Free 0062104292 (8UP) by Anne Nesbet

very close again to get a good look. There was a small metal stove with a pot on it, bubbling slightly. She had never seen a stove like that. They had set up a lightweight table between their tents, she saw. It held a big piece of paper, attached to a board. If it was meant to be a picture, it was a funny one, that was for sure—all squiggles and flowing lines and numbers. What kind of a picture was that?
    But then even as she squinted squinted squinted at it, a bunch of little loose pieces clicked into place in her brain, and she almost crowed aloud in triumph (but remembered in time where she was).
    That line there !That was the creek running down from the hills. That was the very creek she had come sneaking across, just a little while ago. She was absolutelysure of it, even though on the paper it was no more than wavy lines and numbers. She could see how the drawing of the creek bent, and she remembered the real creek bending, just in that way.
    “It’s the map ,” she said to herself, remembering how important and mysterious the word had sounded in her mother’s mouth. A map was a picture of a place.
    Meanwhile the awful man had ducked down into one of the tents. He came out a moment later with—was that a pencil? Yes. A pencil and a bunch of metal tools, though not the kind of tools you make lourkas with. Then he came over in Linny’s direction to the table with the map on it, which he stopped to study for a moment, reading the secrets of those squiggles. Linny was so close she could see the veins on the backs of his hands. Way too close, that meant! She had been too eager to see what he was up to.
    Her tree was only about ten feet from him. It wasn’t the very best tree, either, despite the handy leafiness of the branch she was spying through now; she was pretty sure anyone who looked really closely would see her curious eyes burning through those leaves. Gazes leave little marks, like tiny insect bites, on the backs of people’s necks. Sometimes a person will twitch if you stare too hard, or even scratch a gaze mark with an absent-minded hand—and then catch himself scratching, and figureout what’s up, and turn. Linny knew that from experience, and that mere thought was enough to put a nervous little tickle in her throat. She willed herself as still as a tree trunk, she willed the welling-up cough away, she closed her eyes to keep them from biting, and she held her breath, which she knew she could do for longer than most people, though not forever.
    It worked. Footsteps, heading away. He had left, with the map on its board in his hands. He left another roll of paper behind on the table, though. Aha, thought Linny. She was beginning to see the shape of a possible plan.
    She was careful to wait until he rejoined the group on the far side of the clearing, because people’s eyes will travel toward someone walking and might catch an accidental glimpse of someone, even a small-sized, cautious someone, sneaking about in the background. But when the awful man started talking to the group, and all the gray people’s attention clumped around the sheet of paper on the board, Linny made her move.
    Staying very low, she slipped over behind the table, used a quick hand to filch the roll of paper there, and faded immediately behind a tent, where she tore a strip of the paper off, twisted it a few times to made a wick, and then crept over to the stove to light it. All that was easy-peasy, for someone as practiced in wickedness as Linnet. The part she wasn’t sure about was the next bit, becausethat depended on the material those tents were made of. Most kinds of cloth will burn, but some take longer to get going than others. She took her little flame behind the far tent and went to work on its corner, using one hand to scrabble up some dry grass and a stray twig as backup for her paper.
    Burn, burn, burn, burn! she told the patch of fabric being licked by that tiny little tongue of flame. Burn, oh, please burn!
    It