But on the second try I miss terribly and swallow a curse, squinting my eyes and not moving a muscle. Before the stinging of my finger abates I lift the hammer for a third time, having to remind myself not to hold back. This will take too long if I don't hit the nail hard every time.

None of us wimp out on the hammer swings, despite the aching of our fingers. Still it takes too long to finish and as I wait I stand against the wall tapping silently on my leg and peering anxiously at the expanse of featureless earth on either side. I rationalise to myself: only the five of us have the grit required to complete this particular escape plan. The others are too young or too soft or too trusting to go through with this.

Finally, we begin to lift the completed ladder up the wall. It's not entirely stable and I beg to the stars that it can hold a person. It's heavy enough that once it's about thirty degrees from the ground we need four of us to heave it up the rest of the way. The wood itself is light but the ladder is just so goddamn tall.

It's getting easier to hold it upright when I feel it brush against the wall and Fern hisses, "The top section's gone awry." I want to look up but I've got to hold the base steady.

"Pull it up straight anyway," I grunt to the others holding the base. My mind whirls with the alternate plans, each more daring than the last. We hold it straight up but it's hard to balance, wobbling in every direction. Fern quickly directs us to the gouged out holes in the ground ready to hold the base for us.

I step back as we carefully lean it against the wall and survey our makeshift ladder. It's macabre in its rickety-ness, even as a silhouette, towering impossibly high. I look to the top segment. It's broken, still pointing upward but crooked to one side. My lips tighten into a frightened line. One of the nails didn't quite hold. I measure the distance from the off-centre piece to the top of the wall. When I straighten it will it be high enough?