The Mark of the Dragonfly Read Online Free PDF Page A

they’re going to get the jump on the whole town, but they didn’t notice me.”
    “A caravan?” Piper asked as she turned to look. “It can’t be.” No one in his right mind would bring a caravaninto the middle of a meteor storm. Piper had never heard of such a thing.
    But Micah was right. In the distance, a pair of high-walled wagons pulled by four sintees rolled across the shattered ground. The shaggy, half-blind beasts stumbled often among the craters, their trunks outstretched to feel the terrain while their bellies dragged the ground. The traders were probably too busy watching the skies to guide them. Sintees were a bad choice for caravan animals, but they were the only beasts Piper knew of that might tolerate a meteor storm without balking. They were too deaf, blind, and stupid to know any better.
    “Whoever they are, if they don’t manage to get themselves killed, the Consortium will ban them from the trade markets for good,” Piper said. “Why would they risk coming out here? They’ve always let the scrappers do the dirty work of harvesting.”
    “Hoo, boy! See that gap in the clouds? It looks like a huge hole in the sky!” Micah wasn’t listening to her or paying attention to the caravan any longer. The falling meteors had transfixed him. “Do you think that’s where Hiteria went through?”
    “What—the goddess?” Distracted, Piper shook her head. “That’s a bedtime story, Micah. It’s not real.”
    “I know, but they say when she left Solace, she tore open the sky.” Micah shook Piper’s shoulder to make her pay attention to where he was pointing. A swelling vortex of green clouds hung over their heads. At its centerwas a vast darkness devoid of stars. “Isn’t that a big enough opening for a goddess to fly through?” he demanded.
    Piper stared up at the shattered sky and tried to push past the fear that had her clenching her teeth and digging her nails into her palms. Micah had a point. She’d never seen anything like this before. People in the scrap towns made up all kinds of stories to explain how the strange objects came into their world. Some believed it was the goddess’s doing, while others thought the objects had been forgotten in their own worlds and somehow slipped through the cracks into this one. Piper didn’t know about the latter story, but as a tiny speck cowering before the unimaginable sight above her, she could believe a goddess had ripped a celestial tear so big that it allowed things from distant worlds to fall through.
    Then she glimpsed a spark of green in the center of the darkness. With a dawning horror, Piper was pulled from her daydream of goddesses to—reality. A huge meteor, the largest she’d yet seen, roared from the darkness at the center of the swirling vortex, heading straight for the slowly moving wagons.
    There was no way the traders would be able to get clear in time. The meteor was falling too fast. Micah dug his fingers into her arm, and Piper watched in horror as they jumped from the wagons. Too slow. The meteor looked as big as a horse, and the screaming sound it made as it neared echoed the cries of the doomed caravan.
    Piper threw her body over Micah’s and covered her ears as they fell to the ground.
    The world erupted in a ball of heat and light. The meteor’s impact shuddered through the ground, sending debris from their stone shelter falling all around them. Piper squeezed her eyes shut, praying the ledge would protect them. Micah wrapped his arms around her in a painful grip and yelled something incoherent.
    They stayed like that, terrified, until gradually the storm passed. The whole thing was over in less than twenty minutes, but it felt like Piper spent an eternity pressed against Micah under the small rock ledge. As the minutes ticked by, the impacts grew fewer, and finally an eerie quiet fell over the field, broken only by the ringing in Piper’s ears. She knew it was truly over by the smell of the air. Each breath passed