of the names she had whispered to herself when she did something
impossible would come gushing to the surface if she ever let herself
loose. But when she heard Hector snarl her name she didn?t think
about what it would mean, or how it would feel, to run as fast as
she could. She just did it.
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Something led her out onto the moors. The dark, flat lands that
stretched out under the color-bleaching light of the moon were
somehow safer than the roads and the houses of her community. If
she was going to die, it would be alone, with no weak normals sacrificing
themselves to save poor Helen Hamilton, their lifelong
neighbor and friend.
If she was going to turn and fight, she wanted to be under the
broad, low sky of the uninhabited parts of her island and not
hemmed in by the quaint shingle-sided whalers. She went west,
across the northern side of her island, the calm waters of Nantucket
Sound sighing somewhere off to her left, and Lucas and Hector
calling her name from behind. They were gaining on her.
Helen crossed Polpis Road, skirting Sesachacha Pond until she
saw the true Atlantic, not its calmer cousin, the Nantucket Sound,
but the wild water at the end of the continent. She needed to hide,
but the land was flat and open and the air was clear and bright.
Helen looked out over the dark waves sparkling like inky tinfoil in
the moonlight and begged for some kind of mist or haze to come
and cover her. That damn ocean owed her for almost taking her life
as a child, she thought hysterically, and it should pay. After a few
more huge strides, Helen?s plea w
as miraculously answered. She
ran north up the coast, out onto the uninhabited sand spit on the
northern tip of the island, into a damp, salty fog.