She sucked in a breath. Through wheezing coughs she said, "Uncwe." She took another breath, but still he didn't let her go. "Uncwe, uncwe, uncwe!"
He smashed her head into the ground and then released her. She lay on the ground for several minutes until she could breathe normally again. "Pitiful," he said with disgust. "To think of all those years I wasted following you because I was scared. Of what? This? This is what you always were underneath."
He picked her up off the ground, tossing her over his shoulder. She didn't have the strength to kick, punch or bite him anymore. The words of surrender tasted worse than the dirt in her mouth. She should have let herself die instead of giving in to him. Then she knew the fountain water had changed her inside as well as out. She was a coward. This caused her to cry anew, albeit silently, for what she'd lost.
David tossed her to the ground at the banks of the stream. "What did you do to her?" Becky said.
"I gave her what she deserved."
"You should have waited until afterwards. I can't have her looking like this for the party."
"So clean her up. What's the big deal?"
"The big deal is you were supposed to bring her here and that's all. Can't you follow simple directions?"
David took a step towards Becky. "Maybe I ought to do the same to you," he said. "I don't see any need for you or Molly now that she's out of the way."
Becky held up a vial of fountain water. "You could just as easily join her in the crib," she said. "I think it'd be sweet. I could raise you as brother and sister."
David took a step back. "I'm sorry," he said. "I got a little carried away. It won't happen again."
She leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek. "Good, because I don't want to change two sets of diapers. Go make sure everything else is ready, will you, Davy?"
"Yeah, sure," he said. Throughout their conversation, Samantha had been crawling along the bank towards the water. She could ride the current downstream into the forest. As her bloody hands splashed into the water, someone yanked her back by the hair.
"Now Mommy you're supposed to wait an hour after eating to swim," Becky said. She hauled Samantha back to the shore, setting her against a rock. Samantha cried out as Becky opened the vial of fountain water. "You don't like this, huh? I don't blame you. But I'm not going to kill you yet." She wet a piece of cloth with the water and then dabbed as Samantha's wounds. The scraped skin turned from red to pink and then to the same rusty color as the rest of her. "All better now."