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She’d be in serious trouble when they found she was gone So she’d have to prove herself big She couldn’t fail

Tracker stuck to her He could smell adventure He wanted desperately to co for the Lanes

She woke Bean She slipped a rope bridle on hi junkyard Shethe silent ways Tracker saw the nose to tail tip with desire

Once she was outside the gates, she paused for aGood They’d left a clear trail for her to follow With sure hands, she guided Bean along it

She was learning fro her days with the, but there was so much she didn’t understand She needed to find her teacher With all theAuriel, surely, surely she’d come soon She was the only one who could help her

The first starfall of the night caught her eye Burning bright, soent business Orto her the quickest way possible Hitching a ride on a shooting star Streaking across the sky to land in New Eden in a perfect dazzle star No one Not even the Pathfinder or the Tonton

We leave the horses in a mossy dell an h the trees, my whole body’s tuned fer any whisper of Jack The skin an the blood an the bones of me listen To the creak of a branch The pass of a breeze The sigh of the ground unnerfoot Is he nearby? Is the heartstone slightly warm? No, jest wishful thinkin

All the way here, I kept two bark rolls curled in it the chance to send Nero with ’eot scratched on it is X Which otta axe our h River Gorge in Sector Six It’s our closest ht Lanes A V aves in the botto Full sun directly overhead But Nero never touched down He kept to the sky I couldn’t call him to ang is doin To hear that everythin’s rollin out fast like it needs to It ain’t that I don’t trust hi, he won’t blow no chances So I do trust him an I believe, truly, that this is the only e can possibly win, but …

But This whole thing sits uneasy inSo uns The fact is, we live in a sticks an stones world It’s the only way that any of us knows I fear that if we coer an that’ll be it Endgaht sky above the treetops He lofts an banks an scoops the chill winds, always circlin back to keep track of us

Saba! hisses Lugh

We bin halted by a fierce corral of barbwire It heh, weak fence The worst kind Impossible to clih would be to cut our way

Lugh’s scopin the place with the long-looker Guards, he ers In a moment, two Tonton come into view They approach froot a armoured boar-hound strainin on a short chain leash They pass each other with a nod an continue around Me an the boys look at each other Their eyes a white gleaittin in there Fence, guards, an dogs bred to kill with snap-trap jaws We’re stuck on this side

Follow the fence along, I says Check it out Meet back here Don’t let theht into leafy darkness an To the centre bit, back an forth, takin in the lie of the main buildins, the sheds, workshops, little barns an so on It’s tidy an clean an well-kept The kids livin here--every single one of ’em stolen from their families--they’re set to be Stewards of the Earth at fourteen This is where they learn to not remember who they come from Where they learn to believe their only family is the Earth, that the Pathfinder has chosen them to heal her Where the stream of who they are is stemmed to carve another channel An who they were dies to a trickle, then dries to dust

Here, they’re learned the kinda things Pa learned us How to build an row An all the other day-to-day you need to know to git along There’s a junkbarn half built The silent glearound set aside fer crops I wonder if they’re usin any seed from the seedstore or if DeMalo’s savin it all fer the tide of nureat maps Pushin outwards frohta be usin these woods fer a forest garden, but they’d never be able to keep tabs on the kids Blink an they’d be lost to the shadows

Gawdamnmit, Jack, where are you? My skin bristles, waitin fer the sound of a nightpip If he caht now, I could hotfoot it, have a quick ith hiht behind a tree an stare through the fence at the quiet dark of Edenhoone froive the body of her dead child to be burnt Her older girl, Nell, the ten-year-old stolen by the Tonton, she ht be asleep inside one of these huts I remember sayin to the woman, to Ruth--that’s her name--I told her that wherever Nell was, she was bound to be watchin an thinkin an plannin how to git away How to git back to her faht

C’mon, Jack, c’mon, c’mon Where are you?

Suddenly, I sht Where is he? Where? I flatten myself deep to the tree, not breathin Then I’inst a juniper That’s the scent of DeMalo’s shirt, his skin I found sprigs of it in the chest where he keeps his clothes I crush a needly twig The cool dark smell fills me But no warh first, then Toht Hoe git these kids outta Edenhoonna be a harder nut to crack than stealin babies or slippin Skeet into a slave gang The setup here, with the fence an the dogs an the guards, it gives us a whole different problem to solve An not ht

Fer noe need to go The chill wind’s bin blowin in our favour all night but now it’s restless, twitchy, on the change I don’t fancy our chances with them boarhounds if they catch our smell We turn around an start to head back to the horses Once we’re at the Lanes, we’ll talk it through Lugh’s good at unpickin couard duty above the woods all this time He suddenly dives Disappears into the trees A few htpip My heart juh ticks his head towards the sound It comes from forty or so foot to the left of us The heartstone’s faintly warn to Tohtpip callin in the dark ain’t nuthin untowards Nuthin to give rise to second thoughts