Free Elemental by Antony John Page A

floor through all the debris.
    Finally I stood beside a doorway that looked eerily familiar: the shattered glass, the handle locked fast. Memories from the previous night flooded back. I ran my fingertips over the itchy scabs that dotted my forearms.
    I couldn’t go back into that building. Not yet.
    To the right of the door, something glinted. It was a small, tarnished metal sign, so faded I could barely read it. As I ran my hand across the surface, I felt the indentations of letters spelling out the word
clinic
. It was the same word that Guardian Lora had used.
    â€œThomas, look!” Dennis shouted. He stood in front of a gray building across the road from me. His arms were full.
    â€œWhat have you got?”
    â€œClothes. Lots of them.” He held them up. “Can you believe it? If only the Guardians had known about this place.”
    He was right. Fabric was always in short supply. When clothes were damaged, they were repaired, or the material was saved for future repairs. Rose was already expert at crafting new clothes from worn-out pieces of material that the Apprentices gave her. She also worked harder than any of us to make sure those clothes lasted. Nothing was thrown away.
    But if Lora knew about the clinic, how had she not realized there were clothes just across the road?
    â€œWhere’s Alice?” I asked.
    â€œShe’s gone. Showed me this place and then ran off.”
    Dennis hurried back inside. I didn’t want to return empty-handed, so I walked to the next building. It had no door at all, just a hole where one used to be. Inside, the walls were bloodred. Row upon row of shelves were piled high with objects I didn’t recognize, all of them broken. The floors were dusted with the crushed remains of colored glass bottles.
    I thought of Lora’s dead husband as I shuffled across the floor, first one foot, then the other. It felt firm, but I kept my weight behind me, just in case.
    In the far left corner, a plain white door had been left ajar. The handle had been destroyed. I figured that if someone was willing to break the door to get inside, I should take a look.
    It was a small storage area with a single narrow window high up the wall near the ceiling. But where the room outside was cluttered, here everything had been carefully organized into piles. There were plates and bowls of various sizes; small wooden boxes; even shoes. A container of metal knives, forks, and spoons caught my eye. There was more in there than we had possessed in our entire colony. The Guardians would be staggered by my discovery, if they ever got to see it.
    I threw a handful of cutlery into my bag and kept looking. On the shelf above was a row of dusty water canisters. I added them too.
    There was a small black object on the next shelf. I couldn’t see it clearly, so I tried to turn it over. Before I’d even lifted it, it made a sound—a low buzzing that made me step back. It rolled onto the floor and broke into several pieces.
    I nudged the scattered pieces with my shoe. They were tiny, in shapes I’d never seen before. I wanted to inspect them, but the sun was setting and I could barely see anymore.
    I raised my arm and ran my hand across the top shelf. Dust coated my fingers. Halfway along, I brushed against several round, smooth objects. I held one up to the window. There, in the waning light, I saw a piece of smooth red glass, attached to a strip of leather. It was identical to the one that Eleanor had been wearing around her neck for as long as I could remember.
    Did Eleanor know about this room?
    I remembered Alice calling the object a pendant. I dropped it in my pocket to show her later.
    I stepped out of the room and retraced my path through the building. Outside, my thoughts returned to the pirates. I sprinted back to the shelter.
    Alice arrived at the same time as I did, and we joined the others in a circle on the grassy area beside the shelter, away from prying eyes on