Read Online Stolen by Lucy Christopher - Free Book Online Page B

larger water system, that it would lead me to another building on the other side.
    I heard a thud from over near the outbuildings and made a quick decision. I would follow the pipe.
    The path was rocky and uneven, getting narrower all the time. But it was cooler in there straightaway, as if the cool was radiating off the stone itself. My eyes took a moment to adjust to the shadowy light from the boulders towering above. The path became so narrow I had to walk with one foot on either side of the pipe. Soon the rock sides felt like they were starting to close in on me, pressing me like a flower. I stretched my arms out and laid my palms on the cool, dry stone, as if pushing it back. I tripped over the pipe as I hurried, using my hands to steady myself. The path got narrower still but I could see light at the end. Was it the other side already?
    Another few feet and I got there. But it wasn’t the end. Instead the path opened into a clearing. The light was brighter but greenish, filtered through vegetation. I stopped. The clearing was the size of a large room, but with thick bushes and trees around the edge, some growing up the rock sides and spreading out above. There were other pathways, too, leading deeper into the rocks. It was so different from the stark openness on the other side, a different environment entirely. It was the first real bit of green I’d seen for ages.
    I took a few steps to the middle of the clearing. The pipe curved around to the right and down one of the larger pathways. There were some cages just before it. The chickens! When I walked toward them, they started clucking. I knelt and looked through the wire. There were six, scrawny like rags. There was another cage next to them with a rooster inside. I stuck my finger through the wire and stroked his black tail feathers.
    “Poor feller,” I murmured.
    I pulled the lid of the hens’ cage until it swung open. I stuck my hand inside and felt for eggs, thinking I could take them with me before I disappeared. But there were none. I wondered about setting the birds free, but I didn’t want them to come clucking back to you and show you where I’d gone.
    There was a thick patch of vegetation behind the chickens’ cages. Strange yellowish berries hung from some of the branches, and small apple-shaped lumps peeked out from deep in the undergrowth.
    I glanced back down the narrow path. I was taking too long. You could catch up to me any moment. So I left the chickens. The quicker I could get through the clearing, the better.
    I followed the pipe. The path it went down was wider and flatter than the last, and I had to step through several patches of thick grass. I wondered about snakes. What would I do if I saw one? I saw a movie once where a man tied rope around his arm above a snakebite, but he tied it so tightly that later he had to have his arm amputated. I tried to push that thought out of my mind; it wasn’t exactly helpful right then. I kept going, hoping I was traveling in the right direction. It seemed like I was walking in a straight line toward the other side. The sun was above me, beating down strongly, but it wasn’t the same kind of stifling heat as near the house. The vegetation was getting thicker. Inside those boulders, it wasn’t like the desert at all. I hadn’t walked far before the path opened up into another clearing. It was smaller than the last and even denser with plants. I followed the pipe through the middle.
    The pool was so closely screened by foliage that I almost walked straight into it. Instead, the thick arm of a tree caught me just in time.
    Rock overhung the pool, sheltering it from the sun. There was a cave at the back, just above the water, with moss growing around the entrance. That dark hole could have been hiding anything. Snakes, crocodiles … bodies. I shivered.
    I clung to the tree arm and stared out, faintly listening to the birds chattering somewhere above. The water was deep and dark, but it wasn’t murky. I