Free Running Out of Night by Sharon Lovejoy Page B

bent leg careful, so as not to hurt her. But how could I hurt her any more than she were? I reached under her body to straighten her arm and tugged it.
    “Aiiieeeee! Aiiieeeeeeeeee!”
    I dropped Zenobia’s arm and tripped backward over a root just as somethin heavy—heavy and big—tumbled from the tree and landed half on me. When I fell against Zenobia’s body, my screamin tailed onto the other screamin sound. Sure as thunder after lightnin, I knowed the haints was goin to put me in that grave with her.

    I laid there twined in a jumble of black and brown arms and legs—like snakes in a rock pile. “Lark, you be killin me,” a familiar voice cried.
    “How can I be killin you if you dead?” I asked, lookin down into Zenobia’s wide golden eyes.
    One long black leg worked its way out of the tangle, anda big hand pushed against me. I looked back and watched the gunpowder-black slave with the scarred face strugglin to stand. Last time I seen him he were hog-tied onto another boy.
    I raised up, felt at myself to make sure all the pieces was still there, and started to move off Zenobia, and she cried out again.
    “I’m hurtin, hurtin bad,” she said.
    “You be hurtin with no skin on your back if you don’t keep quiet,” the runaway boy said. “You scairt me right off that branch when you come back from the dead.”
    “She’s hurt bad,” I said. “We need to help her.”
    “I know what happen to me when I try to help someone besides my own self,” the boy said. “Look what helpin you done for me.”
    I looked at his bloodied legs and arms, and my stomach turned.
    “Sorry,” I said, my head bent. When I looked up, I could see my Hannah doll’s head pokin out of his shirt.
    This weren’t no time for us to talk about what had happened to him or how he’d gotten away from them slave catchers. We needed to get away afore the sun come up over the hills.
    “I gotta move you, trouble girl,” I said, “but you cain’t make a sound. I’ll be as easy as I can, but if you scream again, after all that noise we made, well, our luck is about played out.”
    Zenobia looked at me and nodded.
    The boy stood behind me and dropped to his knees, his face all twisted with hate. He looked at me like he’d tasted spoilt meat. He jumped down into the grave hole and crawled back out with the long diggin stick tight in his fist. Were he so mad at me from the trouble I’d caused him?
    I watched him get up and walk toward me, the stick pointin steady at me all the time. I knowed what he were doin and turned my head so as not to be caught in his witch trickery. I glanced back at him again, takin care not to look at the stick. He come closer. It took all of everythin I had inside me to turn my back on him. If he were goin to end my days, I wanted helpin Zenobia to be the last thing I done on earth.

I f you see a flock of birds, make a wish and do not look back at the birds again or your wish won’t come true
.
    C rack!
I shrunk myself down over Zenobia to protect her and couldn’t help myself from lookin back over my shoulder.
    The boy stood behind me, that long stick split into two pieces. He bent over Zenobia and said, “You got yerself a broke arm. We’ll set it on this stick, but it goin to hurt.”
    Zenobia rolled slow-like onto her good side and let out a cry. I could see her arm all crumpled backward.
    We set her up, propped her against the tree, and the pain, the pain, it made her black out.
    “Quick,” the boy said. “Help me get her arm straight.”
    We worked fast, and though Zenobia’s eyes was closed like she were fast asleep, she moaned and whimpered.
    “Now lay that stick onto it,” he ordered.
    I set the stick against Zenobia’s crooked arm and held it.
    The boy jumped up and ran to a bundle on the ground that must have fell down from the tree with him.
    “Our sacks!”
I said.
    He just looked at me, grabbed my torn apple sling, reached inside, and pulled out some jerky to gnaw.
    When he passed me