Transgression: A Novel of Love and War - By James W. Nichol Page 0,3

was where Madeleine would sit on the railway bank and watch them. Sometimes, if she was in a good mood, which was rare, she’d let Jenny watch, too.

Jenny began to wonder if she was strong enough, if she could run fast enough through all the steam and noise, if she was tall enough to reach the bottom rung and haul herself up on the iron ladder and ride past the Township Line, past everything and away from everyone she ever knew.

She could still hear Madeleine taunting her and it wasn’t the first time, either, it was about the millionth. She would do it. She would hitch a ride on a train. She’d run away.

And then she remembered the story.

The wagon trail she was walking along had disappeared into a towering mass of trees. Everything was still. There wasn’t a hint of a breeze. She could skirt around the woods, but it would take longer and it was swampy at the one end. Her father’s wagon trail was dry and ran almost perfectly straight through to the back field.

Jenny stared at the opening into the woods.

If the witch did live in a deep cave under a tree, as Madeleine had said, maybe she was asleep. It was the middle of the day and it was scorching hot. Hell’s own kitchen, her father would have said to her. If he had been standing there beside her. If he were holding her hand.

The longer Jenny stared at the opening, the more tempting it became. Her heart raced. It would only take a few moments and she’d be through. The lane soon narrowed and darkened. She began to walk up on her toes like a water bird, ready to take flight at the crack of a twig, at anything. She could hear the lonely clang of a cowbell somewhere. Her father was over at Uncle Matt’s, three miles away, helping out with the threshing. So was her big brother Andrew.

Dark corridors opened up on either side of her. Vines hung down from dead trees. Jenny kept her eyes straight ahead. A shadow was moving somewhere, it was moving toward her. She began to run. Something was running between the trees, she could hear some horrible, panting noise.

Jenny flew out of the woods and into her father’s back field. Stubble began to cut into her bare feet. She slowed down, stopped.

There was no creature standing on the trail behind her, nothing to be seen at all, just the still green woods and the cloudless, sun-seared sky.

Jenny picked her way carefully across the stubble toward Mr. Timmon’s oat field and began to rethink this idea of running away. Maybe she’d just hide under the railway bridge all night instead. Everyone would be scared out of their wits. Everyone would be searching for her. Her mother would be turning insane. Her father and Andrew would be running around in the dark. Madeleine might even feel sorry for what she’d done.

Ahead of her, puffs of dust began to rise in the air like small explosions. She’d never seen anything like that before. They were rising out of the weedy fenceline between her father’s field and Mr. Timmon’s. She went up on her toes again. Another puff of dust. She could see something moving, a shifting of light, a copper-coloured rustling.

Jenny stepped closer. Something as startlingly white as a snake’s belly flew up in the air and then fell back down again. Jenny stuck her foot out cautiously and parted the tall dusty grass. One of her mother’s hens was staring up at her. She recognized it right away–it was the one whose eggs she could never collect, the one who’d chased her across the barnyard on numerous occasions. It bobbed its head and again something white flew up in an explosion of dust.

A garter snake, she thought, but it seemed too stubby for a garter snake. Whatever it was, it had disappeared into the grass again. The hen began to peck and peck.

“D-d-damn you, g-g-go away!”

Jenny kicked at the bird. The bird shied off a few steps. Jenny knelt down and parted the weeds. The thing the hen had been worrying was puffy and milky-looking, its one end rough and black. She picked up a twig and poked at it. The thing rolled over, dragging something behind on a long sinuous thread, something thinly curved and as shiny as coal.

A faint smell, both sweet and repugnant, reached Jenny’s nostrils. And now she knew that Madeleine’s story had been