Break Your Chains by Emily Conolan

Author:Emily Conolan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2018-02-14T05:00:00+00:00

To run away from Molly and find out if Da’s on the police office list, go to scene 22.

To stay with Molly and try to find Da later, go to scene 23.

Molly is shuffling further away with her stick, her back turned to you. You’re not due to meet the master for another two hours. You might never have a better chance to get away and search for Da.

I have to do it, you think. I’m going to do it.

The wharves are bustling, but the crowd is not so dense that you can simply disappear into it. You need a place to hide.

There is an ox-and-cart left unattended only a stone’s throw away, with a canvas cover over the cart. Quick as a cat, you dive into the empty cart beneath the canvas, peeking out through a little gap. Just in time! Molly turns around, and realises you are missing.

You had planned to come back to her after you’d had the shipping master’s list read, full of apologies and excuses, hoping she would believe that you’d become accidentally separated from her.

Now you hear her words from the other day ringing in your mind: You’re fair keen, aren’t you, girl? Planning to slip off and escape, are you?

Molly is suspicious – much more suspicious than you want her to be: she gives an exasperated groan, rolls her eyes, and begins pacing back towards you, her eyes now narrowed, muttering, ‘Knew it was a bad idea … me so slow, and her so fast … “I’ll help you,” she says. Not likely! Can’t trust those Irish girls.’

You stay flat and low beneath the canvas. There is a musty potato smell, and the cart beneath you is splintery. You chance a glance out every so often, and Molly is always still within sight, pacing and cursing.

Then you feel a jolt and a lurch: your cart is moving! Great – it is carrying you out of sight of Molly!

But it is also taking you in the wrong direction, away from the police office, towards God knows where. You’ll have to jump out. Already you’ve reached the end of the wharf area, and now the cart is picking up some speed. Molly is about four hundred yards away. You’ll have to jump now!

You roll back the cover and spring to the ground.

Crack! You land on an uneven cobblestone, and your leg buckles under you. You fall heavily sideways and your head hits the stony ground. You cry out, feeling blood trickle down your face. The pain in your foot is breathtaking. You look down, and it looks like a clay foot on a broken doll that has been stuck back on at the wrong angle. Vomit rises in your throat. You try desperately to crawl to the side of the road for some cover before Molly sees you.

Too late! You hear her shout, and see her wave her stick, and a horrible, slow-motion cat-and-mouse chase is on: Molly hobbling along with her stick and twisted ankle; you on all fours, with your badly broken foot and blood dripping into your eyes.

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