Page 60 of Thornlight

“My name is Thorn,” she growled, yanking her arm back.

“And mine’s Zino. Thank you for helping us out. It’s awfully kind.”

With a smirk, he dashed away to crouch behind a cluster of boulders.

Brier licked her dry lips. Pale figures shifted, flanking her.She glanced behind her and found a dozen children, hiding and waiting in the rocks. The four unicorns ducked low to cloak their flashing horns.

Brier looked back down the mountain.

Three harvesters were climbing up the slope. No unicorns accompanied them. Judging by the sunlight, it was around midday. Lunchtime. Their unicorns would have run off on their own for a while, to stretch the bonds to their riders as far as they could go.

Another snowbird whistle.

Zino peered out from behind a boulder. Beside him, a second stormwitch held Mazby. Zino mimed the action of plucking a feather from Mazby’s wing.

Brier could hardly swallow. Her mind raced for a solution, but nothing was coming to her, and... what was astormwitch, anyway? Noro had only ever talked about ordinary witches. And had Zino really done something to ease the burn on her chest? Andwouldit return if she disobeyed them?

If she cooperated, could Zino heal the burn entirely?

Her stomach pitching, Brier clutched her leg and waved.

“Help!” she cried. “Please, help me! Over here!”

The harvesters whirled around to search the slope.

One of them cursed. “Thorn?”

Brier’s throat constricted. She recognized that voice. That was Farver Pickery, and now she could see the two others were Gert Goldfuss and Eldon Pye.

“I’ve hurt my leg,” she called out. “I... I can’t walk!”

Immediately Farver, Gert, and Eldon hurried up the slope.

“Don’t move!” Farver called out, already huffing and puffing. Really, he was too old to be hiking up into the mountains every day, but Queen Celestyna wouldn’t allow her harvesters to retire, not with the eldisk stores so low and the skies so quiet.

Stop spiraling,Brier scolded herself.Focus.

Farver and the others were running toward her across the clearing, and if she just had a bit more time to think—

Then, to Brier’s right, a furious series of squawks exploded.

Brier spun around just as Mazby shot up into the air, his bindings dropping to the ground. He’d sliced himself loose, bitten and clawed right through the twine. Chirping and shrieking, he zoomed around the clearing, tugging at the stormwitches’ hair with his talons, evading the unicorns as they swiped their horns.

Brier dashed across the clearing. Her healing chest pinched with each breath.

“Run!” she cried.“Go!”

She grabbed the astonished Farver Pickery’s hand and raced with her friends down the mountain.

They couldn’t run long; Farver’s breath turned thin, and Brier’s squeezed out of her lungs in sharp little bursts.

She imagined a horrible vision: the burn on her chest darkening, and spreading, even meaner and hotter than it had once been. It would bleed across her torso and down her limbs and around her skull until she was a charred crisp of a girl, glittering and black.

“There!” Gert Goldfuss gestured at a nearby hill spotted with patchy green grass, where one of the harvester’s huts stood. “Inside!”

Three of the hut’s walls were made of the mountain itself. The fourth was a jumble of stones, patched together to resemble a natural formation.

Eldon Pye wrenched open the door, Brier and the others close behind. Dry and plain, the hut contained two narrow beds, a tiny stove, bundles of firewood, and a few sealed crates of goods, in case a harvester got stuck during a snowstorm.

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