Then above the roar and crash of the fire she heard screams—the high-pitched screams of women, of children. They came from all around her, piteous, keening cries.
She lifted her head, looked to her left, to her right, saw only flames.
A shiver ran down her spine.
The screams were not coming from women and children, but from thetrees.
A flaming branch fell from above, landed a few feet in front of the stallion.
The animal swerved.
A tree to the right exploded into flames. Bits of burning wood whistled through the air. One hit her on the cheek, its bite sharp and searing.
She might have screamed, but the smoke was so thick and the air so hot that she could not draw breath without choking.
A cougar dashed out from the underbrush, almost beneath the stallion’s hooves.
Zeus shied, swerved, stumbled, and Bethie feared for one terrible moment that the stallion would fall, pitching them into the blaze. But Zeus knew the forest and quickly regained his footing.
The fire was ahead of them now, falling in graceful streams from the forest canopy, rising up from the ground in great sheets.
The heat was excruciating, and Bethie began to feel dizzy.
But then the smoke began to clear, the fire to thin.
Had they outrun it?
Suddenly before them stretched what seemed to be a gaping chasm, its darkness lit by small glowing fires.
We are going to die.
The stallion was crazed with fear, and Bethie knew it would not stop. But she did not want it to stop. She would rather that she and Belle meet their deaths quickly at the bottom of a precipice than suffer the torment of flames.
Her last thought as the stallion’s muscles tensed for the leap was of Nicholas.
Then the stallion stretched out its legs and leapt out above the brink.
They fell.
Bethie screamed, held Belle closer.
But then...
Water!
It was not a cliff, but the dark waters of a wide river. The Ohio.
Icy cold, it rose above Bethie’s head as stallion and rider plunged as one into the current.
Bethie felt herself float from the stallion’s back, kicked with all her strength, desperate to get Isabelle’s head above water.
She broke the surface, sucked sweet, cool air into her lungs, lifted her baby above water.
Belle coughed, gave a weak cry that soon became a wail.
She was alive.
But she wouldn’t be for long if Bethie couldn’t make it to the other side. The current was strong and swept her along, and although she was a good swimmer, she knew the Ohio River was perilous, with falls and hidden rocks that mangled both boats and bodies. She knew she needed to reach the other side if she wanted to survive.
