Free Sky Jumpers Book 2 by Peggy Eddleman Page A

with sand?”
    Luke nodded. “People can do some pretty amazing things when they work together.”
    We stopped our horses right before we reached the gate. Two guards stood at the top of the tall wall on either side. “State your business,” one called down.
    Mr. Williams slid off the trailer’s bench and landed on the ground, grabbed the reins from the two horses, and walked them forward. “We’re here from White Rock. We’re stopping to buy feed for our horses on our way to Heaven’s Reach.”
    The guard motioned to someone behind the gate, and after a minute, one side of the gate opened, and two more guards stood just inside it. The closest one, a burly man with short hair, spoke. “We have a strict ‘no guns’ policy.” He motioned to the guard standing next to him, who held a big wooden box. “We’ll return them when you leave. Stay on the main roads, don’t start any fights, and don’t cause trouble, or you’ll be banned.”
    “We won’t,” Mr. Williams said to the man, then turnedto our group. “You heard him—give him your gun as you enter.” He took off his gun and holster, placed them into the box, then tipped his head to the guard and rode in.
    Brock and I steered Ruben as close to the glass wall as possible while we rode in. The surface in places was as smooth as the glass back home, but in other places, it was grainy—as if sand was stuck in it. On one whole section to our right, there appeared to be more sand than glass. I wanted to jump off my horse and run forward to touch it.
    Brock gasped next to me, then pointed at a thick part of the wall that had something in it. “Look!”
    It took a minute to figure out what I was seeing. Something big and dark was encased in the glass itself, similar to a stick in the river getting frozen in the ice during winter. “It’s the scoop part of one of those tractors they had before the bombs!”
    “And over there—a metal wheel!” Aaren said, pointing to another part of the glass wall. “Like the ones cars used to have.”
    “Stay with us,” Mr. Williams called back, and we galloped to catch up with the group.
    From what I could tell, Glacier City was more or less circle-shaped. The glass was shortest in the front part where we came in, and highest in the back. It was probably thirty feet high there, and curved inward, so it made abit of a roof over the back part. A tall wooden wall divided the front half of the city from the back half. There was a road to our left, bordered with buildings. A man with a navy vest stood in the middle of the road, directing us to continue on the road in front of us.
    We rode ahead to catch up with Luke, our horses’ hooves clomping on the packed sand.
    “What’s down there?” Brock asked as he pointed toward the road the guard blocked.
    “Work areas for their town,” Luke said. “That entire road is off-limits to visitors. These shops,” he said as he gestured to tables under wooden roofs on either side of the road we traveled on, “are run by people who come here to make trades.” He jerked his head toward a shopkeeper sitting next to a table covered with a bluish cloth. The man’s yellow teeth showed between his wiry mustache and beard as he called out to us about some jewelry he had for sale. “None of these people live here, except maybe in the hotel. But when the road turns left up there, you’ll see the shops run by the people of Glacier. That’s where the feed store is.”
    I tried to see everything, but there was so much, and the voices from the shopkeepers all mixed together. There were relics from before the bombs, metal bent into strange shapes, clothing, different-colored liquids that came inlittle jars, and trinkets that were intricate enough they must’ve been from before the bombs. I wished I wasn’t on a horse so I could look more closely.
    We rounded the corner onto a long, wide road lined with shops. Real shops. There were some that were the same as the merchant shops we had in