Craft Read Online Free PDF Page A

almost sounded concerned. Uncertain if her sister was
still teasing her, she looked out over the darkness again. Her eyes
lingered on the places where the lights were brightest. The calls
from her family were difficult to listen to without trying to do
something.
    “Did they hurt anybody?” Ellie
asked.
    “Nothing we can’t handle,” Neveah
said. “Now, go on, get. The adults got work to do before the
night’s done.”
    Ellie scowled at Neveah. Neveah
smirked at the expression on Ellie’s face, daring Ellie to argue.
Ellie knew better. She clamped her mouth shut. Without another
word, Neveah and Careen moved across the road to help the Bumbalows
closest to them. Ellie obediently turned away to go to her shack.
There was nothing she could do to help. The others would tell on
her if she tried to help. After the fear of the attack, and her
guilt at doing nothing, Ellie was not eager to face a beating from
Neveah.
    Ellie’s eyes searched the dark around
her house for Coopers as she turned. She knew Neveah had been
teasing her, but she also feared the Coopers more than it was
logical.
    As she turned, she noticed a dark
shape in the trench. Ellie took a step closer, letting the light of
the others craft give her details. The shape was a person on the
ground. She did not remember anyone on her side crawling in there,
but she had been too overwhelmed to notice much. She peeked over
the edge of the trench at her family to be sure she wasn't being
watched. Everyone had a task. No one had noticed the person
yet.
    A smile crept over Ellie’s face. She
could help the person without Neveah ever knowing the truth. Ellie
could play her part and help her kin. No one beyond Ellie would
ever know the difference.
    Ellie double and triple checked to be
sure Neveah and Careen were distracted by the others. Neveah was
working healing craft on an aunt. Careen was next to a cousin and
doing the same. Their eyes were closed as they focused on their
work. Ellie could feel their familiar craft reach across the space.
It bound Ellie to the nature of their task. They would be at it for
a while.
    Satisfied, Ellie hurried over to the
prone figure. All she could tell from the amber and red lights
radiating in the night was that the dark figure in the trench was
male and was lying face down in the dirt.
    Ellie turned him over, expecting to
see a familiar face, perhaps a cousin, or even some of her extended
family. What she saw was anything but familiar. She stood again and
pressed her back against the dirt of the trench. Her fear rocked
her body. She let out a low gasp of shock. He was not a Bumbalow or
anyone the Bumbalows had married. If he was not a Bumbalow, he was
a Cooper. It was that simple. The world only consisted of two
sides: her and them.
    Ellie almost called out to Neveah.
Neveah would know what to do with the man. She would take care of
him before he could kill them all. Ellie stopped herself just shy
of the call. A feeling in her gut explained to her that she would
regret the moment forever if she did. It was a moment she could not
have explained to anyone if she had tried.
    Ellie hated the Coopers, but she could
not stop the feelings in her chest as she looked at the man. The
feelings told her she had met a kindred spirit. He had crawled into
the trench as well. He had shared her hiding place through the
chaos. He had been as afraid as she had been.
    The pause gave her time to consider
the truth of what would happen to the man if she called out. Ellie
knew what her family would do to him. It was what the Coopers would
have done had a Bumbalow fallen on their property. They would make
him pay for the attack, and it would have been her call that sealed
his fate. She could not do it. There had to be another way. The
Coopers were murderers, but she was not. She wanted to be better
than them.
    She was also curious. She had never
met another person who could not claim some blood or marriage
relationship to her family. The man was different,