The island was full of new Chickens taken from Tweedy's new farm, and now there were so many it was becoming a little crowded, but Ginger wouldn't have it any other way.

No chicken deserved to have their heads cut off, never mind being diced and fried and dumped into a bucket thanks to Melissa Tweedy. While Ginger had been focusing a great deal on welcoming the newcomers to the island, she hadn't been able to take her eyes off of her daughter. Her Molly. And all the time, Ginger was regretting so many of her decisions since Molly had hatched out of her egg.

Ginger at the time would never have dismissed the plight of other chickens like she had when she and the others had seen those lorries carrying them across that new road to Tweedy's new farm. She would have gone over there, alone if she needed to, and she would have done whatever it took to free those chickens and damn the consequences.

But the moment Ginger had first laid eyes on her daughter as she hatched she had gone on a one-chicken rampage to make sure Molly was coddled so much she couldn't even breathe without her knowledge. Ginger hadn't wanted her daughter to know what life had been like before she and the chickens from Tweedy's farm arrived on the island, she hadn't wanted Molly to hear stories and go to bed in her own nest and suffer from nightmares of being forced to lay eggs and then losing her head just because her body had given up.

Ginger had become such a control freak she had gone out of her way to make sure nobody talked about their lives before coming to the island, but she knew now it had been a vain mistake.

Sooner or later someone would have talked, said something, made a thoughtless remark that Molly happened to overhear, or she would just simply travel to the mainland and find answers from there.

And that was what happened, but now Ginger knew her desire to keep her daughter safe had been a mistake and yet wasn't.

With a sigh, Ginger excused herself and she headed down to where Molly was. She was chatting with Frizzle - Ginger hoped she had the chance to get to know the young chicken, she had a feeling she would be Molly's version of Mac, who'd been Ginger's best friend for years - when they both noticed her.

"Hi, Mum," Molly said.

Ginger smiled. "Hi, Molly. Look, can we have a quick talk, in private?" She asked, looking between them hesitantly.

Knowing she couldn't put this off since she knew her mother had been waiting for a chance to talk, Molly sighed, looking at Frizzle briefly for a moment. "It's okay," Frizzle replied with a wave, and as she made her way off, Molly turned to her mother. She had known this meeting was going to come, sooner or later. They hadn't had much of a chance to talk for a while since Ginger had gone after her daughter before finding out Tweedy was at the new farm and was running it.

Mother and daughter headed down to the beach and they sat down where they could. Ginger took her daughter in, inwardly shaken and still horrified by the memory of seeing her in Tweedy's claw-like grip. Tweedy, unlike her husbands, was smart enough to see the similarities, and the scenario she hadn't wanted to play out, did. One of her oldest nightmares was Tweedy finding them somehow, and learning of Molly. Of taking her away, and forcing her into a farm to lay eggs or be pie meat, or anything else the sick human had in mind.

"Mum, I'm sorry," Molly apologised to break the awkward silence. "I should have listened, and I nearly got us all killed."

"No. Molly, it was all my fault," Ginger replied and looked out over the horizon, trying to see the fences of the farm she had grown up on, the farm she hated so much. "It was only a matter of time before you found out about the farms, Tweedy, and how humans eat us." Ginger sighed and shook her head, glancing at her daughter for a second before she decided to make her point. "You remind me of my mother, you know."

"I do?" Molly blinked in surprise. She had never heard of her grandparents.

Ginger nodded. "I was your age when she died," she went on, looking ahead but she saw how Molly started at the news. "I was born in a place completely the opposite of this island, Molly. There was no water surrounding us. There was no grass, not a single tree. All there was was a muddy wasteland walled off by tall fences and gates, and each of us was crammed into huts. We were fed with seed and we lay eggs night and day until our bodies just…gave up, and we couldn't lay anymore, and when that happened they would kill us, pluck our feathers, and then cook us to eat."

Molly had been listening to all of this with horror. "They did all that?" She whispered, her mind conjuring up scenes of terrified chickens, using the faces of her beloved aunts, before they had their heads cut off in the same way Tweedy had nearly killed her.

Ginger nodded. "Mum, my mum, tried to escape for years before she had me. Afterwards, she became more determined to get out. She didn't want me to grow up and have children in the same way she had," okay she knew she had never actually heard that coming from her mother's beak, but there was no doubt in her mind it was exactly what her mother would have thought on the day she was hatched, "Like you, I barely listened to her, and she worked hard to hide the horrors for a short time before she told me the full horror." Ginger stopped and closed her eyes; thinking about her mother always brought out unsettling memories of her past, a past she tried valiantly to keep hidden.

Molly bit her tongue, seeing how much pain her mother was in, "W-What happened?"

Ginger kept her eyes closed. "Mum stopped laying eggs," she said simply, and she tried to escape but the Tweedy's stopped her. They picked her up, and they -," She stopped, the memory was too vivid, too horrifying for her to describe.

Molly had already heard of the fate that befell the chickens who failed to lay eggs, but she was having a hard time picturing this one. "Mum," she tried to say, but she couldn't come out and say it.

Ginger sighed and opened her eyes, and turned to Molly. "They picked Mum up, but before they took her away, she quickly whispered to me 'This is not the life I want for you, Ginger; get out, be free,' and then they took her to the barn. The Tweedy's always cut off the heads of the chickens in a barn where an axe was kept. But before your grandmother died," she wondered if she was trying to detach herself from this, "she let out a long, plaintive, defiant squawk, which was cut short when Mrs Tweedy killed her."

Molly gasped, and Ginger went on. "My childhood died that day, Molly. I spent every day after that looking for a way out, and I vowed to take everyone out of the farm with me. It wasn't difficult getting one or two chickens out, but the plans wouldn't have worked without everyone. Nothing worked. We tried going through the fence and under it. But it wasn't until I saw a bird flying overhead, that I realised the answer had been flying in the air the whole time. The only way to get out was by flight, or going over the fence."

Molly listened silently, sensing her mother's coiled feelings that had been bottled up for so long coming to the surface, and she pictured herself in the same place. There was no way she would have just bowed her head and laid egg after egg before her body stopped.

"When I came up with the plan to free us by flying, I was let out of the coal bunker they kept me in whenever I tried to escape and I was caught I only had enough time to give Mac the plan to escape when she," Molly blinked at the venom in her mother's voice when she spat out the word and guessed rightly she was talking about Tweedy, "grabbed an old friend of mine, a chicken called Edwina. Like me, she wanted to escape desperately. She was like a cross between your Aunt Bunty and Aunt Babs. She was strong and determined and yet she could be innocent. She wanted to get out after seeing her mother die the same way mine did. I still don't know if it was because she was so focused on escaping, or if she had genuinely just forgotten about the egg collections and how they noted it down, or if she had just decided it was not going to happen. But whatever it was, she was killed on the same day I met your father.

"I heard a sound like thunder outside the hut after some of the others began debating whether or not we could escape, and even I began to lose my hope, when your father came flying overhead," Ginger went on.

Molly gaped. "Dad flew? He can fly? I didn't know he could fly!"

Ginger grinned at her. "He didn't. He'd been blasted out of a cannon, but I didn't know that because he soon realised if he told me the truth then it would break my heart," she told Molly gently.

"Aww," Molly's excitement fell before she brightened up again. "How did you get out?"

"It turned out your Uncle Fowler had the answer all the time, Molly," Ginger hoped her smile was covering her embarrassment for how long she and the others had just ignored Fowler's rants about the RAF and medals. "We used something he had to build a flying machine out of the huts we lived in, and we got out just in time before they put us in pies."

"Pies?" Molly repeated in horror.

"Mrs Tweedy was tired of collecting eggs, and she decided to just cut us up and sell us in pastry," Ginger hated how blasé she sounded. "But that was the start of using big schemes to get what she wanted. But the point is," Ginger closed her eyes for the moment, "when we got here…I just wanted us to forget the past; I even went as far as just put up fences with leaves to stop anyone from looking in, and I missed the fact I was like Tweedy," she added in disgust with herself.

"No, mum, you're not-!"

"Aren't I? I kept you all here, confined you to this island. Trapped you here….," Ginger sighed, "I love you, Molly, I cared about you too much. I was so wound up with memories and nightmares of that damn farm, I didn't ever want you to leave…and find yourself trapped like I was," she finished with a choked sob.

"And then I…I got away, and you came after me, oh mum I'm sorry," Molly tried to apologise, but Ginger wouldn't have it.

"No. You made me realise I was shielding you from the truth, and you also made me stop being frightened. Right now we've got a lot to do. There are other farms out there, and the chickens in them need to be freed, it will be like old times," Ginger grinned, wondering if Tweedy would realise what was happening when word got out the chickens were escaping.

But she ignored that, she had plans to make.

"Come on, Molly, we need to work out how to free the other chickens, wanna help?"

"Definitely, Mum!"