The strange girl got instantly stranger. She thrust her head forward and drew back her lips, showing them her teeth.
“If it’s a secret,” she snarled, “you could just say so.”
This time, Max and Nell stepped back, too. Jean and Kate had retreated as far as the next orchard row and were clinging to the trunk of a plum tree.
Just outside the girl’s line of sight, Max put a finger to his head and tapped it. Crazy. That was it. Not just different on the outside, then.
“Nothing’s a secret,” Susan said carefully. “We just haven’t been to any workshops.”
Max and Nell shook their heads to back this statement up. The girl looked from one to the next of them, and as quickly as she’d gotten angry, she softened.
“Oh, my lambs,” she said. “You really don’t remember, do you?”
A squirrel leaped from the plum tree into the grass and edged toward the full basket. The girl stomped at it, growled, then turned back to them, chewing this thought over, as Susan wondered whether it might be better to run now and find some other kind of help that didn’t involve teeth.
“I think I have it,” the girl said, unaware of the looks they were giving one another on her account. “That’s part of it, too. They emptied you like an old boot!” She shook her head sorrowfully. “Bet you couldn’t even tell me your own names, could you?”
Susan’s eyebrows shot up, and a wave of irritation threatened to swamp the pity she’d been feeling for this strange girl. “Well, we’re not quite idiots,” she said, landing somewhere in between the two.
The girl did not look prepared to take her word for it. She pointed at Jean, still clinging to the plum tree. “You, what do they call you?”
Startled, Jean looked up at her. “Jean,” she said.
The girl mouthed the name as if tasting it and wrinkled her nose.
“That’s a strange one. What about you?” She jabbed a finger at Susan, like a little kid pretending to be the teacher in a game of school.
“I’m Susan,” Susan told her, feeling impatient. “Nice to meet you. And what do they call you?”
The girl sniffed. “Liyla. And that’s a city name, for your information. Not like . . . what did you say yours was?”
“Susan.”
“Like Susan.” She shook her head. “What kind of useless name is that?”
Susan’s face burned. There was politeness, and charitable thoughts and there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I and all that, and then there was letting some lunatic insult you.
“Excuse me?” Susan said to her. “What did you say?”
The girl drew her lips back and looked at Nell. “How about you? You have a useless name, too?”
“It’s Nell,” she said. “And who are you calling useless?”
Liyla slouched back against the plum tree and reached over her head to pull a fruit from a low branch.
“Well, there’s use for you now, of course,” she conceded, taking a bite of plum with her sharp teeth. “Just look at those faces! I only meant how you were before. You know, Ma always said they only take discards for the workshops. She’ll be glad to know she was right.”
She extracted the pit from her plum and flicked it away. It arced up a few feet and landed in a pile of moldering fruit beneath the next tree in the row. They all watched her. If the girl’s face had been a shock, her talk was worse. She didn’t seem to have the faintest self-consciousness about it, though, which struck Susan as a sure sign of insanity. She remembered reading once that the truly crazy lived in a state of absolute certainty they were right.
Liyla jabbed her finger at Max and then at Kate, insisting they repeat their names for her once, then a second time, as she finished the fruit and licked plum juice from her fingers with a startlingly long tongue.
Then she stopped, her brow furrowing.
“You said you’re lost, right?”
They nodded.
“Is that the kind of lost that’s got the red cloaks after you?”
Susan thought of the dark shape in the woods.
“What are red cloaks?” she asked.
The girl shot her a look. “Now, that is an emptying, isn’t it?” She brushed her shoulder, miming a cloak. “Soldiers, remember?”
Susan shook her head, and the girl sighed. “Well, can you at least recall how you all met up?”
“Met up?” Max said. “These are my sisters!”
It took a second for Susan to recognize the strangled snort that followed as laughter.
“Not only emptied, but filled back with fluff! Sisters! That’s rich.” She laughed some more. “No, you’re discards; that’s a fact. At least you girls are. Don’t know why anyone would put you out,” she said to Max. “But maybe you were sleepy.”
She reached up and picked another plum, then sliced off half of it with her sharp teeth and chewed vigorously.
“Riiiight,” Max said in his I-sometimes-have-to-suffer-fools voice. “Sleepy. So they threw me out.”
“So you do remember!” the girl crowed. She tossed the half-eaten plum in the air and caught it in a rough hand. “Thought so!”
Susan had had about enough.
“Look,” she said. “You mentioned a city, and that’s where we need to go. Could you take us there?”
The girl cocked her head and grinned.
“I can, pretty-picture girl!” she said. “Just as soon as I know this place is safe from prying eyes.” She went to the outer wall, hooked a foot into the network of vines, and hoisted herself to the top. They watched her scan the forest before she dropped softly back into the mossy ground of the orchard.
“Looks clear. You sure you weren’t followed?”
They shook their heads, and she smiled.
“Well, then you are lost, and I’ve found you. Isn’t that right?”
She raised her eyebrows with the look of someone who expected applause. Susan only shrugged.
“Sure,” she said.
“Good!” Liyla gave a great clap with her gnarled, thick-nailed hands. “Very good. You’ll all come home with me, then, and my ma will fix you up. You’ll be back where you belong in no time.”
Adult intervention. Exactly what Susan had been hoping for. Finally,
