Bennie stood up as soon as she had the strength, swaying unsteadily. The moon shone surprisingly bright. The air smelled sweet and clean. A breeze caressed her battered body, rustling the tatters of her clothes. She wiped blood, tears, dirt, and sweat from her face, looking around the field.
It was dark around her, with no houses in sight. The grass had been cut for hay and lay in humped rows. In the distance was a tall treeline and a hulk of farm machinery. She remembered the shaking she’d felt in the box, the tornado she’d heard driving over her. It had been a harvesting machine.
It struck her then what must have happened. The hay in the field must have been tall when Alice had buried the box, but she wouldn’t have known that it would be cut at the end of the month. The harvesting machine, and the wolf, had saved Bennie’s life.
She started walking, wobbly and weary, looking for a road. Her bare feet aching, her hand trailed its bloody bandage. She didn’t want to think about what she looked like. She hadn’t eaten in forever, her throat was dry and parched. She felt dizzy and weak.
She heard the screech of a faraway owl. The loud knocking of a woodpecker, echoing over the field. Crickets everywhere. She passed a herd of deer lying in the short grass. They spotted her, startled, and took off, their back hooves flying, white tails upright as surrender flags.
She kept walking, using the hayrow as a guideline. Above shone the stars, their whiteness brighter out in the country. They pierced a velveteen sky, a glittery whitewash of stardust. She remembered looking at the stars so long ago, when her mother was still alive. She had thought that her family was fixed as the constellations, but she’d been wrong. She’d learned that stars changed and so did families, hers when it belatedly acquired its darkest star.
She walked through another field, passing immense rolls of hay, lined up together like houses, two stories high. She followed the rows of mown hay when she could and her sense of direction when she couldn’t, stumbling and halting but going ever forward, and she saw a black ribbon of paved road that snaked along the fields, its canary yellow divider phosphorescent in the moonshine.
She almost cried with happiness. She staggered over, reached the shoulder, and walked next to it in the grass. It was only a matter of time until someone drove by. She’d call the cops and find Alice, no matter where she tried to hide. She’d charge her, prosecute her, and lock her away for good. Twin or no. Sister or no. Blood or no.
Her pace quickened, heedless of her sore everything. And when she spotted a pair of headlights coming down the road, she thanked God.
For salvation.
And for vengeance.