Read Online Flight of the Sparrow by Amy Belding Brown - Free Book Online

with feathers that falls over his chest. He studies her, his eyes moving slowly up and down her body, then fixing onSarah. Her mind clears and she realizes he’s weighing their lives, deciding whether to kill them.
    “Please,” she says. Her tongue burns and tastes like smoke. “I beg you, do not slay her.”
    Their eyes meet and he lowers his club. Mary steps back, away from him, but before she can take a second step, he stops her with his free hand and plucks off her cap. He flips it into the wind, where it swirls on an updraft toward the ruined barn. Her hair falls down her back and shoulders. He stares at it, perhaps startled by the color, then grasps a handful and brings it to his mouth. Like a snake, his long tongue comes out of his mouth and he licks one strand. Mary shivers in revulsion, but when he tilts back his head and laughs, it occurs to her that her hair may have saved Sarah.
    He catches Mary’s wrist and pulls her quickly across the yard. When she stumbles under Sarah’s weight, he jerks her impatiently. They go down through the yard of blood and churned-up snow, moving past the mangled bodies of her nephews William and Joseph, and past the naked, bloodied corpse of John Divoll. They pass a dead boy’s body sprawled facedown on a rock, his arms twisted in impossible positions. Mary recognizes the tousled hair; it is Josiah, Hannah’s son. She looks away but cannot stop the heaving of her stomach. They go past the barn and out to the lane, where many Indians are milling around. Someone hands her captor a length of braided rope. He fashions a loop and knots it around her neck, tying the other end to his waist. Mary is grateful that he does not try to pull Sarah from her arms. The child is still moaning. Blood runs from her stomach, dripping thickly onto the snow in multiplying spots. Mary’s own wound repeatedly stabs her, but she forces herself to stand tall, sensing that drawing any attention could mean the instant death of her daughter.
    Her eyes burn, her mind swirls, and she cannot hold a thought. Her throat hurts, as if the tears clotted there are barbed. She tries toconcentrate on what is happening, but everything is fragmented, confused. Did she not swear she would rather die than fall captive to Indians? Yet now that the hour has come upon her, where is her courage to resist these heathens? Why can she not gather the strength to flee?
    The chanting and cries die away, and for a moment there is no sound except the fire crackling and soughing up the house walls. The air reeks with burning wool and hair. Mary looks back over her shoulder at the house, where flames are busily licking at the three laundry barrels that stand by the door. One of the barrels erupts in flame and breaks open. Its staves fall across the stoop onto Elizabeth’s legs. Mary can watch no longer. She turns away from the sight of her sister’s body, even as Elizabeth’s skirts burst into flame.
    She hears a crow call from the tree by the meetinghouse, and the sound of women weeping. She spots Hannah standing a few yards away. She, too, has a rope around her neck, and is carrying her four-year-old son, William. Mary wants to signal her, but Hannah is not looking in her direction.
    The Indians begin to push the captives into a long line. There are warriors everywhere, hundreds of them. Finally Mary sees—sorrow mixing with relief—that both Joss and Marie are far ahead of her in the line with other children. Two of Hannah’s children are there, and Elizabeth’s three daughters, including Martha. All their necks are bound by ropes. A few yards away, young Henry Kerley sags between two warriors. His arms are pulled behind him and bound to a pole laid across his upper back. Mary feels a great plunging hopelessness fall through her. Her nephew did not escape as she had hoped. Likely no one escaped.
    She begins to shake. The tremors are so strong she has to struggle for breath. She wonders how much blood she has lost. She sees