Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende

see the mountains in the distance, and everything was a question of walking in that direction. We slaves knew that there were Maroons in the mountains, but we did not know that beyond the first peaks were many more, so many they can’t be counted. Night fell. I ate my bread but saved the mango. I hid in a stable under a pile of straw, although I was afraid of horses, with their hooves like hammers and steaming nostrils. The animals were very near, I could hear them breathing across the straw,a sweet, green breath like the herbs in Mademoiselle’s bath. Clinging to my doll Erzulie, mother of Guinea, I slept the whole night without bad dreams, wrapped in the warmth of the horses. At dawn a slave came into the stable and found me snoring with my feet sticking through the straw ; he grabbed my ankles and pulled me out with one tug. I don’t know what he expected to find, but it must not have been a scrawny little girl, because instead of hitting me, he lifted me up, carried me to the light, and looked me over with mouth agape. “Are you crazy? What made you hide here?” he asked me finally, not raising his voice. “I have to get to the mountains ,” I explained, also whispering. The punishment for helping a fugitive slave was very well known, and the man hesitated. “Let me go, please, no one will know I was here ,” I begged him. He thought it over a while, and finally ordered me to stay where I was and be quiet ; he made sure there was no one around, and left the stable. He soon returned with a hard biscuit and a gourd of heavily sugared coffee ; he waited for me to eat and then pointed to the way out of the city. If he had turned me in, he would have been given a reward, but he didn’t. I hope that Papa Bondye has rewarded him. I burst into a run and left behind the last houses in Le Cap. That day I walked without stopping, even though my feet were bleeding and I was sweating, thinking of the Negro hunters of the maréchaussée. The sun was high overhead when I entered the jungle. Green, everything green ; I couldn’t see the sky, and light barely penetrated past the leaves. I heard the sounds of animals and murmur of spirits. The path was vanishing. I ate the mango but vomited it up almost immediately. Capitaine Relais’s guards did not waste time looking for me because I came back alone after spending the night curled among the roots of a living tree ; I could hear its heart beating like Honoré’s. This is how I remember it.
    I spent the day walking, walking, asking and asking, until I reached the place Clugny. I went up to Mademoiselle’s apartment so hungry and tired that I scarcely felt it when Loula cuffed me across the room. Mademoiselle, who was getting ready to go out, appeared at that moment, still in her negligee and with her hair down. She lifted me by one arm, pulled me off to her room, and with a push sat me down on her bed ; she was much stronger than shelooked. She kept standing, with her arms cocked on her hips, looking at me without speaking, and soon she handed me a handkerchief to wipe off the blood from Loula’s blow. “Why did you come back?” she asked me. I didn’t have an answer. She handed me a glass of water, and then came my tears, like warm rain, mixing with the blood from my nose. “Be grateful, you stupid brat, that I don’t lash you as you deserve. Where were you going? To the mountains? You would never get there. Only a few men do that, the most desperate and courageous. If by some miracle you could get out of the city, cross through the trees and swamps without coming upon a plantation, where dogs would devour you, elude the militiamen, the demons, and poisonous snakes, and reach the mountains, the Maroons would kill you. Why do they want a little thing like you? Do you know how to hunt, fight, use a machete? Do you even know how to please a man?” I had to admit I didn’t. She told me that I should