When we turn, Moe and Stella are on the ground. Moe’s boot is caught behind her in the closed wall. Her face contorted in pain.
Stella’s hands grab her face. “Can you pull it out?”
Moe’s too lost in agony to answer, her eyes squeezed shut as she slams a fist on the ground with a cry.
Marcella and I crouch down near the wall, with Aelia and Beatrice behind us.
Marcella stretches out her fingers near Moe’s boot, where blood slowly seeps out from the crack. “It looks like it’s just her toes.” She stands, her expression stilling into something serious. “We’re going to have to pull it out.”
Moe shakes her head as she lowers her face, still unable to form words through her cries.
Stella looks to the distance where our finish line is, the raised platform. “But?—”
“It’s the only way!” Marcella snaps. “They’re not coming to save us. They won’t interfere in a trial. We pull her out, and get through the last one.”
I open my mouth as I stand. Then shut it. Despite her lack of sympathy, she’s right. I nod. Then Aelia, then Beatrice.
Stella looks to each one of us, then back down to Moe, giving her shoulder a squeeze before standing. “Alright.”
“Grab her underneath her shoulders and pull,” Marcella instructs, straddling the back of Moe’s legs. Squatting down, she grabs Moe’s ankle with both hands. “Ready?”
Stella braces her arms underneath Moe’s arms. Aelia and I grab either side of Moe’s thigh, and Beatrice grabs hold of Stella’s waist.
“Ready!” Stella answers.
We all pull. Moe’s screams ratchet up to a level that could crack glass. But her foot doesn’t budge. Marcella pauses, panting heavily before she shouts, “Again!”
We all groan as we try to pull her free once more.
Something slips, and we all tumble at the sudden give. As we rise, Moe’s foot is free from the wall—but a badly mangled, bloody mess. Crushed in a way that makes my stomach roil.
Beatrice and Stella help Moe rise, taking either side of her. We all turn to the last part of the trial.
The scattered A-frames.
Many of the women race up them, then down the other sides. Some are already climbing their way up the stairs to the finish line.
Wordlessly, the six of us race into the arena. Cutting left, then right around the A-frames, but slowed by Moe’s staggered gait. We pass one A-frame, and I glimpse a woman cowering there beneath it before we’re passing the next one.
“If we climb them, it’ll be faster!” Beatrice shouts.
“It’ll be too hard to climb!” Aelia barks back.
A click, click,clicksounds.
Followed by screams.
Heat puffs over us in a cloud, the smell of rotten eggs in the air before my eyes widen.
Back behind when you smell it.
Cutting right, I shove into Aelia who piles into Beatrice. Knocking into Moe, and then Stella, with Marcella on the other side.
“Get in!” I scream, and we all collapse underneath the A-frame as flames explode over and around the arena. Engulfing the space in fire.
All of us are panting as the heat fades, watching the flames retreat.
“How did you know?” Aelia asks.
