The Mark of the Dragonfly Read Online Free PDF

more easily into her lungs, until the cold mountain wind finally chased the last of the green dust and brimstone stench away to the south. It would probably take another hour or so for the mist to blow out of town. The scrappers would stay in the shelter until then.
    Piper opened her eyes, eased away from Micah, and looked across the field. As she expected, the enormous meteorite had torn the caravan apart. The battered shell of the second wagon was intact, but a sintee head and two wheels were all that was left of the first. “I don’t think you’ll have to worry about the traders taking any of yourtreasures, Micah,” she whispered, her voice shaking, a lump rising in her throat.
    Micah didn’t answer.
    Piper turned back to the boy. He still lay on the ground, his body scrunched underneath the rock shelter, eyes closed. He wasn’t moving. “Micah?” she asked, silently adding,
Open your eyes
. A sick feeling clawed at Piper’s stomach. Why wasn’t he answering her?
    Gently, Piper eased his body out into the light. The sky was no longer green but gray with a line of pink on the horizon. Micah was breathing but unconscious. Blood streaked the right side of his face and soaked the hair near his temple. Some of the caravan debris must have hit him in the head. All those jokes Piper had made about getting his skull smashed …
    Tears blurred her vision, and her throat got tight. With trembling hands, she felt Micah’s chest. A strong heartbeat; but with a head wound, that might not last. She ran her hands up and down his body, looking for more injuries. “Tell me what’s wrong, Micah,” Piper sobbed. “Tell me where you’re hurt, and I’ll fix it, I’ll—”
    How would she fix it? She was a machinist. Machines were so much easier to fix than people were—hadn’t she told Micah that herself? Piper put her head in her hands. She didn’t even have her tools with her. She had nothing.
    Except the caravan. Piper’s head snapped up. Traders from the big cities were wealthier than any person in thescrap town could ever hope to be. Their caravans carried extra food, supplies, and medicine. It would have taken a miracle for any of it to have survived the storm, but Piper needed to check.
    Ignoring the pain in her ankle, Piper pushed herself to her feet and ran unsteadily across the field to the ruined caravan. The bodies of the two traders lay nearby, but she didn’t look at them. Instead, she went to the remains of the second wagon. She hadn’t noticed it at first, but now she realized a good portion of the wagon had escaped the meteorite.
    “Let’s see what you’ve got here,” Piper said out loud. She rubbed the tears from her eyes and got down on her hands and knees to tear into the wagon. With every breath she drew, anger bubbled up inside her. “See what we can scavenge off of you. You make us animals, clawing at each other, killing ourselves for food down here in the scrap heaps, so let’s see what we can take from you.” Piper hated that she couldn’t stop crying, but Micah’s blood-covered face was all she could see in her mind.
    Someone had tied the goods down in the back of the wagon, under a thick black tarp, and the storm had tangled the tarp in the wreckage. Piper lifted her shirt and took a knife from a small sheath strung on her belt next to the coins she’d been saving. She punched a hole in the tarp and dragged the blade down toward her. The cloth parted easily, and the contents of the wagon spilled out onto the ground.
    Medicine kits, food packs with meat kept on ice, and clothes fell into her lap. Not just any clothes, either, but the thin, bright-colored stuff the southerners liked to wear. To Piper, all those sky blues, fiery yellows, and ivories looked foreign and strange set against meteor green, but Micah wouldn’t have been able to contain himself at seeing all the pretties.
    Piper carefully laid the medicine kits aside and cut away the rest of the tarp. She would use it as a