Free The Ever Breath by Julianna Baggott Page A

can sneak into the hut and find the hole and go back to Swelda’s.”
    But Praddle wasn’t paying attention. She climbed up Truman’s arm and sat tall on his shoulder.
    “Praddle,” he said. “Are you listening? This city’s too big. We’ll never find the boy in the snow globe.”
    Praddle mewled.
    “What is it?”
    She pointed into the crowded streets.
    “What is it?” Truman said again.
    “Mewl-mewl!” she cried.
    And then Truman spotted it too. A blue woolen hat on a man’s head. An ugly blue woolen hat that could have been knit by mewlers. Truman raced into the crowd, against the flow of traffic. He dipped down, dodging in and out among people and their big woven baskets. He kept an eye on the hat. It bobbed along through the crowd.
    Truman knocked into someone’s basket.
    “Watch out!” a well-dressed fawn bleated, trying to regain his balance on his hooves.
    “Sorry,” Truman said.
    At one point, Truman got down on his knees and, clutchingthe snow globe in one arm, slipped behind the stalls to try to gain on the man in the hat. But he was blocked by an ogre.
    “Get out of here!” the ogre yelled. “Are you some kind of thief?”
    “No, no!” Truman said. “I’m not a thief!”
    The ogre reached out to grab Truman but he dipped down and crawled back out into the street.
    He hopped up and down to see the hat in the sea of creatures. He caught glimpses of one odd creature after another. They were a blur of claws, hands, horns, pudgy noses and snouts, feathers, and furry forearms. It was like a dream, but the kind of dream that seems like a stranger but almost truer version of home.
    Praddle pointed again. “Mewl!”
    Truman saw the tip of the hat—just the faintest bit of blue. The man had stopped. He was standing under a sign that read EDWELL ’ S HOPS AND CHOPS HOUSE. He was gazing through the plate glass window.
    “Hurrry,” Praddle purred urgently.
    Truman hid down the alley next to a store called Idgit’s Inkhorn and Plume Shop. “What will I say?
Where did you get that hat?
I don’t know what the hat even means.” Truman peered around the corner at the man in the blue hat, getting a good look at him for the first time. “Wait,” Truman said. “I know that man!”
    It was the man who’d been stabbed in the first scene that Truman had seen in his snow globe—the man on the ground, blood spreading across his white shirt. But his shirt was white now, not stained at all. He was fine.
    Truman looked at the snow globe. “Does it make things up?” Truman asked Praddle. “How does it work?”
    “Futurrre, passst, presssent. They’rrre all ssswirrrled, like sssnow.”
    Truman stared at Praddle and then at the snow globe. “If it was telling the future, then I might be able to save him.” He paused. “Who is he, Praddle?”
    “He’sss one of usss.”
    Truman decided to take another look. He moved one step beyond the corner of the building and heard a sharp squeak.
    “Hey, there! Watch it, you giant galumph!”
    Truman looked down and saw a mouse wearing a red vest and a plaid scarf. The mouse had a rolled-up piece of paper in his fist, and he shook it at Truman.
    Praddle bared her teeth.
    “Sorry,” Truman said, retreating to his spot in the alley, with his back against the wall.
    “You should all be shrunk! Oversized idiots,” the mouse muttered, and then scurried on.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Magical Afflictions
    Swelda ushered Camille toward the front door. They both stepped over a chunk of plaster that had fallen from the ceiling and lay in a dusty heap. “Oh my!” she said under her breath. “It’s beginning to self-destruct!”
    “What’s self-destructing?” Camille asked.
    Swelda didn’t answer. “Here’s a sack lunch,” she said. She turned Camille around, unzipped her backpack, and stuck a brown paper bag inside. “Keep track of the snow globe, of course. It will be of great use!”
    Camille was still a little dazed. “I saw Truman inside it.”
    “What was he