Children of the Storm

hold him off for a long while, or permanently injure him.
        This, however, was a psychological advantage she would not have much longer, for he would soon know that she had nothing else to use against him.
        For the most part, he kept his face to the ground, moving toward her like an insect oblivious of the world above it. Now and again, however, at fairly regular intervals, he raised his head to look at her and to gauge the angle of his ascent. She picked up the rhythm of these upward glances and, when she felt he was just about to raise his head again, she threw the coconut with all her might.
        He looked up.
        He screamed.
        It caught the side of his face.
        He went backward, head over heels, to the bottom of the rise, fell half into the water and did not get up or move.
        She waited, trembling, on the verge of throwing up but not sure if she had the time for that.
        He lay still.
        Water lapped at him.
        She thought of going down there and turning him onto his back, to see if he were dead, but the memory of what his strong hands had almost done to her in the bougainvillea arbor kept her where she was.
        She saw the knife where he had dropped it, more than halfway down the hill, its point directed at her, its red handle like a small beacon in the midst of the drab, storm-painted earth. She wondered if she could risk going that close to him so that she could get hold of the knife and deprive him of his most dangerous weapon. She remembered how fast he had run up the first section of the slope, jumping from side to side and digging his heels in like a soldier taking enemy ground during an offensive action, and she knew she would have to turn and renegotiate half the hillside while he would be chasing her… Yet, she thought, now, that he was unconscious, and she knew that, when he came to, even if that was while she was retrieving the knife, he would not have the wits about him to give immediate and competent chase. And if she could have the knife…
        She started over the brink of the hill and had taken four or five steps when he shuddered, thrashed about, and tried to get his hands under himself.
        Terrified, she turned, scrambled to the top again, and ran after the kids.
        They had not managed to get very far, no more than a third of the way across the flat top of the hill.
        She scooped Tina up and urged Alex to make better time than he had thus far.
        From somewhere, she did not know where, though it might have been from a terror that was greater than any she had ever known before, she found a new supply of energy. Her legs were rubbery, but they drove her on with renewed speed; her back and arms felt as if they would require major surgery to ever be right again, yet they were laced with new strength that made Tina seem less of a burden than she had before.
        The sounds of the storm seemed so loud now that she felt as if they were coming from within her head and not from the land around her; she felt as if she could buckle under the demanding explosions of the sound alone.
        At the next slope, she turned and looked back, hoping to see that they were unpursued.
        For a few seconds, it seemed that way, seemed safe. Then, she caught sight of him, weaving drunkenly between the trees but nonetheless closing the distance between them.

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    THIRTY-FOUR
        
        Because the depths of the ravine between these last two hills was not so great as it had been in each of the previous geographical divisions of the island, the pool of seawater across which they had to go was not nearly so much of an obstacle as those which had come before it. Indeed, it only reached to Sonya's knees and slightly past Alex's waist. They were able to walk across the pool together, while Sonya carried the little girl, and no time was lost in making a second trip to ferry one or the other of the children to safety.
        In other ways, Nature seemed suddenly to have chosen their side. The trees grew even thicker than before, cutting the whip of the wind in half and making advancement a good deal easier. The slope of this hill was more gentle than those before it, and while it was not rocky, it was also not grassy, composed of spotted clumps of vegetation and a lot of loose sand which, while shifting under their feet, was preferable to slick grass.
        On the hilltop, they ran forward, zig-zagging