Free Stolen by Lucy Christopher

could see right down to the sand and weed at the bottom. I should have known there would be water at some point. Why else would all those trees be there? They certainly weren’t surviving on rain.
    I knelt at the edge and stuck a finger into the water, then gasped and took it back. The water was cold, ice-cold, almost. I wanted to jump in … jump straight in and drink it all up. But I just sat there, resting on my heels. I was so stupid. I was looking at all that water, dehydrating more every second, and not touching a drop. I didn’t know if I could drink it, you see. I didn’t know what was in it. All I could think about was a TV show where an explorer guy drank from a river and a tiny fish swam into his stomach and started eating his insides; then a doctor had to stick a long tube inside him to get it out. There were no doctors around that pool. And I didn’t want a tiny fish in my insides, so I gave up on the water idea. I stood up and walked around it, trying to find where the pipe came out the other side.
    But it didn’t. The pipe stopped in the pool, not leading anywhere else. I ran my hands through my hair as I glanced around. You were right, it seemed. There were no other buildings using that water supply.
    I tramped around the small clearing, looking for another way out, a way to get me to the other side of the boulders. There were two other pathways, but they were even narrower than the one I’d come in on, more overgrown, too. I stepped gingerly down the larger one. If I had been worried about snakes before, it was nothing compared to my thoughts about that path. The grass was up to my knees at points, and there were things moving and rustling around me. I thought I saw something in the rocks near my hands, something slithering away. Loudly buzzing flies were hovering around my head, too, being drawn to my sweat. I kept walking until that path turned into a dead end of rock and I had to turn back. I tried the second, smaller pathway, but that soon became too narrow.
    I went back to the main clearing, but the other paths out of that were no better, either. I just got more lost, tangled up in the maze of the Separates. I don’t know how long I spent trying to get out. It was hard to keep an idea of time in that place. It felt like forever. But one thing I did know, you hadn’t followed me. Not yet. I clung desperately to the hope that you thought I’d run somewhere else. I tried another, smaller path, squeezing myself flat to fit between the rocks. But when I came back to the main clearing yet again, I realized I was going around in circles.
    That’s when I finally woke up and had my idea.

     
    There was a tall, white-barked tree with thick branches growing against one of the boulders. I was glad of its strength as I swung myself up into it. I loved climbing trees when I was young, though I’d never done much of it. Mum was always too scared I’d fall out. It felt weird to be in a tree again, and I couldn’t work out where to put my feet at first. But I soon got the hang of it. I hugged the trunk and pulled myself up its bark, using the branches as steps. The only time I stopped was when I saw a small brown spider scuttle away in front of me. It was pure determination that made me keep going after that.
    It was annoying when I got to the top, though. There were branches and leaves everywhere, and I couldn’t see out. I took a deep breath, closed my mouth and eyes, and tried to sweep the branches aside. Things fell on me as I did. I didn’t want to know what they were so I brushed them off before I looked too closely, but it still felt like they were crawling on me. I could feel their legs in my hair. I clung to the uppermost branches and rested a foot against the rock face, dragging myself up it a little way.
    And then I looked out.
    I shielded my eyes. There was nothing but sand and flatness and horizon. I used the branches to turn myself around, grazing my leg a little on the rock. But there were