Free Sisters of Sorrow by Axel Blackwell Page B

back half of Saint Frances’s southern wing. Anna sat, mesmerized. It had occurred to her that the boiler might rupture, but she had no idea it would explode so cataclysmically. People must have died.
    Lots of people.
    Just sisters, she thought.
    It was a wicked thought, but she rubbed the knuckle where her pinky used to grow and felt no guilt. Just sisters, what does it matter now?
    Children began emerging from the broken walls. One or two at first, then in groups, until their shadows crowded out the shadows of the fallen debris. They drifted around the wreckage, awe struck and wondering, looking at the ocean and the stars and the smoldering hulk of the factory. A few, mainly the older boys, pointed south to the forest, but none drifted beyond the bright ring of firelight. Not yet.
    Anna looked to the forest, where Joseph told her to hide. It lay two hundred yards down the open beach. Where she lay now, in the shadow of the beached and peeling rowboat, she felt safe. But, the icy sea was rising. When she fell to the sand, the waves were only outlines and highlights. Now she saw each one clearly, and some foam had already reached her. She had read about the tide, how it rises and falls. Her boat would not be beached much longer.
    Suddenly, Anna heard screaming. She turned back to where the children had been milling about. Sisters, dozens of them, poured out of the openings in the wall like hornets from a kicked hive, screaming orders at the children. “Get back inside this instant!” “Come back here!” “Don’t you run from me!”
    Children scattered, some running for the woods, some running back to the dormitories, most running with no idea where they were heading. They ran through the night, busting shins and breaking ankles on the scattered stones. The walls of Saint Frances de Chantal, even when blown to bits, refused to let its children go. The sisters fell upon them, shrieking like banshees.
    Anna knew she had to move. The tide, slow and relentless, advanced behind her. Abbess McCain and her minions swarmed the beach in front of her. The orange fireball in the pit etched their shadows across the beach, shrieking and screaming and thrashing and running shadows. A pagan carnival , Anna thought.
    She looked to the forest, far across the diminishing curve of sand. She had to go, but it was too bright. They would spot her at once if she ran that way. She considered the rowboat, but it was heavy, and she was not. Even if she could manage to get it into the water, I have no idea how to row a boat. I’d be a sitting duck.
    She surveyed the beach on the other side of the dock. To the north, the soft sand gave way to boulders and a high, craggy outcropping of rock.
    That won’t work, she thought. What did Joseph say?
    Wait until the fire dies. Run to the forest beyond the crescent beach.
    She huddled against the curve of the rowboat. Waves splashed over her shoes.
    I can’t wait much longer .
    She peeked over the boat. A few of the boys had reached the wood line, but most had been caught. Anna could see them, black silhouettes against the fire. They stood in rows, lining up to be marched back to their rooms. Several children limped or leaned on each other. Three were being carried. One boy still thrashed and kicked in a circle of sisters, but Anna could hear in his cries that he had already accepted defeat.
    What will it be like for them tomorrow ? She wondered.
    You did this to them, the other voice answered.
    Before she could consider this, an icy wave sloshed over her legs. She squeaked a startled, “eep!”
    I have to move.
    “Anna Dufresne!” Abbess McCain’s voice boomed across the beach. “I know you did this, you murderer!”
    Anna peeked around the end of the rowboat. Abbess McCain stood on a large stone, a black outline with the inferno behind her. She looked like a hole in the fire.
    “I know you can hear me. You better hide, you miserable imp!” She held her cupped hands to her mouth, the sleeves of