BreadCrumb Trail (The Yellow Hoods, #2): Steampunk meets Fairy Tale Read Online Free PDF Page B

years, Pierre had run across more than a dozen people lost in the forest. He’d helped many, but he’d always looked down on them as weak and ignorant. If they just had common sense, he’d told himself, they could’ve gotten out of the forest or the trap or whatever, on their own. Now he realized in his own desperate moment that common sense didn’t come easy amidst fear and panic.
    Just as the dire lynx was close enough to leap at him, it stopped. Still running, Pierre glanced over his shoulder, confused. He spotted three billowing sails coming his way.
    Then his right foot touched the lake ice. His frantic, heavy gait betrayed him. In the blink of an eye, he was under the ice-cold water. The chill was penetrating. His limbs wanted to stop moving. He knew he should calm down, but he couldn’t. He saw shadows, up above, fading away. 
    The frigid water bit at his skin, and his clothes resisted his attempts to remove them. He was getting tired of holding on. This was nature’s true justice: the hunter, now the hunted. He would die a fool’s death—nothing noble, nothing selfless, just a simple, stupid, avoidable death.
    Elly chiseled away at the ice like a young woman possessed, having already dealt with the now-unconscious dire lynx. “Why have you stopped, Tee? He’s going to die !”
    Standing up, shock-stick in hand, Tee looked around. “I…” she started, unsure of what to say. When she’d faced down LeLoup months ago, it was the first time she’d felt the sweep of calm in a moment of crisis. An idea was bubbling its way up, getting clearer as it surfaced.
    Tee sprang into action. “Richy! Help me get my sail-cart over there!” said Tee, pointing to a spot near the shore.
    “Why?” said Elly. “Never mind—you’re thinking of the mini-crossbows, right?”
    “Right,” said Tee, imagining how everything would need to play out. “They’re the best chance we have of punching through the ice!”
    “That’s brilliant! It might kill him, but it’s brilliant,” said Richy.
    “The brilliant part is if we can haul him up,” said Tee, rolling some snow to put under the sail-cart so it’d be in the position she needed.
    A minute later, they had the sail-cart propped up on the shore and everyone in position. Tee got on all fours and looked at the angle. Satisfied with the sail-cart’s orientation, she stood up, backed away, and gave Richy the nod.
    Richy, in the sail-cart’s pilot seat, pulled the extra lever only present in Tee’s sail-cart. Five mini-crossbow bolts shot out of the front of the sail-cart and pierced into the frozen surface of the lake in a thunderous crash of ice. 
    “Woohoo! They went through!” yelled Richy, punching the air. He then quickly raised the sail-cart’s telescoping mast and sail, anticipating the next step in Tee’s plan.
    Elly ran to the smashed ice and started removing chunks. Tee pushed the sail-cart slowly onto the lake’s frozen surface, hoping to avoid breaking through the ice. For her plan to work, they would need the full benefit of the wind.
     “Come on! Come on! ” yelled Tee, going red in the face. Then, the wind snapped the sail to its limits and the sail-cart started to creak forward.
    “We’re good, Tee!” said Richy.
    Tee darted back to the black cables. She nervously grabbed at the first, but it was slack. She looked over to Elly, who checked the second—and it was taut.
    “We’ve got something!” yelled Elly.
    Finally, the top of Pierre’s head broke the surface of the water. Tee and Elly, with the sail-cart’s help, hauled him out of the water.
    “Richy, he’s up!” yelled Elly.
    “We didn’t kill him, did we?” asked Richy fearfully.
    Tee discovered the mini-crossbow bolt lodged between Pierre’s heavy coat and his javelin holder. The bolt tips were designed to grab, not just pierce. “Nope!”
    “That’s one lucky man,” said Richy.
    They tore off his coat, and Elly put her head on Pierre’s chest. “He’s not