Free 0062104292 (8UP) by Anne Nesbet Page B

monsters! Why’d they hit you that way?”
    There was no why, though. She had never heard of people like that, who would hurt someone for what as far as she could tell was no reason at all.
    “Linny, we’ve got to go,” he said, and she knew what he meant. They needed to be farther away from people who would do something like this to a person. Plus there was Sayra, back home, fading. They couldn’t let the gray people slow them down this way.
    “Come on, then,” she said. “I’ll hide us up this slope. Can you walk?”
    Elias nodded, and he shook a foot to show Linny his legs were fine.
    “Okay,” said Linny. “Follow me. I’ll get us lost from them.”
    That was another thing about Linny’s talent: she could find places other people would lose themselves looking for. It came in handy, if you were a person whose criminal lourka-making career called for a lot of hiding from other, possibly angry people. She sought out the crinkly places in the woods, and by the time she said, “All right—here!” and dropped to the ground in a hollow just large enough for a couple of kids about their size, Elias was looking as pale as she had probably looked the day before.
    “You all right?” she said. “That was awful.”
    Elias shook his head, not at Linny, but like someone trying to remember how to think.
    “Don’t worry. They won’t find us here, not right away,” she said, more confidently than she really felt. “There’s something wrong with them all. They couldn’t run up this hill if they tried.”
    “C-catching my breath,” he said. “Then we can go.”
    “I’m not going back to Lourka, you know,” said Linny.
    “I know,” said Elias, still breathing hard. “Neither am I. Don’t you see? Those gray people were looking for us—I mean, for Lourka. They kept talking about lost towns and lost villages, and it was the ones tucked up into the hills that they meant. We can’t be accidentally leading them there. I’d better come along with you.”
    She was startled, and then, to her surprise, actually a little tiny bit glad.
    “You mean, you want to come downhill with me? To the Broken City with all the different names?”
    “Anyway, I should have offered to come with you right away. Ma would be furious with me for even thinking about leaving you alone.”
    “Why?” said Linny. “I’m fine on my own.”
    “It’s too dangerous. Those people in gray! You’re going down all alone to a whole city filled with nasty people like that? No. Not by yourself. No way.”
    That was Elias all over, yes? Linny had just set a whole camp on fire to rescue him from evil people in gray, and now he was saying she needed him to protect her!
    “I can take care of myself,” she said.
    “Until you hit your head on a rock or need to eat,” said Elias.
    Oh, right. That.
    But it was time for them to get farther away from those people in gray.
    “All right, then,” said Linny. “Rest for five minutes. I’ll just scoot over to the campsite for our bundles. Be a shame to lose our nice cookpot. Then we’ll go.”
    Elias looked a lot better when she came back—especially when he saw his lourka bouncing against her back next to hers. (Oh, come on! Did he really think Linny would have left a lourka behind in the woods? Lummox!)
    “I’ve figured out how to go,” said Linny. It wasshowing off, a little, but she couldn’t help it. “We’ll angle over to the next valley, soon as the ridge lets us, and walk down to the Plain from there. That way we’ll keep a little more distance between us and those awful people. The trick is to keep moving.”
    And so they set off together down out of the hills. It was walking away from Away, Linny knew, and that meant leaving Sayra farther behind, and that was hard. But it was going away in order to come back again, which is not the same thing as going away forever. She couldn’t risk being gobbled up by Away herself before she had that medicine for Sayra safely in her hands.