The clay man ran without effort, and the tiny woman shook her head at the growing distance between them and the scholars. "Stealing it was wrong," she reiterated.

The clay man nodded.

The woman folded her arms. "Where are we going to take it? We can't just give it back; they'd burn us up." She looked up at the man's face, smiled, and shook her head. "You have a lot to learn about the world."

The clay man nodded again.

"Find us a safe place, and we'll start reading it there."

They ended up by the lake. The scholars' fire no longer glowed in the distance. The clay man raised an earthy wall, too tall for a man to scale, around a patch of grass and a portion of the water.

"Don't get it wet!" the tiny woman demanded as she stepped into the water. "Stonesleeve, what does it say?"

With great care, Stonesleeve opened the tome's giant cover. He hesitated, touched the inside page, and left a wet fingerprint. Slowly, he shut the cover and stared at the lettering on the front.

"You can't turn the pages without staining it?"

"No, Ress," came the reply.

Ress rubbed at her forehead. "What are we going to do?"