1269_UgliesFreeBook

UGLIES 209
Still, she wouldn’t have traded anything for this
moment, standing there and looking down at the plains
spread out below. Tally had spent the last four years staring
at the skyline of New Pretty Town, thinking it was the most
beautiful sight in the world, but she didn’t think so anymore.
Lower down and halfway around the mountain, another
river crossed David’s railroad track. The route there from
the Smoke twisted in all directions, taking advantage of
veins of iron, rivers, and dry creek beds, but they’d never
had to leave their boards. Walking wouldn’t be an option,
Shay explained, when they came back loaded with heavy
metal.
The track was overgrown with vines and stunted trees,
every wooden cross-tie in the grip of a dozen tentacles of
vegetation. The forest had been hacked away in patches
surrounding a few missing segments of rail, but it held the
rest firmly in its grasp.
“How are we going to get any of this out?” Tally asked.
She kicked at a gnarled root, feeling puny against the
strength of the wild.
“Watch this,” Shay said. She pulled a tool from her
backpack, an arm-length pole that telescoped out almost to
Tally’s height. Shay twisted one end, and four short struts
unfolded from the other like the ribs of an umbrella. “It’s
called a powerjack, and it can move just about anything.”