The Goblin Warrior (Beneath Sands Book 2) by Emma Hamm (100 books to read txt) 📕

“I will.” She said quietly. “I’ll bite your fingers off one by one until there’s nothing left but bloody stubs.” To emphasize her point, she clacked her teeth loudly at him.

The heavy weight of the teacher’s hand landed on her shoulder, and Willow knew her time was up. There would be no more tugging upon her hair but she was going to be in trouble again.

“Miss Penderghast. The office.” And when she hesitated, the teacher added in a much more stern tone saying, “Now.”

She straightened. For only ten years old, she held herself with the grace of a much older woman. Willow was not dirty. She was not useless. And she was damn well better than these children who had been born into luck and wealth.

“Yes, Theresa.” She quipped.

“You will call me Mrs. Jenson!”

As Willow walked towards the door, she yanked her hair out of the pins that held it in a bun. The heavy mass of curly blonde hair fell upon her shoulders like a shield. “Whatever you say, Theresa.”

The outraged shout followed her into the hall. This place was stifling her. It made her want to run, to feel the wind in her hair and the harsh bite of sand again.

At the end of the hall, the front double doors of the school gleamed. There it was. Her freedom.

If only she didn’t have to go to the principal’s office.

But then a thought bubbled into her mind. It skittered just beyond reach, floating through her mind’s eye like a bubble that burst when she heard the first echo of the teacher’s heels striking the hall behind her.

That was her freedom.

She didn’t have to stay here if she didn’t want to. She didn’t have to sit here and take their cold stares and shallow minds. The doors were right there. The light that peeked underneath the edges called to her.

It said, “Willow. It’s time to go.”

Before she had even made up her mind, her feet were flying towards the door.

The teacher’s shout echoed in her ears but the sound did not stop her. There were no chains holding her down now. No one could stop her from leaving this place.

Her shoulder hit the door before anything else. She was shocked to find that it wasn’t locked. Instead, there was very little resistance as she slammed into the metal and then skittered out the door. The sunlight hit her face as she paused. Luther was going to be so angry at her. She had broken so many rules today.

But the shouting behind her reminded Willow that there wasn’t much time. She had already made her choice.

Well, her feet had made the choice for her.

Said feet were then pounding down the grand staircase that led to the school and disappearing into the street full of busy people. Some around her stopped to stare at the little girl whose golden hair streamed behind her like a banner.

But Willow knew how to disappear.

She had grown up in the sands that swirled around a person and swallowed them whole. She had followed in the footsteps of sandcats that disappeared into burrows and were never seen again. She was something wild and free that these people could never understand.

When she felt as though the school marm had given up, she skidded into an alleyway to catch her breath. Running had felt good. She hadn’t run free since they had arrived here.

Her heart was beating against her chest, her breath sawed out of her chest and her lungs felt raw. She felt alive again.

One hand pressed against her sternum as she leaned back against the metal wall. Laughter slipped out of her mouth like a hidden secret. She had done it. She had gotten away from everything that she hated so much. Luther would be so angry with her but this was the first time she had actually enjoyed being in the City.

It was so much easier to disappear here than it was anywhere else.

With a sigh, she rotated her shoulders and looked around to her bearings. She was going to have to find Luther.

The school would send word to him that she had disappeared. Again. At first, she had refused to even go to the school. She didn’t want to sit in chairs with other students and stare at boards that flashed pictures in front of her eyes. She wanted to go outside! Wasn’t that what children were supposed to do?

At least she knew where Luther was working. He was apprenticing at the hospital. Exactly where he had always wanted to be. He wanted to save lives. To make a difference in this world.

He said it was because that was where the brightest minds went. But Willow knew differently. He had wanted to go into it because he thought that someday he could go back to the mines and cure the thing that had killed their mother. He remembered her heaving cough and slow death.

Willow didn’t.

She wished he were smart enough to realize that they were never going to let him do that. The people in the City didn’t want anything to do with the miners. Once you were in the City, you were here for good. They weren’t going to be wasting any resources on people they thought were less than dirt.

Even when she mentioned it to him, he told her she didn’t know what she was talking about. A little girl couldn’t understand the politics of a City such as this.

Willow knew that if their children were treating her like this, that they were learning it from someone else. Their parents thought the same of her. That meant that the older these kids got, the more the hatred of her people would grow.

She just didn’t understand how they could look down on people they didn’t even know.

Her feet made no sound on the stairs of the hospital and she opened the door quietly so that the man at the front desk wouldn’t notice her. She had gotten into the habit of