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Tally had never really exarapher Yes, it was the first work she’d gotten in Seattle, but why babies and toddlers? Why leggy little girls and wide-eyed boys torn between childhood and adolescent?

And with the gli the horizon Tally realized it wasn’t by accident She photographed the faces of children to learn her own

There’d been no real childhood for her No tie in play No fantasy and fancy, no dress up, no costuy—where would the money come from, honey? Besides we need you here

A lump filled Tally’s throat but she didn’t dwell on the emotion, not when the horizon seemed to turn black before her very eyes

Justsand but it wasn’t

Her steps faltered With her heart in her throat she realized she alking straight into a sandstorm

CHAPTER FOUR

TALLYturned, looked behind her, wondering where she could go, how she could protect herself But there was nowhere to go And as she watched, the cloud and wind of sand grew, stretching froe and brown The pale sun disappeared and the afternoon grew ominously still

Goose bumps covered Tally’s arer, felt the heaviness in the sky, the weighty silence of i like a sci-fi monster come to life

There was no sound anywhere No sound of anything but the stillness of the desert and yet to Tally it was like a roar, a screa her arainst her skin as the blackness sailed toward her

I’ to perish here This is where it ends And I don’t even have my camera

She tried to laugh at her feeble huh was a hiccup and her gaze clung sickeningly to the huge black whirling wall of sand very nearly on her now

This is it This is all This is how it ends

And then fro hooves and turning Tally saw a blur of horse andblack horse raced toward her, leaning low on his stallion’s back and with one ar her onto his saddle in front of hirab her, or settle her Instead he pushed her low against the horse’s neck and he dropped his body over hers urging his stallion on, and they were running for their lives, running against sand and storeful desert wind

They were riding toward a rock that protruded fro Tally had seen only froht twice about but now that they were closer she could see crevices in the rock, openings like little caves and Tair rode there now The wind storan to bite at their skin, sharp cuts and stings and Tally covered herthe sand in