Ashes

Isabel, the narrator, and Curzon are two teenagers on the run during the Revolutionary War. They’re hiding in the bushes, waiting for British soldiers to move on so they can get a look at a nearby milestone. They’re searching for Isabel’s little sister, Ruth, and Isabel is sure that the sign she’s looking for will point them to the city where they’ll find her: Charleston, South Carolina. Isabel recounts the story of her and Curzon’s travels. The pair have been on the road for five years. They’re starving and exhausted, and despite their former friendship, they’ve fallen out. Curzon wants to rejoin the Patriot army, and has only agreed to stay with Isabel until they find Ruth: “Time and hard travel,” Isabel says, “had much changed us both” (15-16). Curzon makes a plan to approach the British soldiers pretending to be a slave fleeing from a bad master and ask them for protection and directions. As Isabel waits for him to carry this plan out, she is startled by a sound in the bushes: A rattlesnake has crept up on her.