Mary
Mary paused and cradled her bulging belly. She leaned her shoulder against the corridor
wall and let her satchel fall to the floor.
The stone walls wept and the moisture dampened her green frock,
darkening it nearer to the jet of her hair.
Her face was full and florid. She
could hear footsteps down the dank hallway behind her. The echoing footfalls compelled her forward.
Mary was being followed, no doubt, by members of the Mayor’s
all-female security detail. They were
coming for her now; for her and her unborn child. She knew this Mayor. She knew his sour temperament and knew the
folds of his chins and prodigious gut. She knew his sour scent and his eminent
brutality.
Mary saw light creeping into the hallway in the distance and
was less afraid. It was early morning
and the really bad things only happened at night.
Mary poked her head out into daylight and felt the sun warm
her neck. Ahead of her stood a cavernous
building perched on the side of a stone precipice. It was built from corrugated metal with the Mayor’s
seal, a coiled purple viper, painted on the side facing Mary and the city-state
on the hill. The viper was a warning. People may come, but no one leaves. Above her the sounds of the citizens
beginning to rouse were audible. They
awoke at their leisure. That was the
trade-off; a life free of hard work in exchange for complete political
subjugation. With no one in sight, she
ran.
The metal edifice contained a tremendous purple balloon with
a white gondola attached to the bottom.
Two massive duct fans splayed out from either side of the gondola. A door to the cab swung open and a
dark-skinned woman gestured for Mary to join her rapidly. The woman helped Mary up into cab and swung
the door closed. “They are coming!” cried
Mary as she found the open seat. Again
she cradled her protruding belly. A third
woman sat behind the controls in a cockpit seat and started flipping switches
in rapid succession.
A low growl sounded from the engine as the fans started to
turn. The great balloon’s skin stretched
taut and it lifted from the ground.
The rear door of the hangar swung open violently and slammed
against the metal wall, sending reverberations through the space and through
the blimp. The three women all turned to
look out the rear window. “Guards!” Mary
yelled. A dozen women armed with blades
of varying shapes and sizes had spilled into the hangar and were running
towards the airship as it lumbered off the ground. The driver pressed a button above her head
and one whole wall of the building began to fold down from the top, accompanied
by the noise of metal scouring metal.
The guards drew closer as the dirigible gained clearance from the
ground. Its rise was halted with a
snapping jolt.
The pilot unbuckled herself from her seat and stuck her head
out the window. “The tether! The tether is still on! Someone has to get it.” The dark-skinned woman swung the door open. She laid flat on her stomach and reached over
the edge. She stretched as far as she
could but couldn’t quite reach the rope.
“I can’t get it!” she yelled.
“Mary, can you hold my ankles?”
Mary slid off her chair and pinned her legs to either side of the door,
knees bent. She hoped her legs and arms
could support the other woman’s full weight.
Mary grabbed hold of the woman’s ankles and let her slide further out
the door.
The guards had just reached the ground under the blimp. They swung their weapons angrily. The dark woman hung precariously from the
door of the gondola, reaching with both hands for the underside of the coach
where the tether attached to the blimp.
The front wall of the hangar was now fully open, revealing
an expansive view of the densely populated land below.
One of the guards slashed at the dangling woman as she
lengthened her arms and body to the extent physics would allow. The leading edge of the guard’s small axe
made contact and sheared the woman’s hand clean off. Her scream echoed through the hangar and through
the whole of the valley below. The
downward pressure on the airship released and it resumed its ascent as the
tether had also been severed.
Mary pulled the injured, shrieking woman back into the cab
and laid her prone on the floor. She
stared at the place where the woman’s hand should have been. Blood spurted out in iambic meter. Short, long, short, long.
Mary took her bag off her shoulder and dumped its contents
onto her vacated seat. She found the
scarf she was looking for and tied it tightly around the elbow of the bleeding
woman, now silent from the shock or the pain.
Mary pushed herself back against the wall, trying to keep from looking
at the gaping wound. She focused her
gaze between her own legs at one of the vials that had rolled from her satchel. It was hand calligraphed: pennyroyal and blue
cohosh.
Mary grabbed the vial and turned to the open window. She dropped the bottle from the gondola and
watched it fall into the makeshift cemetery at the base of the cliff. It shattered onto the tombstone of one of the
Jumpers. Behind them several dozen
guards stood at the edge of the crag and watched the airship make its way
slowly upward; their impotence due to the Mayor’s own fear of guns.
Mary allowed herself to envision her unborn son for the
first time. She could almost see his
face and hoped he would be neither as fearful nor as brutal as his father.
