Free 0062104292 (8UP) by Anne Nesbet Page A

darkened a little.
    The wick was almost out, and the twig she was also holding to it was slow to take, too. And then the twig stopped resisting and let a bead of fire take it, and the tiny dark spot began finally to spread and to smoke, and Linny set up the twig next to another patch of tent and flung herself back into the relative safety of the woods.
    Just at that moment, the voices of those gray people seemed to rise into a louder argument, and in the middle of that tangle of voices, Elias shouted out, sharply and wordlessly, like someone who has just been hurt. The woman said something angry. Others did as well. And Linny felt the icy thrill of horror dance along the bones of her back.
    She had taken too long!
    She was racing back through the woods as she thought this, and she was no longer quite as quiet as she had beenearlier. What were they doing to him? Who were these horrible gray people?
    Whoever they were, they were still arguing among themselves, that was for sure, arguing and coughing. Linny kept an ear on those voices as she made her way back through the trees. She was close enough now that she thought she could pick out another sound, too—Elias’s breathing, the way you breathe when you’ve been hit. He’d better not be badly hurt, or her plan— if you could call it a plan at all! —went bust.
    And then the voices changed tone completely, from anger to alarm.
    “Hey! What’s that?”
    “You must have knocked the blasted stove over!”
    “That’s my tent!”
    Linny smiled grimly to herself. They were scattering now, she could hear, back to the camp, at the lurching pace of people whose lungs are misbehaving. She peeked through the leaves—yes, there was Elias, still kneeling on the ground and left behind for the moment. He was dazed, but he had wiggled his feet out of those loops, and now he was struggling with the ropes around his wrists. Good.
    “Hey, pssst , Elias,” said Linny, coming out from behind her tree. “Quick, while they’re busy.”
    The expression on his face—well, Linny just wishedshe had the talent for making pictures that Sayra had. She would have loved a picture of Elias’s face as she grabbed his arm and dragged him back into the woods, away from the burning tent and the commotion and the noise.
    Thank goodness the gray people hadn’t hurt his legs, whatever they had done. Thank goodness they had been a little careless with their knots. He moved along fast beside her, for once not being bossy or complaining or saying much of anything, just desperate to get away.
    “Across the creek,” said Linny. “Here, quick, before they figure this out.”
    She had to help him with the creek. It’s hard jumping from stone to stone when your arms are still tied behind your back. But Linny steadied him, and they made it without too much loud splashing or inconvenient drowning.
    “Good, good, good,” said Linny, once they were safely back in the woods on the far side of the creek. Then it was really time to get the remaining ropes off him, as hard as it was to stand still, sawing away at ropes, when you knew gray people might be coming after you any minute.
    “Quick, quick, can’t you do that any faster?” said Elias—first full sentence out of his mouth. (Not “Thank you, brave Linnet,” you’ll notice.)
    “Want to do it yourself?” she said, stepping back for a second. “They did a better job with these.”
    Elias made a desperate squawk-like sound, and even Linny wasn’t going to waste more than a second on making Elias pay, not now. The ropes gave way, strand by strand, and soon enough she was pulling them loose and Elias rubbing his wrists and obviously trying not to cry. Under ordinary circumstances, Linny would have felt obliged to make a sarcastic remark or two, but his hands were scarily white and there were angry marks on his wrists where the ropes had been. Not to mention that flushed print of a hand on his cheek.
    “Why’d they do that?” said Linny. “Gray