Liberation by Imogen Kealey

Author:Imogen Kealey [Kealey, Imogen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2020-04-28T00:00:00+00:00

She had to trust him, but up on the promontory west of the camp, with a length of rope wrapped around her forearms, the other end tied around a chestnut tree twenty feet back from the edge, the idea looked not just foolish but completely insane.

“You want us to lean out over the edge of the cliff?” Nancy said.

Denden was tugging at his own rope. “Darling, I swear by all that’s holy, you want to lean out over the edge too, you just don’t know it yet.”

Satisfied with his knot, he took her hand and led her to the very edge of the drop. The rope behind her still seemed pretty slack. Even in the almost moonless dark he must have caught her expression.

“Nancy Wake, I have set up the ropes for a thousand trapeze acts and tightrope walkers while you were swigging cheap champagne in cheap bars. Trust me. Just walk until your toes are on the very edge, then lean backward as far as you can. It’s utterly delicious.”

He demonstrated, his whole body hovering above the deep dark, just his hands on the rope, his boots resting on the cliff edge.

Oh, why not? Nancy turned, set her feet apart and leaned back. And felt it. The pull of gravity on her back, on her head, the comfortable tug on her arms as the rope tightened and held. This did feel good. She let a little more of the rope out, leaning farther back and bending her back—then laughed, a great burbling laugh that came from the soles of her feet and shook loose her whole body. Behind them the void pulled at them and the breeze whipped her hair across her face, but the void could go fuck itself. Captain Nancy Wake commanded gravity.

“I never drank cheap champagne, you horror,” she said. “But you were right, Denden, I needed this.”

Beside her, Denden let go with one hand and took one foot off the edge, swinging from side to side.

“Best trick I learned in the circus. Whenever I hated my sinful self, which was every time I got hot for another boy, which was every goddamn day, well, I’d hang off the trapeze. No net. Made me feel alive again, being on the edge.”

“It’s a ‘sod you’ to the universe, isn’t it!” Nancy said, then whooped, hearing her voice echo and bounce into the darkness below, and giggled.

“It is! Don’t feel bad about destroying those bastards, Nancy. Even if you have to do it with your own hands. Use it! Use that feeling of being out over the edge to live. Sure I like shagging boys and people tell me I shouldn’t, and people tell you you should sit at home and let the men get their blood rage on. Well, screw them. Use your rage and never let them shame you for it.”

“Thank you, Denden.” He got it. He got how it was to be her. She released one hand too, felt the lurch, re-found her balance and felt a surge of pleasure.

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