THE MAKER'S CAGE

This is the first page of the small project:  The BIG project is making good progress now, too.


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 I miss my brother.
Levin taught me to read. He taught me everything our father didn’t want us to learn: How to climb the chimney shafts, how to use numbers, how to  and write and where to hide the books. We made a narrow side-shaft that led from Levin’s room up into the library ceiling so we could talk about the girls he hoped would pass their heritage tests and the boys I hoped my father wouldn’t choose for me.
We found a way to get outside the walls.
We sat in the moonlight and stared at the stars as often as we could, and we didn’t die. Then our father sent me here—to the dirty Walled City at the end of the world.  My mother said he wanted to protect me from something I was too young to understand, but I think he lied to her.
 I know he lied to me.
I am not a hearth guest here.
I am a prisoner trapped in a smelly little room.
I haven’t seen the sky since the old woman locked me in.


(next snippet below image)

Tangles....I am always surrounded by tangles 

(about thirty pages later:)   

Then I  heard a man laugh.

I whirled around to run, but I wasn’t quick enough.

The driver clamped his hand around my wrist and pulled me out
into the roadway. He was carrying a sack of blueberries in his free hand. 

"Heritage food,” he whispered, then leaned closer until I could feel his breath on my cheek. "First, Second, and Third Dome people can smell blueberries as far away as most people can smell smoke," he said. "Did you know that?”

I stared at him without speaking and he laughed again.






About 20 more pages into the book: The Makers Cage




I suddenly stopped whispering. 
.....not because I wanted to, but because my lips had closed. 
I tried to open them  and I couldn't. 
But I could hear my father walking away