By MEGAN WHALEN TURNER, Illustrator DAVID WATT
There we one guard who always seemed to catch me with my head in my hands, and he always laughed.
"What?" he would say. "Haven't you escaped yet?"
Every time he laughed, I spat insults at him. It was not politic, but as always, I
couldn't keep an insult in when it wanted to come out. Whatever I said, the guard laughed more. I ached with cold. It had been early in the spring when I'd been arrested and dragged out of the Shade Oak wine shop. Outside the prison walls the summer's heat must have dried out the city and driven everyone indoors for afternoon naps, but the prison cells got no direct sun, and they were as damp and cold as when I had first arrived. I spent hours dreaming of the sunshine, the way it soaked into the city walls and made the yellow stones hot to lean on hours after the day had ended, the way it dried out water spills and the rare libations to the gods still occasionally poured into the dust outside the wine shops.
Publisher: HarperCollins
Price: $14.95
Age group: 11 plus years
