FOUND (Angels and Gargoyles Book 1) by Brenda L. Harper Read Free Book Online

after a lifetime of wearing shapeless coveralls, Dylan found herself appreciating her new clothing. The material absorbed the sweat and used it to keep her body cooler than it might have been otherwise. The coveralls would have acted as a heavy lump of wet cloth, a weight to add to her burden.
    Again she felt the sudden breeze of someone, or something, moving past her quickly. Instead of searching for its source, she simply closed her eyes and whispered a quiet thanks. The breeze was refreshing. And, as though in response, the breeze moved over her again.
    “What now?” she wondered aloud.
    The landscape had not changed since she began walking that morning. The sun was now to her right. She thought she might have a few hours until it disappeared all together, but she was not sure about that. Not that it mattered. The problem was she had not found any water and she had another full day before she would be taken back to Genero. Her water was nearly gone.
    She had to find water before the sun went down.
    Her body hurt. Her legs did not want to move anymore. She was exhausted beyond words. And her tongue, despite conservative sips here and there of the water, was beginning to swell a little again.
    She needed water.
    When the breeze moved over her a third time, she found herself staring up into the sky. “I don’t suppose you could show me where there is a lake or something, could you?” she called out, not sure if she was talking to the phantom breeze or the soft, billowy clouds.
    And then she laughed at herself, forcing her legs to move, one step after the next.
    She was beginning to lose her grasp on reality.
    She closed her eyes as she walked, her thoughts again moving to Davida. She wished that she was here, that she could tell her what to do next. Had Davida gone through this test? Did she find water? How?
    Dylan began to hum under her breath, a song Davida sang to them sometimes. But her throat hurt, and the movement only made the pain more intense. She tripped over a rock and landed on her hands and knees. “Great,” she muttered as she inspected a dozen tiny scratches on her palms. One of her knees ached as well, but she did not want to stop long enough to pull up the legs of her broken coveralls to see how badly she had bruised them. Just another ache and pain to add to the others.
    She climbed to her feet and began to walk again.
    She passed a small cluster of those green plants. Some of the leaves were broken, lying discarded on the ground. She wondered what might have done that. The breaks were too clean for it to have been a large animal running past. She wondered if there was another human out here, another girl from Genero. She had seen footsteps several hours back, but told herself then that it was her imagination. She wondered now if another girl was doing this test, if she was doing it better than Dylan.
    Dylan found herself rooting for that mystery girl.
    One of us should survive.
    As she passed the plants, she felt that breeze again. But this time, something hit her shoulder. Hard. Dylan spun around, but there was nothing there. Yet, it came again, that same tap on her shoulder, as though something was trying to turn her. To make her walk in a new direction.
    Dylan turned around, moving in the opposite direction of the taps. It came again. When she turned in that direction, the breeze stopped. Dylan looked around herself, studying the empty air, the blue and white sky that hung heavy above her. She saw nothing. But she couldn’t dismiss that feeling that something, or someone, was trying to tell her something.
    She walked for nearly an hour without anything happening. She had nearly convinced herself it was only her exhausted, water-deprived brain that had touched her, had moved her in a new direction. Then it happened again.
    That breeze. A tap on her other shoulder. Turn , someone was telling her.
    Dylan turned without hesitation. Did it really matter what direction she moved in? Her water would be