The Gift

Chapter 6

Wisty

The crumpled, quintuple-folded paper the old woman had forced into my hand is a map. She said she was a friend, right? Besides, what better plan do we have? So Whit and I follow the map.

The dotted line on the dirty, handwritten piece of parchment leads us through the south side of the city. So far, so safe and alive.

"I can't place her," I muse as we hike outside the city's perimeter toward a set of railroad tracks. "Was she… maybe one of Mom and Dad's friends?"

Whit shrugs. "Doesn't matter, does it? Any person willing to risk her life tackling a New Order policeman is a friend. A really good friend."

Whit rips down a NOTICE from a loudspeaker post near the track and tears it into shreds. "By the way, when did you become a 'leader of the Resistance'?" he asks with a chuckle and a glint of his baby blues.

"Hey, if The One says it's so…"

"Leave it to you to be launched into fame and fortune by a totalitarian thug."

"Shut up!" I start chasing him down the track, laughing in spite of myself. "You're just jealous!" And Whit starts pumping his arms into a sprint, back in football mode.

"No fair!" I call after him. He's bigger and older, and of course he can run faster. A lot faster.

For just a few minutes, we let ourselves be kids again. A brother and sister racing along the train tracks. Pretending that one of their best friends hadn't just been murdered, that they weren't on the run from half the world.

With a burst of enthusiasm, maybe even fun, we run those last few miles to our destination-a little brick building that appears on the map with an X and the instruction: GO THROUGH SIGNAL HUT.

"You have keys?" I yell to Whit, noting the chain and padlock on the door.

"You have spells?" he calls back.

Oh yeah-that's right. I'm a witch. And Whit's a wizard.

Sometimes it's hard to remember things like that when you're busy running for your life. But I do have spells-and they do seem to occasionally work on chains and padlocks.

And pretty soon we've actually escaped from the fiends of the N.O.

For the moment anyway.