Susan stopped, looking at the house in front of her, and stood shivering, biting her lip. Her trip from the park had been a succession of choices of the least-bad option. Hop or knee walk? Hop under the cover of the trees, exposing her to the danger of unseen obstacles, or nearer the street in better lighting, exposing her to possibly being seen? Risk death crossing the creek, or near-certainty of being caught hopping across the bridge, or look for a footbridge that might not be there? She had made all those choices so far.

She was about fifty feet from the house on the near side of the creek. It was as close as she could get before making another decision.

The trees had been cleared away from the property up to a point just in front of her. She could see the side of the house, and it had two windows on this side -- dark, but uncovered by curtains or blinds, so she didn't want to come out of the trees anywhere near them. The side yard was illuminated partly by moonlight, partly by the streetlamp, the latter being cut off behind a certain point by the corner of the house, the light being much dimmer behind that point.

She could see what appeared to be a fence enclosing the back yard. She had hopped slightly closer to it. It looked like it began at the back corner of the house, with a length of it parallel to the street which, she assumed, would contain a gate into the yard, then turned at a right angle to form the side boundary of the back yard. She was seeing only the top of the fence, if that's what it was, about six feet high, a straight line illuminated by moonlight to a shade just slightly lighter than the blackness below it. Even that amount of light faded out after about twenty feet or so, probably due to the trees coming closer to it and blocking the moonlight. She assumed fence went on farther into the blackness, because it seemed certain the yard would be more than twenty feet deep. But that was just a guess.

Susan had to get past the house to reach the creek. Hopping across the well-lit front yard, in full view of the house's occupants, was out of the question. But going behind it presented problems as well.

She could see absolutely nothing in that direction, beyond the point where the moonlight showing the top of the fence ended. If it was because the tree line was closer to the fence back there, then visibility wouldn't get any better as she came closer to it. If there were gaps in the fence, she should be able to see the yard through it, lit by moonlight. There seemed to be no such gaps. It seemed to be an unbroken wall, most likely of wood. She had anticipated something more like a short picket fence, which would have been much better, but a tall solid fence made sense as she thought about it. With the property right at the edge of a dense forest, the purpose of the fence would be to keep large animals out.

She hoped any such large animals were asleep at present.

If she went that way, it looked like she would be completely blind: being behind the fence, she would get no light from the house itself or the moonlit yard because the fence was blocking it, no light from the streetlamp because the house was blocking it, and no light from the moon because the trees were blocking it.

And the area behind the house was no place to be blind. The creek generally followed a line that would take it directly behind this house -- and not very far behind it. The depth of the yard, in fact, would be limited by the creek, and it was possible that the yard went as far as it could in that direction, to within a few feet of the creek. And the creek was not, of course, a perfectly straight line. It took unpredictable twists and turns. It wouldn't be possible for Susan to know exactly where it was. She could hear it, but the sound would not tell her exactly how close to it she was, and most importantly, wouldn't tell her whether she was just inches from stepping -- or hopping, rather -- over the edge of the embankment to plunge into the rapidly flowing water. Earlier, the creek had been visible by moonlight because it flowed through a break in the trees. But the moon was getting lower in the sky by the minute, and less able to illuminate any such breaks.

That last thought made up Susan's mind for her. As dangerous as the situation was right now, any amount of delay made it worse.

She would have to go directly to her left, staying within the trees, to avoid any chance of being seen from those windows. At her feet, the ground was nearly invisible, with the tiniest amount of streetlight glow to show Susan her surroundings. She hopped tentatively in that direction, and immediately nearly tripped over an unnoticed root. She fought for balance -- if she fell here, she could be heard. Okay, she thought. Knee-walking it is. She dropped to her knees.

As she moved ahead a few inches at a time, detouring around trees and bushes, the ground soon completely disappeared. She continued until a black wall to her right blocked her view of the side of the house behind her. The fence. A few feet farther, and as she'd feared, she was completely blind. She could still see dimly behind her, but that wasn't helpful. She angled towards the fence, knowing she would need to stay next to it to remain oriented. She brushed up against it with her shoulder -- it was indeed wood, it turned out -- and continued on.

I really don't think Suzy meant for it to be this hard, Susan thought to herself. I'm pretty sure she thought it would be straightforward getting across the creek. But it's turned into something harder, and there's nothing she or I can do about it now except try to find a way across.

After about twenty knee-paces, not counting a couple of detours around trees, Susan lost the light completely, even from behind her. Everything would have to be done by feel now, and by, she hoped, hearing the creek well enough to stay away from it. She hated the detours. Whenever she lost physical contact with the fence she feared she'd never find it again, and she could easily wander in circles, totally lost. But sometimes the trees were too close to the fence for her to be able to squeeze between the tree and the fence.

It took longer than she'd believed possible to arrive at the back corner of the fence, where it turned at a right angle and ran along the back of the property. As soon as she turned the corner, the babbling of the creek became noticeably louder. It was hard for her to make herself move forward.

She wondered whether she'd be able to find a footbridge even if there was one. But it should be between the properties -- there was no reason for it to be here, where she was now -- and that area should be lit by moonlight. If she got there soon enough.

Her left knee, on her next step, sank into a shallow depression in the ground. Susan could easily have accommodated it if she had known if was there, but it threw her off balance, and to her horror she found herself toppling to the left, in the direction of the creek. It took all of her focus on where she was to stop herself from crying out in alarm.

She hit the ground hard on her left shoulder, and froze, statue-like, to keep herself from rolling any further left. The force of her left elbow digging into her side paralyzed her diaphragm, and she struggled unsuccessfully to breathe for ten seconds before it finally began functioning again. She lay still, breathing in small sips of air as the pain subsided.

She didn't think she'd had the wind knocked out of her since she was five or six. She hadn't been a terribly active child. She'd forgotten how really unpleasant it is.

As she worried over how close she might have come to falling into the creek, it occurred to her how stupid she was being. If you're scared because you don't know where the creek is, Susan, she told herself, then find out where it is. You can wiggle up to it feet first, slowly, so you won't fall in. And you can keep yourself oriented by following the creek just as easily as following the fence!

She rolled onto her back and sat up. She listened carefully for a moment to make sure about the direction, and swung her legs around so her feet were pointed towards the creek. Then she lay back on her elbows and started making her way towards the sound: digging in with her elbows, she lifted her butt off the ground and moved it ahead a few inches; then she straightened her legs back out, tightened her stomach muscles to bend at the waist and lift her upper body, getting her elbows elevated, and putting them back down a few inches ahead of where they'd been. Then repeated the sequence of movements. It wasn't easy on her stomach muscles -- she'd never been good at sit-ups in gym class -- but it was better than rubbing the skin off her elbows by dragging them along the ground.

After about twenty such moves, she felt her feet go over the edge of what had to be the embankment. She continued farther, until her lower legs could dangle down the embankment and her toes dipped into the water flowing by.

Her thirst flared up again at the feel of all that water, so close she was literally touching it, yet unable to drink it. If there had been something she could hold onto to keep from falling in, then she could have got her head, and her mouth, down to the water. But as it was, there was no way to balance on the edge and reach down to the water head-first.

Keep looking for the footbridge, Susan, she ordered herself. If you find that, you can get home and drink all you want.

Moving sideways along the bank was much easier. Susan simply pressed her fists against the ground, lifted her butt and moved it to the right, slid her legs to the right along the edge, moved her fists over and did it all again. Up until she came to the first bush adjacent to the bank. She tried to push past it, but it was much too firmly rooted. She carefully checked with her legs to see how much space there was between the bush and the edge of the creek. Not enough for her to sit on without danger of falling in, so she had to back away from the creek to go around the bush, then find her way back to the creek. Each time she reached another bush, she had to either pass in front of it or, more often, go around it. She wasn't worried about losing track of where the creek was -- she could always hear it -- but she did worry about the amount of time the detours were taking. She was sure there wasn't much left. She was cold; she had no idea where she might find any food; and she had not run across any puddles since she had crossed Stockhouse and lost her bottled water, nor in fact for some time before that. She was shivering, starving, and parched. She worked to push all of that out of her mind and concentrate on the one thing she had to do. She couldn't afford to let her mind wander to any of those things.

To her right, was that...? Yes!!! She could see, as she got past what must have been the corner of the fence blocking her view, another fence that was dimly lit in the moonlight -- and at some distance along it, in front of it, she could see a horizontal surface that looked the way she would expect a footbridge to look. It's there! It's there!

Excitement flared in her, and brought a familiar feeling with it. Every movement she had been making reminded her of her bondage: her limited use of her hands, locked behind her to the chain around her waist, her inability to separate her feet, and especially the chain that played with her sex constantly as long as she was moving. The background arousal that never went away had been muted by her fear that she had no way home tonight, that she faced another day of hiding out from discovery, without any food or water available that she knew of. But the footbridge she had hung all her hopes on -- she had found it! Now the curtain of fear was thrown aside, and the thrill of being in bondage instantly demanded her attention. She wanted another of those orgasms so badly! Her hips started twitching without her conscious awareness, her breathing accelerated, the flush of anticipation pushed the cold away.

She fought against the oncoming loss of control.

She knew exactly what the aftereffect of one of those powerful orgasms would be now: as she usually did, she would fall asleep. It was inevitable: she was way beyond exhaustion from shortage of sleep and endless physical effort. Sleep would come over her after climax no matter how hard to tried to fight it off -- she wouldn't have the strength left to resist it. And she wouldn't wake up for hours, long after sunrise -- and here, of all places, between the yards of neighbors, within sight of the footbridge they would almost certainly use today to share a holiday barbecue.

Another consideration was the noise she would almost certainly make. She wouldn't need to wait until morning to be discovered. The people in the houses would come out to see what was going on.

Just get moving, Susan, she told herself. It's too cold to sit here.

As she prepared to move, she realized the significance of the fact that she could only see the last few feet of the footbridge on the far side. Most of the bridge was in the shadow of the fence on the near side. The moon was near setting. The longer she waited, less and less of the bridge would be visible. It didn't surprise her to see that the bridge was nothing but a flat walkway -- no handrails or similar type of support, no raised sides. On the first part of her crossing, she would have to use a bridge she couldn't see that had nothing to prevent her falling off. At least it looked decently wide, about five feet or so.

She resumed her sideways motion, her lower legs again hanging over the edge of the embankment.

After a few feet, she bumped up against the corner of the fence, where it turned to run parallel to the creek -- it was as invisible as everything else on Susan's side of the creek. The fence forming the side boundary of the back yard, she discovered, was set back only about two feet from the edge of the creek. There was that much of a shelf between the fence and the drop-off into the water.

Moving forward, pushing her legs farther out over the edge of the creek, so that she could get her butt past the corner of the fence, Susan discovered she no longer had enough room to move the way she had been: the edge of the embankment now was underneath her mid-thigh, and way too much of her legs hung over the edge with only rushing water underneath. She pulled her feet back to get her heels onto the shelf, but then her back was pressing her arms too tightly against the fence, and she couldn't find a way to move.

She backed off beyond the corner of the fence, and stretched out on her back parallel to the creek, her feet pointed in the direction she wanted to go, to move the way she had earlier. She moved herself back onto the shelf, but by the time she was fully onto the shelf her left elbow was barely an inch from the edge. She wasn't able to get her elbows any closer together, and any movement seemed likely to send her falling over the edge.

Her stomach knotting painfully in fear, she considered the possibility that the shelf might be too narrow for her to navigate, especially given that she couldn't see any of it. The visibility problem could be solved by waiting until dawn, and she might be able to get across before the people in the houses woke up, but just crossing the creek left her still a long way from home, a distance she couldn't possibly cover in daylight without being seen. And, as she reminded herself once more, that represented an entire day without food or water.

I'll have to knee-walk it, she told herself. She remembered vividly why she had abandoned that method of movement earlier -- falling over when her knee went into a depression -- and if the same thing happened again she'd plunge into the creek.

I'll be more careful than I was before, she promised herself. I should have enough room if I keep my knees together.

She backed up beyond the corner of the fence again, and laboriously got up onto her knees.

And then could not move. Absolutely could not make herself take the first step.

She knew she could easily be facing in a direction slightly different from what she believed it to be. She had a general idea where the creek was, based on the sound, but it was approximate. She wasn't sure exactly how far from the edge she was. She only knew that her first step might send her over it. She wasn't sure of the exact direction of the shelf from her, or the corner of the fence. She would have to search for them, and the distance she'd have to go to get to either one was farther than her distance from falling into the creek.

Ironically, she could still see the shelf and fence on the far side of the creek, still lit by the moon. That wasn't helpful.

She thought about lying back down, and starting over from a safer place. But she could only lie down by falling, and while she knew she could fall away from the creek, she wasn't positive she was far enough from the fence to avoid bashing her head against it when she fell.

She could protect her head if she bent forward and touched her head to the ground before falling. But the ground might not be there. It might be open space above flowing water instead.

She shook herself. Susan, you forgot already! You already figured out if you don't know where the creek is, then find out! Do it again!

Moving her knees the tiniest distances, the left forward, the right back, she slowly turned right so that the creek was directly behind her. Already she felt safer. She began taking tiny steps backward, waiting to feel her toes go over the edge.

There, she thought, found it.

This will be safer than what I was thinking, she told herself, cautiously feeling better about it. I need to keep track of the edge the whole time, so I'll walk sideways, not straight ahead.

She began shuffling to the left, keeping her toes out just beyond the edge as she moved. After a few moves, her left shoulder bumped against the fence. Okay, she thought, that's where that is.

She would have to back up a little.

Her stomach twisted again. There would be so little margin for error, so much work to stay balanced. What she was going to do, she understood perfectly, was exactly like negotiating a ledge on the side of a fifty-story building. If she failed, she wouldn't be able to start over and try again. She would be dead. She would die of drowning rather than impact, but it came to the same thing.

There weren't any other choices. There was no other way to get home. She had to cross the creek, and this was the only way to do that.

Susan wondered, again, whether this had really been part of Suzy's plan. Maybe Suzy had assumed Susan could wade through the creek, as it had been yesterday, even bound this way. Suzy almost surely hadn't waded through it herself. It may have looked much easier to her, walking over it on the street bridge.

In any case, it was no longer like it was yesterday. It might be days before the water flow receded to a point where she could cross it -- and only if it didn't rain anymore before then, here or upstream.

She couldn't survive that long. She needed a bridge. Not the traffic bridge. This bridge. She would die if she tried this and failed, but she would very likely also die if she didn't try it.

The thought of giving up and calling for help never presented itself. Susan's conscious mind knew better than to bother to entertain the idea. Being found in her current condition, being looked at, talked about, being the center of so much attention, becoming a story that people never stopped telling, was lower on her list of priorities than dying. She understood that many people -- perhaps most people -- would rather go through that humiliation than die. Susan couldn't understand how those people thought.

Renewed consideration of using the street bridge, in front of the houses, was out, for the same reason. The chance of being able to cross that bridge, without being seen by anyone in either house or in a passing car, was almost zero. As dangerous as what she was about to do was, it was still preferable.

A tiny distance at a time, Susan moved each knee back. The edge of the embankment was up to her ankle cuffs now, her feet hanging completely over the edge. Her knees could clear the fence now, but she needed to give them still just a bit more room. They needed to be a few inches out from the fence, so she could lean her upper body against the fence. It would be much easier to avoid falling over backward that way.

She moved her knees a tiny bit further back. The cuffs went out beyond the edge; she could feel the edge now against her lower shin.

Taking a deep breath, which revealed to her how much she was shaking, and not from cold, Susan moved her left knee a few inches left. She could reach the corner of the fence with her chin now, and kept it pressed against the corner as she brought her right knee over to join her left. She moved her left knee a few inches to the side again.

She decided to keep the top of her head against the fence, rather than her chin. She didn't want to be scraping skin off her chin as she moved along. She didn't want to scrape her breasts either. She had to push them against the fence after each step to feel safely balanced, but pushed them barely out of contact at the start of each step.

She was cheered by the fact that after a few steps, the shelf widened slightly, the edge once again under her ankle cuffs. Not surprisingly, it wasn't perfectly straight as the fence was.

A few steps later, the variation in width worked against her. In mounting alarm, the shelf narrowed until the edge was nearly at mid-shin. She wasn't surprised to find her bladder letting go once more, spattering urine on her calves. She made herself ignore it, and its consequences. In a few more steps, to her relief, the shelf widened a bit once more.

If I'd been knee-walking straight ahead as I'd first planned, she thought, I wouldn't have made it past that narrow spot.

It was obvious a gate in the fence would be coming up soon, of course, which would be next to the footbridge. Not only had she heard a slight metallic clinking sound from the latch as the light breeze stirred it, but even that confirmation wasn't necessary. How else could the walkway possibly be used if there wasn't a gate at both ends?

Even while expecting to reach it, she realized that when she did actually encounter it, it might disrupt her concentration. She worked to steel herself against that. No distractions, she told herself. No surprises. You will get to the gate soon. Expect it. Don't flinch. And you will feel the walkway when your foot hits it. Don't flinch. You know it's there.

She had been counting steps, one for each time she moved her left knee to the side. Maybe three inches for each step, she thought. Four steps for a foot. She'd moved twenty steps now, and felt as though she had been doing this forever, that it couldn't be much farther. Her heart sank as she realized twenty steps meant she had only come five feet since she'd started. How many, then? Twenty feet, do you think? Eighty steps? Just concentrate on the steps. You're not there yet. But expect the fence. Expect the walkway. On every step. Don't flinch. You shouldn't have estimated the steps. Forget the count. No surprises on any step.

Don't count. Step. Gate? Walkway? Step. Step.

She wasn't able to stop counting. She told herself it would give her a better idea when to expect the gate.

Twice more, the shelf narrowed. She whimpered in terror, but kept going. There was no point in turning back. There was no other way home.

Ninety-three.

The fence yielded slightly. There was a slight rattle. She smiled, proud of herself. She hadn't flinched.

Three more steps. Her left foot pressed against something.

Okay, she thought in intense relief. I'm there.

She bent her legs to lift her feet, and rested her toes on the surface of the footbridge. She took several more knee-steps to the left, then thought about what to do next.

No part of the footbridge was visible by now. The moonlight-shadow cast by the fence on her side of the bridge was halfway up the fence on the other side. She not only couldn't see the bridge, she also couldn't see any of the shelf she was going to have to walk along on the far side to get to safety, after she'd crossed.

I need to keep track of where the edge of the footbridge is, she told herself. I've learned that lesson. I can't see it, and I'm not going to know where the edge is unless I keep in constant contact with it.

She made a left turn, and backed up carefully. With her toes over the edge of the bridge, she could tell she hadn't quite completed the turn. She did so, and then took a step to the left, moving her right knee after to close it against her left. Then another step to the left. She let her feet keep up, keeping herself perpendicular to the edge.

She had to go a little slower than on the shelf, with more concentration on keeping her balance. She didn't have a fence in front of her to lean against. She remained just slightly bent back so that she wouldn't fall forward. Ten steps. Twenty. How far? she wondered. Stop thinking about that. And definitely stop thinking about being on a wooden plank bridge that you can't see, above rushing water that will kill you if you fall in. Don't flinch when your foot reaches the embankment. It could be there on any step, the next or the one after. Concentrate, no distractions, no surprises.

Sudden agony shot through Susan's left calf muscle as it seized up in a cramp. Automatically she straightened her legs, sending her falling forward. As her mind exploded in terror as she began falling, she pushed down hard with her right knee, changing her straight-ahead fall to a fall to the left. She crashed down on her left side, knocking the wind out of her for the second time. She rolled onto her butt, kicking out with her left leg to straighten it, using the top of her right foot to pull her left foot back to stretch out the muscle. Unable to breathe, she waited out the pain in silence, until the muscle slowly unclenched, the knife-like pain passing into a dull ache.

Somehow she hadn't screamed in pain from the cramp or the fright of the fall. The need to stay quiet, so close to people who might hear her, had overridden her reflexive shout. She could not, of course, cry out afterward once her diaphragm was paralyzed.

She was sure the fall itself had made a lot of noise. As she recovered the ability to breathe, she did so very quietly, listening for any sounds that might indicate alarm or curiosity in either house.

She waited for assurance that she was still safe, breathing with her mouth open, not making a sound. Several minutes passed. There was no sound of doors or windows opening, no sign of lights going on.

If she hadn't pushed herself to the left, she realized in amazement, if she had simply fallen straight ahead, the far edge of the bridge would have caught her just below the breasts, and her momentum in that direction would almost certainly have made her slide a few inches farther, enough to carry her over the edge. Into the water.

As her breathing returned to something resembling normal, she told herself forcefully that she couldn't stay here. She had to get moving again. The leg cramp was a sign of things to come tomorrow if she didn't get home tonight. She was dehydrated, and if that wasn't the direct cause of the muscle spasm, it had certainly contributed to it. There would be more cramps tomorrow if she didn't get home tonight, to the point where she would be unable to move at all. As a way to die, drowning would be much more pleasant.

First, she reminded herself, I need to know where the edge is. She squirmed back a few inches in the direction her feet were pointing. Her toes slipped past the edge. Okay, found it.

She began to work out how to get back onto her knees, and stopped, her breath catching in horror. There could be no more knee-walking, at least not until she had found her way off the shelf of land in front of the fence on the far side. Putting herself back in that same physical position, standing on her knees, would invite the cramp to return. She could feel how much the muscle wanted to tighten up again, and it would as soon as she was in that same bent-legged physical position, using her muscles in the same way as before. And she couldn't let that happen. Even on the bridge, where she had more room than on the shelf, another cramp could easily pitch her helplessly into the creek. As for knee-walking on the shelf -- if that cramp had hit five minutes earlier, when she had still been on that narrow strip of ground, she would definitely have ended up in the water.

Yet there had been no other way Susan had found of making her way along the shelf, other than walking on her knees.

She hadn't given any thought to standing upright. Her legs were so tired she didn't see how they could hold her up in such a tense situation. But now it was her only remaining alternative. But she wasn't sure she could get up on her feet in the amount of space she had. Her most-often used way was to get onto her knees first -- inviting that cramp again -- and then throw her weight back to get her feet under her. She could easily fall over while doing it, especially as exhausted as she was. And the effort would test the remaining strength in her legs to the utmost.

Worst of all, her only realistic way of traveling on her feet was by hopping, and she wasn't about to go hopping around on the shelf. As for "walking," she could barely put one foot more than an inch in front of the other. The ankle cuffs were joined by a single padlock, rather than two linked ones as they had been last weekend.

Susan shook her head. Stop stalling, Susan, she told herself. If it's your only choice, then you have to do it.

I should, she told herself, be able to get standing using the gate to help.

She looked toward where the gate should be, and saw that she had finally lost all of the moonlight. There was also no light from either house to backlight it, nor any glow from the streetlights, which were blocked by the house the creek was passing behind. There were no clouds to reflect the glow of city lights. Starlight was negligible, at least for the purpose of allowing Susan to see anything. There might still be a little residual moonlight elsewhere, where it wasn't cut off by trees to the west, and certainly she would be able to find electrical illumination elsewhere. But that did her no good here. Here she was completely blind.

You were wishing earlier you could be blindfolded, she reminded herself, as her stomach twisted yet again in recognition of one terrible new complication. You've got it now.

Get moving, she ordered herself. She was lying on her side, her toes still over the edge of the bridge. Rolling left would put more of her leg over the edge. Not liking that idea, she rolled right, and over onto her back. The gate she wanted was now to her right. She sat up, and pressed her fingers down against the wooden bridge surface to lift her butt, moved a few inches right, then moved her heels an equal distance that same direction. Repeat. Repeat.

She grew cautious about the possibility she was approaching the other edge of the bridge, and began reaching back with her fingers to feel for it before lifting herself. She found it after a few moves, lifted herself once more with her fingers, and began aligning herself parallel to the sides of the bridge, her back facing the gate she wanted. She made sure with her heels where the side edge was, and began moving herself backward towards the gate. She backed up against the gate at last.

Let's see if we can do this, now, she said to herself.

There was no way around having to bend her legs for this. She took several deep breaths, trying to will herself to ignore the pain if the cramp returned.

She drew her feet in towards her, nearly up against her butt. Pressing down with her feet, she pushed her back hard against the gate -- she did it gradually, hoping she wouldn't make the latch jingle. The sound was minimal. She started walking her finger up the gate's surface behind her, alternately pressing the back of her head and her shoulders against the gate to anchor herself each time she made progress a little higher.

The cramp returned, but she was ready and ignored it, telling herself the pain should abate once she was standing and had her legs straight. Breathing in and out in tiny sips, she felt sweat break out on her face from the pain, but she continued pushing herself slowly upward.

At last she had her legs straight, and moments later, still pushing herself upward along the gate and walking her feet back, she was standing upright leaning against the gate.

Her legs shook with muscle fatigue. She felt dizzy for a moment, and feared fainting. But the lightheadedness passed. The cramp, now that she could stretch the muscle, let go and the pain receded once more.

Now that she was standing at the gate, a new possibility for escape occurred to her: enter the back yard, go through it and find the other gate, the one the homeowners would almost certainly have for passing between front yard and back.

She couldn't believe she was considering going through someone's yard, in her nude-and-bound state. It was fantastically dangerous. But she had to weigh the danger against the danger of trying to walk to safety along the shelf at the edge of the creek.

In the case of passing through the yard, the danger was of discovery. In the case of walking along the shelf, the danger was deadly.

She had already been down this road before, weighing the preferability of discovery versus death. Her entire being resisted the consequences of being found, naked and handcuffed, becoming a worldwide Internet sensation and focus of ridicule. She knew which she preferred.

But the likelihood had to figure into it as well. How likely was she to be discovered in the yard -- she would try as hard as she possibly could to avoid it -- and how likely was she to die if she tried the shelf? She had been threatened with discovery constantly for nearly sixty hours now, and had avoided it through sufficient care. Going through the yard increased the danger. Too much? The back yard would be moonlit, but being seen was far less likely in the back yard than in the much-better-lit front yard, and certainly safer than using the Stockhouse Boulevard bridge, which was permanently out of consideration.

As she considered the options, she began leaning towards going through the back yard.

At that point, the question arose as to whether it was even possible. Can I open the gate, she asked herself? How?

From the sounds the gate made when she leaned against it, clearly it had a metal latch. Most likely it was one of the standard self-latching types, and probably one-sided. And it would be on the inside of the yard, not the outside. Normally a string would project through a hole to the outside. You'd pull on the string to unlatch the gate from that side -- and the string could be withdrawn when the homeowners didn't want anyone outside opening the gate.

All of that was Susan's best guess, anyway. There could be something more elaborate, and she could probably find it if there was. But very likely she was looking for nothing more than a bit of string hanging down the gate from a hole.

Whatever the latch consisted of, a string or something more fancy, almost certainly it was up higher than Susan's hands could reach.

She tried locating it with her hands anyway, and realized in the process that she had a faster way to travel from side to side than moving one foot after the other. If she turned on both heels and swung the fronts of both feet to the left, or to the right, then raised up on her toes to move both heels, she could move several inches in the time ordinary "walking" would take her half an inch. It was a method of locomotion that would only work because she had something to lean back against while she was doing it -- the fence.

She began doing that, with her hands flat against the gate, trying to find a latch. Or a string.

On finishing examining the entire gate at hand-level, finding nothing, she came back the other way, with her whole back pressed against the gate. At least she could find a metal latch that way, though probably would not feel a string.

When that yielded nothing, she decided to try one more thing. She turned to face the gate, and pressed her lips lightly against it -- the most sensitive part of her face, probably the only way she would be able to detect something as light as a string -- and, maintaining the "kiss" very lightly out of fear of splinters, she moved from one side to the other, bent over to what she considered the mostly likely height for a string.

She found nothing.

She sighed. The drawstring might not be out, she told herself, or it's there and I somehow missed it. I don't have any more time to keep looking.

In a sense, she was relieved that the decision had been taken out of her hands. But it left her death-defying 50th-floor-ledge-walk as her only option. Blind.

Turning her back to the gate once more, she was scared by her perception of how tired her leg muscles were now. Her legs were still trembling with fatigue, and she couldn't be sure how long they would hold her. At least she would be leaning back against the fence, and locking her knees would help.

She tried to clear her mind of distractions again. The cold, which was adding to her trembling; her hunger; her thirst; the pain in her calf, which still felt like a knife was stuck deep within it. I can take care of all of that later, she told herself. I can get home, inside my warm apartment, toasty under the covers of my bed, after I drink all the water I could ever want and put together a huge roast-beef sandwich. And the water will help with the aftereffects of the cramp. That's for later. Concentrate on now. Be where you are.

To negotiate the shelf, she needed to keep her heels several inches out from the base of the fence. She hated giving away that much of the shelf, which was narrow enough as it was, but she needed to make absolutely sure her weight was pressed back against the fence so that she couldn't overbalance and fall forward.

She began her sideways shuffle again, twisting on her heels and then on her toes, repeating again and again. It took what seemed to be a long repetition of moves like that before she finally left the gate behind and was on the shelf, with nothing in front of her but a plunge into the creek. At least the shelf was wide enough get keep her full foot securely on it, even with her heels a few inches out from the fence.

Until it wasn't. On each step she curled her toes to make sure she could still feel them brushing the ground. And now, after her latest step, it wasn't there. The ball of her foot rested on the ground, but her toes did not.

Maybe, she thought, it doesn't get any worse than this. I can still move if it's like this.

Carefully, she raised herself on the balls of her feet so she could move her heels just a little farther right. Then she put her weight back on her heels again, and rotated her right foot, only her right, into the questionable area.

There was nothing under the ball of her right foot. She pulled it back quickly. Once more, for a better reason than ever, she lost control of her bladder, the pee running straight down both legs.

She couldn't move if the balls of her feet weren't on solid ground. She had to rise up on them in order to move her heels.

She couldn't pull her feet back any farther. She had them just far enough in front of the fence so she could lean back against the fence and have no tendency to fall forward.

She'd already decided she couldn't get through the gate. Now it appeared she was blocked from escaping from here along the shelf of ground.

At least, she was blocked from going in this direction. She could try going the other way from the gate. Which would take her to the front of the house. In the front yard, well lit by streetlights, in full view of passing cars.

She rejected, once more, forcefully, the idea of being so exposed. It occurred to her, then, that she still did have a way to move along the narrowed shelf, even if the ends of her feet were hanging over the edge. The much, much slower way: keep her feet pointed straight, move her right foot as far as the padlock would allow, then her left foot, to close the gap, then her right foot again. Moving half an inch with each step.

She decided to try it. If going to the front of the house was out, and going through the back yard had been stopped by her inability to open the gate, this was her only remaining choice.

She moved her feet back an inch -- it was the closest she could bring them to the wall and still feel safe from falling forward. Then she began moving to her right: right foot, slide to the right until stopped by padlock; left foot, slide right to close up feet. Repeat. Repeat. It took her several steps to get the right feel for it. If she slid her right foot too abruptly, too hard, then feeling it jerked to a stop by the padlock threatened to disrupt her balance; if she slid it too slowly, then her weight was all on her left foot too long, again throwing off her balance. She tried to blank not only her mind but her senses of all possible distractions, all thoughts unrelated to the rhythm of her motion. She kept her weight mostly back on her heels, just lightly sensing the ground under the front part of each foot, or lack of it. If the edge of the shelf were to recede to a point more than an inch or so behind the ball of her right foot, she would stop at that point and decide whether to go on.

One fleeting thought did cross her mind: that it was a very lucky thing she was blind right now. She was sure she couldn't go on if she could see how close she was to plunging to her death in the rushing creek. If she could see that metaphorical fifty-story plunge off the ledge. She pushed the thought away as the worst of all possible distractions.

She fought to keep from doubling over in pain as her stomach knotted in cramps, a combination of dehydration, hunger, and tension. She pushed any consideration of physical sensations, other than the sense of touch in the soles of her feet and the feel of the fence behind her back, off into the future. She could worry about them later. Not now. Her legs continued shaking from fear and muscle fatigue, while all of her shivered from cold. Think about those sensations later too. Not now.

After many steps, she didn't know how many -- she sensed that it might be twenty or thirty, but it could have been more -- there was solid ground under the balls of her feet once more. She bit her lip. The possibility that the worst might be over threatened to burst the dam of concentration she had built up.

Another three steps, and she felt ground under her toes when she curled them downward. Now she let herself to consider that she might be allowed to think about other things. Home. Warmth. Food. Water. Water. Water.

She could resume moving faster now -- faster in a relative sense, of course. Moving three inches at a time: twist ankles to the right, let the balls of your feet slide along the ground. Stand on tiptoes, swing your heels right to catch up. Repeat. Repeat.

Now that other thoughts were allowed to intrude, she admitted a fresh worry: If there was another narrowing of the shelf ahead, this time to a point impossible to pass, she would have to turn back -- and go through that terrifying section again. She wasn't sure she could make herself do it.

She allowed herself to start counting again. Her steps were, she thought, probably a little shorter now than when she had been knee-walking. Three inches might be an overestimate. After ninety-five of them, beyond the narrow patch, she felt the corner of the fence behind her back. She didn't let herself think it was over, or change her motion -- she was still just inches from falling into the creek, and celebration could kill her.

A few more steps, and the fence was gone. She felt around the corner with her fingers to make sure it wasn't just a missing section of boards. She could feel the right-angle turn the fence had made, to begin its run across the back of the yard.

A few more sideways shuffles and she was beyond the edge of the fence. She sat abruptly, her momentum rolling her onto her back with her feet in the air, not even considering what she might be sitting on, simply knowing that whatever it was, it probably wouldn't kill her. She took deep breaths, her mouth curling into a smile as relief cascaded through her body, her stomach unknotting. I did it! I did it! She wanted to shout it aloud. She had literally spent hours trying to move twenty feet from one side of Louris Creek to the other. The effort had occupied her entire world, been her one single goal in life during that time. And she'd done it!

And I'm sorry, Suzy! I shouldn't have doubted you! I was thinking you gave me too much to handle, but I did it!

Susan let her feet back down to the ground, and lay flat. So nice not to have to be in the Now, to have to clamp down on her thoughts. So nice to let them wander. To think about being warm, being fed, being watered. Though her eyes were doing her no good anyway, it felt nice to let them close...

NO!! She sat upright, breathing hard. You're not done! she screamed at herself. You almost fell asleep! You have no idea how near dawn it is, but you know it has to be close! You can't sleep, not even for a minute!

She felt for the fence with her left shoulder, turned her back to it, and began working on standing up. There was less pain in her calf muscle now, and that made it easier. But she knew knee-walking would bring the cramp back. She didn't know how she would find enough remaining strength in her legs, but she would have to push them to their limit and past it. She was going to have to hop the rest of the way home.

Still shivering from the cold, as she felt she must have been doing forever, she finished getting herself standing. The cold may actually help, she thought. I won't be sweating very much. I need to keep whatever water I have left.

With her right shoulder brushing the fence, she hopped forward tentatively. She leaned her head forward to feel for any tree she might be about to hop into. Finding none, she hopped again.

She did come up against two trees, and between them a bush, that she had to detour around, finding the fence again afterward each time.

She gasped. There was a slight glow in front of her. Now she could tell there were no trees in the way, allowing her to move faster. Hopping further forward, the glow brightened. She recognized it, at last, to be coming from one of the streetlamps shining into the side yard of the house.

The fence came to another corner, and turned right. Beyond it there was a small cleared area, the side yard. She retreated a short distance into the trees behind it, and hopped until the clearing ended. She turned then and hopped towards the street.