Free Zia by Scott O’Dell

that I do not speak words just to hear them." Again he drew a finger his throat.
    At the bottom of the hill, just as we were going through the gate into the Mission, he took my arm and pulled me aside. He waited until everyone had passed us and gone into the Mission.

    "Some asked about the locked doors," he said. "There are two, as you know. The door from the boys' quarters is locked. The door from the girls' quarters is also locked."
    He turned his back upon the Mission and faced me. "Wrap this in your shawl and show it to no one. I made it from the key the old lady carries around. I got it from her when she was asleep and made one like it. I have tried the key on both of the doors and it works."
    He laughed. "I should become a locksmith." With these words he put the key in my hand and I slipped my shawl over it. The key was heavy and awkward. I took it at once to my bed and hid it under the blankets.
    Before the bell rang for mass, I climbed into the belfry and looked off toward the west in the direction the boat had gone, thinking that something might have happened to cause them to return. But I saw nothing on the sea. The water was calm and the nearer islands of Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz stood up very clear against the sky.
    Beyond them, far out where it was sometimes stormy it was also calm. But I could not see the Island of the Blue Dolphins because it was too far away, perhaps because the world was shaped like an orange, like Stone Hands said.

    After mass Father Merced talked to us while we ate but many were not listening. They were thinking about what Stone Hands had said when we had come home from the fields.

Chapter 15
    S TONE H ANDS had chosen Sunday night because of the fiesta, but also because of the full moon, which would make traveling easier.

    It was a quiet fiesta. There were paper globes, which had colored candles in them, looped around the courtyard and three boys played guitars and one played a violin and everyone danced, even the old ones. It should have been a noisy fiesta but everyone was quiet, thinking his own thoughts.
    Stone Hands danced with me first.
    In the few months I had been at the Mission he had paid more attention to me than to any of the other girls. He brought me a flower sometimes, which he picked in the garden. No one else was allowed to pick flowers from the garden, except the padres. Sometimes he brought me a sweet from the kitchen, which he was not supposed to do either.

    But when we were in the fields or were dancing he said very little. Usually, he asked me where I had lived before I came to the Mission. He asked me this over and over. I guess he could not think of anything else to say. Sometimes I told him different stories.
    I did not want to get married. I was fourteen years old and the age when most of our girls got married, but I did not want to.
    Especially, I did not want to marry Gito Cruz. I did not like the way he talked or did not talk, or the way he made his mustache into a thin line, or the name he chose for himself, or the way he strutted around. There was nothing I liked about him at all.
    My friend Rosa said, "You will get used to his mustache."
    "Maybe to his mustache," I said, "but not to all the other things. Marry him yourself."
    "I would if he would ask me," Rosa said.
    As we danced that night, Stone Hands said, "You have told me about your aunt who may come back from the island. I understand how you feel. I understand that you would not wish to go away and have her come here and find no one she knows. I understand all these things. So I do not expect you to come with us tonight. Later, after one moon, I will send you a message and tell you where we are. Then you will come to us with your aunt. I will send you a map, which will tell where we hide."

    "I will think about what you have said," I replied, but I did not want a map, nor did I wish to know where they would hide.
    It was nearly the end of the fiesta and we were dancing gravely together, saying