Free The Burning Sword by Emily Williams

girls. As Faith went towards them she had to shoulder her way through the tightly packed group. Eventually, she saw what all the gasps and exclamations were about.
     
    Isabel was sat on the floor, clutching her ankle, her face white and strained. Her breath was coming in short, shallow gasps, but as she saw Faith , she attempted to give a weak smile. It wasn’t convincing.
     
    “What happened?” Faith asked, sinking down next to her. Martha had already run to get some bandages, and was trying to pries Isabel’s fingers away from her injured ankle so that she could try to patch her up.
     
    “I slipped,” Isabel replied, finally letting go of her ankle, and gasping in pain. “It was just me… me, being clumsy… didn’t see a… tree root.”
     
    “Oh, Isabel,” Faith sighed, taking hold of her friend’s hand. “It would be you, wouldn’t it?”
     
    Isabel let out a light laugh, but it turned into a shriek of pain as Martha wrapped her ankle up tightly, using what seemed to be a great deal of bandages.
     
    “Sorry,” Martha apologized, “but this will help.”
     
    It was a good job that Martha had practiced first aid, Faith realized, as she watched her best friend at work. As she sat there, looking at the scene- the pair of them, one in severe pain, the other trying to ease it, she reflected back over the night.
     
    It had been another of their nighttime activities. Faith had suggested that they practiced working as a team in difficult situations; they had been aiming to creep down to the base of the mountain, if they could. However, this was seriously flawed, as none of them had realized just how long this would take, perhaps rather naïvely.
     
    They had been exploring further and further each time, and were all now experts at stuffing their blankets with clothes to make it look as if they were still there. So far it had all gone smoothly, but Faith had known that it would only be a short amount of time before something went wrong. And now it had. How on earth they were going to explain Isabel suddenly having a broken ankle, Faith had no idea.
     
    Footsteps behind her didn’t worry her at all at first, until she heard a very familiar cough. Her head whipping round, she looked up to see Margaret, hurriedly dressed with her hair uncombed. This unkempt appearance was so different from the usual Margaret, who was-in her own words- a ‘beacon of immaculacy’ that Faith had to blink several times before she was completely convinced that it was indeed her.
     
    “What are you doing, Faith ?” Margaret asked, her voice dangerously steady.
     
    “Err, well,” Faith began, racking her brains for an idea. She saw all the worried faces of the girls behind her, even Eli looking anxious, and made a gesture for them to scatter. They did, quickly and silently.
     
    “Well?” Margaret inquired her foot tapping out an impatient beat upon the floor.
     
    “Well, Isabel and I were going to the, err, toilet.” It was the best she could come up with. “And Isabel slipped. Martha heard us, and brought some things to help with her foot.”
     
    “Martha heard you? Where was she?” Margaret asked.
     
    “In bed,” Faith replied, seconds before she realized that Martha’s hut was the other side of the village.
     
    “I see,” Margaret replied, very slowly. “Explain to me then, Faith , why all the other people I see around me decided to join you?”
     
    “What other people?” Faith asked innocently, looking behind Margaret in a pointed sort of way.
     
    Margaret turned. “I see they seem to have abandoned you,” she said. “But, as I checked in with most of their mothers before I came to see you, I’m sure they’ll have some explaining to do.”
     
    “I don’t know what you mean,” Faith replied, and she thought she’d done quite a convincing job.
     
    Margaret held out a bundle of Faith ’s own clothes, the very ones that she had used to stuff a girl shaped huddle under her bed covers a few